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NUCLEAR
A Powerful Documentary Film
Report Links Exposures To Gulf War Syndrome
Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment: diplomats
Desire for Nuclear Empowerment a Uniting Factor in Iran
Iran Says Deal Near on Nuclear Program
Iran Agrees to Suspend Uranium Enrichment
Canada Likely to Face Missile Defense Issue Head-On
Feds Won't Test Nuclear Waste Casks
MILITARY
Flights Leave in Odd Calm in Ivory Coast
US to deploy hyper-missiles
Blair stirs controversy with terror remark
Spring Valley sick blame chemicals in WWI dumping
German Fears Grow That Far-Right Party Will Return to National Stage
Romania could pull its troops out of Iraq next June: PM
Iraqis purge informants from ranks
Humanitarian aid barred from Falluja
Denial Of Water To Iraqi Cities
Insurgents Routed in Falluja; Smaller Bands Still Resist
For Iraqi Leader, Political Risks of Attack on Falluja Grow
Troops Battle for Last Parts Of Fallujah
In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War
Israelis to Ban Weapons for Palestinians
In Shadow of Arafat's Death, Unity, Violence and Anger
Palestinians Say the Future Rests on Vote, Israeli Action
Palestinians Schedule Election for Jan. 9
Israel Takes Quiet Steps to Bolster Palestinians
Soviet-era dissidents despise Putin
Goss Reportedly Rebuffed Senior Officials at CIA
Long Fall for Pentagon Star
Lawmakers Divided on C.I.A. Chief's Leadership
CIA plans to purge its agency
Brass defends ongoing intelligence from Gitmo
U.S. and U.N. Renew Quarrel Over Iraq
Army Sets Hearing on Rape Accusation
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Wary Texans Keep Their Eyes on the Compound of a Polygamous Sect
Bush Faces Early Test on Immigration Policy
Groups, U.S. Battle Over 'Global Terrorist' Label
A Radical Who Remained Just Out of Reach
POLITICS
'Saving Private Ryan' an honorable honor
Sliding Scale of Moral Values Is All in the Phrasing
Lame Duck May Do Housekeeping
OTHER
Calif. Stem Cell Initiative Could Backfire Nationally
ACTIVISTS
Media Lockdown-Actions you can take
Asians offer filming of the green A festival focuses on environment
Anti-war protest halts city centre
-------- NUCLEAR
FATAL FALLOUT
A Powerful Documentary Film
by Gary Null,
November 14, 2004
http://www.garynull.com/Events/FatalFallout.aspx
Terrorists hijack a plane and strike a nuclear power plant located just thirty miles from midtown Manhattan.
This documentary feature film examines this devastating what-if scenario, as well as the all-too-real history of public exposure to radiation - the silent, invisible and odorless killer - from carcinogenic x-ray exams, to Hiroshima, and to the recent accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. While featuring chilling, formerly classified archival footage shot at government nuclear test sites, the film makes clear that the fatal legacy of nuclear power, post-9/11, is no longer relegated to B&W newsreel or a child's nightmares.
The current controversy that surrounds the woefully inadequate emergency evacuation plans for communities situated near nuclear reactors - such as Indian Point - would seem an eerie reflection of President Eisenhower's memo when asked what to tell the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons testing and the construction of power plants: "Keep them confused." Eight percent of the population of the United States, which includes all of New York City, live within a fifty-mile radius of Indian Point.
Click Here to Preview the Film
http://www.garynull.com/marketplace/media/TrailersT1/FatalFalloutTrailer.asx
-------- depleted uranium
Report Links Exposures To Gulf War Syndrome
November 14, 2004
By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS,
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/health/hc-gulfillness1114.artnov14,1,930450.story?coll=hc-headlines-health
The federal government has acknowledged that illnesses afflicting many veterans during the 1991 Persian Gulf War resulted from exposure to hazardous substances, but that hasn't helped the ill veterans still waiting for benefits, family members say.
Diane Dulka, 44, whose husband, Joseph, died of pancreatic cancer after the war and whose son, Joseph, was born with a cleft pallet, said Friday severely sick veterans are still being denied benefits. In the past few years, Dulka, of Windsor Locks, has tried, often unsuccessfully, she said, to help hundreds of Gulf War veterans whose requests for medical assistance have been rejected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
After more than seven years of fighting for her widow's benefits and medical benefits for her son, Dulka obtained the necessary approvals from the VA about five years ago. In the meantime, she became an advocate for other Gulf War veterans, a job she does when she is not working as a paralegal or caring for her 12-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, Lindsay.
For more than a decade, high-level federal health and military officials, sometimes during testimony under oath before Congress, denied U.S. and allied service members were sick from wartime exposures. The hazards included warfare gases, depleted uranium munitions dust, oil well fires, experimental drugs and vaccines and other pollutants. The Pentagon and federal health agencies have spent more than $100 million on inconclusive Gulf War illness investigations and studies.
On Friday, a federal panel of scientific experts and military veterans, called the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, concluded progress in understanding Gulf War illnesses has been hampered by a lack of coordination and availability of data within both the VA and the Defense Department.
The panel said there is significant evidence linking chemical warfare exposures to the so-called Gulf War syndrome, a connection Pentagon officials have repeatedly rejected for many years. The research panel, set up by Congress and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, concluded veterans have long term, multi-symptom illnesses that cannot be explained in terms of stress or psychiatric illness that the Pentagon has long favored.
Asked why the report's findings are being released more than 13 years after the Gulf War ended, Dr. Lea Steele, scientific director for the panel, said, "I don't know. All the answers already have been found. So the reason is not scientific." Steele added that there could be only two reasons for not getting the answers until now, scientific or political, and she would not speculate on the political possibility.
Jonathan Perlin, the VA's acting undersecretary of heath, said, "This report opens up new doors in terms of research, but it doesn't provide a level of proof" for making specific health claims from the VA.
Other committee findings include:
Thousands of veterans have significant nervous system disorders consistent with low-level exposures to deadly warfare gases, including sarin.
Treatments to improve veterans' health are still badly needed.
A host of other wartime exposures, including depleted uranium munitions dust from U.S. and British weapons explosions, may also have contributed to the illnesses.
Significant questions about the health of service members' children and immediate family members and their relationship to soldiers' exposures remain unanswered.
Veterans' health has to be closely monitored for disease patterns and causes of death to determine if they are connected to wartime service
And research on these veterans' illnesses has important implications for other recent wars and the current conflict in Iraq. Some 32,000 service members are said to be sick from hazardous exposures in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The panel estimates the research needed to connect a specific illness to its cause will cost another $15 million.
In the 1991 Gulf War alone, roughly 697,000 U.S. troops served. By last year, 591,000 had left the service and of those more than 26 percent were disabled and receiving medical benefits. Another 11,074 have died, most from illnesses or accidents, after the war. The average age of those service members when they went to war was 36.
Figures from the VA show 182,000 disability claims granted, 27,270 denied and 26,507 still pending, almost 14 years after the end of the war.
Five thousand British service members of the 53,200 who served are reported ill from the first Gulf War with about 2,000 of them awarded war pensions, The Guardian Limited reported. More than 660 have died since the war. Thousands of other allied force soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who became sick from hazardous exposures have also died.
The Defense Department, according to a report issued in June by the Government Accountability Office, underestimated the exposure of chemical warfare agents such as nerve and mustard gas. Defense models of the effects of toxic plumes of chemical agents did not "realistically simulate actual bombings or demolitions," the GAO report said.
Despite these reports, Dulka said, many veterans and service members from other recent wars are not getting the help they need. Today, Dulka said, she is still trying to help a New Jersey widow get death benefits after her husband died of leukemia in 1994, apparently from constant Gulf War missions hauling fuel from depots. The widow gave birth to a child the year her husband died, and already had two toddlers, said Dulka.
It is well documented with the VA that some soldiers repeatedly exposed to petroleum developed leukemia and they have been approved for VA service-connected disabilities, Dulka said.
-------- iran
Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment: diplomats
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041114165313.7z9wmymr.html
Iran has agreed to a full suspension of uranium enrichment in line with an agreeement worked out with the European Union, ending a deadlock over answering US charges that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, diplomats close to the talks told AFP Sunday.
"The letter from Tehran is on its way," a diplomat close to UN nuclear watchdog IAEA said, but he added that the IAEA had not yet seen the letter.
Another diplomat said there is "full acceptance between the EU and the Iranians" and that Iran had agreed to a full suspension of uranium enrichment including "no testing or production in any conversion facility."
The diplomat was referring to what had been a sticking point over Iran agreeing to not even manufacture the feedstock gas that is the first step in the enrichment process.
Iran's top official in charge of the country's nuclear programme, Hassan Rowhani, was due to announce the agreement later Sunday in Tehran, according to reports from the Iranian capital.
The diplomat in Vienna said "all has been negotiated" but cautioned that the announcement by Rowhani would be crucial.
He said the problem with conversion had come about since Iran had apparently already begun the process of converting some uranium yellowcake ore into the feedstock gas.
An IAEA team had arrived in Iran on Saturday to visit the conversion facility and determine what the problem was, he added.
He said Iran had agreed to suspend enrichment, the process that makes nuclear reactor fuel but which can also make what can be the explosive core of atomic bombs, until a long-term agreement was reached with the EU.
The European Union is ready to offer Iran incentives such as aceess to nuclear fuel and even a lightwater research reactor, but the diplomat said that none of these incentives were specifically mentioned in a two-page agreement reached with Iran and which obligates Iran to work towards a long-term agreement in meeting international concerns about its nuclear programme.
--------
Desire for Nuclear Empowerment a Uniting Factor in Iran
Issue Seen as Matter Of Independence, Reaction to U.S.
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48189-2004Nov13.html
TEHRAN -- Iranians are deeply divided on politics, the economy, the role of religion in government and a dress code for women. But reformers and conservatives, urban and rural, old and young, rich and poor, and men and women generally agree on one thing: Iran needs nuclear energy, and despite its oil and gas riches, the world should not deprive it of the technology, even though it could also be used to develop weapons.
Iranians cite four reasons for their increasingly fierce determination to acquire nuclear technology: the economics of oil, a population boom that is consuming more energy, regional security, and anger at what many perceive as a U.S. ultimatum that Iran end its nuclear program.
"Iranians are united not because of activities by the Iranian regime, but because of the U.S. position. Before U.S. intervention, many Iranians thought we didn't need nuclear technology, as it's expensive and dangerous. We remember Chernobyl, which is close to Iran," said Abbas Maleki, director of the Caspian Institute, a research organization based in Tehran, referring to the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine. "But now all Iranians believe we must promote our activities as a sign of independence."
Analysts say that public support for the program has given the government enormous leverage in negotiating an agreement with Britain, France and Germany over the country's plan to enrich uranium, which can be used in its new nuclear energy plant and in converting the technology for military use.
Iran and European governments are currently negotiating a deal to suspend enrichment, an action that would precede a permanent agreement to ensure that Iran fulfills its obligations as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is unable to produce a bomb. If those negotiations succeed, the second stage of talks would be much tougher, Iranian officials and Western diplomats here say. But the government would enter the process with a strong public mandate.
Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, said Saturday that the country was in the "final stages" of negotiation with the Europeans. But European envoys told the Associated Press that an agreement remained a long way off.
Students demonstrated last week at Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, demanding that the country pursue access to nuclear technology. "Enrichment is our natural right," they chanted, according to local media reports. "Nuclear technology is our legitimate right."
Nasser Hadian, a political scientist at Tehran University, called the issue "a matter of prestige."
"There's a perception among the young, even those critical of the government, that this is the technology of the future. So we have to have access," Hadian said.
