------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
'THE ASH GARDEN'
U.S. Said to Be Ready to End Sanctions on Pakistan and India
India, Pakistan await change in U.S. export curbs
Antimissile system dangerous, misguided
Kodiak -- Launch site in Alaska eyed in wake of terrorist attacks
Morocco and US sign agreement on peaceful use of nuclear techniques
NRC REACTS TO TERRORIST ATTACKS
PUMP FAILURE AT NUCLEAR PLANT CONSIDERED SERIOUS
NRC RECEIVES APPLICATION FROM TVA TO PRODUCE TRITIUM
GOSHUTES DEMAND FAIR ELECTIONS
More N-Waste Headed Through Moab?
Text of George Bush's speech
Global Eye-Blank Check

MILITARY
'We will not fail,' Bush tells nation
Nic Robertson's diary: A week in Afghanistan
U.S. takes on war-hardened Taliban it helped create
Muslim clerics urge bin Laden to leave
TALIBAN REACTION
Islamic fears of terror ahead
Kashmiris Burn US Flag, Vow Support for Afghanistan
Averting Bioterrorism Begins with US Reforms
Ten Dead in French Plant Blast
Blast kills 10, injures 150 at Toulouse plant
Iraq suspected of sponsoring terrorist attacks
Iraq's role - if any - splits the US on possible action
2 Iraqi Antiaircraft Sites Are Hit
Influential Pakistanis Call U.S. Alliance Necessary
Bin Laden haven just across border
Hard - Liners Challenge Pakistan Stance
Pakistan protests turn violent
Russian troops and armour mass on Afghan border
U.N. seeks bigger role in anti-terrorism
Pentagon prepares variety of responses
Bush gives speech as war commander
Second deployment order signed
U.S. Has Cruise Missiles for Strike
Bios of Armed Forces Commanders
Rumsfeld Invokes Pentagon Debt Act

OTHER
Caution Is Urged on Terrorism Legislation
Unfolding Catastrophe for Afghan Refugees
FBI expands terrorist hunt into U.S. banks
Pentagon Analyst Accused of Spying
FBI Arrests Kuwaiti Liquor Store Clerk
U.S. Measures May Incite Domestic Terror

ACTIVISTS
Messages of Peace from Victims' Families
Yucca hearings set for October
An Anti-authoritarian Response to the War Efforts



-------- NUCLEAR

'THE ASH GARDEN'
Disparate Lives, Connected by One Bomb

September 21, 2001
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/books/21BOOK.html?searchpv=nytToday

The "Ash Garden" referred to by the title of Dennis Bock's harrowing first novel is Hiroshima, the city transformed by the atomic bomb into a landscape of death in the early morning hours of Aug. 6, 1945. The phrase also refers to the emotional landscape inhabited by Mr. Bock's characters: a landscape of loss and exile and regret, a place haunted by the ghosts of time past.

Mr. Bock, the author of a short story collection titled "Olympia," explores the fallout of the bomb through the lives of three people, all of them immigrants, displaced persons, brought to America by the vagaries of World War II.

There's Anton, a physicist who left Germany to come to America to work on the bomb, not because of the Nazis but because he felt his work and talents would be better appreciated in the United States. There's Sophie, a half-Jewish Austrian teenager who ends up in a refugee camp in Canada and who sees Anton as her ticket to a new life. And there's Emiko, a 6-year-old girl in Hiroshima who loses her parents and her brother to the bomb, and who is sent to New York to have her facial injuries repaired by American doctors.

From these three overlapping lives, Mr. Bock constructs an elegant, unnerving novel that illuminates the personal consequences of the war, transforming characters who might easily have been mere symbols or representative types into keenly observed individuals: people indelibly shaped, in anomalous ways, by their losses and their grief. They are characters who set off in search of answers and absolution but who find only more questions, and the compromises of ordinary, daily life. They are people cut off by the war from their former lives and linked to one another by what they have lost.

Mr. Bock sometimes tries too hard to underscore those links by using leitmotifs to connect his characters' experiences: Emiko's facial scars are mirrored by a lupus rash Sophie develops on her face, just as the hallucinatory ash garden of Hiroshima is mirrored by the dreamlike topiary garden Sophie constructs in her backyard. Still, the reader can easily overlook these writerly excesses, so powerful is the author's channeling of his people's memories.

