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NUCLEAR
Revealed: the huge mountain of 'unofficial' nuclear waste
China bucks U.S. over U.N. action
French nuclear shipment heads towards Germany after protest
Anti-nuclear protester killed by waste train
India still wary of China despite better ties
Preliminary Pact Reached on Iran Nukes
Envoys Report Progress in Iran Talks
Nuclear Talks With Iranians Said to Progress
Missing Antiaircraft Missiles Alarm Aides
PM says Japan military must contribute to global safety
Love her or hate her...
S. Korea Urges U.S. To Push for Arms Talks
Terrorists trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons, Australia warns
Court Rejects Early Decision on Radioactive Sludge Tanks
MILITARY
US defies protests to poison Afghan poppies
Afghan Militants Hold Talks on Hostages, but No Deal Yet
Eritrean authorities deny reports 20 died in prison "incidents"
Ivory Coast erupts in attacks on French
Exercise Displays Japan's Ambitions
PM says Japan military must contribute to global safety
As Falluja Waits in Despair, Rebels Attack in Samarra
US warplanes hammer Iraq's rebel-held Fallujah overnight
Terrorists kill dozens in Iraq attacks
52 Killed In Spate Of Attacks
U.S. Forces Begin Moving Into Falluja
Bickering Iraqis Strive to Build Voting Coalition
Arafat's No. 2 Is Set to Assume Leadership
Philippine defense minister leaves for China
Russians Mark Revolution Day With Protests
US ready to put weapons in space
Officer Who Says She Was Raped at Base Is Classified as AWOL
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Trial postponed for terror suspect
Supreme Court Proceeds, but With Uncertainty
US defies protests to poison Afghan poppies
Unrivaled Security Planned for Inauguration
POLITICS
Four More Years Attributed to Rove's Strategy
Rumsfeld signals he won't 'fade away'
Domestic Issues on the Front Burner
White House's Iraq policy director to step down
President Signals No Major Shift In Foreign Policy
Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm
ACTIVISTS
Anti-nuclear protester killed by waste train
Love her or hate her...
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Revealed: the huge mountain of 'unofficial' nuclear waste
Contamination nine times worse than admitted
sundayherald
By Rob Edwards
07 November 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/45831
The mountain of radioactive waste that will be left by Britain's nuclear programme is at least nine times higher than previously admitted, a new report by government advisers has revealed.
A massive 18 million cubic metres of soil and rubble is now known to have been con taminated by leaks, spills and discharges at 30 nuclear sites across the country over the past 60 years. That figure could double to 36 million cubic metres when the full extent of the problem is revealed. Only 1.9 million cubic metres of low-level radio active waste has been declared in the official inventory.
The news follows revelations in the Sunday Herald last week that a large area of land around the Hunterston nuclear power station in North Ayrshire had been contaminated .
The latest report, by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), which advises the Scottish Executive, warns that there is currently "no solution" for dealing with the waste.
"This report reveals the vastness of the problem ," said Dr David Lowry, consultant editor of the land contamination newsletter, Brownfield Briefing. "It is extraordinary to learn that such large volumes are not included in the official UK inventory of nuclear waste."
CoRWM's report, released last week, is the most comprehensive assessment to date of Britain's legacy of radioactive rubbish. The waste comes from defunct and operating nuclear power plants, military nuclear bases and medical radioisotope factories.
In Scotland, the waste has been generated at six sites: Hunterston, Dounreay in Caithness, Torness in East Lothian, Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway, Rosyth in Fife and the Clyde naval base, near Helensburgh.
CoRWM concludes that there are 2000 cubic metres of high-level radioactive waste, 349,000 cubic metres of medium-level waste and 1.93 million cubic metres of low-level waste. But it adds that there will also be a huge volume of contaminated soil, rubble and other wastes from cleaning up the nuclear sites over the next century.
It estimates this will amount to 18 million cubic metres - enough to fill 200,000 double-decker buses. This is a "rough figure", CoRWM says, which may end up being two times too low, or two times too high.
The figure includes the 81,000 cubic metres of contaminated land at Hunterston . It also includes an estimated one million cubic metres of contamination from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria.
At Dounreay, the UK Atomic Energy Authority says that 7500 square metres of land is contaminated - 5% of the open ground on the site. The amount of radioactive soil, rubble and other "low-activity" wastes planned for disposal over the next 30 years is between 26,000 and 45,000 cubic metres.
All these wastes - low in radioactivity but high in volume - pose a dilemma. While regulatory agencies say they might need to be buried at special sites with other radioactive waste, the nuclear industry would like to leave them where they are.
"Owing to the increase in future volumes of site clearance waste, it will be necessary to review the scale of, and arrangements for dealing with, these wastes," says CoRWM.
Green MSP for the South of Scotland Chris Ballance, who was instrumental in uncovering the contamination at Hunterston, accused the nuclear industry of " playing Russian roulette with public health, public money and the environment" .
It also raised questions about nuclear secrecy, and suggested that there may be other radiation leaks which have been covered up, he argued. "The cost to the taxpayer of cleaning this up - if that can be done - is anybody's guess."
The Green Party will next week be questioning ministers on how much contamination has been found around Hunterston, Dounreay, Torness and Chapelcross. And last week, party co-leader, Robin Harper, quizzed First Minister Jack McConnell on the Hunterston contamination.
CoRWM was set up by ministers in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2003 to recommend what should be done with nuclear waste. It includes 13 experts from universities and consultancies and has promised to make its final recommendations in July 2006.
CoRWM's chairman Gordon MacKerron pointed out that low-level wastes were not part of its remit, which is restricted to medium and high-level wastes. But another government group which had been looking at low-level wastes, the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC), had been suspended.
"Government has no source of independent advice on the low and very low-level waste," MacKerron said. "CoRWM cannot make credible recommendations to government without looking at the whole picture and that includes low and very low-level waste." David Lowry said that RWMAC had flagged up the looming problem of high- volume decommissioning wastes a year ago. "But it seems that the Executive and the ministries in Westminster have paid no heed," he said.
The Executive said it was aware of the nuclear industry's legacy. "We do not accept that putting a figure on the amount of low-level nuclear waste adds any risk to human health or the environment," said a spokesman. "The scale and scope of the issue is being reviewed. Proposals on how these wastes can best be managed for the long term will be brought forward shortly."
The British Nuclear Group, which runs 10 nuclear plants in the UK, including Hunterston A and Chapelcross, said that "no firm decisions" had been taken on what to do with the waste. Most of it would probably be left where it is for the moment, and would be dealt with in the future by the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which starts up next year.
British Energy, which runs Hunterston B and Torness, accepted that there could be 18 million cubic metres of site clearance waste. "We have contributed to that figure and we are totally supportive of CoRWM," a spokeswoman said.
Friends of the Earth, however, dismissed suggestions that there was nothing to worry about. "This latest revelation of the problems of nuclear power should act as a warning to all those who think building new nuclear power stations is a smart idea," said the environmental group's chief executive, Duncan McLaren.
-------- china
China bucks U.S. over U.N. action
November 07, 2004
By Laurent Lozano
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041106-112313-6587r.htm
TEHRAN - China gave Iran crucial backing yesterday in its standoff with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, with Beijing saying it opposed U.S. efforts to have the Islamic republic referred to the United Nations Security Council.
The comments from Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing came as officials from Britain, France and Germany were trying to persuade Iran to limit its sensitive nuclear activities or risk possible international sanctions.
"There is no reason to send the issue to the Security Council," Mr. Li said at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi.
"It would only make the issue more complicated and difficult to work out," Mr. Li said, contradicting Washington by saying "the Iranian government is having a very positive attitude in its cooperation" with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mr. Li refused to speculate on whether China would use its veto in the Security Council in the event of Iran's case being sent there.
He did say he had told U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw "that China supports a solution in framework of the IAEA."
The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons under cover of its civilian atomic energy program. It wants the IAEA to refer the dispute to the Security Council when the IAEA board meets in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 25.
Tehran denies the charges, insisting it only wants to generate electricity.
Russia, another permanent and veto-wielding Security Council member, has also voiced its strong opposition to Iran's case being referred to the United Nations. Moscow is helping Iran build its first nuclear power plant in a deal worth some $800 million.
Mr. Li's comments added yet another layer of diplomatic difficulty for the European Union, which is using a "carrot and stick" approach with Iran in a bid to get it to suspend uranium enrichment.
In Paris, the meeting between Iran and the big European powers - France, Britain and Germany - is taking place behind closed doors, under a news blackout.
Enrichment is the sensitive part of the fuel cycle because it makes fuel for civilian reactors but it can also be used to manufacture the material for the explosive core of atomic weapons.
Tehran has until now resisted Europe's demand for an indefinite suspension, arguing that it would infringe on its right to maintain a civilian nuclear power program.
Enrichment is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - the treaty overseen by the IAEA and to which Iran is a signatory - if for peaceful purposes.
The three European powers are offering Iran nuclear technology, including access to nuclear fuel, increased trade and help with Tehran's regional security concerns if the Islamic republic halts enrichment.
-------- europe
French nuclear shipment heads towards Germany after protest
(AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107143123.9yxysyx5.html
NANCY, France - A train carrying a shipment of highly radioactive waste was on its way to a German storage dump on Sunday, after being delayed for two hours by anti-nuclear protestors in eastern France.
The train left Laneuveville-devant-Nancy at 1:23 pm (1223 GMT) in the direction of Gorleben in northern Germany, after police removed two protestors who had chained themselves to the railway lines.
"Two militants, a boy and a young girl, chained themselves to the railway track, around 300 metres from a chemical factory, which obliged the dangerous convoy to stop at around 11:20 am (1020 GMT), one of the 15-strong group of protestors, Daniel Michel, told AFP.
The waste left the plant in La Hague in northern France late on Saturday and was expected to cross the French-German border on Sunday and to reach the German town of Dannenberg 24 hours later, where it is expected to be loaded on to trucks to cover the last few kilometres (miles) to the Gorleben dump.
On Saturday thousands of demonstrators had demonstrated in the northern German town to protest the imminent arrival.
More than 12,000 police were deployed last year for similar convoys in one of the largest security operations of its kind ever mounted in Germany.
Anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners say the shipments are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.
Germany, which has no treatment facilities of its own, sends spent fuel rods for reprocessing at the La Hague plant before they are returned here for storage.
-----
Anti-nuclear protester killed by waste train
(AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107211828.o8bde6zr.html
STRASBOURG, France - An anti-nuclear protester died in northeastern France Sunday after being run over by a train carrying nuclear waste from France to Germany, regional authorities said.
The 21-year-old man, who had chained himself to the railway near the city of Nancy, lost a leg after he was crushed by the train and died despite receiving emergency treatment at the scene.
The authorities said the accident happened in the early afternoon in the town of Avricourt after a group of eight people gathered near the main Paris to Strasbourg line, on which the nuclear transport train was travelling.
"After coming out of a corner at reduced speed, the train was apparently confronted with the group, which moved out of the way with the exception of one person, who was hit," a police statement said.
"Despite the arrival of the emergency services at the scene, the young man died of his injuries," the statement said.
The police did not reveal the man's identity, but said he was aged 21, was "probably" from the Meuse region in eastern France and was part of a group of activists.
Nancy state prosecutor Michel Senthille said that one of the man's legs had been cut off in the incident, contradicting an earlier statement by the regional authorities who had said that both the man's legs had been sectioned.
Earlier the train, which was carrying treated nuclear waste from the French plant at La Hague to Gorleben in northern Germany, was delayed for two hours near Nancy as police removed two protestors who had also chained themselves to the railway lines.
Senthille said that the man who died was not thought to have had links with this group.