Some Iranians say they fear that their country would be forced to rely on foreign sources of fuel if it did not have an enrichment program, making it susceptible to political or economic blackmail.
"When you can make a thing in your own country, it's not rational to buy it from the outside," said Amir Mohebian, political editor of the newspaper Resalat.
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran retains the right to produce nuclear energy. The country, however, concealed aspects of its nuclear program from the IAEA, conducting secret research that involved procedures potentially useful in making weapons. The Bush administration insists that Iran, as the world's fourth-largest oil producer and second-largest gas producer, does not need nuclear energy, even though the United States approved about 20 nuclear energy plants for Iran before the 1979 revolution.
Iranians counter that they need nuclear energy, specifically seven 1,000-megawatt plants, to accommodate domestic demand that already absorbs 1.8 million of the 4 million barrels of oil that Iran produces daily. Iran's population of 69 million is expected to increase to 90 million in 16 years, the government says.
As a result, Iran could be forced to use all its oil just to meet domestic demands within 20 years. That would be devastating for an economy dependent on oil exports for most of its revenue, said Ali Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"This is the worst way of using our oil, especially since we won't have oil forever," Salehi said. "If we did that, we'd be like the United States, which is the third-largest producer of oil in the world but also the first importer of oil."
Although the cost of a nuclear reactor is much higher than a plant for fossil fuels, Iranian experts say the savings that would come from being able to export more of its oil as a result would pay for a nuclear facility in two to three years.
Iran is also wary of the cost of importing fuel for a nuclear plant, even if a permanent deal brokered by the Europeans includes lower rates. "We don't want to pay millions of dollars to Europe to buy the fuel," said Mohsen Rezaie, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who is seen as a potential presidential contender.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it intends to militarize its nuclear program. But U.S. officials and other Western envoys say they believe that some Iranians would like to be able to independently develop weapons capability.
Iran is still smarting from its war with Iraq in the 1980s, when chemical weapons killed or injured thousands of Iranians, according to U.S. estimates. The outside world did little to stop Iraq or protect Iran. "Many Iranians feel they can't rely on the world to defend us" against the use of weapons of mass destruction, Hadian said.
The neighborhood doesn't help. Pakistan, India, China, Russia and Israel all have the bomb, and Iraq and Libya have worked on it.
"Having the technology in itself has a psychological effect to deter countries," said Mohsen Mirdamadi, a former chairman of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and one of three leaders of the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979. "Nuclear technology will not deter America, but for countries in the region, it has that effect."
--------
Iran Says Deal Near on Nuclear Program
November 14, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Nov. 13 (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that negotiations with the European Union over a deal that would spare Tehran from possible United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program were in their final stages.
"Negotiations with Europe were intense and important," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on state television. "We have given them our final response and await their final decision, and we hope to pass this stage smoothly." Advertisement
Iran, Britain, Germany and France have been negotiating a deal for the past few weeks under which Tehran would freeze its program to enrich uranium. The process can be used to help make nuclear weapons, though Iran has insisted its program is only to produce electricity.
In return, the European Union would not push to send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions and would sit down with Iran to work out a lasting solution to the nuclear dispute.
Tehran gave its response to the European Union on Thursday, but there has been no announcement yet of a final agreement. European diplomats say Iran has been trying to change some terms, including the scope of the enrichment suspension.
--------
Iran Agrees to Suspend Uranium Enrichment
November 14, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html?hp&ex=1100494800&en=405d9e147f1ffd20&ei=5094&partner=homepage
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran has given the United Nations a written promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said on Sunday, in an apparent bid to dispel suspicions that Tehran wants to build a nuclear bomb.
The move also would appear to blunt an American drive to take Iran before the United Nations for the imposition of sanctions.
By issuing the written commitment to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency -- the International Atomic Energy Agency -- Iran dropped demands for modification of a tentative deal worked out on Nov. 7 with European negotiators, agreeing instead to continue a freeze on enrichment and to suspend related activities, diplomats told The Associated Press.
``Basically it's a full suspension,'' said one of the diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``It's what the Europeans were looking for.''
Washington has argued that Iran's enrichment activities are part of a nuclear arms program. Uranium enrichment is a precursor process to building nuclear bombs. As negotiators for France, Germany and Britain struggled with the Iran to bridge differences over the weekend, the IAEA delayed a report on Iran's nuclear activities scheduled for limited circulation to diplomats accredited to the agency.
A diplomat familiar with the IAEA said the delay was meant to give the two sides a chance to resolve the dispute and allow agency head Mohamed ElBaradei to include an Iranian commitment to suspend its uranium enrichment and related activities in his report.
The IAEA survey on nearly two decades of clandestine activities that the United States asserts is a secret weapons program is being prepared for review by the agency's 35-nation board of governors when they meet Nov. 25.
Based on that report, they will decide on actions that include possible referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which, in turn, could call for sanctions.
After ending talks in Paris with Iranian envoys last weekend, European diplomats said there was tentative agreement by Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment and all related activities. The suspension would be in effect for at least as long as it took for the two sides to negotiate a deal on European technical and financial aid, including help in the development of Iranian nuclear energy for power generation.
But on Friday the diplomats told The Associated Press that Iranian officials had presented British, French and German envoys in Tehran with a version of the agreement that was unacceptable to the three European powers -- the main negotiators of the deal -- and the European Union as a whole.
The key dispute was over the conversion of uranium into gas, which when spun in centrifuges can be enriched to lower levels for producing electricity or processed into high-level, weapons grade uranium, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
The diplomats -- all of them briefed on the dispute and based in Europe -- said that as of Friday Iran had insisted that the deal allowed it to process uranium into a precursor of uranium hexafluoride, the gas introduced into centrifuges for enrichment.
The diplomats said that was not allowed under the tentative deal reached in Paris.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year but has repeatedly 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.
A full suspension would be significant because it would commit Iran not only to continue its voluntary freeze on enriching uranium but also to stop the contentious activities linked to it.
The deal still falls short of U.S. calls for indefinite suspension if not an outright scrapping of Iran's domestic enrichment program.
On the Net: www.iaea.org
-------- missile defense
Canada Likely to Face Missile Defense Issue Head-On
Government Fears Political Consequences of Joining U.S. Plan
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48191-2004Nov13.html
TORONTO -- The reelection of President Bush is pushing the Canadian government toward a decision it had hoped to avoid: whether to join a new U.S. system designed to shoot down any missile headed for North America.
Off Canada's northwest shoulder, the United States already is lowering five-story interceptor missiles into silos in Alaska to start the experimental and controversial missile defense system that Bush has championed. His administration has made clear it would like Canada to be part of the project.
But a new opinion poll released this month showed 52 percent of people surveyed were opposed to the plan, and antipathy here to Bush was intensified by the contentious U.S. election. Opposition from Canada's splintered political parties has also given Prime Minister Paul Martin's government, already operating with a minority in the parliament, serious pause about promoting missile defense.
"I think this is one issue they would have liked to have skipped," Gordon O'Connor, a Conservative Party member of parliament, said of Martin's Liberal Party.
Sidestepping the issue will become harder given Bush's expected official visit to Ottawa before his second inauguration in January. Political observers said Bush is unlikely to press Martin for a decision, to avoid being seen as strong-arming Canada. But the missile defense issue has returned to the center of political debate, with supporters arguing that Canada needs to cooperate with Washington to help mend ties strained by the disagreement over the war in Iraq.
"There's an influential community that wants Canada to reassert itself as the United States' best friend, a position we lost to the United Kingdom," said Michael Byers, a security expert at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "There's a desire to make up, in effect, for the refusal to go along with the Iraq war."
Proponents of the missile defense plan point to Canada's long partnership with the United States in NORAD -- the North American Aerospace Defense Command. They say Canada must continue to be included in planning by the United States for defense of the continent. And they note that, so far, the Bush administration is asking only for political support, not land or money for the system.
"Do we want the Americans to go ahead with something to defend North America that we're not going to participate in?" Defense Minister Bill Graham, who once opposed the system, argued in a televised interview in September.
Opponents echo the complaints of critics in the United States, arguing that the missile defense system is unproven, technologically difficult, hugely expensive and based on an outdated assumption that an attack will come in the form of an airborne missile. In addition, critics here say the system undermines Canada's preference for multinational teamwork and agreements over weapons and defense machinery.
"There are places we should be cooperating with the United States, but this is way down on the list," said John Polanyi, a chemist and Nobel laureate at the University of Toronto who has joined a phalanx of academics and political figures opposed to the system. He asserted that the missile defense plan inevitably would lead to putting weapons in space, long anathema to Canada.
"I would think that with Canada squawking all the time against weaponization of space, that would make us an unlikely partner for this," Polanyi said. "To be a good ally, you don't pick the weakest ideas of your ally to support, you pick the strong ones. This isn't one."
Martin's government is trying to avoid a clash over the issue that could weaken its already wobbly hold on power. It opposed a demand by the New Democratic Party for a series of public hearings on the subject.
"The majority of Canadians have made it quite clear they do not support Bush's values," said Alexa McDonough, a New Democratic Party parliament member from Halifax, Nova Scotia. "If we really think this is how we are going to build a safer world, we'd have to accept that having nuclear bits flying around above our head is good."
The main opposition group, the Conservative Party, has generally supported joining the project. But in a maneuver employed to make life difficult for Martin, the Conservatives have declared themselves neutral and demanded a parliamentary vote on the issue. The ruling Liberal Party reluctantly agreed, but announced that the result would be "nonbinding," and has yet to schedule the vote.
"If the government doesn't bring it to a vote, the opposition will force it," said Graham, the Conservatives' point man on the issue. "The opposition parties will decide whether it is binding. The government has to be careful. They are a minority."
Some analysts argue the political jockeying is largely irrelevant because the United States could go ahead with the program with or without Canada's participation. Last summer, Canada quietly agreed that the joint U.S.-Canada NORAD operations center in Colorado Springs could share incoming missile information with NORTHCOM, the U.S. command that will control the 40 interceptor rockets planned for Alaska and California and at sea.
"From a technical perspective, Canada is already in," said Byers, the security expert. "It has made the decision to cooperate to the degree necessary to let it go forward."
-------- us nuc waste
Feds Won't Test Nuclear Waste Casks
Monday, November 15, 2004
by the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=132696
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A federal agency is lacking the funds to test casks that will be used to transport nuclear waste across the country to the underground repository planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
But even without that testing, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the casks for transporting 3,000 tons of waste yearly past more than 11 million people in 45 states -- including Utah -- to the repository 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The NRC, however, won't test casks to demonstrate their ability to survive severe real-world accidents, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday. The agency, instead, is relying on computer analyses and scale modeling.
One in question is the cask model destined to hold waste at a temporary storage facility in Utah.
Critics contend the computer simulations are inadequate.
"The NRC has adopted as fact the fictional notion there are no real-world accidents that could cause casks to fail," said Bob Halstead, a consultant to Nevada on Yucca Mountain transportation issues.
NRC senior transportation adviser Earl Easton says the agency doesn't have the money to do real-world testing.
"We're trying to scrape together the funds," Easton said.
The states of Utah and Nevada are demanding full testing of the casks.
NRC regulations require casks to pass a series of hypothetical accident conditions: a 30-foot free fall onto an unyielding surface, followed by a 40-inch fall onto a steel rod six inches in diameter.
Then, casks would be subjected to a 1,475-degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes before being submersed in 3 feet of water for eight hours. The sequence is supposed to mimic a rail or truck crash.
The casks are protected by "impact limiters," which are caps on both ends that make the containers resemble barbells and cover vulnerable seals and bolts.
The NRC has tested full-scale impact limiters by dropping them onto unyielding surfaces. But Halstead said the most dangerous impact wouldn't be to the limiters.