Writing in quick, elliptical takes, Mr. Bock cuts back and forth among these three characters' lives. Emiko's story is by far the most traumatic, and the most affecting, for the author makes us experience the bombing of Hiroshima through a 6- year-old's eyes. We watch as she and her 4-year-old brother go off to play by the river and glimpse a silver plane cross the sky, trailing a white plume of smoke. We watch as a dark object falls from the plane, and the air jumps "alive with objects that never had flown before."

Emiko's long convalescence in a ward for radiation victims, the death of her brother in the next hospital bed, her selection as a candidate for special surgery in America, her disorienting voyage to the United States all are limned with emotional precision.

Sophie's long journey to America forms a kind of countermelody to Emiko's story. She, too, loses her family to the war; she, too, finds herself in the new world, unmoored from her past. Though she is not in love with Anton, she marries him, and when she later falls in love with another immigrant who wants her to return to Europe to search for their missing families, she reluctantly declines, saying she is determined to move forward with her life.

Her marriage to Anton will become a testament to diminished expectations and stubborn commitment, to the simple business of living and the "racking up of decades."

"They had reached an implicit understanding that neither believed the other could be blamed for any general failures in their shared life," Mr. Bock writes. "After everything, they were still together; and in the world they had moved through, making such offerings as this somehow seemed enough. That was one thing they agreed on, deep in the bones - that happiness, pleasure, fulfillment were goals suitable only for the naïve and foolish or extremely lucky. They were none of these."

As for Anton, he emerges as the novel's least sympathetic character - and the most conflicted. He rationalizes the suffering he witnessed in Hiroshima - which he visited as part of a damage-assessment team, weeks after the bombing - as being a "tragic inevitability" but allows his guilt over his own role in developing the bomb to estrange him from his wife at home. He believed that "she would never grasp the forces behind the events he'd lived through," and resolved "not to let her pity him, or believe that he now regretted the role he had played."

Worse, he allows his own guilty preoccupation to blind him to Sophie's losses and pain: "He did not ask her about her family. Nothing about what she had lost. It was as if that blast had destroyed the ability to see beyond himself."

Initially Mr. Bock's orchestration of the confluence of Anton, Sophie and Emiko's lives might seem contrived: Anton invites Emiko, who is doing a documentary film about Hiroshima and the lives it touched, to visit him and Sophie in the small Canadian town where they now live, and her visit just happens to coincide with a medical emergency in Sophie's life.

But if this scenario reminds the reader that the novelist is there behind the scenery, pulling his characters' strings, it soon metamorphoses into something more mysterious and compelling: not only a moving portrait of three lives, damaged and changed by the war, but also a haunting meditation on the uses of memory and its power to both condemn and redeem.

-------- india / pakistan

U.S. Said to Be Ready to End Sanctions on Pakistan and India

September 21, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international/attack-pakistan-sanctions.html

ISLAMABAD, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Washington will soon lift sanctions imposed on Pakistan and India for their 1998 nuclear tests in a package of measures to give quick rewards for Islamabad's backing in its confrontation with Afghanistan, a senior Indian diplomat said on Friday.

A U.S. diplomat said separately the United States will sign an agreement next Monday in Islamabad rescheduling $600 million in Pakistani debts.

Washington has been anxious to help military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who faces widespread domestic opposition to his pledge to help the United States against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

The Taliban are sheltering Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who Washington terms the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The lifting of economic sanctions imposed for the 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests by India and Pakistan would mean the United States could vote in favour of multilateral aid packages -- such as the three-year $2.5 billion agreement Pakistan is about to begin negotiating with the International Monetary Fund.

In Washington, a State Department official said no decision to lift sanctions had been taken yet but consultations with Congress were under way. A hearing in Congress on sanctions is set for next Tuesday.

GLENN AMENDMENT

Although Pakistan faces various sanctions, the key one is the amendment named for U.S. Senator John Glenn and passed after the nuclear tests. It severely limits the ability of the U.S. government to provide bilateral assistance to Pakistan outside narrowly defined humanitarian aid.

The Glenn Amendment bars U.S. support for multilateral aid and U.S.-government financial assistance such as credit guarantees unless a humanitarian exemption was sought.

U.S. military assistance to Pakistan was already barred under the 1990 amendment named for Larry Pressler that was passed in a futile attempt to prevent Pakistan from joining the elite circle of nuclear powers.

``You will see discernible progress soon,'' the senior diplomat, who asked not to be identified, said when asked if sanctions would be lifted.

Separate U.S. aid restrictions imposed for Musharraf's seizure of power in October 1999 would not be affected by the planned lifting of sanctions, diplomats said.