The train, which left the retreatment plant at La Hague on Saturday evening, crossed on to German soil at 8:35 pm (1935GMT) Sunday, almost exactly 24 hours later.
It carries 12 containers of spent fuel and is the seventh such consignment to be sent back to Germany since 1996.
A member of protest group Nuclear Out, Gilbert Poirot, said about a dozen protesters had been involved, all of them French nationals.
"It appears that the demonstrators had not put in place safety measures destined to warn the convoy of their presence," he said.
The German Greens Party, which forms part of the German governing coalition, said it was stunned by the death of the demonstrator.
"We deeply regret this tragic death," a spokesman said, adding that he expected a thorough investigation be carried out into the incident.
It called on demonstrators not to risk their lives, an appeal echoed by another anti-nuclear group.
At Hitzacker, 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Gorleben, several hundred people gathered with candles and lanterns in a spontaneous tribute to the dead man.
A spokesman from French nuclear energy firm COGEMA, which manages La Hague nuclear plant said the incident was "a tragedy" and that officials organising the convoy had been "extremely shocked".
On Saturday thousands of anti-nuclear protestors had gathered in northern Germany to protest at the imminent arrival of the shipment.
After demonstrating in Danneberg market square on Saturday, protestors gathered at the railway station and also temporarily blocked the tracks to be used by the train.
From Dannenberg the consignment will be taken by road to Gorleben.
Anti-nuclear and environmental campaigners say the shipments are dangerous and that the waste will contaminate the water table at Gorleben.
Germany, which has no treatment facilities of its own, sends spent fuel rods for reprocessing at the La Hague plant before they are returned here for storage.
-------- india / pakistan
India still wary of China despite better ties
The News International
November 07, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/07-11-2004/world/w3.htm
NEW DELHI: The Indian defence ministry remains wary of its giant nuclear-armed neighbour China despite a recent improvement in ties. In its annual report issued late on Friday, the defence ministry said both countries had "stepped up efforts to build mutual trust and confidence" and were trying to resolve a long-running Himalayan border dispute. But it also noted India's long-standing concern about China's close alliance with arch-rival Pakistan, adding that Beijing had helped Islamabad develop its own nuclear missile programme.
"At the same time, China's close defence relationships with, and regular military assistance to, Pakistan, ... its build-up in the Tibet Autonomous Region, its military modernisation, its nuclear and missile arsenals and its continental and maritime aspirations, require observations," the ministry said. China and India agreed in March to strengthen ties between their armed forces, which fought a brief border war in 1962. The two sides also held "friendly" talks in July as part of an ongoing effort to demarcate their 3,500-km border. Each side claims the other is occupying parts of its land at opposite ends of their Himalayan border. But they are thought to be close to a deal to resolve the dispute. In another sign of warming ties between the world's two most populous countries, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to visit New Delhi early next year.
In the report, the defence ministry said Pakistan remained a source of "infiltration, cross-border terrorism, military adventurism, nuclear and missile posturing and threats" and was the main threat to peace and stability in the region.
It also defended India's need for an independent nuclear deterrent since the country was a not a member of any military alliance or strategic grouping, and faced a wide-spectrum of security challenges from terrorism to possible nuclear attack.
-------- iran
Preliminary Pact Reached on Iran Nukes
November 7, 2004
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAN_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Hoping to avoid a U.N. showdown, Iran and the European Union's three big powers reached a preliminary agreement over Tehran's nuclear program, Iran's chief negotiator said Sunday.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Iran's conservative-dominated parliament pushed for a bill banning the production of nuclear weapons in a gesture of building more international trust.
The preliminary agreement worked out in Paris with Britain, France and Germany could be finalized in the next few days, chief Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian told state-run Iranian television from the French capital, where talks wrapped up Saturday.
If approved, the deal would be a major breakthrough after months of threats and negotiations and could spare Iran from being taken before the U.N. Security Council, where the United States has warned it would seek to impose economic sanctions unless Tehran gives up all uranium enrichment activities, a technology that can produce nuclear fuel or atomic weapons.
Diplomats in Austria familiar with the talks outcome declined to discuss details. "One or two points remain outstanding, and they hope to resolve those outstanding points by Wednesday," one diplomat in Austria told The Associated Press.
In proposals to Iran last month, Britain, Germany and France offered a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology - including a light-water research reactor - if Iran pledged to indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment and related activities such as reprocessing uranium and building centrifuges used to enrich it.
Europe and Washington fear Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, but Tehran denies such claims, saying its atomic program has peaceful aims, including energy production.
"We had 22 hours of negotiations ... They were very difficult and complicated negotiations but we reached a preliminary agreement at the expert level," Mousavian said. He said the four countries must now ask their governments to approve the accord.
The preliminary agreement appeared to mark a dramatic breakthrough, since Iranian officials have resisted indefinite or long-term suspension of nuclear enrichment, a process that Iran is permitted to pursue under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Tehran has signed.
While not being in breach of the treaty, Iran is under heavy international pressure to drop such plans as a good faith gesture.
"If this is approved by all four parties, we will witness an important change in Iran's relations with Europe and much of the international community in (the) not-too-distant future," Mousavian said without elaborating on the agreement.
The Europeans had warned Iran that they will back Washington's threat to refer the Islamic republic to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions unless it gives up all uranium enrichment activities before a Nov. 25 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
Tehran suspended uranium enrichment last year but has refused to stop other related activities such as reprocessing uranium or building centrifuges, insisting its program is intended purely for the production of fuel for nuclear power generation.
Meanwhile, lawmakers "are collecting support for a draft bill banning the production of nuclear weapons," legislator Mohmoud Mohammadi told The Associated Press.
Mohammadi, a former Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the bill could be presented to the parliament next week, adding that the draft was prompted by a religious verdict by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, has said that production, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons was un-Islamic and against human interests.
"Ayatollah Khamenei's verdict is clear," Mohammadi said. "So why not make the production of nuclear weapons illegal under Iranian law?"
--------
Envoys Report Progress in Iran Talks
Europeans Say Tehran Must Act Soon to Avoid U.N. Action on Nuclear Program
By Robin Wright and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31048-2004Nov6.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 6 -- Two days of talks in Paris between Iranian and European delegations about Iran's nuclear program ended late Saturday without a formal agreement, but diplomats said progress had been made.
"After two days of very difficult discussions, we have made significant progress toward a provisional agreement," a senior Iranian envoy involved in the negotiations said on condition of anonymity in a telephone interview from Paris. "We all agree after these difficult talks on a common approach to the problem. . . . An agreement is attainable."
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, left, talks to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami in Tehran. China is increasing its trade with Iran. (Raheb Homavandi -- Reuters)
A nearly identical statement from the French Foreign Ministry, issued after 20 hours of intense negotiations, also noted "considerable progress."
The European delegation -- with members from Britain, France and Germany -- and the Iranians will consult with officials in their capitals over the next few days and then provide formal responses. No further meetings are envisioned, the Iranian envoy said. European envoys stressed that Iran must answer by the time the International Atomic Energy Agency takes the issue up Nov. 25.
The Europeans are trying to persuade Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program indefinitely as a way to ensure that it does not use the technology to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran has insisted that the suspension be no longer than six months and on assurances that it would not be asked to permanently revoke its right to have a nuclear energy program, according to European envoys.
Iran has said its uranium enrichment facility is part of a peaceful nuclear fuel program. But the scale of its efforts, conducted in secret over 18 years, has left U.S., European and Israeli officials suspicious that Iran is ultimately seeking to produce a nuclear weapon.
The Europeans have offered Iran diplomatic and economic incentives to suspend nuclear work that could lead to producing a bomb. If no agreement is reached, the Europeans will join the United States in referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions.
Throughout the negotiations, the Europeans have faced pressure from the Bush administration, which has made clear its preference to take the issue to the Security Council.
China signaled Saturday that it opposed any U.S. effort to take Iran to the council, a potential blow to the Bush administration's goal of pressuring Iran.
The Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, on a two-day visit to Iran, said at a news conference in Tehran that he had informed Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that confronting Iran at the United Nations would complicate efforts to find a solution.
China, which last month signed a multibillion-dollar gas deal with Iran, instead wants the issue settled at a lower level by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Li said.
"I told all my colleagues that China supports a solution to this issue within the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency," Li told reporters. Taking it to the Security Council "would only make the issue more complicated and difficult to work out," he said.
China, one of five members of the Security Council that wield veto power, holds a critical card in the looming debate about Iran's nuclear program. Iran and China have developed increasingly close ties, and China now receives about 17 percent of its oil from Iran and is rapidly becoming one of its largest trading partners.
Linzer reported from New York. Correspondent Glenn Frankel in Paris contributed to this report.
--------
Nuclear Talks With Iranians Said to Progress
November 7, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/middleeast/07iran.html?pagewanted=all
PARIS, Nov. 6 - Two days of negotiations between Iranian and European officials to curb Iran's uranium enrichment program made progress but ended Saturday without a formal agreement, European officials close to the discussion said.
The French foreign ministry spokesman, Hervé Ladsous, reported "considerable progress in reaching a provisional agreement" under which France, Britain, Germany and the European Union would provide economic, technological and political incentives in exchange for Iran's halting production of enriched uranium.
But officials stressed that the agreement had not been formally accepted by Iran and that the Iranian delegation would return home to Tehran for consultation on the issue.
The United Nations nuclear agency has given Iran a deadline of Nov. 25 to suspend its uranium enrichment program or have its case sent to the Security Council, where it could face economic penalties.
Iran has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program for longer than six months and insists on its right to produce its own fuel.
It has said that its nuclear program will be used to generate electricity, though the United States contends that it could be used to produce nuclear weapons.
"The negotiations are complicated and difficult, but both sides are determined to continue the talks,'' Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi of Iran said Saturday at a news conference in Tehran. "We'll have to see where they will lead.
"It is in the interests of both sides that the issue be resolved in a way that Iran retains its legitimate right to use peaceful nuclear technology, and others are assured that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons," he said.
In Tehran, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing of China said Saturday that Beijing would oppose efforts to send the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council.
The move strengthened Iran's position in its dispute with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article.
-------- iraq / inspections
Missing Antiaircraft Missiles Alarm Aides
By Dana Priest and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31050-2004Nov6.html
Several thousand shoulder-fired missiles -- the kind that could be used to shoot down aircraft -- are missing in Iraq, and their disappearance has prompted U.S. military and intelligence analysts to increase sharply their estimate of the number of such weapons that may be at large, administration officials said yesterday.
Some U.S. analysts figure that as many as 4,000 surface-to-air missiles once under the control of Saddam Hussein's government remain unaccounted for. That would raise the number of such missiles outside government hands worldwide to about 6,000.
But a senior defense official said yesterday that military intelligence analysts are having difficulty estimating just how many of the portable missiles may have vanished and how many of those may be in working order and therefore a threat to U.S. and other aircraft.
"We don't have a good estimate," the official said. "Some have put forward some figures, but there is none that the Defense Intelligence Agency has confidence in."
Another official said government analysts could not say with any certainty whether the missing weapons remain in Iraq or have been smuggled outside the country. "There is no evidence that they have left the country," he said.
Still, other government officials said the threat that the Iraqi missiles could be used to target military or civilian aircraft remains a very real one. Concern about the Iraqi missiles was raised during a conference on aviation threats last week at the DIA's Missile and Space Intelligence Center in Huntsville, Ala. The new estimates, based on analysis done by the DIA and with the proliferation section of the CIA, were first reported yesterday by the New York Times.
The U.S.-led invasion forces did not secure all weapons depots in Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions were looted. U.S. officials fear that the shoulder-launched missiles were among the items carried off by groups willing to sell them on the black market to terrorist organizations.