"It's a sideways truck jackknifing so the bridge abutment hits the cask in the body, bypassing the limiter, causing it to twist and force the lid to pop open, like Popeye's can of spinach," he said.
That could cause a tiny opening and allow lethal radioactive cesium and strontium to escape.
The casks, weighing between 25 and 125 tons, are made of multiple layers of steel and other materials. The NRC has certified 16 different designs, including a rail-transport model made by New Jersey-based Holtec International that Private Fuel Storage would use at its facility proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Holtec would be willing to sell the $3 million casks for any kind of testing NRC would want to do, said Joy Russell, a Holtec spokeswoman.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight utilities, is planning to send 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to an open-air storage site in Skull Valley.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is expected to decide early next year whether Skull Valley can safely keep nuclear fuel. The board in March 2003 stalled construction by ruling the chances of a fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage pad makes the project too risky. It has taken arguments for and against that decision and is weighing other aspects of the project.
As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel -- about 10 million rods -- across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Flights Leave in Odd Calm in Ivory Coast
November 14, 2004
By LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/africa/14ivory.html?pagewanted=all
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Nov. 13 - President Laurent Gbagbo on Saturday blamed France for the current crisis in Ivory Coast and said that he had attacked the rebels who control half the country, breaking a cease-fire agreement, only to spare this troubled region a new round of overlapping civil wars.
"The rebels threatened to resume the war and spread it around the region," Mr. Gbagbo said in an interview in his sprawling residence here. "They were organizing with Charles Taylor and mercenaries from Sierra Leone. So we launched a counterstrike with aircraft on specific targets."
The attacks, which began on Nov. 4, hit a French peacekeepers' camp in the rebel-held North a week ago, killing nine French soldiers and one American civilian. France retaliated by striking the Ivoirian Air Force, destroying much of its tiny fleet.
Mr. Gbagbo contended that France had overreacted, precipitating a week of mob violence fueled by anti-French sentiment among Mr. Gbagbo's supporters.
"What happened is very unbelievable," he said of the French action. "They immediately, without any prior investigation, decided to perpetuate their own justice."
Michel Barnier, France's foreign minister, speaking on Europe 1 radio Saturday morning, stated France's position. "We have thought and we have said that this was a deliberate attack on the part of Ivoirian fighter jets," he said. "That's why the president of the Republic immediately replied by having all these planes neutralized so that they don't attempt against the lives of our soldiers."
Mr. Gbagbo replaced his army chief of staff with Col. Philippe Mangou, former chief of army operations, seen as a hard-liner, Reuters reported Saturday.
An eerie calm prevailed on the streets of the this battered city on Saturday after a week of anti-French violence spurred by clashes between the Ivoirian and French armies.
Hundreds of foreigners waited at the airport for flights out of the country, but the desperate scenes of Westerners trying to flee had given way to orderly lines of passengers waiting for scheduled commercial flights, which had begun flying within the region. French and Ivoirian soldiers maintained an uneasy distance from one another, with a truckload of a dozen French troops, riot shields dangling from their arms, standing by at the departure terminal.
Mr. Gbagbo's invocation of the region's troubled history of civil war speaks to the deepest fears of aid officials here, who warned that for all the focus on the departure of thousands of French citizens and other Westerners, another mass departure is of greatest concern to them.
They said it is the prospect of mass departure of large numbers of people whose roots are in neighboring African nations, who were drawn by the lure of plentiful jobs in Ivory Coast's once-booming economy, that poses the greatest threat to the stability of a strife-prone region.
"Any massive displacement would lead to regional war," said Joël Boutroue, chief of coordination of intervention services at the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, speaking after an emergency conference of United Nations agencies on the crisis in Dakar, Senegal, on Friday.
"The countries in the region cannot withstand hundreds of thousands of people coming into their borders," he continued. "Can Mali or Burkina Faso absorb half a million people who left two or three generations ago?"
While attention has focused on violence in Abidjan, the largest city and power base for the wealthy southern elite, the northern portion of the country, which is controlled by the rebel group New Forces, and the west, are the epicenter of what could become a crisis, Mr. Boutroue said.
Several thousand people fleeing clashes between warring factions have trekked through dense forest in the west and into Liberia, which is just emerging from 15 years of civil war, United Nations officials said.
The prospect of Ivory Coast tumbling into open civil war has caused fears that the region's most recent cycle of civil war and strife will start anew. The worst case envisioned by the United Nations, if efforts to reunify the country fail, more than a million Africans of foreign extraction would flee their homes, either within Ivory Coast or to the countries of their parents and grandparents.
Mr. Gbagbo was elected in a vote many viewed as flawed because his main rival, Alassane Ouattara, a northerner, was barred from running because he was deemed not pure Ivoirian.
A cease-fire deal called for changes in the laws governing citizenship and for rebels and pro-government militias to lay down their arms. But the laws were not enacted, so the disarmament, scheduled to begin last month, never happened.
-------- arms
US to deploy hyper-missiles
Anywhere on Earth could be targeted 'within two hours'
The Observer
November 14, 2004
Robin McKie and David Smith
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1350890,00.html
American scientists are developing hypersonic cruise missiles that will fly 10 times faster than current rockets, penetrate concrete armouring and could be launched from any site in the world. The missiles would have a range of 9,000 miles, more than a third of Earth's circumference and be able to reach their targets within two hours. First prototypes are expected to be tested next year, though the missile is not expected to be deployed until the end of the decade.
'If someone is messing with us - or Britain - from far away, we could whack them straight away,' said Preston Carter, an aerospace engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California.
The new missiles will exploit supersonic combustion ramjet - or scramjet - technology. Nasa engineers will tomorrow attempt to fly a robot X-43A scramjet over the Pacific at speeds around 7,200 mph, 10 times the speed of sound.
The flight will be crucial in demonstrating the feasibility of hypersonic travel. Most media attention has focused on its commercial exploitation for jets that could travel from London to Sydney in two hours. The prime aim is to create hypersonic rockets that would replace current cruise missiles.
'The new missiles could strike pretty much anywhere within a couple of hours,' said Graham Warwick, Americas editor of Flight International . 'Current cruise missile have to be carried on a B52 bomber. That involves planning and takes at least 24 hours. The military want a quick solution, so if they knew bin Laden was sipping coffee at a cafe they could get a bomb on target in two hours.'
Scramjets work on the same principle as all jets, by igniting fuel in compressed air and using the expanding gases to propel the aircraft. Standard turbojets use fans to compress the air: scramjets use a plane's forward motion alone to bring air into the combustion chamber and require an initial boost from a rocket.
The entire aircraft then becomes an enormous scoop that receives air which is compressed and injected - and ignited - with a chemical called silane before hydrogen fuel is added. The feat compares to 'lighting a match in a hurricane', says Nasa.
'We'll see a military application initially as a "bunker buster" that would hit its target and bore into the ground before exploding,' said Carter.'
'We are talking about the ability to strike more cost-effectively. If the US has to deploy troops to the other side of the world, it is expensive. This may keep enemies in check and act as a deterrent.'
-------- britain
Blair stirs controversy with terror remark
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
By Patrick Hennessy
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041113-111215-9630r.htm
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday reignited a dispute over the Guantanamo Bay detention center for suspected terrorists by saying former British detainees were "causing difficulties again" since their release.
Mr. Blair's comments, in a television interview, came as it was confirmed that the five former terrorism suspects freed this year from the U.S. naval base prison in Cuba are subject to round-the-clock police surveillance.
A senior official said the men are under suspicion and the activities of more than one was "worrying" police.
Mr. Blair's remarks were branded "highly defamatory, misleading and irresponsible" by Gareth Peirce, attorney for three of the former detainees. She called on the prime minister to clarify what he meant.
After his talks with President Bush at the White House, Mr. Blair was asked by a reporter whether the four Britons still at Guantanamo Bay would also be sent home.
Mr. Blair replied: "We are in discussions with them. It's difficult, because we have to make sure our own security is going to be properly protected if we have people back in this country.
"As you know, there have been incidents of people who have been back and causing difficulties again, so you need to be careful."
None of the five men sent home from Camp Delta has been arrested. However, they are under surveillance 24 hours a day.
Ms. Peirce, the solicitor for Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, denied that any of her clients had been in trouble with authorities and said Mr. Blair's words would be libelous if applied to them.
"On the face of it, uncorrected, what he has said is highly defamatory, misleading and irresponsible," she said. "Whatever Blair meant, he has a responsibility to make it utterly clear that these young men have led entirely law-abiding existences trying to rebuild their lives."
Ms. Peirce, whose clients claimed they were tortured and beaten during more than two years' detention, called on Mr. Blair to explain himself.
"If by the word 'difficulties,' Mr. Blair means they have produced an exhaustive account of the conditions, the methodology of coercion and the torture that prevails in Guantanamo, then the 'difficulties' consists of bringing to the public the unlawful practices of the U.S. government and the complicity of the British government," she said.
The five returned Britons are Mr. Iqbal, 22; Mr. Rasul, 26; Mr. Ahmed, 22; Tarek Dergoul, 26, and Jamal al-Harith, 37. They were captured in Afghanistan and north Pakistan in late 2001.
Mr. Iqbal, Mr. Rasul, Mr. Ahmed and Mr. al-Harith brought legal action seeking $10 million in damages against the U.S. government, claiming torture.
"After the disgusting treatment of Tarek at the hands of the Americans," a relative of Mr. Dergoul said, "he has one arm and is severely traumatized and cannot cope with life. What kind of criminal act does Mr. Blair think that he can carry out?"
-------- chemical weapons
Spring Valley sick blame chemicals in WWI dumping
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jon Ward
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20041114-121810-5745r.htm
A survey of the incidence of disease among residents of Spring Valley is renewing questions about whether the Army's chemical-weapons tests in the Northwest neighborhood during World War I led to later health problems.
The yearlong, unscientific survey by the Northwest Current, a weekly newspaper, collected health data from 345 Spring Valley households. It found 131 current or former residents with chronic - and sometimes rare and life-threatening - diseases.
Some residents say they believe their illnesses are linked directly to long-term exposure to chemicals that contaminated the soil or were buried after World War I ended in 1918.
"I'm absolutely and totally convinced it came from the chemicals," said Geza Teleki, 60, who lived in Spring Valley for most of the period 1974 to 2002 and five years ago developed diabetes, hypothyroidism, and kidney, colon and heart disease.
"You don't have substantial portions of your internal organs fail within a period of five years if you haven't been exposed to something," said Mr. Teleki, who two years ago moved his family to Bethesda.
But Greg Beumel, a toxicologist whose criticisms of the Current's methodology were cited by the newspaper, yesterday said its findings would be more meaningful if compared with those from a similar neighborhood.
The evidence does raise questions, he said.
"I think we need to see what would happen if a well-designed health study were conducted," Mr. Beumel said in an interview with The Washington Times.
Mr. Teleki said his kidney failure occurred 10 months ago. His wife, Heather, 50, has a vision problem known as peripheral neuropathy. He said their son, Aidan, 9, has severe headaches and stomach pains.
Mr. Teleki went on dialysis treatment but says he has been rejected for kidney-donor lists because "so many other internal organs are failing."
The Current's survey found 160 cases of disease among the 131 current or former residents. The 56 different diseases included Parkinson's, several types of cancer and blood disorders, among them forms of anemia, which lowers the number of red blood cells. Many were autoimmune disorders, which cause the body to attack itself.
"There's definitely a higher incidence of illnesses, cancer and other blood-related illnesses in this area than you would find in a normal community of this sort," said Curtis "Buff" Bohlen, 77, who has lived in Spring Valley with his wife, Janet, 75, since 1958.