Another diplomat said the moves were part of a number of financial benefits, many already in the pipeline, that have been accelerated to help Pakistan as it lines up behind Washington in what may be an attack on neighbouring Afghanistan.

The signing of the rescheduling agreement under the Paris Club, which handles negotiations on bilateral debt, will take place on September 24, and is part of $1.6 billion in Pakistan's Paris Club debt being rescheduled this year, a U.S. diplomat said.

The diplomat said the $600 million rescheduling agreement had been under negotiation for some time but was accelerated following the attacks on the United States.

U.S.-PAKISTAN MEETINGS

A series of meetings have taken place between senior members of the U.S. embassy and Musharraf and ministers with economic portfolios as part of an effort to provide tangible benefits to Pakistan.

``Everything they asked the United States to do on the economic front fits into the context of their economic reform programme,'' said the diplomat.

The diplomats said Pakistan had made clear any additional aid will be directed toward the badly underfunded social sectors such as health and education, not toward the military.

Even before the current crisis, which has forced the closure of Pakistan's stock exchanges all this week, the economy was in precarious condition.

It is struggling under about $40 billion in foreign debt and has meagre reserves to defend its currency, which has been declining for more than a year.

Pakistan is just completing a $596 million short-term standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund, with the IMF expected to authorise the final tranche next week. It is then to begin talks on a three-year agreement.

Onder Yucer, the top U.N. official in Pakistan, told a news conference in Islamabad that all donors to Pakistan met on Thursday and strongly expressed the need to support Islamabad.

``There was a very deep sympathy, very strong sentiment that Pakistan needs to be supported (financially) in its time of need,'' Yucer said.

``The meeting, also considering the financing requirements particularly in the present crisis, felt Pakistan merited an enhanced support from its partners,'' he added.

Musharraf has won praise from foreign economists and governments for trying to tackle the chaos left by a decade of short-lived elected governments. Aside from persistent shortfalls in revenue, Pakistan has met the key economic targets agreed with the IMF.

However, under the sanctions, the United States could oppose multilateral aid packages but could only abstain on those it supported, such as the recent IMF and World Bank packages for Pakistan.

In addition to the assistance for Pakistan, the United States is also stepping up humanitarian assistance available for Afghanistan, diplomats said, although delivering it in the current crisis would be almost impossible.

--------

India, Pakistan await change in U.S. export curbs

By K.C. Krishnadas
EE Times
09/21/01
http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20010921S0023

BANGALORE, India - Officials in India and in neighboring Pakistan - as well as technology companies in the United States - are waiting to see what impact the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington might have on the status of U.S. sanctions against high-technology exports to the two countries.

Washington had imposed the sanctions in the aftermath of nuclear-weapons tests by both countries in 1998. Pakistani military officials this week were reportedly seeking an end to those sanctions in exchange for Pakistan's assistance in Washington's response to the Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

With the possible lifting of sanctions against Pakistan, some Indian high-tech companies remain hopeful that Washington might consider doing the same for India, which is a far larger market than Pakistan for U.S. technology.

India's hopes are tempered, however, by the possibility that Washington might lift only economic sanctions against Pakistan, not limits on high-tech exports.

U.S. companies have lost millions of dollars in Indian sales to European and Asian competitors as a result of the technology sanctions.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration had imposed even more sanctions against Pakistan, accusing a government military agency of violating the Missile Technology Control Regime. The agency had allegedly obtained Chinese components for a Pakistani missile program.

At the same time, Indo-U.S. relations had thawed after New Delhi moved quickly to back the Bush administration's planned missile defense initiative.

Lifting sanctions "will be on the back burner now," said Ashok Kapoor, managing director of Tektronix (India). "The decision to lift sanctions in principle may remain, but the schedule for doing so will be pushed back.

The sanctions were imposed by the Clinton administration in 1998 after a series of underground nuclear tests. U.S. companies are banned from selling to about 200 research facilities, military laboratories, space research units and some public companies in India under the sanctions. In 1999, 51 of the outfits were removed from the list after Washington determined they were not involved in military work.

"Obviously, it will take time for the U.S. to get back to a normal agenda, such as looking at lifting sanctions," said Kapoor.

-------- missile defense

Antimissile system dangerous, misguided

Friday, September 21, 2001
By David Suzuki
Environmental News Network
http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2001/09/09212001/sm_45020.asp

Once the horror of last week's terrorist attacks on the U.S. subsides, the demand to make America safe again will send politicians scrambling. Undoubtedly, the national missile defense system (NMD) will be in the spotlight, only this time it may have the increased support of Congress and an angry American public.