Western intelligence officials have repeatedly warned of al Qaeda's desire to acquire the missiles for use against American and other airliners. The weapons are easy to hide and cost relatively little -- from less than $1,000 to $100,000 each.
In 2002, terrorists launched two Russian-made SA-7 missiles at a commercial airliner taking off from Mombasa, Kenya. The State Department estimated in 2003 that more than 40 aircraft have been struck by portable missiles since the 1970s, causing at least 24 crashes and more than 600 deaths worldwide.
U.S. officials have said thousands of antiaircraft missiles, most of them SA-7s, were looted from Iraqi army stockpiles and remain unaccounted for. The U.S. military initiated a buyback program for surface-to-air missiles in August 2003, paying as much as $500 apiece. Although hundreds were acquired, military officials have said that thousands remain in circulation.
Three months after the start of the buyback program, in November 2003, a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter packed with soldiers was hit by a missile west of Baghdad, killing 16 soldiers and wounding 20. At the time, the attack marked the deadliest single assault on U.S. forces since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Since the 1950s, 20 countries have developed or produced more than 30 different types of portable missiles, with between 500,000 and 750,000 weapons believed to be in the worldwide inventory today, according to a report in May by the General Accounting Office, now known as the Government Accountability Office.
The report, "Nonproliferation: Further Improvements Needed in U.S. Efforts to Counter Threats from Man-Portable Air Defense Systems," cited official U.S. figures estimating a few thousand manually portable missiles outside government control.
But, the report added, the government "estimates that thousands more under government controls may be vulnerable to theft and possible transfer to terrorist groups because they are not subject to stringent national export standards nor do they have adequate physical security or inventory controls."
Researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.
-------- japan
PM says Japan military must contribute to global safety
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107071021.f81gf3ry.html
Japan's armed forces must contribute to global peace to secure safety at home, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Sunday amid signs his government will extend an unpopular military deployment in Iraq.
"(The Self-Defense Forces') international contributions have come to be highly praised both at home and abroad," Koizumi said in a speech at a military parade.
"From now on, to secure our own country's safety and prosperity, it is necessary to positively contribute to the peace and stability of the international community," said Koizumi, a fervent supporter of the US-led "war on terror."
The beheading last month of a Japanese hostage in Iraq, after Koizumi rejected demands to withdraw Japanese troops, has fuelled a debate about whether the soldiers should extend their mission past December 14.
A recent Asahi Shimbun poll showed 63 percent of Japanese oppose extending the troop's one-year mission beyond next month.
Around 550 Japanese troops on a non-combat humanitarian mission are based in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa, Japan's first military deployment since World War II to a country where there is active fighting.
The chief of Japan's Defense Agency, Director-General Yoshinori Ono, told a morning television program that a decision on the mission would be made with "the security situation and prospect for Iraq's reconstruction" in mind.
He suggested troops could stay in Iraq until the end of next year.
"The multinational forces' term in Iraq ends at the end of next year according to UN Security Council resolution 1546," Ono said.
"By then, nation-building should be clear. That is the most important thing. That is why the new year's elections in Iraq must be made to succeed."
Main opposition leader Katsuya Okada of the Democratic Party of Japan renewed a call for the soldiers to be withdrawn.
"We have said the SDF should withdraw, even before December 14, and have opposed the dispatch. That has not changed," Okada told the same program.
The parade featuring 4,200 troops in red scarves and camouflage fatigues, along with 230 military vehicles and 60 aircraft, was held at the SDF's Asaka base just northwest of Tokyo.
Before Koizumi's arrival a sound similar to that of a gunshot was heard close to the base, police said.
Police began investigating whether the firing was the work of extremists after finding two metal tubes and a fuse in a wooded area pointed at the base, Jiji Press reported. No one was apparently injured, it said.
Police said they found a five centimeter (two-inch) diameter metal-like object less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) south of the base.
"We are looking into whether this object was fired," said Saitama police spokesman Yasuo Kazama.
Japan's military is called the Self-Defense Forces because its pacifist constitution rejects the use of force. The forces turned 50 years old on July 1 this year.
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Love her or hate her...
One woman's single-handed efforts to make the world a better place are an inspiration to many.
But when she faced execution as a hostage in Iraq, her fellow Japanese overwhelmingly heaped scorn and derision upon her
The Japan Times
By Nao Shimoyachi
Nov. 7, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20041107x1.htm
Nahoko Takato became famous on the night of April 8 this year, when the Arab satellite broadcaster Al-Jazeera aired video footage of her and two other Japanese held blindfolded at gunpoint in Iraq.
The 34-year-old volunteer worker had been captured in Fallujah -- along with photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama and freelance writer Noriaki Imai -- by militiamen who demanded the withdrawal of Japan's Self-Defense Force troops from Iraq as a condition of their release.
With public opinion in Japan already split down the middle by the dispatch of those troops in February, the plight of the three civilian hostages took center stage in a renewed national debate over the government's decision to contribute to U.S. President George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing.''
However, despite the Japanese government rejecting the captors' demand, the hostages were released unharmed after being held for nine days. During that time, Takato repeatedly pleaded that she had been working to help Iraqi children and was not an enemy of the Iraqi people.
Her release, though, was not to be the end of Takato's ordeal. After returning to Japan, she suffered severe stress disorder caused not so much by having been a captive, but more because of harsh public criticism that the three had been irresponsible to enter Iraq despite a Japanese government warning to civilians not to do so.
A native of Chitose in Hokkaido -- the home base for most of the initial contingent of troops sent to Iraq -- Takato grew up in an environment where, in her 40-student elementary-school class, "all but two were from SDF families." Four years ago, at age 30, she quit her job running a karaoke shop and went to Calcutta in India to do volunteer work with the Missionaries of Charity founded by the late Mother Teresa. She also spent time at hospices for AIDS patients in Thailand and Cambodia.
Takato went to Iraq for the first time in May 2003. Since then, she has worked with local people to organize the provision of medical supplies to hospitals in cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi, and has also helped street children in Baghdad. It was during her fourth stay in Iraq that she was taken hostage.
Takato has recently resumed her work for Iraqi people, using some of the 8 million yen left from money sent to the three former hostages from people across Japan. Although the volatile security situation now prevents her entering Iraq itself, she spent both August and October in Amman, Jordan, coordinating her new projects to rebuild schools in Fallujah and provide job training for street children in Baghdad.
While now being deeply wary of the Japanese media, Takato granted The Japan Times this exclusive interview before flying out once more to Jordan in late September. This week, she also responded by telephone to comment on last weekend's execution of the 24-year-old Japanese hostage Shosei Koda in Iraq.
It is roughly six months since you were taken hostage in Iraq. How do you feel now about your time in captivity?
Before that, I was always asking myself what I could do. But now, I feel more like, "You have to do this." I feel more obligations. Even if I get a job here in Japan, or go back to India, or wherever I go, the experience of having been taken hostage will never leave me.
I was derided by the Japanese people. I was told, "You are sticking your nose into something you have not been asked to do." But if I tried to avoid such criticism in the future, I would never be able to move on, never feel at ease, never get back to my normal life. I can't even fall in love in this state. Things are different now.
Are you still struggling with all that?
The incident had a huge impact and made me aware of a lot of things. One is how Japanese regard people who work for other countries. Yes, I had been told that I was neglecting domestic issues. There is that kind of a culture here. But even when I helped to make Braille books and read out aloud for blind people in Japan, I was told -- in a sarcastic tone -- "How admirable!"
I have also become more aware of the value of human life. I knew about other people's deaths: those of friends and AIDS sufferers. Then, that became about my life too, and I have started thinking about human life through my own life. When I grasped the hands of those dying whom I cared for in India, Thailand and Cambodia, I could feel that human souls never die even if their bodies do.
This feeling has become stronger after the [kidnapping] incident because I might well have been killed. But we -- Imai, Koriyama and I -- all knew too well that our captors had suffered a lot in the past year, too.
Is that what you were thinking when you were being held? Weren't you scared?
Of course I was scared. I couldn't stay rational when I was captured. I froze. When you are in real shock, you can't do anything. The most horrible part was the video shoot. Before that, we [three hostages and our Iraqi captors] were in a good mood, talking about local restaurants and other stuff. I had a hope that we might be able to get out soon. Then, heavily armed men came in and they were so angry! I was scared, but I had known Iraqis were in a terrible situation since before I entered Iraq.
When I learned in an Internet cafe that two Japanese diplomats were killed in Tikrit last November, I cried a lot and Iraqis in the cafe asked me why I was crying. When I told them why, they asked me back, "Do you know how many Spanish were killed on the same day? What about Iraqis? Americans?" They told me that's what a war is about. I was ashamed of myself because that reminded me I was acting like a foreigner, even after I had witnessed so many Iraqis dying terrible deaths.
You avoided appearing in the media very much, and stayed at home for months after the incident. What were you thinking during that period?
The only people I could share my feelings with were those who knew Iraq, who had been there. When I started talking about Iraq, I couldn't control myself. I kept talking about what was happening in Fallujah and how many died in Fallujah, things like that.
There was a critical information gap. Fallujah is seen as a den of vice by the rest of the world. I wanted Japanese people to know what was really happening there.
Fallujah was the first city I visited when I went to Iraq for the first time in May 2003. There, I heard from Iraqis who had been marching peacefully in protest against Americans occupying a local elementary school, about their being shot at by American troops. About 18 people were killed. How can Americans do that? I have American friends. I could not believe what I saw at the hospital there.
What I most wanted to convey during the period when I largely shut myself away at home was why the hostage-taking happened: the background to it. People kept asking me about the incident, but I wanted to talk more about why it happened.
Hostage-taking continues in Iraq, and some hostages have been killed, including Shosei Koda who was beheaded last weekend. What is your view on this, and what do you think of the hostage-takers?
I never met Shosei Koda. I don't know how and with what feelings he entered Iraq. So, I can't comment on that. When I was captured, many different people -- old friends I hadn't seen for ages, and people I had never even met -- spoke about me. The result is a totally different Nahoko Takato. I don't want to do the same thing to other people myself.
What I believe is that there are no national boundaries where human life is concerned. You can't say which life is good and which life is bad. This is an issue of human life.
As for the hostage-taking in general, it isn't known who is really behind it. I guess our case was one of a few, including the one in April involving Junpei Yasuda and Nobutaka Watanabe, that were the result of pure resistance -- I mean resistance movements by local Iraqis. In the cases after that period, such as the killing of South Korean Kim Sun Il in June, I think foreign fighters were playing no small part. Things are getting complicated.
Let me make this clear. Fallujah was the first place where, as early as April, people stood up against American occupation after the fall of Baghdad. I guess foreign fighters crept in around that time, taking advantage of the mess and lack of international attention.
Why do you think the situation in Iraq has become so bad?
That's because all foreigners -- the occupation forces, the foreign radicals and people like me -- just haven't cared enough about the condition of postwar Iraq. We should have noticed that the situation never improved after the war. A faint sign was there early on, but no one paid attention. Information has been very limited and international opinion stands by the aggressors: the Japanese, the Americans, the British, all of them.
I blame myself for not having made enough effort to let people know the facts. I was shocked that some reporters did not know the name of Fallujah until the hostage incident, whereas the city had always been at the center of the Iraq problem.
Why did you start volunteer work?
From being young, I never had a clear image of any profession I wanted to follow. They always ask you what you want to become when you grow up, you know. I had a clear image of what I wanted to be, but that was not connected to a particular profession. I have great respect for Seiho Tajiri [head of the Japanese-African American Society in Atlanta, Ga., who had been living in the U.S. for 40 years when, in 1993, Takato says she "learned how to live" by following him around "carrying his bag" for a year] and Mother Teresa, whose ways of life do not fall into a certain category of profession. I was also interested in Buddha, not the religious Buddha but the private Buddha when he was still Siddhartha: how he agonized over people's suffering, poverty and illness and forsook everything he had to search for the meaning of life. I wanted to find an ideal way of life rather than live for a profession.