Mrs. Bohlen, an avid gardener, discovered four years ago that she has a cancer known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Mr. Bohlen said the couple have no plans to leave the neighborhood before the Army Corps of Engineers finishes testing his property.
Spring Valley, comprising about 1,300 homes, is adjacent to Massachusetts Avenue north of American University.
The Current's extensive report includes three health experts who studied conditions there and cast doubt on the newspaper's findings, which were inserted into Wednesday's editions in a package of 11 articles and a two-page map.
In one article, Mr. Beumel and two other specialists challenge the survey. One criticism was that its unscientific methodology resulted in anecdotal, inconclusive findings.
Mr. Beumel, the toxicologist, requested a copy of a D.C. Health Department study comparing Spring Valley residents with those in Potomac. He also called for an expansive investigation by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Current reporter Charles Bermpohl, who researched and wrote the articles, agreed with those Spring Valley residents who say it is difficult to conclusively link the illnesses to chemicals buried more than 80 years ago.
Mr. Bermpohl, 62, a journalist for 35 years, said the evidence is circumstantial but compelling.
"There were no studies done like this, going out into the community and knocking on doors, or going out and talking to people," Mr. Bermpohl said.
The Current's report suggests the chemicals could have contributed to illnesses in the family of former President George H.W. Bush.
Mr. Bush and his wife, Barbara, lived in Spring Valley with son Marvin for five months in 1967. Mr. and Mrs. Bush both now have an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid known as Graves' disease. Marvin Bush was diagnosed with colitis in 1986; doctors removed his colon.
A spokesman for the former president, who is 80, last week said the Bush family has no comment on the matter.
During World War I, the Army devoted 661 acres, 1,200 chemists and more than 600 technicians to its American University Experiment Station, a center for testing and developing chemical weapons such as chlorine, chloride, cyanide, Lewisite, mustard gas and ricin.
The Army was developing weapons to counter Germany's. When the war ended, officials had assembled a large cache of weapons at the American University but had nowhere to put them. The Army shipped some chemicals to another testing site and buried others.
Camille Saum, 60, an interior designer, lived in the Spring Valley neighborhood until she was 20. She says her childhood was dominated by physical weakness and sickness.
Miss Saum said she developed a form of anemia at age 5 and now has renal stenosis and lupus. And she believes her learning disabilities, including dyslexia, are related to chemical exposure.
"The reason I'm upset with this is because I didn't have a nice childhood," Miss Saum said. "I was absolutely so embarrassed and humiliated because I was so stupid. Now I run a successful business. I was always just sort of sick, but nobody ever knew why."
-------- europe
German Fears Grow That Far-Right Party Will Return to National Stage
November 14, 2004
By JUDY DEMPSEY
International Herald Tribune
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/europe/14cnd-germany.html?oref=login
BERLIN, Nov. 14 - After a string of electoral successes, there are growing fears that a far-right party could be elected in 2006 to Germany's Bundestag, or Parliament - the first time since World War II.
The fears have increased because of the growing support that extreme-right parties are enjoying in Eastern Germany, where the German People's Party and the more powerful and better organized National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD, recently won 10 percent of the vote in regional state elections in Brandenburg and Saxony.
The two rival parties have since agreed to stand on a united ticket in 2006 to increase their chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, the minimum required to get elected to the Bundestag.
Such concern took a new twist last week in Saxony, where to the dismay of the mainstream political parties, two deputies from amid their ranks voted for a NPD candidate and not for Georg Milbradt, who was seeking re-election as the state's Christian Democratic prime minister. Mr. Milbradt eventually scraped home, but without the support of two non-NPD deputies who twice voted for the NPD candidate Uwe Leichenring.
Although the ballot was secret, deputies from the mainstream parties believed the two votes cast for the NPD had come inside the CDU, which has harbored sympathizers from the extreme right.
"You can't imagine how shocked we were," said Uta Windisch, a CDU deputy. "This is a very bad signal. It is very dangerous."
Extreme-right parties have been elected for short periods to a few state parliaments in East and West Germany. But the presence of the NPD in Saxony's Parliament is the first time since the 1960's that this party has made its reappearance on the wider German political scene.
The NPD's long absence was due to the rebellion carried out by the generation born in West Germany during or after World War II. These include Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
An amalgam of left-wing and Marxist groups had taken to the streets demanding that the mainstream political parties make a clean break with the extreme right. They wanted the judiciary and political echelons of people cleansed of those who had links with the Nazis and called for zero tolerance, particularly of the NPD, considered the most dangerous of the far-right parties.
"The 1960's in West Germany was the break with the past," said Burkart Lutz, professor at the Center for Social Research, an independently financed research group in Halle, in Eastern Germany. "For a variety of reasons, Eastern Germany has not had this kind of rebellion."
One reason is that the communist-ruled former German Democratic Republic claimed it was the GDR that had resisted Nazism and fascism, thus giving it no reason to confront the Nazi era. Yet 15 years since reunification, the taboos held by West Germans that made it unacceptable to tolerate parties such as the NPD have found little resonance in Eastern Germany.
Some of Mr. Schröder's governing Social Democrats and Angela Merkel's opposition Christian Democrats still say the appeal of the extreme right in Eastern Germany will in any case weaken over time because they are divided and disorganized.
But individual CDU members, such as Ms. Windisch who on the one hand sees for herself the high levels of unemployment and on the other the political skills of the far right, completely disagree.
"You should see how the NPD works in Saxony's Parliament," Ms. Windisch said.. "It is disciplined. The deputies are educated. They are the best prepared of all the parties."
Indeed, like Ms. Windisch, Mr. Lutz too believes that the extreme-right parties in Eastern Germany are not ephemeral.
He says the NPD is becoming more professional and has a large reservoir of recruits - thanks to the social changes that took place in the GDR in the 1980's.
During the 1980's, a radical shift took place in East Germany's demographic structure after the Communist regime provided generous maternity leave and a network of all-day child care facilities.
"One in every three children born at that time in the whole of Germany was born in the GDR," Mr. Lutz said. The population of West Germany in the 1980's was 63 million, in East Germany, 17 million.
The result today is that that East German generation, now in their 20's, have either left the Eastern states because of unemployment or have stayed. Often, particularly in places of high unemployment, they have become vulnerable to the appeal of the extreme right.
"I call these 20-something-year-olds 'the lost generation,' " Mr. Lutz said.
"The extreme right can easily recruit some of them," Mr. Lutz said. "If we are to avoid the growing appeal of the far right, similar to what happened during the 1920's, we have to find jobs and address their social needs."
----
Romania could pull its troops out of Iraq next June: PM
BUCHAREST (AFP)
Nov 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041114202028.mmwtg2d2.html
Romania could pull its 800 troops out of the US-led coalition in Iraq next June if the situation in the war-torn country stabilises, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said Sunday.
"We hope that the elections in January will lead to a gradual normalisation of the situation in Iraq, and if this is the case Romanian troops could be withdrawn in June 2005," he said.
Iraqi voters are in January due to choose a national assembly, a parliament for the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and 18 provincial councils, but there are fears that relentless violence could derail the process in large swathes of the country.
The Romanian soldiers are serving in the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq that operates in a region south of Baghdad.
The Romanian defence ministry said Sunday one of its soldiers had suffered light wounds in a rocket attack the day before on a US base in Baghdad.
-------- iraq
Iraqis purge informants from ranks
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Borzou Daragahi
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041114-121758-5411r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities are moving against enemy informants and sympathizers in the ranks of the nation's hastily trained security forces by firing thousands of police officers and taking over from Americans the screening of new recruits.
Such informants are believed to have undermined numerous operations and tipped off terrorists, who last month killed 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits as they traveled by bus near the Iranian border.
"Most of the screening as far as the staff is up to the Iraqi staff now," said U.S. Army Capt. Kevin Bradley, who trains Iraqi national guardsmen. "Right now, whether or not the person is clean, it depends on the Iraqis."
With a major offensive under way against Fallujah and other bases of the Sunni-led insurgency, U.S. military commanders were forced to shift troops to Mosul last week after American-trained Iraqi police fled their posts and turned parts of the city over to militants without firing a shot.
In Fallujah yesterday, U.S. military officials said American troops had occupied the entire city and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.
A U.S. officer told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that Fallujah was "occupied but not subdued." Artillery and air strikes were halted after nightfall to prevent mistaken attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces who had taken up positions throughout the city.
Military operations also surged along the Euphrates River valley well to the north and west of Baghdad, with clashes reported in Qaim on the Syrian border and in Hit and Ramadi, nearer to the capital.
Mosul's police chief was fired last week, as was the police chief of Samarra, after waves of insurgent attacks.
They are among the latest of thousands of police officers whom U.S. and Iraqi officials confirm have been fired for incompetence or suspected insurgent sentiments since Iraqis regained sovereignty from coalition forces at the end of June.
The action follows frequent reports of police officers who publicly express support for the insurgency or do not act against terrorists who plant roadside bombs.
"There are some good people in the security services who are the ex-military people," said Iraqi army Lt. Bashar Sadigha, who attended Rostemiya Military Academy near Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's regime. "But there are many people who signed up just to be able to earn a living."
The Iraqi armed forces, meanwhile, have taken charge of their own recruiting. They often employ methods that, while falling short of U.S. civil rights standards, are proving effective, Capt. Bradley said.
In April, when fighting broke out in various parts of the country, many Iraqi soldiers and police ran for their lives or handed their weapons to the attackers.
Iraqi authorities have raised the recruitment age from 17 to 20 and instituted new rules to keep anti-government sympathizers out of the ranks.
Each recruit must now bring a letter of approval from his local community council, and each military base now dispatches committees to new recruits' neighborhoods to check on their "moral background," Maj. Ala al-Khifajey of the Iraqi national guard said.
What's more, nepotism is now the rule: Every new recruit must have a relative already in the service to vouch for him.
"We know our people," he said. "We know who to recruit and who to reject."
That marks a sharp departure from the methods used by the Americans, who ran the recruiting program the way they were used to doing at home, Maj. al-Khifajey said.
"The American way was, you fill out a three-page application form, they check your name against their list of terrorists, and after a medical and fitness test, you had the job."
But privacy rules and fair-hiring practices simply didn't work in a country surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, infiltrated by suicidal Islamic extremists and ravaged by decades of poverty and war, he said.
"Maybe 10 years down the line we'll have the kind of society where a man can just walk in off the street and sign up for the army," Maj. al-Khifajey said, "but definitely not now."
-----
Humanitarian aid barred from Falluja
Red Crescent says 157 families are still in the heart of Falluja
Sunday 14 November 2004,
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/443C3B4E-C2D2-4B18-9C5C-7C9B657A8DCF.htm
An Iraqi Red Crescent convoy blocked from entering Falluja by US forces has asked the United Nations for help.
US troops have directed the convoy, carrying emergency food, water and medical supplies into the Falluja hospital on the outskirts of the town, away from the reach of local citizens.
"They will not be allowed to cross the bridge today," Capt. Adam Collier told Reuters at Falluja hospital, where the convoy is waiting to cross the Euphrates River into the main part of the embattled Iraqi city. He cited security reasons.
Abu Fahd, a member of the relief convoy, told Aljazeera that "the relief convoy wants to enter Falluja town for humanitarian purposes only, to save women, children and elderly people.
"I hope the United Nations will hear our appeals," he said.
"We are now in Falluja hospital, outside the city. There is no one in the hospital except the medical team, doing nothing."
But the US military said it saw no need for the Iraqi Red Crescent to deliver aid to people inside Falluja and said it did not think any Iraqi civilians were trapped inside the city.
'Aid not needed'
"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said US marine Colonel Mike Shupp.