That's too bad because, although Americans have every reason to feel shaken and vulnerable, the NMD project will not enhance U.S. safety. Instead, it could destabilize world security, spur a new arms race, and increase the threat of accidental nuclear missile launches. And it will do nothing to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil.

At first blush, the idea of building a system to knock nuclear or chemical weapons out of the sky before they hit the country sounds like a good one. It's defensive, after all, and therefore peaceful.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Let's look at it from the perspective of countries such as North Korea or China, who may feel threatened by the awesome power of the United States. These countries only have a handful of nuclear weapons, but that small arsenal is enough to act as a deterrent that prevents the United States from even considering invading them. If the United States can potentially shoot those missiles down, then deterrence disappears. To compensate, these countries will want to have enough weapons to overcome an American missile defense system. In fact, the United States has already signaled to China that it would be acceptable to build up its nuclear arsenal if that alleviated its concerns about the NMD.

Proponents of the system say it is necessary to defend the United States against "rogue" nations such as North Korea, Libya, or Iraq. Of course, this argument ignores the fact that world leaders are well aware that any country that launched a nuclear missile at the United States would meet a swift and violent end. It also ignores the fact that a crude nuclear weapon launched from such a country would be the most difficult to hit. That's because more advanced weapons use spin stabilization to make them more accurate, whereas crude weapons tumble wildly, making them extremely difficult to track.

Moreover, the best time to intercept a missile is during its boost phase, when its rockets are burning. But according to physicists like MIT's Ted Postol, hitting a missile then could send it spinning out of control over Europe or Canada, where it could explode.

Proponents of the NMD are already using the recent terrorist attacks in the United States as justification for better defenses. But as Sept. 11 illustrates, the real threats to American security come from much more mundane sources. We mustn't forget that the World Trade Center was brought down by a few individuals brandishing nothing more advanced than knives, cardboard cutters, and the threat of a bomb. The bomb turned out to be real. It was the aircraft itself, a guided missile filled with 40,000 liters of jet fuel.

Technology is truly a double-edged sword. The wonderful freedom of communication we have thanks to cell phones, the Internet, satellites, and computers and the freedom of movement we enjoy thanks to global transportation enable us to keep in touch with friends and family, travel the world, and experience new cultures. However, those same technologies enable those with evil intent to plan and execute atrocities such as the ones we witnessed last week.

Technology like a missile defense system also has a double edge. On one hand, it is designed to protect people. On the other, it could be perceived as a legitimate threat to another nation's security. With an estimated price tag of $60 billion, unproven and as-of-yet undeveloped technology, and the potential to create even more international tension, the missile defense project is a misguided and dangerous waste of money and resources.

It does not take a scientifically advanced rogue state to launch a biological weapon to kill Americans. It does not take an accidental launch of a Russian nuclear missile. It merely takes blind hatred and access to everyday technologies that we take for granted.

----

Kodiak -- Launch site in Alaska eyed in wake of terrorist attacks
Commercial facility is well-situated for anti-missile test site

By Marego Athans
Sun National Staff
September 21, 2001
Baltimore Sun
http://sunspot.net/news/custom/attack/bal-te.alaska21sep21.story?coll=bal%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines

KODIAK, Alaska - Forty-five miles down an unpaved road that winds past lakes, rivers and mountain vistas, past forests of Sitka spruce, past grazing bison, horses and cows, and fishermen wading knee-deep in pursuit of silver salmon, a handful of beige buildings overlook the Pacific. A trailer is marked "NASA."

Otherwise, it might be hard to imagine that rockets are launched here. About 300 bison roam the rugged terrain, often gathering on the helicopter pad and occasionally straying so close that launch operators have to shoo them away.

But perched on this 3,100 acres called Narrow Cape on the northeastern tip of Kodiak Island is a state-of-the-art launch complex that is drawing an increasing amount of attention these days.

It has been described as a great place to test the missile defense program that President Bush wants to develop or as a prime example of federal pork that threatens the character of the island.

Today, the Kodiak Launch Complex is scheduled to send its first mission into Earth orbit, a $38 million NASA-sponsored launch of Athena 1, a Lockheed Martin rocket carrying four satellites - one of them built on a shoestring budget by midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy using parts from Radio Shack and hobby shops.