Why did you choose to go to India?
I had several other options. I wanted to go to Africa very much, and I was interested in Vietnam, too. When I quit my job at 30, I made up my mind that I would stay someplace for at least a year. Then I saw a video of Mother Teresa, which greatly inspired me. Plus, her organization accepts all people regardless of religion. If you want to work there, all you have to do is turn up and give your name and address. Of course, you have to listen to what they have to say before starting your work, though (laughs).
What motivates you to offer your own time, money and effort to other people?
In the end, it is all for myself and, perhaps, for my family. We never went a day without quarrels. My parents and I were very bad at expressing love. We can't be honest about our feelings when we are close. When we are apart, I think about my parents and write letters to them. Things go smoothly.
In Japan, I was wearing "armor," especially when I was running the karaoke shop. I was in fighting mode because, you know, I had to make a profit (laughs). I got really tired of controlling my feelings in such a way, and I started wanting to be alone.
I stopped wearing that armor when I went to India. When you are with lovely orphans and see people dying, you can't control your feelings. Lots of feelings just poured out of me: I wanted to love those kids, I felt sad, I felt lonely. And I didn't have to control those feelings. I finally found myself at ease.
But it was more than that this time [after her captors released her and Takato returned to Japan]. I have never cried so hard before.
What do you mean?
I had a lot of feelings swirling around inside me. I cried when thinking about the people in Fallujah. I was very frustrated and sad. I felt powerless. I also felt sorry for my family. I was sad when Japanese people spurned me. I cried and cried. I didn't know anyone could cry as much as I did. The only memories I have about that time are of me crying. I don't remember what I was doing or where I was sleeping at home. I don't even remember that Imai came to see me. There is an SDF drill site just across from my house and the sounds of the SDF exercises and shells brought back what happened in Iraq. I would pull a duvet over me to try to shut out the noises.
How else were you affected by the criticism you faced in Japan?
I can't help feeling powerless when I think of people in Fallujah. I survived while thousands of people died. I survived, but I had been shutting myself away at home. I blame myself when I read news reports about Fallujah.
I fell into a cycle of self-disgust and started feeling that the people who accused me were right. All I had done in Iraq felt meaningless. My soul was completely destroyed. I wondered why I had to live. I was nothing more than a physical object in which blood was circulating.
How did you recover from that state?
I received a lot of letters of encouragement, not only from Japan but from abroad. There were Americans who even asked me to come over to their homes for a change. But the biggest factor was when I opened my e-mail inbox for the first time in a while and found e-mails from Iraqis.
Why do you act as an individual rather than participating in a group?
People often say they can't help because they can't speak English, because they don't belong to an NGO, because they don't have nursing qualifications. I was labeled as a "volunteer activist" by the media. What is that? "Volunteer" and "activist" have totally different meanings. When I saw those news articles, I was afraid people might think I was doing that kind of stuff because I am an activist. I hated it. Our daily lives are connected with international society: Every action, from drinking juice to eating a hamburger. After they had killed 1.5 million people, the United Nations recently lifted the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Who are the member states? It's us. Even if you are not a doctor, nurse or NGO member, there should be something you can do. I wanted to be sure and show that there was something I could do.
Do you think an individual can make a difference?
Individuals run organizations. An organization involves "dry" parts, such as fundraising and info-collection. Take a humanitarian operation -- you can't do anything with that dry part alone. When you don't have a tractor and need one, you might have to negotiate with local people. There are a lot of "wet" parts. And I think those wet parts are very important.
The same can be said of a nation. The government thinks from the point of view of the national interest. But at the same time, it shouldn't neglect individuals. A nation is not only about a flag. It has to include individuals.
What do you think of the Japanese government deploying the SDF troops in Iraq?
There is no doubt that Iraqis need international assistance. But I feel the military side is too prominent in delivering humanitarian assistance in Iraq. For Iraqis, a military force is a military force. When a U.S. Humvee arrived at a local school to deliver notebooks, kids stepped back. Teachers and staff members went home. The American soldiers were not going to kill them, they were doing humanitarian work. But, still, they were scary. The same can be said of Iraqis. I saw Iraqi girls shrink away when they saw Mujahedeens holding guns. Men in military fatigues with guns are scary for Iraqis because they have had so many horrible experiences due to the military.
So, what do you think Japan should do?
I think there are a lot of things Japan can do as the sole victim nation of atomic bombs. My friends asked Iraqi students about depleted uranium, and 90 percent of those asked knew about it: that it causes diseases and that it affects farm products that harm our bodies if we eat them. As the only nation to have experienced the horror of atomic bombs, Japan should help to study the situation, find out ways to solve the problems and clear the contamination all over the land -- if the SDF has that ability.
What are you going to do in Jordan?
I have two projects. One is to rebuild schools in Fallujah. I wanted to do something at the place where I was taken hostage and where, at the same time, a lot of people were being killed. This is a kind of tribute project to the people of Fallujah. But we can't enter Fallujah. The situation is getting worse and worse. The aerial bombing never stops and Iraqi friends tell me half the population has fled and now live in poultry sheds and suburban resort hotels. We were scheduled to start work on a school on Aug. 31, but we could not. One of the important purposes of this project is to create jobs and stop young Iraqis from becoming fighters in the war. So I didn't want our project to be stalled. As a result, we are thinking of rebuilding a school in Ramadi where the situation looks calm now. And when the situation improves in Fallujah, we will move there and rebuild schools there.
The other project is giving vocational training to street children in Baghdad. Our job-training programs for them have taken off -- at a barber's shop, a carpenter's shop, a steel factory and a blacksmith's workshop. Some are learning how to cook.
Do you want to go back to Iraq someday?
Yes. I do very much because I have such a strong tie to Iraqis now. This is more than sympathy for Iraqis. It was a fatal encounter. If I look at the hostage incident in a positive way, I think I was shaken by Iraqis who said, "You saw the tragedy of Fallujah. You heard the tragedy of Fallujah. Now it is time for you to understand it with your body."
My connection with Fallujah is such that I can never ever say goodbye just because security is bad in Iraq. My dream is to attend the weddings of the boys [street children she has cared for]. I really want to be there when they get married.
What are your long-term plans?
Other than Iraq? My mind is now preoccupied with Iraq. But I think I will live in Japan in the future. It's just that I am not strong enough to live in Japan now. I don't get complained about in India and Iraq for what I do. But in Japan I can't bear it when people keep asking me, "Why do you have to go abroad?" "Are you crazy working in a dangerous country like Iraq?" "What is volunteer work?"
What would you like to do in Japan? I want to open a free school for drug users and dropouts. Then, I want to do agriculture and farming. I don't mean commercial agriculture, but growing some vegetables and milking cows in a field near my house. This is to do with my own experiences. I think I must consider why I needed glue-sniffing and pills and why it was that I was able to quit them.
When did you take drugs?
I started when I was a sixth-grader. I quit when I was 16. At my junior high school many of the boys belonged to motorcycle gangs and girls started working or got married soon after graduation. I was among the few who went to high school. I was angry at everything around me: parents, teachers and society. I realized that when I saw street boys in Baghdad yelling, "There is nothing interesting in the world!" I was able to get out of that game when I found something interesting other than sniffing glue. It was a music band I joined at high school. A natural high makes you far happier than using drugs.
Is that what you tell the street children in Baghdad?
No way! Hopped-up boys would never listen to a story like that. I don't get mad if I catch them sniffing glue. But I blow up when I catch them wasting food or breaking a promise. I overdo it, using broken Iraqi, because I believe it's important to make them understand that I am angry.
But you are trying to straighten those Iraqi boys out, aren't you?
I didn't set out to help them directly. I just showed them there is an exit. The first step was to win their trust. I visited the boys every day, sitting next to them, listening to their stories, smoking and singing together. I had to show that I wasn't going to abandon them. That seriousness and devotion was necessary. Then I rented a house and invited them over to have them take a shower. I told them to wash their clothes, fold them and wear them again. When you live in the streets, you don't wash your clothes. You throw away things easily. I tried to get them to understand a rehabilitation process through washing. When they clean themselves up, they become interested in fashion. They go to the market to find nice clothes. Adults see them differently, which gives the boys confidence. As a result, they now spend less time sniffing glue.
What would you do if you were captured in Iraq again? How would you want your family and the government to act?
I will probably be dead next time. But even if I was killed, I think my family would happily tell you that they had no complaint about that because Nahoko knew what she was doing.
-------- korea
S. Korea Urges U.S. To Push for Arms Talks
Reuters
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31049-2004Nov6.html
SEOUL, Nov 6 -- South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun telephoned President Bush to propose that solving the nuclear crisis involving North Korea be a priority for Bush's second term in office.
Bush agreed on the need to push forward with stalled six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, the Blue House, South Korea's executive quarters, said in a statement.
"President Roh proposed making the North's nuclear problem a joint project to solve with close cooperation and to lay the groundwork for peace on the Korean Peninsula and in the world," it said.
"The two leaders agreed to strengthen efforts to hold the six-way talks as soon as possible," the statement added.
China, the United States, North and South Korea, Japan and Russia agreed in June to hold a fourth round of six-way talks in September involving senior diplomats to try to end the North's nuclear programs.
The discussions never took place, with Pyongyang appearing to stall while it waited for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
-------- terrorism
Terrorists trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons, Australia warns
SYDNEY (AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107022608.c7v6lke0.html
Terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) are trying to obtain nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to use them, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer warned Sunday.
Speaking ahead of a two-day conference on regional nuclear proliferation starting here Monday, Downer said although JI was yet to get its hands on atomic weapons, it would not give up trying.
"There's absolutely no doubt that terrorists, or at least some terrorists, are endeavouring to get hold of nuclear materials as well as other forms of weapons of mass destruction," he told commercial television.
"We don't have any evidence that for example that Jemaah Islamiyah is trying to do that, but we do in the Middle East that organisations like al-Qaeda are."
Downer said it was clear JI had no problem targeting innocent victims as it had in the Bali bombings which claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians, in October, 2002.
"Obviously, any organisation that is prepared to wipe people out, young people enjoying themselves, wipe them out in Bali, is an organisation that wouldn't stop short of using at least some sort of more vicious and more dangerous weapons.
"I think in the interests of the region and the interest of humanity we need to make a very big effort to stop the proliferation of these systems." Downer said the conference was a chance to seek common approaches to the treatment of nuclear materials.
The conference, likely to be dominated by questions surrounding North Korea's nuclear ambitions, will be attended by government ministers and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei.
"This is about getting countries in our region to try to develop common approaches to dealing with questions such as nuclear security, that's the security of nuclear facilities of one kind or another that they themselves have," he said.
It was also about finding ways to stop inappropriate exports of material which could contribute to proliferation.
Downer said questions surrounding nuclear material in North Korea, Iraq and Iran highlighted the need to develop strong and consistent approaches.
"There is absolutely no consensus on how to handle these questions," he said. "There's no consensus in detail how to handle, for example, sensitive exports. There's no consensus on how to handle nuclear materials internally."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
Court Rejects Early Decision on Radioactive Sludge Tanks
November 7, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/national/07nuke.html?oref=login
YAKIMA, Wash., Nov. 6 (AP) - A federal appeals court ruled Friday that it was too early to decide whether the Energy Department should be allowed to leave radioactive sludge in underground tanks in Washington State instead of shipping it to a central repository.