The relief convoy aims to help civilians stuck in Falluja town
"Now that the bridge (into Falluja) is open I will bring out casualties and all aid work can be done here (at Falluja's hospital)," he added.
He said he had not heard of any Iraqi civilians being trapped inside the city and did not think that was the case.
But aid workers say there are still hundreds of families left in the city, which has been pummelled by sustained aerial bombardment and artillery fire in recent days.
"We know of at least 157 families inside Falluja who need our help," said Firdus al-Ubadi of the Iraqi Red Crescent.
No medicines
The Iraqi Red Crescent sent seven trucks and ambulances to Falluja on Saturday, hoping to get food, blankets, water purification tablets and medicine to hundreds of families trapped inside the city during the past six days of fighting.
"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people"
Colonel Mike Shupp, US marine
"None of the injured residents are being allowed to come to the hospital, while those outside are not allowed to go into the town," Abu Fahd said.
"The town is suffering from cuts in power and water supplies. There are no medicines or ambulances either.
"The injured and the dead are now on the streets. Many families want to get out of their houses, but they have no alternative shelters to go into," he said.
"The US forces have prevented us from entering the town claiming it is not safe. US forces have said they control 80% of the town."
Relief team
"I have asked them to allow the relief team into the areas they control, to offer humanitarian aid for women, children and the elderly, and transfer the injured to the hospital, but they have refused," Abu Fahd said.
Baghdad hospitals received wounded refugee children
The Red Crescent sent a convoy of essential goods along with 53 volunteers and three doctors from Baghdad to attend to people in Falluja.
It believes that 157 families are still in the heart of Falluja, but it is concerned about the plight of tens of thousands of people living in refugee camps and villages dotted outside.
"They are dying of starvation and lack of water, especially the children," Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdus al-Ubadi said.
"If there is no solution to this crisis it will expand to other cities and other parts of Iraq and there will be a great disaster here."
Earlier, the Red Crescent society despatched a convoy of four relief trucks and an ambulance to Amiriyat al-Falluja and a tourist village in Habbaniya, where an additional 1500 refugees are camped.
----
Denial Of Water To Iraqi Cities
Rense.com
11-14-4
http://rense.com/general59/denialofwatertoiraq.htm
Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other Coalition members, and the Iraqi interim government.
EVIDENCE FOR THE DENIAL OF WATER
Tall Afar
On 19 September 2004, the Washington Post reported that US forces 'had turned off' water supplies to Tall Afar 'for at least three days' (1). Turkish television reported a statement from the Iraqi Turkoman Front that 'Tall Afar is completely surrounded. Entries and exits are banned. The water shortage is very serious' (2). Al-Manar television in Lebanon interviewed an aid worker who stated that 'the main problem facing the people of Tall Afar and adjacent areas is shortage of water' (3). Relief workers reported a shortage of clean water (4). Moreover, the Washington Post reports that the US army failed to offer water to those fleeing Tall Afar, including children and pregnant women (5).
Samarra
'Water and electricity [were] cut off' during the assault on Samarra on Friday 1 October 2004, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers (6) and the Independent (7). The Washington Post explicitly blames 'U.S. forces' for this (8). Iraqi TV station Al-Sharqiyah reported that technical teams were working to 'restore the power and water supply and repair the sewage networks in Samarra' (9). Al Jazeera interviewed an aid worker who confirmed that 'the city is experiencing a crisis in which power and water are cut off' (10), as well as the commander of the Samarra Police, who reported that 'there is no electricity and no water' (11).
Fallujah
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that: 'Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra.' (12)
Residents of Fallujah have told the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks that 'they had no food or clean water and did not have time to store enough to hold out through the impending battle' (13). The water shortage has been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujah(14), Fadhil Badrani, a BBC journalist in Falluja, confirmed on 8 November that 'the water supply has been cut off'.
In light of the shortage of water and other supplies, the Red Cross has attempted to deliver water to Fallujah. However the US has refused to allow shipments of water into Fallujah until it has taken control of the city (15).
Other cases
There have been allegations that the water supply was cut off during the assault on Najaf in August 2004, and during the invasion of Basra in 2003. We have not investigated these claims.
JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THE DENIAL OF WATER
Some military analysts have attempted to justify the denial of water on tactical or humanitarian grounds. Ian Kemp, editor of military journal 'Jane's Defense Weekly', argues that: 'The longer the city [Fallujah] is sealed off with the insurgents inside, the more difficult it is going to be for them. Eventually, their supplies of food and water are going to dwindle' (16).
Barak Salmoni, assistant professor in National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, told the San Francisco Chronicle that civilians would probably be encouraged to leave Fallujah 'by cutting off water and other supplies' (17).
These arguments are deeply flawed on legal, humanitarian and political grounds. The majority of the population of Fallujah fled before the American attack. Those who have not already fled Fallujah are forced to remain, since roads out of the city have been blocked (18), including by British troops (19). Not only are those remaining unable to leave, but they are likely to consist largely of those too old, weak, or ill to flee - precisely the groups which will be most severely affected by a shortage of water.
REACTION IN IRAQ
The information reported above is more widely known in Iraq than in the US and UK, and has had become a significant political issue. Belief that US tactics involve denial of water is widespread. According to the LA Times: 'As soon as the women of Fallouja learned that four Americans had been killed, their bodies mutilated, burned and strung up from a bridge, they knew a terrible battle was coming. They filled their bathtubs and buckets with water...' (20)
Condemnations of the tactic have been issued by several major Iraqi political groups. On 1 October the Iraqi Islamic Party issued a statement criticising the US attack on Fallujah which 'cut off water, electricity, and medical supplies', and arguing that such an approach 'will further aggravate and complicate the security situation'. It also called for compensation for the victims (21).
Three days later Muqtada al-Sadr criticized both the denial of water to Samarra, and the lack of international outrage at it: 'They say that this city is experiencing the worst humanitarian situations, without water and electricity, but no-one speaks about this. If the wronged party were America, wouldn't the whole world come to its rescue and wouldn't it denounce this?' (22)
Denial of water is one of the misguided tactics which increases distrust of the Coalition forces. Asked in June how much confidence they had in US and UK forces, 50.8% of participating Iraqis responded 'none at all', with a further 29.5% saying 'not very much' (23).
This in turn fuels anti-American violence. A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, one of the most significant Sunni political groupings in Iraq, reported that the party's representative in Samarra had told him that 'there was no water'. He argued that partly as a result of this: 'The Iraqis no longer trust the Americans. It is not a question of military manifestations. It is now a question of popular rejection for the Americans, not for the military manifestations.' (24)
His analysis is confirmed by the Oxford Research International poll, according to which one third of Iraqis regard attacks against Coalition forces as 'acceptable' (25).
REACTION IN THE UK
Awareness of this issue remains extremely limited among the British public. The British government denies involvement. Despite inquiries from CASI and others, they appear not to have raised the issue with their American counterparts. UK Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram has denied knowledge of US action to cut off water supplies in Tall Afar (26), despite coverage in the Washington Post. Similarly Hilary Benn, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, says he has not discussed the issue with his American counterparts (27). This lack of communication with the American side suggests a lack of concern for the humanitarian implications of the conflict in Iraq, and an unwillingness to comment on American activities. Concerning British forces, Mr. Ingram has claimed that: 'With regard to the action of our own Forces, I can also confirm that we have not cut off water supplies to civilians. It is possible that local temporary disruptions may have occurred at some time due to damage from combat with anti-Iraqi Forces but we are not aware of any actual cases where this has happened' (28). LEGAL IMPLICATIONS
The denial of water to civilians is illegal both under Iraqi and international law. Article 12 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which serves as a constitution during the interim period, states that:
'Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of his person' (29)
International law specifically forbids the denial of water to civilians during conflict. Under Article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions,
'Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.' (30)
RECOMMENDATIONS
CASI calls on Members of Parliament to raise this issue with ministers as a matter of urgency. The UK government must use its influence with our US ally to ensure that all military operations are conducted within the bounds of international law. In addition to the suffering caused to the civilian population, use of these tactics by US forces puts our own troops at risk from rising insurgency.
We hope that the issue will be taken up by international NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Deliberate disruption of civilian water supplies should be a matter of concern for all who are promoting human rights in Iraq.
CASI urges journalists on the ground in Iraq to investigate the above reports further, in order to build up a clearer picture of use of this tactic. The UK media must give greater weight to the plight of civilian populations in their coverage of conflicts such as Fallujah. The UK public needs to know that our Coalition partner is using this illegal tactic.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This briefing was prepared for CASI by Daniel O'Huiginn and Alison Klevnas. Thanks to Felicity Arbuthnot, Anne Campbell, Helena Cobban, Mike Lewis, Rory McCarthy, Glen Rangwala, Colin Rowat, Shirin, Jonathan Stevenson, Per Klevnas and the members of the CASI Analysis list for their help and advice. Except where otherwise noted, extracts from the Iraqi press and broadcast media are taken from the BBC news monitoring service.
For more information on this issue, please contact:
Daniel O'Huiginn, Tel: 01223 328040 Mobile: 07745 192426
(1) 'After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts from Scratch', by Steve Fainaru. 19 September 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ac2/wp-dyn/A31377-2004Sep18?language=printer
(2) Comments by Faruq Abd-al-Rahman, leader of the Iraqi Turkoman Front, on TRT 2 Television, Ankara, 1600 gmt 12 September 2004
(3) Al-Manar Television, Beirut, 0440 gmt 14 September 2004
(4) Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad, 1200 gmt 15 September 2004
(5) 'After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts from Scratch', by Steve Fainaru. 19 September 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A31377-2004Sep18?language=printer
(6) 'US, Iraqi forces take control of Samarra'. By Nancy A. Youssef and Patrick Kerkstra, 1 October 2004,
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/world/9813499.htm
(7) 'Onslaught in Samarra escalates in 'dress rehearsal' for major US assault on rebels'. Ken Sengupta, Independent, 3 October.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=56835
(8) Washington Post, 16 October 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A34612-2004Oct15?language=printer
(9) Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad, 1300GMT 8 October 2004
(10) Al-Jazeera TV, 1505 gmt 1 October 2004
(11) Al Jazeera TV, 1810 gmt 2 October 2004
(12) Washington Post, 16 October 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A34612-2004Oct15?language=printer
(13) 'Iraq: thousands of residents have fled Fallujah'. IRIN, 8 November.
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa87 36b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/c8e6aade2a3db177c 1256f460051db3b?OpenDocument
(14) Comment by Shirin,
http://justworldnews.org/MT/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=966
(15) 'Iraq: thousands of residents have fled Fallujah'. IRIN, 8 November.