With the nation seemingly on a course toward war and Democrats in Congress moderating their opposition to the Bush missile defense plan, residents on this island of 15,000 say they expect that missile silos will soon be excavated here.

Any doubts about that crumbled in the wreckage of last week's terror attacks in Washington and New York City.

"What we saw last week was the Model A version of a Cadillac delivery system," said Pat Ladner, executive director of the Alaska Aerospace Development Corp., the state agency that runs the launch complex.

"If rogue nations have or get a delivery system like a long-range rocket to deliver ... an intercontinental weapon, they don't have to worry about the [Federal Aviation Administration] closing down the airports. We can't afford to wait until the threat is real."

In purely economic terms, the likely increase of business from the Pentagon comes just in time for the launch complex, which was conceived in 1991 to ride the expected boom in satellite communications as well as serve military and government customers.

While there are other U.S. spaceports, such as Cape Canaveral in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the Kodiak complex bills itself as the nation's only commercial launch site not connected with the federal government - though it has received ample federal and state funding and plays host to NASA missions. But its independence from government enables it to reduce red tape, says Ladner, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel who worked on the Pentagon's "star wars" strategic defense program.

"The fact that you don't have to share it with a big formal system like NASA or the Air Force makes it easier," says Gil Moore, a retired professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy who now designs educational satellites that involve students around the world, including one about to blast into space on Athena 1.

"It has a frontier feeling - it's fun. And the fact that there's 45 miles of dirt road, and the buffalo are running all over, and there are eagles flying and salmon ... that's fun, too."

Construction on the $40 million site began in 1998. It sits on 3,100 acres of state-owned property, though the range itself covers only a 27-acre "footprint" divided among four buildings - a launch pad with a 170-foot tower that is enclosed to shield rockets from bad weather, a launch control center, and buildings for processing and assembling payloads of up to 8,000 pounds. Its launch pad and processing facility are "equal to or better than our facility at the cape," said George Diller, a NASA spokesman.

Kodiak was chosen in part because its high latitude lends itself to missions on a polar trajectory, which allows the satellite to map virtually every inch of the Earth. And its position on the edge of open ocean diminishes the chance of spent rocket stages dropping on inhabited areas.

For missile test launches, the spot is ideal because the trajectory mimics one that would respond to an incoming missile from North Korea. In such a case, under the Bush plan, the target missile would be launched from Kwajalein Atoll and Kodiak would send the interceptor.

"Kodiak sits right on the arc of the curve," Ladner said. "It's the real test. It's the way the real thing is going to happen."

The island also happens to have a solid infrastructure, with one of the busiest fishing ports in the country and the largest Coast Guard base in the United States.

So far, KLC has launched three suborbital rockets for the Air Force. The business hasn't shown a profit yet, though Ladner says he expects to break even this year.

But other anticipated business began fizzling shortly after ground was broken on the complex. The communications satellite industry began falling out of orbit in August 1999, when the global communications venture of Iridium LLC, backed by Motorola Inc., filed for bankruptcy. It had been planning to send 66 satellites into orbit.

The military has filled some of the void, and now the Bush administration's ambitious missile defense plans could make the spaceport boom.

In July, the Bush administration included KLC as part of the missile defense proposal, which calls for expanding the complex, building two silos, and bring test missiles from Fort Greely near Fairbanks - where other antiballistic missiles would be based - for testing two to four times a year.

"With the current technology, Alaska is the only place that can defend all 50 states based on its position from the top of the world, so to speak," said Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the missile defense program in Washington.

Democrats in Congress, some fearing a new arms race, had opposed any missile testing that would violate a 1972 arms control treaty with the Soviet Union, and until last week's terrorist attacks, a battle was expected on the Senate floor as Congress considered the $343 billion defense authorization bill for the year that begins Oct. 1. In the aftermath of the attacks, Senate Democratic leaders decided to postpone discussion of missile defense money.

Residents here who formed a group to oppose the launch complex say they were led to believe at its inception that it would be a commercial site. Even then they opposed it, on the grounds that it would not make money and would always have to be on "corporate welfare," said Mike Sirofchuck, a spokesman for the Kodiak Rocket Launch Information Group, which has nicknamed the complex "Space Pork Kodiak."

Group members say they fear that further development of the site would restrict public access to that part of the island, one of the few popular hunting and fishing spots not in private hands. They also worry about the cumulative effect of chemicals and particulate matter from rocket launches.

"It confirms our worst fears about the facility, that it would become quasi-military," Sirofchuck said. "You wonder, if the Department of Defense wants this facility, what's to stop it from taking it over? The talk about constructing silos was something we never could have imagined."