The court overturned a lower-court ruling favorable to environmental groups and American Indian tribes that had sued to block the Energy Department's plans. The lawsuit claims combining the sludge with concrete grout - as the government plans for Idaho, South Carolina and Washington State - could endanger groundwater and rivers.
The Energy Department says some highly radioactive residue in the waste tanks is too expensive to extract and proposes reclassifying it as less dangerous, combining it with grout and leaving it in place.
Although the lawsuit cites all three states, the ruling affects only Washington because Congress approved a measure this year allowing the reclassification for South Carolina and Idaho.
Friday's ruling overturned one last year by a federal judge in Idaho who barred the Energy Department from reclassifying the waste. Washington and several other states filed briefs with the appellate court, asking it to uphold the Idaho decision.
The appeals court said it was too soon to know if the Energy Department's plans violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Waiting would be no greater danger "than the one already imposed by our high-level-waste Frankenstein," said a panel of three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Elliott Negin, spokesman for one of the plaintiffs, the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the group did not regard the ruling as a defeat. "All it said is that the timing is off," Mr. Negin said.
Colleen French, an Energy Department spokeswoman, said the agency was reviewing the ruling and would not comment.
As much as 100 million gallons of nuclear waste were stored over the years in 239 tanks in the three states. Some of it has been removed and processed for permanent disposal, but about 85 million gallons remain to be processed.
Critics said that leaving any waste in those tanks would threaten the Columbia River at the Hanford nuclear reservation as well as the Snake River aquifer under the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and the groundwater at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
About 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from World War II and cold-war-era plutonium production is buried in Hanford's 177 aging underground tanks.
An estimated 67 tanks have leaked radioactive brew into the soil, contaminating the aquifer and threatening the Columbia River.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
US defies protests to poison Afghan poppies
independent.co.uk
By Nick Meo in Kabul
07 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=580336
The US is preparing to destroy Afghanistan's opium poppy crop from the air next spring, before it can be harvested, brushing aside objections from aid agencies.
The operation, modelled on controversial efforts to wipe out cocaine-growing in Colombia, reflects growing concern in Washington that the opium trade is financing al-Qa'ida-linked terrorist groups and posing a grave threat to the region's stability. Hundreds of private security contractors and pilots will be hired to spray herbicides from low-flying aircraft.
Senior American officials barely disguise their impatience with British-led efforts at eradication, which have failed to stop a massive increase in Afghan poppy-growing. An annual UN report out next week will show a 64 per cent increase in the area planted over the past year.
"It's time the stick was wielded and farmers understood there is a risk if they plant opium," said a Western official in Kabul. "Some of them will have a rough time, but there simply has to be enough eradication that farmers see risk attached to this business."
Eradication missions are likely to begin in February or March in the southern province of Helmand, although it has not yet been decided whether to begin with an experiment in one area or launch the operation across the country. An American-led campaign targeting drug barons is also expected to start in the next few weeks, with US officials promising to extradite any who can be linked to heroin smuggled into America.
The Pentagon has over-ridden objections from USAid, the official American aid organisation, as well as Britain's Department for International Development.
US troops have expressed fears of being dragged into a drugs war, in which Britain's 1,700 soldiers in Afghanistan could also be embroiled. Britain is also expected to have a major intelligence role in anti-narcotics operations.
A Colombia-style operation in Afghanistan could spark rural rebellions, increase support for the Taliban's insurgency and perhaps cause damage to the environment and health, according to critics. They fear that destroying a crop on which an estimated two million farmers and their families now depend for their livelihoods could impoverish whole provinces without stopping the massive flow of heroin to Europe.
The herbicide glyphosate, used in Colombia, is reported to have caused severe skin rashes and other illnesses. If it is accidentally sprayed over legitimate crops, innocent farmers could suffer, and local famines might result.
Critics complain that little is being done to warn farmers that their crops will be destroyed, even though it could make them decide against planting poppies this month. "If this is to be effective they should be showing farmers that they are really serious," one agriculture expert said. "The best way to combat poppy cultivation is to dissuade farmers from growing it in the first place.
"The other step is disrupting the smuggling networks and the seven or eight big figures who control the opium smuggling business. Afghans might have more faith in anti-narcotics measures if pressure was put on the big fish."
Many analysts believe Plan Colombia, the US-funded war against the cocaine trade, has proved ineffective. Much of the trade has relocated to neighbouring countries, and the price of cocaine in America has remained the same.
The five-year, $3.3bn campaign provides training, equipment and intelligence in return for the extradition of 120 alleged drug dealers to the US. In Afghanistan, Britain has helped to train counter-narcotics forces, including the much-praised Force 333, which has already destroyed heroin laboratories.
----
Afghan Militants Hold Talks on Hostages, but No Deal Yet
November 7, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/asia/07cnd-afgh.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 7 - Militants holding three foreign United Nations workers in Afghanistan said that they had held negotiations with officials from the Afghan government and the United Nations in southern Afghanistan today, but that the meeting had ended without result.
A senior government security official confirmed that the talks had taken place but that they had ended inconclusively.
The hostages were thought to have been moved from the Kabul area to the region close to the Pakistani border, he said.
A spokesman for the kidnappers told news agencies that his group had handed over a list of 25 prisoners being held in Afghanistan whom they wanted released, and that talks would resume Tuesday. Afghan and United Nations officials had traveled to the meeting with his group, he said.
He added that his group, a splinter group from the Taliban movement called Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, may drop its more extreme demands if the government releases the prisoners. The change of tone has led government officials and diplomats to hope that the group is prepared to negotiate a way out and not stage a brutal beheading as militant groups have done in Iraq. One foreign official in Kabul said ransom money was being discussed.
The kidnappers had threatened to kill the three hostages: a British-Irish woman, Annetta Flanigan; a Kosovo Albanian woman, Shqipe Habibi; and a Filipino diplomat, Angelito Nayan, who had been assigned to the United Nations to work on elections in Afghanistan. The three were kidnapped Oct. 28 in broad daylight on a busy Kabul street. A week ago, the militants released a video of the three in captivity.
The militants have called for the withdrawal of the United Nations mission and British and American troops from Afghanistan and the release of all prisoners who express allegiance to the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and Al Qaeda being held in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Senior government and religious leaders have condemned the kidnapping. The minister of the Hajj pilgrimage, Mohammad Amin Naseryar, and Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, leader of one of the mujahedeen parties, both condemned the abduction today, saying it was against Islam to harm people who had come to help bring peace to the country.
The government, together with the local mobile phone company, the Afghan Wireless Communications Company, sent out thousands of text messages urging anyone who had information on the hostages' whereabouts to call a secure phone line.
Senior officials and diplomats said that while they were concerned for the fate of the three hostages, they feared that any deal involving money or release of prisoners would only encourage other criminals to stage similar abductions in the future, endangering all foreigners and prominent Afghans in the country.
-------- africa
Eritrean authorities deny reports 20 died in prison "incidents"
ASMARA (AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107145025.kwzmv0dx.html
The Eritrean government denied on Sunday reports that many people had been killed early Sunday at a prison where people who have avoided military service are detained.
"I can't say there were no incidents, but to say that some 20 people had died is totally exaggerated," Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told AFP by telephone in Asmara on Sunday.
Earlier on Sunday, a high-ranking diplomat, who asked not to be named, told AFP: "I spoke to a direct witness, who told me 25 people were killed by guards during a prison riot" at Adi Abieto jail near Asmara.
An Eritrean opposition website asmarino.com had earlier reported that "guards had started the shooting, killing over 20 detainees."
"It is natural to have some kind of incident because some of the detainees were gangsters. I don't have the details of the operation," Ali Abdu said.
The roundup on Thursday was aimed at catching "gangsters" in order "to preserve security" in Eritrea, "we found gangsters" who were imprisoned, he added, stressing that it is a "national security affair and it is not other people or diplomats' business."
Eritrean authorities are conducting roundups to "target the very few" who have not done their military service, Ali Abdu told AFP on Thursday, but added on Sunday that the aim was also to find "gangsters".
In Eritrea, "we have a very low crime rate" and "we want to preserve security" in the country, he said.
Several young Eritreans, who asked not to be named, told AFP on Thursday: "These roundups started in 1998. They were severe during the war. Since 2002, they had been declining, but right now they're increasing. Soldiers go into offices, houses, stop cars, taxis, buses, and ask for identity cards." Eritrean authorities are rounding up people who have avoided military service.Weapons of microelectronic destruction
Last of four parts In an age of global terrorism, directed energy may represent the kind of adaptive technology Defence R&D Canada needs. Find out where it might appear outside the military
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Ivory Coast erupts in attacks on French
November 07, 2004
By Parfait Kouassi
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041107-121425-4653r.htm
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - French troops clashed with soldiers and angry mobs yesterday after Ivory Coast warplanes killed at least nine French peacekeepers and an American civilian in an air strike - mayhem that threatened to draw foreign troops deeper into the West African country's escalating civil war.
France hit back, destroying what it said was the entire Ivory Coast air force - two Russian-made Sukhoi jets used in the bombing and five helicopter gunships. France scrambled three Mirage fighter jets to West Africa and ordered about 300 troops to be readied for deployment in Ivory Coast.
Mob violence erupted in Ivory Coast's national commercial capital, Abidjan, after France's retaliation. Thousands of angry loyalists armed with machetes, axes and clubs ran into the streets in fiery rampages in search of French targets.
"French go home," loyalist mobs shouted, as thousands set fire to at least two French schools and tried to storm a French military base, seeking out French civilians as French and Ivory Coast forces briefly traded gunfire.
"Everybody get your Frenchman," young men screamed to each other, swinging machetes.
French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo would be "held personally responsible by the international community for [maintaining] the public order in Abidjan."
The U.N. Security Council, convening in emergency session, demanded an immediate halt to all military action in Ivory Coast and emphasized that U.N. and French forces here were authorized to use "all necessary means" to keep the peace.
French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said he will draft a resolution to impose an arms embargo on Ivory Coast. Paris also will seek to impose U.N. sanctions against those blocking the peace process, violating human rights and preventing the disarmament of fighters, he said.
Hard-liners in Ivory Coast's military broke a more than year-old cease-fire, launching surprise air strikes Thursday against rebel positions and vowing to retake the northern part of the country held by rebels since the civil war began in 2002.
Government officials said yesterday's air strike that hit a French peacekeeper position was an accident - but the violence highlighted the nationalist fervor in the pro-government south.
Many there resent the French troops, suspecting them of siding with rebels, even though the peacekeepers have protected government troops in the past. France has about 4,000 troops in Ivory Coast, and a separate U.N. peacekeeping force numbers around 6,000.
A French defense ministry spokesman said on the condition of anonymity that the United States had shown "great understanding about France's concerns in Ivory Coast." But he did not know whether U.S. military assistance had been sought.
The U.N. force includes thousands of West African troops, with the rest coming from an array of contributing nations, none American.
Yesterday's violence began when government warplanes struck French positions at Brobo, near the northern town of Bouake, U.N. military spokesman Philippe Moreux said.
Eight French soldiers were killed and 30 others wounded, French Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said in Paris. An American citizen also was killed in the raid, the French presidency said without elaborating.
A ninth French soldier died of his wounds, Mr. de La Sabliere said in New York.
Council diplomats said the American who was killed was believed to have worked for a nongovernmental organization and to have been at the French base.
-------- asia
Exercise Displays Japan's Ambitions
Seeking New International Stature, Government Departs From Pacifist Past
Washington Post
By Anthony Faiola
November 7, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31046-2004Nov6?language=printer
YOKOSUKA, Japan -- As salty winds gusted off Tokyo Bay, a crack unit of Japanese commandos ascended the starboard ladder of a ship in a simulated hunt for weapons of mass destruction. They secured and patted down the crew, then searched the docked vessel until they uncovered its hidden cargo -- a mock stash of sarin gas.