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa 8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/c8e6aade2a3d b177c1256f460051db3b?OpenDocument
(16) 'Iraq: US troops surround al-Fallujah as offensive preparations continue'. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty feature, 8 November 2004.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/ 2004/11/f29d2002-7151-4453-9e91-97c77a17d3f2.html
(17) San Francisco Chronicle, 6th November 2004.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article. cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/06/MNGHL9NBU11.DTL
(18) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=580548
(19) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3989815.stm
(20) LA Times, 24 October,
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/ world/la-fg-fallouja24oct24,1,6787318.story? coll=la-headlines-world
(21) Statement issued by the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Islamic Party, on 19 Sha'ban 1425 AH, corresponding to 3 Oct 2004. Reported on Dar al-Salam radio, Baghdad in Arabic 1600 gmt 4 Oct 04
(22) Statement by Muqtada al-Sadr on Al-Manar Television, Beirut, in Arabic 1800 gmt 4 October 2004
(23) Survey conducted in June 2004 by Oxford Research International,
http://www.oxfordresearch.com/Iraq% 20June%202004%20Frequency%20Tables.PD
June 2004 Frequency Tables.PD
(24) Al-Jazeera TV, 1615 GMT 2 October 2004
(25) Survey c
http://www.oxfordresearch.com/Iraq20June%202004%20Frequency%20Tables.PD
June 2004 Frequency Tables.PD
(26) Response of Adam Ingram on 25 October 2004 to questions 191479
(tabled by Llwyd, and 192090, 192089, and 192087 tabled by Adam Price.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/ pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/cm041025/text/41025w03. htm#41025w03.html_spnew9
(27) Response to question by Adam Price MP: Adam Price: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what discussions he has had with counterparts in the US Administration on cutting off water supplies in Iraq. [192088] Hilary Benn: I have had no such discussions
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm 200304/cmhansrd/cm041103/text/41103w03.htm#41103w03.html_spnew4
(28) Letter from Adam Ingram to Anne Campbell MP, dated 21 October 2004, ref D/Min(AF)/AI 4770/04/C
(29) Law of administration for the state of Iraq for the transitional period, http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/TAL.html
(30) http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42 141256739003e636b/d67c3971bcff1c10c125641e0052b545
----
Insurgents Routed in Falluja; Smaller Bands Still Resist
November 14, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS and ROBERT F. WORTH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-falluja.html?hp&ex=1100494800&en=15543330172a22ec&ei=5094&partner=homepage
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 14 - Foot soldiers combed the smashed and deserted houses in southern Falluja this afternoon after a mechanized unit smashed through the neighborhood, called Shuhada, the day before, routing insurgents in their last major redoubt within the city.
In house after house, the searches have turned up large caches of weaponry, like artillery shells and mortar rounds, along with electronics for making bombs and mujahedeen literature. Fearing booby traps, the troops generally entered the houses only after tanks rammed through walls or specialists put explosive charges on doors.
As the searches moved southward through the neighborhood, leaving a swath of devastation behind, shooting continued around the city, and at least one marine was killed by a sniper this morning, shot through the head from an area that had been all but obliterated the night before.
But it seemed clear that any further resistance in Falluja would have to come from smaller bands of remaining mujahedeen rather than a coherent fighting force.
"We're sweeping through the city now," said Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, the top Marine commander in Iraq. "We're clearing out pockets of resistance. There are groups numbering from 5 to 30. They're moving too. They're trying to get behind us."
General Natonski added: "People will never appreciate the movement of soldiers down here, what it took to move them and immediately conduct a relief in place with the soldiers. It ought to go down in the history books."
In one remaining mystery, few bodies have been found in the houses, raising the question of whether most of the fighters left for other places in Falluja or parts unknown before the tanks rolled in last night.
Sporadic gun battles continued today in the northern city of Mosul, where insurgents have been trying to carry out an uprising for the last four days. Many of the streets remained clear, both because residents said they feared the violence, and because it was the first day of Eid, the three-day festival marking the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.
A senior military official in Baghdad said the city was infested with insurgent cells, and that the Americans will now have to work on flushing them out. The Americans also have to figure out how to rebuild the police forces, after many police officers fled during a guerilla siege of stations across the city on Thursday, the official said.
In the most pitched battle today, insurgents barricaded in a police station fended off a counteroffensive by a company of Iraqi commandos sent to the city by the Ministry of Interior, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, which is charged with controlling the city.
The five-hour battle began around noon, when the commandos crossed the northernmost bridge spanning the Tigris River to try to secure the police station, which guerrillas had raided and looted on Thursday. As the soldiers crossed to the west bank, roadside bombs exploded around them. At the station itself, snipers shot at them from the roof.
At least 20 Iraqi soldiers were wounded, Colonel Hastings said. American forces in light-armored Stryker vehicles rushed to the scene and helped evacuate the wounded. The battle raged on for the rest of the afternoon, until the American-led forces retook the station.
"There was a pretty substantial engagement there," the colonel said.
In the town of Tal Afar, just 30 miles west of Mosul, insurgents made several attacks on police stations. They blew up part of one station in a neighboring town. The director of the general hospital in Tal Afar said in an interview that insurgents had stormed a prison and freed all the prisoners, though the American military said it had no information on this.
Stryker vehicles had blocked roads around the town, and families were fleeing throughout the day, saying that the mujahedeen were trying to seize control and that the Americans appeared ready to do battle.
The wave of violence in Tal Afar comes only two months after the Stryker Brigade cordoned off the town and swept through it, trying to flush out bands of guerrillas that had run rampant. The Americans said at the time they had re-established control, and the Iraqi government installed a new police chief. But the attacks there, which began around the same time as the uprising in Mosul, show that the insurgency in the area is self-regenerating, as it is in much of the embattled Sunni triangle.
In France, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said at a political congress that he believed two French journalists abducted south of Baghdad in August were in a relatively calm area of Iraq. Mr. Raffarin said the assumption was based on information from the journalists' Syrian driver, who was discovered in a house in Falluja last week. "The messages we are getting have reassured us a little," Mr. Raffarin said, according to the Reuters news agency.
The kidnapped reporters are Georges Malbrunot, a writer for Le Figaro, and Christian Chesnot, who works for Radio France International.
--------
ELECTIONS
For Iraqi Leader, Political Risks of Attack on Falluja Grow
November 14, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14allawi.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 13 - As Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, starts to position his party for the coming national elections, rising public denunciation of the invasion of Falluja by prominent Iraqi groups has put his political support at risk when he needs it most.
Dr. Allawi will almost certainly run for one of the 275 national assembly seats up for grabs in January. His party, the Iraqi National Accord, and other politicians have begun jockeying to form coalitions in order to secure as many votes as possible.
But depending on the outcome in Falluja, Dr. Allawi, 58, could find himself without a significant political ally. Even if the battle ends quickly and without a large number of civilian casualties, Dr. Allawi, by ordering the invasion, has affirmed his image as an ardent supporter of the American presence here. That is enough to keep politicians from wanting to be linked to him.
"The Allawi government has full responsibility for whatever happens in Falluja," said Redha Jowad Taki, a senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party.
"Support for the government has been eroding since last summer," Mr. Taki said. "It had big backing among the people then, but it's failed to deal with gangs of terrorists, and that has led to the loss of support."
Further, public condemnation of Dr. Allawi's role in the invasion has come from across Iraq's political spectrum.
The leading group of Sunni clerics, the Muslim Scholars Association, singled out Dr. Allawi for criticism last week when it called for a boycott of elections to protest the offensive.
"The Iraqi clerics place on the government of Ayad Allawi the entire legal and historical responsibility for what Falluja is going through, which is genocide at the hands of the occupiers," said Harith al-Dhari, the association's leader.
What may do more political harm to Dr. Allawi, who is a Shiite, is the fact that Shiite leaders are also condemning the invasion. Shiites make up at least 60 percent of Iraq and are the largest voting bloc.
The most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said through a spokesman on Friday that the security issue should be solved through peaceful means. Representatives of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, are calling on Iraqis not to take part in the offensive.
"Don't stain your hands with Iraqi blood," an aide to Mr. Sadr, Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, said in front of thousands of worshippers at a Baghdad mosque on Friday. "We demand you stop fighting against your brothers in Falluja."
The pressures on Dr. Allawi have increased enormously over the week, with his backing of the American forces now costing him personally as well as politically. On Tuesday night, insurgents kidnapped a first cousin, Ghazi Majeed Allawi, the cousin's wife and a daughter-in-law. A militant group called Ansar al-Jihad posted an Internet message the next day saying it would behead the captives in 48 hours if Dr. Allawi did not halt the invasion of Falluja and release all prisoners in Iraq.
The deadline expired sometime on Friday. No word has emerged of the fates of the hostages.
Some Iraqis, mostly Shiites and Kurds, do support the Falluja invasion, which is aimed at wiping out resistance from Sunni insurgents. The problem is that with elections coming up, even those supporters could publicly denounce the offensive no matter what they really think, because siding with the American-led forces could lose them votes. So Dr. Allawi finds himself increasingly alone in the political arena.
Since taking office in June when the United States handed formal sovereignty to Iraq, Dr. Allawi has struggled to portray himself as a representative of the Iraqi people rather than of the American government. His background as an exile with close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency has made that difficult. The decision to invade Falluja finally forced him into a corner. He had to say publicly that the decision, not very popular among Iraqis, was fully his own.
It is unclear how much power the Bush administration gave Dr. Allawi in setting the timing of the invasion. A senior Pentagon official said the timing "was a mutual decision, involving the White House and Allawi, and everyone else in between," he said.
A senior military official in Iraq said that Dr. Allawi had insisted on starting the offensive before Nov. 12 so there would be enough time to wrap it up by Nov. 22, when Dr. Allawi and other Iraqi officials are to attend a conference in Egypt on the future of Iraq.
Dr. Allawi became testy when asked at a news conference last week whether his decision to invade Falluja would deepen a divide in Iraq between those people who back the resistance and those who oppose it. He tried to portray his decision as one with immense popular support.
"I think there is a misperception on your part," he said to a reporter. "There is a division between the Iraqi people and the terrorists. We are after terrorists. We are not after anyone else."
Even if Dr. Allawi had never ordered an invasion of Falluja, his party might have had a tough time finding political allies. It is secular, and Iraq is becoming an increasingly religious society.
Even more troubling for many Iraqis, the party is made up of many former Baath Party officials, including Dr. Allawi. Asked on Saturday how Dr. Allawi was taking the political heat over his order to invade Falluja, one of his confidants, Kassim Daoud, the national security adviser, shrugged it off.
"Listening to criticism is practicing democracy," Mr. Daoud said. "We don't mind being criticized by any party."
Robert E.Worth contributed reporting from Falluja for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
--------
Troops Battle for Last Parts Of Fallujah
Senior Iraqi Officials Claim City Is Liberated
By Jackie Spinner and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47334-2004Nov13?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 13 -- As senior Iraqi officials declared Fallujah liberated, U.S. forces on Saturday continued intense combat operations aimed at securing the last section of the city from an insurgent force fighting with surprising discipline, organization and the trappings of a professional army, American commanders said.
In the southernmost section of Fallujah, where a showdown still loomed, U.S. soldiers discovered an underground bunker and steel-enforced tunnels connecting a ring of houses filled with weapons, medical supplies and bunk beds.
The fighters in the area were armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and dressed in blue camouflage uniforms with full military battle gear. U.S. soldiers reported finding American Meals Ready to Eat and other equipment that the U.S. government donated earlier this year to set up a local security force, which was quickly corrupted and taken over by insurgents.
The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, announced "a clear-cut victory over the insurgents and terrorists" in Fallujah but acknowledged that fighters had taken parts of the northern city of Mosul and had attacked sites in several other cities.
Commanders said the fighters in Fallujah exhibited far more skill on the battlefield than the ragtag insurgents who had fleetingly engaged U.S.-led security forces in the first days of the battle. U.S. military units reported heavy casualties for the second day in a row; 24 troops have been killed since the battle began.
"When we found those boys in that bunker with their equipment, it became a whole new ballgame," said Pfc. Troy Langley, 19, of Wister, Okla., who is assigned to Task Force 2-2 of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. "The way these guys fight is different than the insurgents."
The reality of the situation served to challenge the declarations of senior Iraqi officials, who as early as Friday were announcing that the battle for Fallujah was over in time for Iraqis to celebrate the end of Ramadan on Sunday in peace.
"It is with all pleasure that I announce to you that operation New Dawn has been concluded," the minister of state for national security, Qasim Dawood, said at a news conference in Baghdad, as Marine artillery and aerial gunships continued to pummel Fallujah 35 miles to the west. "Major operations have been brought to a conclusion."
U.S. soldiers and Marines, meanwhile, kept fighting.
"We control 90 percent, but the 10 percent that's left is the most difficult," said Capt. Erik Krivda, a member of Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command from Gaithersburg.
U.S. and Iraqi security forces have been battling fighters in this insurgent stronghold since ground troops followed a barrage of artillery fire into the city Monday night. Dawood said that more than 1,000 insurgents had been killed and 200 captured. A militia group, the Army of Mohammad, reported that 73 fighters had been killed.
It was unclear how many insurgents remained in the fight, or even the city. A U.S. military cordon around Fallujah proved porous, with Iraqi reporters entering the city from the south, and fighters leaving the same way. Others escaped by boat across the Euphrates River to the west, according to witnesses.
The insurgents who remained were very low on food, relying on fruit and canned goods, according to witnesses. But the fighters continued to harass U.S. forces, and the Iraqi troops who were trailing them, by moving through the maze of buildings behind the advance, and even answering American psychological warfare operations.
In areas controlled by U.S. forces, loudspeakers mounted on Humvees urged that "all fighters in Fallujah should surrender, and we guarantee they will not be killed or insulted."
From a loudspeaker on a mosque still controlled by insurgents, the fighters replied: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."
Dawood said the offensive failed to produce Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, a guerrilla group that had made a base in Fallujah in an uneasy alliance with local insurgents. Indeed, by Friday morning, insurgent leaders claimed that 90 percent of the group's fighters had left the city and that the remaining 10 percent had been killed. Dozens of survivors were said to be traveling to Baghdad to carry out attacks.
An insurgent spokesman, speaking on al-Jazeera television, called on "scores or hundreds of brothers of the mujaheddin . . . to press the American forces" outside Fallujah. And a group of insurgents released a videotape to "announce the spread of the battle to all . . . parts of Iraq," according to Reuters news agency, which received the tape in Fallujah.
Large portions of Mosul remained under the control of insurgents. On the western side of the city of 1.8 million, residents reported no sign of government authority or a U.S. military presence. Police stations, overrun and looted by insurgents on Thursday and Friday, remained deserted. Streets were empty of all but rubbish and armed men who roamed the city. A car bomb detonated beside a convoy of Iraqi National Guard troops, injuring seven.
Dawood said, however, that Mosul was "not out of the control of the government."
"Just because a bunch of gangsters attacked police stations and declared that they were in control for not more than two hours does not mean that the government has lost control," he said.
Allawi said reinforcements of Iraqi security forces had begun arriving overnight to replace the Mosul police -- a force of perhaps 5,000 -- who largely deserted when the insurgents attacked.
Insurgents also harassed U.S. and Iraqi security forces in other cities in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, including Baiji, Hawija, Tall Afar and Samarra.
In Baghdad, the Shiite Muslim mayor of the southern neighborhood of Bayaa, home to both Shiites and Sunnis, was assassinated, as was his Shiite predecessor earlier this year. Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Education Ministry, the Associated Press reported.
Explosions echoed across the capital for a fourth day. Residents of the predominantly Sunni Adhamiyah neighborhood said insurgents fought U.S. troops for two hours overnight. Gunmen also roamed districts in the west and south overnight. On Saturday morning, a U.S. tank secured the southern edge of the Jadriya Bridge, which leads north toward the city center.
The battle for Fallujah, which insurgents have held since April, began with U.S. troops encountering only light to moderate resistance. Heavy artillery fire and air power seemed to knock the punch out of the resistance, which steadily pulled back from the main U.S. advance in the northern part of the city. But commanders warned that insurgents were likely to make a serious stand somewhere in the city.
Some U.S. commanders expressed surprise at finding fighters wearing uniforms and fighting like professionals. Unlike the insurgents who battled forces in the northern district, the forces in the south popped up, shot off a round and then moved.
But in urban combat, an organized force is also easier to identify, said Staff Sgt. Christopher Echevarria, 25, an Army Task Force 2-2 soldier from Crescent City, Calif.
"It's good they have uniforms," he said. "It makes it easier to know who to kill."
Vick reported from Baghdad. Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War
'We Knew When We Got to the South We Were Going to Get Pounded'
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48226-2004Nov13?language=printer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 13 -- On his first night in the city, Sgt. Aristotel Barbosa slept uneasily on the floor near the door of a vacant house that his Marine unit had taken over. A squad leader in the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Barbosa had been prepared for the worst when U.S. and Iraqi forces began storming into Fallujah on Monday night.
Instead, the slight 26-year-old from Southern California was surprised to find fighters in the city putting up little resistance. By Thursday night, U.S. troops had taken control of the northern half of Fallujah, which lies about 35 miles west of Baghdad, and Barbosa was feeling optimistic about the battle when he woke up Friday. He decided not to shave, figuring things would be over soon enough. "I'm thinking and hoping that it's not that bad," he said, recalling his mood at the time.
But for many Marine and Army units, the battle for Fallujah was only beginning.
Barbosa and his squad set off on foot at 7:40 a.m. Friday following a slow-moving column of Marine infantrymen heading east just below the main highway that divides northern and southern Fallujah.
As he trudged through the desolate, rubble-filled streets, Barbosa said he remembered thinking how bad the city looked, worse than he had imagined. "Basically every house has a hole through it," he said.
Then the unease hit again. "All the squad leaders and myself, we knew when we got to the south we were going to get pounded."
As they began the turn south, gunfire burst from a mosque in front of them. Another platoon began shooting back, and Barbosa led his squad around to the side. "The whole company kept pushing, and we started getting hit from the other side of the street," he said.
Gunfire tore through an aluminum gate when the squad passed a house. Barbosa said he felt a sting in his right bicep. He had been shot. Two other members of his squad were wounded within minutes of each other, including Lance Cpl. Matthew Vetor, 21, who was hit in the lower back just under his flak jacket.
"It was like a whole block of insurgents," Barbosa said Saturday while recuperating with Vetor in a Navy field hospital at a military outpost near the city. "They started throwing grenades at us. It was like a shock. I couldn't believe I got hurt. I went two more blocks. I couldn't believe it."
It was 12:30 p.m.
Barbosa found his gunnery sergeant, who ordered him back to a medical vehicle that the Marines call the "track" or the "big bus."
"I thought they were going to get me out of there," Barbosa said. "But we kept pushing. I could still fight. I had to go leftie, but I was still fighting."
Meanwhile, Vetor was feeling the blood trickling down his face from a shrapnel wound. "I thought it was just my face," he said, until he felt the pain in his back. "I started to run," he recalled. "But it was difficult. We just kept making our way to the track. The hatch opened, and I jumped in. I gave out all my ammo. They took my flak and Kevlar. The doc had me lay down in the center and pulled out some shrapnel."
From inside the medical vehicle, Vetor said he could hear the fighting. "I'm there without my flak or helmet. You hear the shooting going on," he said. He felt afraid.
The column of Marines kept moving, with Vetor riding in the medical vehicle and Barbosa continuing on foot. Barbosa said the unit had to keep moving so the air power could come in behind them and clear the houses the insurgents were shooting from.
"There wasn't one house that didn't have weapons," Barbosa said. Every house had at last one rocket-propelled grenade and a couple of hand grenades, he said.
"They were very prepared," Vetor said, as he and Barbosa sat next to each other on a green cot in the field hospital's overflow medical ward.
"Like they were waiting for us," Barbosa said. "They were waiting for us."
As he walked along the street, Barbosa said, he had to step gingerly around improvised explosive devices that had been strung together.
About an hour later, Barbosa and Vetor found themselves in a large, vacant residence not far from the scene of the gun battle. The Iraqi special forces assigned to their unit found some rice and vegetables and made lunch. The Marines were nursing their wounds and eating hot chow when an explosion occurred nearby, shattering the windows and flicking shards of glass into the food.
It was 1:45 p.m.
Five hours later, Barbosa and Vetor made it out of the city to a staging area. They were taken to the military hospital, where on Saturday afternoon they were watching a movie and waiting to be transferred back to their unit.
Barbosa, twirling a cigarette lighter in his hand, planned to get back into the fight. Vetor, who said he could squeeze shrapnel out of his facial wounds, would not be able to return just yet.
"You know it could happen to you, but you really don't think it will be you," Vetor said, looking at the TV screen. "I'm just glad I was part of it. I was glad I got to fight with these guys. It had to be done. We were really fighting. We were doing great. It doesn't stop us. We'll keep going."
Barbosa said that even when the offensive was officially declared over, his squad planned to remain in the city to keep the peace. He expected things might get worse then, particularly if the artillery and mechanized infantry move out.
"We're not going to kill everyone, and they're not all going to surrender," he said. "I know that a lot of them are left. They'll wait for things to calm down, and they'll come back. They always do."
Barbosa said he would, too, and took a swig of juice from the box in his hand.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis to Ban Weapons for Palestinians
The Associated Press
Nov 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS_GUNS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's military will stop allowing Palestinian security forces in the West Bank to carry weapons in public within the next 24 hours, the army chief told the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said security forces in the West Bank city of Ramallah would be allowed to carry their weapons openly until later Sunday, when the three-day mourning period for Yasser Arafat ends, meeting participants said.
Israeli and Palestinian security commanders will hold a coordination meeting later Sunday, Yaalon told the ministers. Both sides were concerned that chaos at Arafat's funeral Friday could erupt into disarray in the entire West Bank and spark a wave of anti-Israeli attacks, he said.
Sunday's meeting will continue the talks between the security officials held late Thursday, Yaalon said, according to the participants. Israel allowed the carrying of the weapons in the meeting as a goodwill gesture. "We established coordination on the night before of a kind that we haven't had in a long time," Yaalon was quoted as saying.
Israel barred Palestinian security forces in the West Bank from carrying guns in early 2002 after a large Israeli offensive into the area launched in response to a suicide bombing.
-----
In Shadow of Arafat's Death, Unity, Violence and Anger
November 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE and STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14gaza.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GAZA, Nov. 13 - Yasir Arafat's death has brought the Palestinian factions together in a rare display of unity, which the emerging leadership is hoping to cement in order to hold elections and take a fresh look at relations with Israel.
But in a sign of how difficult it may be to hold the factions together, the armed militant groups among them - most prominently Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades - say they will not agree to any cease-fire as long as Israeli forces remain in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"We will continue to resist and confront the enemy as a strategic choice until the end of the occupation," said Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, which has carried out the largest number of suicide bombings.
Such statements come partly in the expectation that Mahmoud Abbas, the new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister, may try to pursue a truce. During his brief tenure as prime minister last year, Mr. Abbas got the factions to agree to a cease-fire, and he is under pressure from Washington and Israel to show that he will begin to confront militancy and terrorism in a way that Mr. Arafat did not.
The truce last year sharply reduced the overall level of violence for about two months, but it never really took hold. Israelis and Palestinians blamed each other for its collapse.
"Last year we accepted a truce and it didn't succeed because Israel continued its aggression," said Muhammad al-Hindi, a leader in Islamic Jihad, which has also been responsible for many of the attacks.
Mr. Qurei will now be in charge of the security forces, but both he and Mr. Abbas are seen as pragmatic, suit-and-tie politicians who have little sway over the angry young men who walk the Palestinian streets with automatic rifles, and they are not expected to confront the militants head on.
Palestinians are broadly supportive of presidential elections to replace Mr. Arafat within two months, as stipulated by Palestinian law. More moderate Palestinians say they hope that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will take part in the elections, their first democratic test. The moderates also hope a new, more democratic leadership can revive the credibility of institutions like the Palestinian Authority, which has largely fallen apart in the last four years of violence, causing a vacuum that groups like Hamas have begun to fill.
But such a ballot requires calm.