The training exercise late last month was all for the cameras. Japan, along with Australia, France and the United States, was showcasing its willingness to prevent the transit of weapons by terrorists and renegade states, particularly North Korea. But for Japan, a country that since World War II has eschewed any impression as an aggressor, the decision to take a leading role in a high-profile military exercise marked a rare display of force. It underscored another mission: to redefine this nation as more than just an economic power.
Seeking a more assertive role on the world stage, the Japanese government is now in the midst of a campaign to win a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and transform its Self-Defense Forces into a full military. Key to the changes is a push by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to alter the country's pacifist constitution, which renounces war. For the last nine months, 600 noncombat Japanese troops have been stationed in Iraq, the country's most dangerous military-related operation since World War II.
At the same time, however, the government is struggling to strike a balance between its new ambition and deep public rejection of the nation's militaristic past. The result has been a delicate, even painful transition away from pacifism. More telling, for instance, than the well-equipped troops running through the maritime interdiction exercises last month were the elements of those drills that were unspoken and unseen.
To limit the impression of aggression, the government insisted that no weapons -- unloaded, fake or otherwise -- be carried by those participating in the drills. It also refused to officially acknowledge that any one nation was the target of the exercises, though U.S. officials have openly stated that the training mission was aimed at sending a message to North Korea.
In the simulated interdiction, officials insisted on having one of their own destroyers flying the Japanese flag masquerade as the targeted ship to avoid any image of confrontation with a foreign power. Even then, citing constitutional limits on the armed forces, the captain of the rogue ship had to give verbal permission before the boarding party could set foot on deck.
"Japan has been changing its role in response to new threats and our desire to contribute more to the stability of the world," said Masashi Nishihara, president of National Defense Academy, the country's elite armed forces training school. "But it is a slow and gradual effort. It may sometimes seem like a contradiction, but this is the way it has to be."
In their own fashion, however, the armed forces are shedding their low profile, analysts say.
With a defense budget larger than Britain's, Japan is preparing to deploy a 600-foot, 13,500-ton helicopter carrier, the first in its fleet. It is almost twice the size of the current Aegis destroyers.
Spurred by the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea, Japan is co-developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense shield with the United States, designed to enable it to shoot down ballistic missiles launched by North Korea. The joint project is likely to force a lifting of Japan's long-standing ban on exporting weapons.
A defense panel last month recommended the country's most sweeping national security overhaul in a decade, including the beefing up of its intelligence network, something already underway after Japan launched its first spy satellites into space last year.
The Liberal Democratic Party is pressing to redefine the role of the Self-Defense Forces -- created in 1954 strictly for defense of the home islands. The current Iraq mission, for example, required parliamentary approval of special legislation and a pledge by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that troops would be deployed in a noncombat zone. But next year, debate is expected to begin on changing Article 9 of the post-World War II constitution drafted by the United States during the American occupation, a move that would give Japan far more flexibility to deploy troops overseas.
"There are expectations that Japan play a greater role in dealing with international conflicts," Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said in an interview. "And I believe that Japan must do so."
To that end, officials are now negotiating with the Pentagon a broad redefinition of the U.S.-Japan alliance, in which the United States is now largely responsible for the defense of Japan. On the table, Japanese officials say, is a new concept of "an alliance in global terms" in which the armed forces would work more closely with the U.S. military, both at home and on missions abroad.
"Japan is changing," U.S. Ambassador Howard H. Baker Jr. told a group of foreign reporters in July in terms that he has since used repeatedly. "I think Japan has decided, 'We're a great, big country, we're the second-largest economy in the world, and we probably have the second-largest navy in the Pacific. We want a seat on the Security Council. We want a role to play in the international arena.' I think all those changes are at work and will continue."
The current campaign to boost Japan's international role dates back more than a decade, when its $14 billion financial contribution to the 1991 Persian Gulf War was dismissed as insignificant next to allied nations that had sent troops. But events in recent years -- the increased threat of North Korea, which test-fired a missile over Japan in 1998, the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and China's rise as a potential challenger to Japan's economic dominance in Asia -- spurred Japanese officials toward quicker change.
However, the desire for diplomatic clout commensurate with Japan's wealth is testing the limits of the public's willingness to assume greater risks. There is no better example that the mission to Iraq, described by officials as evidence that the Japanese are now willing to do more than dole out cash.
But the mission -- which involves medical support, engineering projects and water purification -- has been widely viewed as being of little strategic consequence while remaining enormously unpopular at home. Koizumi is now facing stiff resistance to extending the mission beyond its scheduled expiration on Dec. 14.
Meanwhile, the mission is becoming more dangerous, and at the same time carries the risk of being labeled a failure. Japan's efforts to provide medical aid and rebuild public facilities in the city of Samawah, about 150 miles south of Baghdad, have largely been halted because the security situation in that once relatively tranquil part of southern Iraq has eroded. Japanese officials had periodically limited troop movements outside their camp. But since a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the base a week ago, troops have been ordered to remain inside their protected perimeter at all times, defense officials in Tokyo said.
No Japanese soldier has been injured, or has fired a single shot in combat. The Japanese have spent $750,000 on ad campaigns in Iraq promoting their forces as a humanitarian group independent of ongoing military operations. But the Japanese received a grisly reminder last week of the consequences accompanying even their modest mission in Iraq. Citing the Japanese military presence in Iraq, Islamic radicals kidnapped and beheaded Shosei Koda, 24, a Japanese backpacker, whose body was recovered in Baghdad wrapped in an American flag.
Katsuya Okada, head of the opposition Democratic Party, blamed the military presence in Iraq for Koda's death and said conditions in Iraq are too dangerous. "We strongly demand the withdrawal of" Japanese troops, he said.
But sources close to Koizumi say the prime minister is likely to extend the Iraq mission, concerned that a withdrawal would be seen as giving in to the radicals who killed Koda, and as a step back inside Japan's shell.
"The mission is not completed," a senior Japanese official said, on condition of anonymity. "We would be sending the wrong massage in many respects if we ended it now."
Special correspondent Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.
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PM says Japan military must contribute to global safety
TOKYO (AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107071021.f81gf3ry.html
Japan's armed forces must contribute to global peace to secure safety at home, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Sunday amid signs his government will extend an unpopular military deployment in Iraq.
"(The Self-Defense Forces') international contributions have come to be highly praised both at home and abroad," Koizumi said in a speech at a military parade.
"From now on, to secure our own country's safety and prosperity, it is necessary to positively contribute to the peace and stability of the international community," said Koizumi, a fervent supporter of the US-led "war on terror."
The beheading last month of a Japanese hostage in Iraq, after Koizumi rejected demands to withdraw Japanese troops, has fuelled a debate about whether the soldiers should extend their mission past December 14.
A recent Asahi Shimbun poll showed 63 percent of Japanese oppose extending the troop's one-year mission beyond next month.
Around 550 Japanese troops on a non-combat humanitarian mission are based in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa, Japan's first military deployment since World War II to a country where there is active fighting.
The chief of Japan's Defense Agency, Director-General Yoshinori Ono, told a morning television program that a decision on the mission would be made with "the security situation and prospect for Iraq's reconstruction" in mind.
He suggested troops could stay in Iraq until the end of next year.
"The multinational forces' term in Iraq ends at the end of next year according to UN Security Council resolution 1546," Ono said.
"By then, nation-building should be clear. That is the most important thing. That is why the new year's elections in Iraq must be made to succeed."
Main opposition leader Katsuya Okada of the Democratic Party of Japan renewed a call for the soldiers to be withdrawn.
"We have said the SDF should withdraw, even before December 14, and have opposed the dispatch. That has not changed," Okada told the same program.
The parade featuring 4,200 troops in red scarves and camouflage fatigues, along with 230 military vehicles and 60 aircraft, was held at the SDF's Asaka base just northwest of Tokyo.
Before Koizumi's arrival a sound similar to that of a gunshot was heard close to the base, police said.
Police began investigating whether the firing was the work of extremists after finding two metal tubes and a fuse in a wooded area pointed at the base, Jiji Press reported. No one was apparently injured, it said.
Police said they found a five centimeter (two-inch) diameter metal-like object less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) south of the base.
"We are looking into whether this object was fired," said Saitama police spokesman Yasuo Kazama.
Japan's military is called the Self-Defense Forces because its pacifist constitution rejects the use of force. The forces turned 50 years old on July 1 this year.
-------- iraq
As Falluja Waits in Despair, Rebels Attack in Samarra
November 7, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/middleeast/07iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 - Desperation settled over the citizens who remained on Saturday in Falluja, the rebel-held city on the brink of being invaded by thousands of American soldiers and marines, as violence erupted in another Iraqi city that the Americans thought they had secured a month ago.
In a multifaceted and highly organized attack, insurgents detonated four car bombs in Samarra and attacked three police stations in the surrounding province, said Col. Adnan al-Jouburi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Samarra is the northern city where the military seemingly crushed all resistance during a siege in early October.
The car bombs were part of a full-fledged ambush in which either rockets or mortars and small-arms fire accompanied the explosions. "There was a coordinated attack," said Tech. Sgt. Eric M. Grill, a military spokesman.
Asked if the resurgence of violence in Samarra cast doubt on the American military's strategy of laying siege to insurgent-held cities, Colonel Jouburi said Iraq was no different from Afghanistan, where there has also been violence - albeit at a much lower level - since the end of major military conflict there.
"You cannot stop the terrorists completely, because they attack and retreat," he said.
Colonel Jouburi said at least some of the police officers fought back with the assistance of an Iraqi quick-reaction force. The total number of dead in the Samarra attacks was about 40, Reuters reported. In the past, the Iraqi police have been severely criticized, even ridiculed, for abandoning their posts at the first sign of an attack.
A roadside bomb also exploded at 11 a.m. in Kufa, south of Baghdad, in an attack that appeared to be aimed at Abdul al-Muslim al-Kufa, the chief of a heavily armed security team in Najaf, where the American military fought another battle in August. A local security official, Abu Safa, said that Mr. Kufa had been wounded on his right arm and that four of his escorts had been wounded.
The American military suffered its own casualties in the gathering storm around Falluja. Sixteen Army soldiers were wounded Saturday when a bomb inside an Iraqi police car exploded in eastern Ramadi, according to a report on the incident by marines.
As a military convoy passed, lights on the police car were flashing as if it were directing traffic. The car let several vehicles in the convoy pass, then drove toward a truck carrying the troops and exploded.
Shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday, three Army soldiers were wounded when a car bomb blew up next to a military convoy in western Baghdad, a statement released by the American military said. "Initial reports from the scene of the attack indicate one Iraqi bystander was killed by the blast and another seriously wounded," the statement said.
The marines and soldiers encircling Falluja made preparations and conducted drills on Saturday for what appeared to be an impending, all-out assault. Military aircraft dropped leaflets saying that the last open road into and out of Falluja - the one running west toward Ramadi - would be closed on Sunday afternoon, said Muhammad Allawi Jumaili, a resident of the city.
Residents inside the city expressed increasing dread concerning the confrontation and said that conditions had already become dire.
The main hosptial in Falluja was suffering from shortages of doctors, nurses and supplies. Many doctors and hospital officials have already fled the city, and American checkpoints are gradually closing access roads to the city, said Thamer Abdulla, a medic.
Rockets struck a brand new hospital in Falluja that was ready to open its doors, destroying it on Saturday. Jassim Muhammad, a resident who witnessed the attack, said he did not believe that anyone was inside at the time. Mr. Muhammad said American aircraft passed twice over the area during the attack. There was no immediate information from the American military on whether they had fired on the hospital.
Fewer than a third of the city's employees are now showing up for work, said Ahmad Awad, who works for the municipality. Khalil Ebrahim, a shop owner, called the situation in the city "truly terrifying."
"It is unbearable now," Mr. Ebrahim said, describing a once-bustling city that is now a ghost town at night, where only the sounds of shelling and circling aircraft are heard. Having held out this long, Mr. Ebrahim said he was now planning to leave.
A Falluja police chief appeared on the Arab satellite television network Al Jazeera, along with his men at their station. On television, he claimed that the American military had detained some of his officers and calling on the Americans to release them. There was no confirmation of the incidents from the Americans.
"Despair has defeated our hope," said Abu Khalil, a resident who has already left.
Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from near Falluja for this article, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributedfrom Falluja, Najaf and Baghdad.
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US warplanes hammer Iraq's rebel-held Fallujah overnight: military
(AFP)
Nov 07, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041107043922.qezqqvzm.html
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq - The US military said Sunday it unleashed seven air strikes in 24 hours on suspected weapons hideouts in rebel-held Fallujah, as thousands of troops camped outside geared for possible action.
The onslaught came as a marine spokesman said the number of US soldiers wounded in action on Saturday in the neighbouring Sunni Muslim bastion of Ramadi had been 16 rather than 20 as he had earlier reported.
The first two air raids, part of an intensifying campaign in recent weeks of near nightly strikes, were before dawn on Saturday and the other five came in close succession from 10:45 pm (1945 GMT) until 11:55 pm, the military said.
Each bombardment targeted a weapons cache, but the military provided no further information as to whereabouts in the city it hit.
"First Marine Expeditionary Force employed US Marine Corps aviation assets to deliver precision munitions to destroy preplanned targets in Fallujah," it said in a brief statement.
The aeriel pounding was accopmanied by artillery fire from the ground, an AFP reporter embedded with the marines near Fallujah, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of Baghdad, said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has issued an ultimatum to the city to surrender its rebel fighters, believed to include those loyal to Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or face attack.
The US-backed premier is desperate to crush pockets of resistance in Iraq ahead of national elections promised by January.
In a worrying challenge to the effectiveness of using brute force to achieve this goal, a torrent of car bombs and clashes left at least 33 people dead and 48 wounded in the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Samarra on Saturday.
US and Iraqi troops stormed the city, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad, at the start of October to wrest it from rebel hands in what was at the time heralded as a successful campaign.
It marked the first major joint offensive to reclaim a Sunni area ahead of the landmark elections.
Gearing up for what might be their hardest fight since last year's US-led invasion, US marines on Saturday reassembled weapons, counted ammunition and loaded vehicles at their camps outside Fallujah, while inside the rebel enclave, insurgents said they had unified their military command.
Rebels have transformed Fallujah into their fiefdom since a marine assault on the city in April ended in stalemate.
Several thousand US and Iraqi troops have massed around Fallujah since mid-October, while the US military is doubling its manpower in Ramadi to 2,000 amid expectations of an imminent two-pronged attack.
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Terrorists kill dozens in Iraq attacks
November 07, 2004
By Robert H. Reid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041107-121414-9069r.htm
BAGHDAD - Facing a major assault in Fallujah, terrorists struck back yesterday with suicide car bombs, mortars and rockets across a wide swath of central Iraq, killing more than 30 people and wounding more than 60, including nearly two dozen Americans.
The attacks appeared aimed at relieving pressure on Fallujah, where about 10,000 American troops are massing for a major assault. U.S. jets pounded Fallujah early yesterday in the heaviest air strikes in six months - including five 500-pound bombs dropped on terrorist targets.
The deadliest attacks by the terrorists yesterday occurred in Samarra, a city 60 miles north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi commanders have touted as a model for pacifying restive Sunni Muslim areas of the country.
Militants in Samarra stormed a police station, triggered at least two suicide car bombs and fired mortars at government installations. One of the car bombs, targeting the mayor's office, used a stolen Iraqi police vehicle, the U.S. military said.
Twenty-nine persons, 17 police and 12 Iraqi civilians, were killed throughout the city, the U.S. military said. Arabic language television stations said more than 30 died as gangs of militants roamed the city, clashing with American and Iraqi forces.
The dead included the local Iraqi national guard commander, Abdel Razeq Shaker al-Garmali, hospital officials said. Another 40 persons, including 17 policemen, were injured, the military said.
U.S. military vehicles roamed through the besieged city using loudspeakers to announce an indefinite curfew starting at 2 p.m. yesterday. American warplanes and helicopters roamed the skies.
Elsewhere, 16 American soldiers were wounded yesterday when a suicide bomber using an Iraqi police car rammed their convoy in Ramadi, a major city in the volatile Sunni Triangle, U.S. officials said. They gave no further details, citing security.
Three other Americans were wounded when a car bomb exploded near the entrance to Baghdad International Airport. One Iraqi was killed and another injured, the U.S. military said. Three Humvees were heavily damaged, witnesses said.
Two Marines were injured by a car bomb near a Fallujah checkpoint, and a U.S. soldier was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded south of Fallujah.
Samarra, an ancient city of gold-domed mosques that once served as the capital of a Muslim empire extending from Spain to India, was recaptured from Sunni Muslim rebels in September and was touted as a model for restoring government control to other areas formerly under guerrilla domination.
U.S. and Iraqi forces hope to use the same techniques if they drive Sunni militants from Fallujah. American commanders have assembled a force of Marines, soldiers and U.S.-trained Iraqi fighters around Fallujah, a major rebel base 40 miles west of Baghdad.
They are awaiting orders from Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to launch an all-out assault.
However, the violence in Samarra underscored the difficulty of maintaining civilian authority in Sunni areas even after the worst of the fighting ebbs.
"I cannot claim that entering Fallujah will end the terrorist attacks in Iraq," Iraq's national security adviser, Qassem Dawoud, told Al Arabiya television.
"But I can say that we will deal with a very big pocket of terrorism in Iraq and we will uproot it. This pocket forms the backbone and the center for terrorists in other areas in Iraq."
Elsewhere, gunmen killed a former official of Saddam Hussein's intelligence service in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, police said. The assailants stopped a car carrying former Lt. Col. Abdul Sattar al-Luheibi, ordered him out of the car and gunned him down in front of his 13-year-old son.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities hope to curb the insurgency so that national elections can be held by the end of January.
The influential Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars has threatened to call a boycott if Fallujah is attacked. A public outcry over civilian casualties prompted the Bush administration to call off a siege in April, after which Fallujah fell under control of radical clerics.
Meanwhile, in an open letter to the Iraqi people posted yesterday on the Internet, 26 Saudi scholars and religious leaders said that armed resistance against American troops and their Iraqi allies was a "legitimate right." The scholars issued a fatwa, or religious edict, prohibiting Iraqis from offering any support for military operations carried out by U.S. forces against militant strongholds.
"Fighting the occupiers is a duty for all those who are able," said the letter dated Friday. "It is a jihad to push back the assailants. ... Resistance is a legitimate right. A Muslim must not inflict harm on any resistance man or inform about them. Instead, they should be supported and protected."
Military planners believe there are about 1,200 hard-core fighters in Fallujah - at least half of them Iraqis. They are bolstered by cells with up to 2,000 fighters in the surrounding towns and countryside.
Iraqi authorities have closed a border crossing point with Syria, and U.S. troops have sealed the main highway into Fallujah.
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52 Killed In Spate Of Attacks
In Iraq U.S. Forces, Insurgents Gird for Fallujah Battle
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 7, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30508-2004Nov6?language=printer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 7 -- More than 30 people were killed and more than 60 wounded in a rash of suicide bombings and mortar and rocket attacks in the Sunni Triangle on Saturday, as U.S. Marines and soldiers prepared for a possible assault on the rebel-held city of Fallujah.
The wounded included at least 16 U.S. soldiers injured when a suicide bomber rammed a car into their convoy in Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad, U.S. officials said.
[On Sunday, insurgents launched deadly attacks against police stations in western Anbar province killing at least 22 more people, police and hospital officials said, the Associated Press reported.]
The deadliest violence occurred Saturday morning in Samarra, a city about 65 miles north of Baghdad that U.S. and Iraqi forces retook from insurgents early last month. A series of closely coordinated attacks killed about 30 people, according to tallies by news services, which canvassed hospitals. More than half of the casualties were Iraqi police officers killed in mortar attacks or ground assaults on police stations.
At 9:30 a.m. in Samarra, a car bomb hidden in a stolen Iraqi police truck exploded after U.S. soldiers fired on it as it approached the office of the mayor, who was installed with the backing of U.S. troops last month. One American and four Iraqi soldiers were wounded, the military said.
A half-hour later, a car bomb detonated near a U.S.-Iraqi patrol on the east side of Samarra and a mortar shell hit an outdoor market.
A military spokesman said he could not confirm an Associated Press report quoting a hospital official as saying the fatalities included an Iraqi National Guard commander, Abdel Razeq Shaker Garmali.
"There was an attempt by the insurgents to conduct a coordinated attack, but many of their attempts were ineffective," said Capt. Bill Coppernoll, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division. The division issued a statement calling the attacks "desperate" and declaring that its forces, along with at least two battalions of Iraqi forces, remained in firm control of the city of 250,000.
But Samarra residents said the violence threw the city into turmoil. Helicopters roared overhead, gunfire echoed through much of the day and U.S. forces imposed a curfew starting at noon. U.S. and Iraqi forces also closed down the main bridge leading into the city, firing toward boats that attempted to cross the Tigris River.
Hours after the attacks began, Fallujah's mujaheddin shura, or council of holy warriors, which governs the city, issued a statement in which it threatened to "launch wide military operations within the first hours of the U.S. attack on Fallujah, to open several fronts at the same time." The statement said insurgents were standing by in the cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk, Basra and Samarra.
In Baghdad, at least one Iraqi civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a military convoy in the western part of the city, the military said. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded in the attack.
Explosions echoed across the capital after dark, and residents said they were bracing for insurgent attacks when the U.S. assault on Fallujah begins.
The U.S. military has stepped up operations around Fallujah in advance of an expected offensive to retake the city, which has been controlled by insurgents since April. U.S. warplanes pounded enemy positions and stockpiles of weapons in the city Friday night and into Saturday, while Marine and Army units on the outskirts of the city staged a moonlit battle rehearsal that one Army officer described as a "boxing match" to see what kind of punch the insurgents would throw back.
The U.S. military cordoned off the city and threatened to arrest anyone younger than 45 who tried to flee.
Commanders have said they would not enter Fallujah until Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, gave the word. Allawi, who returned to the country Friday night from a diplomatic trip, was scheduled to give a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday.
"We're here in support of the Iraqi security forces," said 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert, a spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. "We would make no move without the direction of the interim Iraqi government."
Allawi's government has been negotiating with leaders in Fallujah in an attempt to avert what will likely be an offensive with heavy casualties on both sides. But sources close to the government said Friday that the negotiations had been called off.
[Early Sunday morning, the sound of tanks firing from Fallujah could be heard in a distant but thunderous bass. Helicopters hovered overhead and planes roared across a cloudless sky. The clap of artillery echoed from a Marine outpost near the city in what was shaping up to be another noisy night.]
A delegation from Fallujah headed to Baghdad on Saturday to try to revive negotiations with members of the Iraqi National Assembly, which had requested an effort to end the crisis peacefully. Members of the delegation said the attempt was the last chance before an assault.
"It might be useful that we try. We don't want to blame ourselves when the attack happens," said Maky Nazal, the head of the delegation. "Although the attack is approaching, we have to pay every effort we can to prevent it."