Mr. Hindi said a minimum requirement for elections should be an Israeli withdrawal to the positions the forces held in September 2000, just before the start of the intifada uprising. "No election will be genuine elections as long as Israeli troops are present," he said.
There is some evidence that the armed Palestinian groups have scaled back attacks, at least temporarily. Gaza was the scene of the worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting this year, and during the summer, various Palestinian factions battled among themselves. Rival security services have tried to kill each other's commanders. But in recent days, more than a dozen Palestinian factions have met in Gaza with the aim of maintaining unity.
In the last month, there have also been few rocket attacks by Hamas from northern Gaza on Israeli communities; such attacks prompted a major Israeli raid during the first half of October.
But Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, part of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, pledged Friday to step up attacks. The group says it believes Mr. Arafat was poisoned by Israel, though Palestinian leaders insist there is no evidence of that.
"We will respond to the assassination of the leader and symbol by striking deep inside the Israeli entity," the group's statement said, adding that it would now call itself the Yasir Arafat Martyrs Brigades. "We strongly warn anyone who would try to bargain over our cause."
Still, the armed groups acknowledge that Palestinians are vulnerable and need to present a united front, as evidenced by the meetings by the factions in Gaza. "There is a Palestinian consensus that there should be a unified leadership and that we should agree on a specific program following the death of Mr. Arafat," Mr. Hindi said.
For its part, Israel has said it will show restraint if the new Palestinian leadership makes a major effort to halt attacks. But Israel says it will continue to act against Palestinians actively planning or mounting attacks, and the Israeli military, whose troops remain on the outskirts of most cities in the West Bank, has continued raiding Palestinian areas and arresting suspected militants.
Over time, at least, the Palestinians need to resolve their internal contradiction: a leadership committed to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and armed factions committed to Israel's destruction. Mr. Arafat issued routine statements condemning Palestinian suicide bombings, but neither the Israelis nor the Palestinian militants took him seriously. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Mr. Arafat of refusing to order his security forces to act to halt terror attacks.
The Palestinian factions themselves said they did not feel pressure from Mr. Arafat to halt attacks.
As the intifada has ground on through a fourth year, some armed groups have grown in popularity.
Hamas, long esteemed by Palestinians for its charitable activities, has seen its stature increase because of its willingness to use suicide bombings and rocket strikes against Israel. Hamas is engaging in the already planned elections for municipal authorities, hoping to turn its appeal into administrative influence. Opinion polls suggest it would run a strong second to Fatah in Gaza, with up to 30 percent of the vote. It is weaker in the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad, unlike Hamas, has little in the way of an associated political arm.
Both groups refused to take part in the one and only Palestinian election, held in 1996, for the parliament and presidency of the Palestinian Authority. But this time it is waiting for the details of the presidential election before deciding.
There are some questions about how those factions would arrange to field candidates for the Palestinian Authority, since it was formed as a result of the 1993 Oslo accords, which was premised on a two-state solution, and both groups call for Israel's destruction. Also, Israeli action against militants has taken a toll, particularly on Hamas. In a pair of airstrikes last spring, Israel killed Hamas's two top leaders: its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and his successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Since then, Hamas has refused to divulge the name of its current leader in Gaza, and its leading figures, who used to appear regularly at rallies, have tended to remain out of sight. That leaves Hamas no obvious candidate to run for president.
Greg Myre reported from Gaza for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Ramallah, West Bank.
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Palestinians Say the Future Rests on Vote, Israeli Action
Arafat's Death Opens Way To Political Transformation
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48219-2004Nov13.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 13 -- Palestinians must act quickly to hold elections for a leader to replace Yasser Arafat if they are to peacefully transform their political system after more than three decades of one-man control, according to Palestinian politicians, academics and analysts.
But their ability to organize a free and fair vote within 60 days, as mandated by Palestinian law, will depend in large part on whether the Israeli government eases its occupation and controls of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians said.
Arafat, considered the father of the Palestinian national movement and the symbol of his people's fight for an independent state, died Thursday at a hospital outside Paris. He groomed no successor, and his responsibilities were divided among four senior Palestinian leaders, all of whom lack Arafat's stature and charisma and whose legitimacy would be greatly enhanced by elections.
The speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Rawhi Fattouh, 55, was named interim president of the Palestinian Authority, the governing entity for the West Bank and Gaza, until a new president is elected. The other top leaders are Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, 66; Mahmoud Abbas, 69, who was named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization; and Farouk Kaddoumi, 70, who was named leader of the Fatah political movement.
One Palestinian official called on President Bush to play an important role during the run-up to the election. "It's the first challenge for him and his credibility when he speaks about the larger issue of bringing democracy to the Middle East," said Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator with Israel. In a joint White House appearance with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, the day Arafat was buried, Bush pledged to work to encourage the creation of an independent and democratic Palestinian state.
Elections following Arafat's death represent the first step toward "reform and the transformation of the Palestinian revolution," said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. But Hadi said the success of elections depends partly on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
"If Sharon stops the killings and the incursions, releases Palestinian prisoners, lifts the siege over Jerusalem," which prevents most Palestinians from visiting the city, "and does not interfere with the upcoming Palestinian municipal elections in December, he will be endorsing this historic change and allowing moderates to rise," Hadi said. "If he doesn't, it will be a disaster."
Sharon has ruled out the possibility of releasing prisoners or making other such gestures, saying that the new Palestinian government must prove that it is serious about tackling terrorism before Israel will treat it as a partner for peace.
"Elections are not a substitute for fighting terrorism," a Sharon spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said Saturday. "To get to a democratic state, they have to fight terrorism."
"If they want to move away from the Arafat policies, they have to start doing something, and when we see that they're going in that direction, we'll be there to assist them," he said.
The Palestinians must overcome longtime rivalries and mistrust between Arafat's loyalists from the Palestinian exile community and a younger generation of reformers who grew up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even deeper differences exist between Muslim militant groups, which have become popular and powerful during the Palestinians' four-year uprising, and the governing Palestinian Authority and Arafat's Fatah political movement, both of which are secular.
Qureia, a member of Fatah, has already begun fence-mending with the militant groups. He met with a dozen security chiefs and senior militant leaders in the Gaza Strip just before Arafat's death to discuss a more collective style of leadership.
Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political analyst and pollster, said it was important for the old guard and young reformers within Fatah to coalesce around a single candidate. He and other Palestinians said the likely choice was Abbas, who served as prime minister before Qureia.
"The old guard must forge an immediate coalition with the young guard and embrace them, allow internal elections for Fatah, and remove the old guard and Arafat cronies from the government," Shikaki said. Perhaps most important, he said, Israel should release the leader of the young reformers, Marwan Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence in prison for his involvement in the killing of five people.
"The most important element in organizing an election is a cease-fire, and Barghouti's help is going to be critical," Shikaki added. "Barghouti speaks for the young guard reformers, and to make the elections positive and to influence the outcome, he must be released."
Public opinion surveys show that, other than Arafat, Barghouti, a charismatic, firebrand orator and former head of Fatah in the West Bank, is about twice as popular as any other Palestinian politician, and his support will be crucial for Abbas or any other Fatah candidate.
Gissin, Sharon's spokesman, rejected the possibility of releasing Barghouti, saying: "His hands are tainted with blood. Would the United States release someone serving a life sentence to run for president?"
Barghouti did not recognize the legitimacy or legality of his Israeli trial, saying that because he was considered an enemy of the state, his guilt before an Israeli judge was a foregone conclusion.
"Marwan Barghouti hasn't decided what he's going to do," said Sa'd Nimr, the leader of the campaign to release him. If elected as the next Palestinian leader, Nimr said, Barghouti could appoint a vice president or deputy to rule in his place.
Correspondent Molly Moore contributed to this report.
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Palestinians Schedule Election for Jan. 9
November 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html?ei=5094&en=cf24868b86d5f64b&hp=&ex=1100494800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 - Palestinians have scheduled presidential elections for Jan. 9 to replace Yasir Arafat, officials said today. Meanwhile, the favored candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, escaped injury as Palestinians waged a deadly gun battle during a mourning service for Mr. Arafat in Gaza City.
The Palestinian leadership has moved swiftly to fill Mr. Arafat's posts since his death on Thursday, and the January election will choose a new leader for the Palestinian Authority, which runs Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But Palestinian areas remain highly combustible as evidenced by the shooting at a large mourning tent erected so that Palestinians could pay respects to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, traveled from the West Bank and arrived this afternoon at the grounds, an open field near Mr. Arafat's seaside compound in Gaza City.
Armed men in the crowd began chanting, "No to Abu Mazen," and "No to Dahlan," a reference to Muhammad Dahlan, an ex-security chief who accompanied Mr. Abbas. Some of the armed men then began firing their rifles into the air, witnesses said.
Security guards surrounded Mr. Abbas, 69, as more shooting erupted and carried on for several minutes. Two Palestinian security officers were killed and four were injured, witnesses and Palestinian officials said. Mr. Abbas was whisked away after the shooting stopped.
The gunmen involved in the shooting wore civilian clothes and many had black-and-white checkered scarves around their necks, the kind favored by Mr. Arafat. They were believed to be members of the Fatah movement. Mr. Arafat was the movement's founder and longtime leader, and Mr. Abbas has been a senior Fatah figure for many years.
The gunmen eventually left the scene, but were in no hurry, and no one was arrested, according to witnesses and Palestinian officials.
"It was not an assassination attempt," Mr. Abbas told reporters shortly afterward at his office in Gaza City. "Emotions were high. There was random gunfire and pushing in the crowd."
The shooting reflected the lawlessness in Palestinian areas, where militants freely roam the streets and feel little restraint about firing into the air.
"We must deal with the security situation. Some aspects of the security situation are chaotic," Mr. Abbas said.
Mr.. Abbas served briefly as prime minister last year, and immediately after Mr. Arafat's death on Thursday was named as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which incorporates multiple factions, including Fatah.
While seen as the strongest contender in the presidential election, he has no real support on the Palestinian street. Mr. Abbas prefers quiet negotiations to the public stage, and perhaps more than any other senior Palestinian figure, he has criticized Palestinian violence against Israel as counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. This stance has angered many militants, who were fiercely loyal to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat was the dominant Palestinian figure for nearly four decades, and the election will be crucial in providing legitimacy to his successor.
The January vote could also improve the prospect for renewed peace talks, or at least some sort of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue that has collapsed almost entirely during the past four years of fighting.
Rawhi Fattouh, installed as the caretaker leader of the Palestinian Authority just hours after Mr. Arafat's death, announced the ballot in the West Bank city of Ramallah, at the compound where Mr. Arafat was confined for the final three years of his life and is now buried.
"There will be free and direct elections," Mr. Fattouh said. The ballot is in keeping with Palestinian law, which requires a vote within 60 days if a leader dies.
Just a few hundred yards away, ordinary Palestinians arrived throughout the day to visit the marble and stone gravesite, which is covered with floral wreaths and photos.
The Palestinian areas have been mostly calm in recent days, but there are several obstacles to holding elections in January.
Israeli troops have been in or near Palestinian cities in the West Bank for the past two and a half years, and stage frequent raids in against Palestinian militants. Palestinians are demanding the soldiers be pulled back for the election.
Israel has not said how it will respond, though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed a willingness to facilitate the election, according to Gary L. Ackerman, a Democratic congressman from New York who met Mr. Sharon today.
Mr. Ackerman said Mr. Sharon "wants them to have successful elections, and Israel will not put obstacles in their way."
The prime minister also said he "expected that the military presence would be reduced," Mr. Ackerman said.
There is also the question of whether Israel will allow the more than 200,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote, as they did in the only previous Palestinian national election, in 1996.
"They have the right according to all agreements," said the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed it. Although the move has never been recognized intern