The six-member delegation, four members of the Iraqi Islamic Party and two tribal leaders, were stopped on the way out of the city at a checkpoint set up by the shura council, which has prevented residents from negotiating without its permission.
"But we told them we have to go, at least we try," said a member of the delegation, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Maybe we can prevent the offensive."
Abdul-Hamid Jadou, a member of the negotiating group, said neither the fighters nor the government were willing to resolve the problem.
"We, the delegation members, were like a soccer ball," Jadou said. "Everyone kicks it to the other.
Correspondent Karl Vick in Baghdad and special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
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U.S. Forces Begin Moving Into Falluja
November 7, 2004
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/middleeast/07cnd-iraq.html?ei=5094&en=3eb8ca737af5890f&hp=&ex=1099890000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
FALLUJA, Iraq, Monday, Nov. 8 - Explosions and heavy gunfire thundered through the outskirts of Falluja on Sunday night and early Monday as American soldiers and marines swept toward strategic bridges, hospitals and other objectives in what appeared to be the first stage of a long-expected invasion of the city.
Hours earlier, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, faced with an outbreak of insurgent violence across the country, declared emergency law for 60 days across most of Iraq. The proclamation gave him broad powers that allow him to impose curfews, order house-to-house searches and detain suspected criminals and insurgents.
"We declared it today and we are going to implement it whenever and wherever it is necessary," Dr. Allawi told pool reporters inside the fortified compound that houses the headquarters of the interim Iraqi government. "This will send a very powerful message that we are serious."
Troops were on the move by 9 p.m. to the west and south of Falluja, just across the Euphrates River, and after two hours of steady pounding by American guns, tanks, Bradley armored vehicles, artillery and AC-130 gunships, at least one objective - a hospital less than a mile from downtown Falluja - had been secured by American special forces and the Iraqi 36th commando battalion.
Tracer fire lighted up the sky as the operation began, helicopters crisscrossed the battlefield, and at least one American vehicle was fired upon with a rocket-propelled grenade as American and Iraqi forces converged on the hospital, called Al-Falluja. Shortly before midnight, American forces were exchaning gunfire across a strategic bridge near the hospital with four to five insurgent positions on the other side.
"There has been extensive gunfire going across the river," said the American commander of the special forces operation at the hospital, which officials called a crucial early objective. "Bradleys have been shooting over to the east of us, and there has been extensive machine-gun fire to the southwest of us," the commander said.
Dr. Allawi said he would hold a news conference on Monday to provide more details about the state of emergency. Once it becomes clear what exactly Dr. Allawi wants to put into effect, American-led forces will be deployed to help enforce the law, a senior American military official said on Sunday in an interview in Baghdad. That could include operating more checkpoints and increasing patrols.
Though Dr. Allawi has tried hard to cast himself as a strongman since taking office, Iraqi confidence in the interim government has plummeted in recent months as the insurgency in Falluja and elsewhere has gained in strength and lethality. Dr. Allawi's declaration of emergency law is as much intended to be a show of force in these days of uncertainty as it is to extend to his government and the United States-led forces broader powers to combat the guerrillas. Dr. Allawi said he had imposed the state of emergency only after getting the approval of his cabinet and the office of the president, Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar.
With only three months to go until the country's first democratic elections, American and Iraqi officials are grasping for any tool at their command to bring the insurgency under control. Guerrillas staged brazen attacks on Sunday that left at least 37 people dead across the country, showing they could seize the initiative even as American-led forces geared up for their major offensive in Falluja and the neighboring city of Ramadi.
At dawn, insurgents armed with bombs and Kalashnikov rifles raided three police stations and killed at least 21 people in the far west of rebellious Anbar Province, which encompasses those two volatile cities, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman. In an attack south of Baghdad, he said, guerrillas gunned down three officials from Diyala Province as those officials were driving to the funeral of a colleague who had been assassinated.
Insurgents dressed as police officers abducted a dozen Iraqi National Guardsmen on their way home to the southern holy city of Najaf and murdered them all, The Associated Press reported, citing an official in a prominent Shiite political party. In a similar attack last month, guerrillas in police uniform stopped three minibuses carrying 49 freshly trained Iraqi army soldiers who were going on leave. The guerrillas gunned down the soldiers, most with shots to their heads as they kneeled or lay on the ground.
Several powerful explosions shook the capital on Sunday afternoon. One came from a car bomb that detonated near the downtown home of the finance minister, Adil Abdel-Mehdi, killing one of his guards and shattering storefronts along the street, said Haithem al-Hassani, an aide in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite political party to which Mr. Abdel-Mehdi belongs. A suicide car bomb near a Catholic church killed an Iraqi bystander and wounded a second, while two others in the western Baghdad area aimed at separate military convoys killed two American soldiers and wounded five others, the military said.
That brought to at least 1,125 the number of American troops who have died in the war.
The wave of attacks came a day after insurgents launched coordinated bomb and mortar attacks in Samarra and the surrounding area, killing at least 30 people, many of them Iraqi police officers. Those strikes demonstrated that a major American-led offensive last month in Samarra, a "no go" zone for the Americans during much of the summer, had failed to rid the city of insurgents or secure key parts of town. The senior American military official said that a "resurgence" of the insurgency had taken place because there was "a lag in providing sufficient Iraqi police."
"The challenge with police has been an ongoing one," he said.
On Sunday, American troops began enforcing a round-the-clock curfew aimed at keeping all Iraqis off the streets of Samarra.
Before the move into Falluja, about 10,000 American troops, mostly marines, amassed outside the city. Early Sunday and again Sunday night, American forces continued heavy aerial bombardments and artillery shelling of parts of Falluja, with explosions lighting up the night sky. The attacks were intended to weaken the defenses that the guerrillas had built up, the senior military official said.
Edward Wong provided reporting from Baghdad for this article. Iraqi employees of The New York Times also contributed reporting.
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Bickering Iraqis Strive to Build Voting Coalition
November 7, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/international/middleeast/07election.html?ei=5094&en=4f72f03927ada0aa&hp=&ex=1099890000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 6 - With three months to go until Iraq's first democratic elections, established Shiite parties and powerful upstarts are feuding, prompting the leading Shiite cleric to try to pull them together to make sure that they clearly dominate the new government.
The cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is determined to work out a power balance before the election and to keep rivalries from weakening the Shiites' position.
The two main religious Shiite parties in the interim Iraqi government have already banded together. But they face a formidable challenge to their prominence from an unlikely and possibly anti-American alliance that is looming between Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile and Pentagon favorite, and Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric who ignited two deadly uprisings against the Americans and the interim government.
After falling out with the Americans last spring, Mr. Chalabi has recast himself as a pious Shiite and is pursuing a coalition with Mr. Sadr, who has a zealous following. An anti-American platform would have widespread support.
Shiite Arabs, who are the majority, crave the power that has long been denied them, most recently during the era of Saddam Hussein. Making up at least 60 percent of the population, they could easily dominate the elections, marginalizing the Sunni Arabs, who have governed the region since the Ottoman Empire.
But internal rifts could allow other parties, including the secular party of the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to win voters who otherwise support the religious Shiites.
The stakes are high, especially given the increasingly lethal Sunni-led insurgency, which on Saturday made bomb and mortar attacks that killed at least 30 people around Samarra, where the Allawi government and American forces had thought they held control.
For months, Ayatollah Sistani has been demanding that all the Shiite parties form a single coalition dominated by religious parties. The biggest stumbling block to a single slate is that election law dictates that the groups determine before the vote how to share power afterward.
If they are unable to agree, the main Shiite elements could split. Anxious to herd them together, Ayatollah Sistani has formed a commission to broker deals, once again selectively intervening in post-invasion politics.
"Maybe the dialogue will come up with a unified list," said Adnan Ali, a deputy in the Dawa Islamic Party, a top Shiite religious party. "There's an intention to see one list."
It is becoming clear that the elections, to be held in late January, will be contested along established ethnic and religious lines, though the Americans are counting on a national assembly united enough to allow the government to address the country's profound challenges.
Much of the success of the elections will also depend on whether the American and Iraqi forces can subdue the insurgency raging in Falluja, a Sunni city. Officials say they must break the insurgency there so people feel safe enough to vote, but must do so without inflaming Sunni anger. If Sunnis boycott the election, the guerrilla war could intensify or even turn into a full-fledged civil war with a Shiite ruling class.
Iraqis are to elect members of a 275-seat national assembly in late January, which will then install an executive government and write a constitution. Elections for a full-term government are planned for the end of 2005.
In the political jostling, the two main religious Shiite parties have agreed to form a coalition to run in the elections and are favorites for the support of Ayatollah Sistani, say officials of both groups, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, better known as Sciri. The two parties want the ayatollah's commission to endorse the parties as the main body of a unified Shiite slate.
But so does Mr. Chalabi, who leads a rival faction called the Shiite Council, which consists of 42 smaller parties, including Mr. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Mr. Chalabi is competing for the commission's endorsement and a guarantee of a significant share of any assembly seats won by the Shiites, at the expense of the more established parties.
Seen as a carpetbagger by many Iraqis, Mr. Chalabi is trying to draw the popular Mr. Sadr into a coalition to strengthen his credibility. Senior officials in the groups of the two men have discussed how they would divide assembly seats if they were to run together. An organizer of the Shiite Council, Ali Faisal al-Lami, recently traveled to Mosul with Ali Smesim, Mr. Sadr's top aide, to speak to Sunni tribal leaders about their possibly joining a predominantly Shiite coalition led by Mr. Sadr or Mr. Chalabi or both.
"It's not about competition of parties and division of spoils," Mr. Chalabi said of the Shiite talks. "There are no spoils to divide, only disaster to share at this time."
Ayatollah Sistani favors an umbrella Shiite slate that includes not just the two major parties but also independent politicians, mostly from the south. The aim is to minimize friction among the Shiites and show the world that the religious Shiites are organized enough to govern.
While the Shiites bicker, the main Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both players in the interim government, have agreed to put forward a unified national slate. "The core group will be Kurdish elements," said Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign minister and a senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. "The Shia house has a similar approach."
The Sunni Arabs are divided about even taking part in the elections. Some groups like the Iraqi Islamic Party, which sat on the Iraqi Governing Council and is part of the interim government, say they will field candidates. Other powerful groups like the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of Sunni clerics that claims to represent 3,000 mosques, have said they will not take part and have threatened to call for a boycott if the Americans invade Falluja.
If politicians emphasize ethnic and religious differences during campaigning, or insist their groups are entitled to certain seats, tension could grow. At the least, the new assembly might be too weak to confront the country's vast problems. At the worst, a Yugoslav-style dissolution into chaos could ensue.
A Western diplomat said American officials had noticed the divisions and had advised parties to form more diverse coalitions. Otherwise, the political splits "could create acrimony," he said. "We don't need more acrimony."
But some scholars are more hopeful, saying it is natural for the parties to align along religious and ethnic lines. Once elected, the parties might paper over their differences. "Sectarianism is now the organizing principle of Iraqi politics," said Yitzhak Nakash, a professor of Middle East studies at Brandeis University and author of "The Shi'is of Iraq" (Princeton University Press, 2003). "Political campaigning along sectarian lines is natural at this stage."
For the American government, the best outcome is for parties that "support democracy" to win seats in the assembly, an American diplomat said, and for the assembly to be inclusive enough so many groups feel they have a stake.
The Iraqi National Accord Party of Dr. Allawi, a Shiite, is expected to run in January but is at risk politically. It is a secular party with many Sunnis from the former ruling Baath Party, and so stands outside the main blocs of Iraqi politics. Support for the interim government has plummeted, and whatever political capital Dr. Allawi has left could be wiped out if he orders