Similar sentiments led to legal action last month when eight organizations sued the U.S. military to stop work on the missile defense project, saying it had failed to study potential dangers to public safety and the environment.

Lehner said that he could not comment on pending litigation, adding: "We will follow both the spirit and intent of the National Environmental Protection Act and do everything required of us to meet environmental obligations at Kodiak if we do anything there at all.

He said the military has no intention of taking over the Kodiak launch site. "We'd just be a customer," he said.

-------- morocco

Morocco and US sign agreement on peaceful use of nuclear techniques

Morocco-USA, Politics,
9/21/2001
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010921/2001092122.html

Morocco and the United State signed in Rabat on Thursday an agreement on the use of nuclear techniques for peaceful ends.

Under the agreement, US company "General Atomics" will complete the construction in Morocco of the 1st nuclear reactor that will make it possible to conduct advanced research on materials, nuclear medicine and other farming and industrial applications.

Morocco will join 23 other countries which use reactors for general atomic scientific research, said US ambassador, Margaret Tutwiller who signed the agreement with industry, trade, energy and mining minister, Mustapha Mansouri.

Morocco, which is member of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1957, has adhered to all international treaties and conventions related to nuclear energy, mainly the non-proliferation nuclear treaty.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

NRC REACTS TO TERRORIST ATTACKS

September 21, 2001
NRC News No. 01-112
http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/gmo/nrarcv/01-112.html

In light of the recent terrorist attacks, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials and staff have been working around the clock to ensure adequate protection of nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel facilities. This has involved close coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, other intelligence and law enforcement agencies, NRC licensees, and military, state and local authorities.

Immediately after the attacks, the NRC advised nuclear power plants to go to the highest level of security, which they promptly did. The NRC has advised its licensees to maintain heightened security. The agency continues to monitor the situation, and is prepared to make any adjustments to security measures as may be deemed appropriate.

In view of the recent unprecedented events, Chairman Richard A. Meserve, with the full support of the Commission, has directed the staff to review the NRC's security regulations and procedures.

A number of questions have come in from reporters and members of the public since the tragic events of September 11. The following questions and answers are offered in response:

Q: What would happen if a large commercial airliner was intentionally crashed into a nuclear power plant?

A:. Nuclear power plants have inherent capability to protect public health and safety through such features as robust containment buildings, redundant safety systems, and highly trained operators. They are among the most hardened structures in the country and are designed to withstand extreme events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. In addition, all NRC licenses with significant radiological material have emergency response plans to enable the mitigation of impacts on the public in the event of a release. However, the NRC did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s or 767s and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes. Detailed engineering analyses of a large airliner crash have not yet been performed.

Q: What measures have the NRC and its power plant licensees taken in face of this potential threat?

A: Immediately after the attacks, the NRC advised licensees to go to the highest level of security, which all did promptly. The specific actions are understandably sensitive, but they generally included such things as increased patrols, augmented security forces and capabilities, additional security posts, heightened coordination with law enforcement and military authorities, and limited access of personnel and vehicles to the sites.

Q: What, precisely, did the NRC do in response to the attacks?

A: At 10 a.m. on September 11, the NRC activated its Emergency Operations Center in headquarters and assembled a team of top officials and specialists. The same was done in each of its four regional offices. In addition to communicating with its licensees about the need to go to the highest level of security, the NRC established communications with the FBI, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among others. NRC personnel were dispatched to the FBI's Strategic Information Operations Center. The NRC has also established close communications with nuclear regulators in Canada and Mexico.

Q:What would happen if a large aircraft should crash into a spent fuel dry storage cask?

A: The capacity of spent fuel dry storage casks to withstand a crash by a large commercial aircraft has not been analyzed. Nonetheless, storage casks are robust and must be capable of withstanding severe impacts, such as might occur during tornadoes, hurricanes or earthquakes. In the event that a cask were breached, any impacts would be localized. All spent fuel storage facilities have plans to respond to such an emergency, drawn up in consultation with local officials.

Q: What if a large aircraft crashed into a spent fuel transportation cask in a heavily populated area?

A: Again, the capacity of shipping casks to withstand such a crash has not been analyzed. However, they are designed to protect the public in severe transportation accidents. The cask must be able to withstand a 30-foot drop puncture test, exposure to a 30-minute fire at 1475 degrees Fahrenheit, and submersion under water for an extended period. Moreover, the location of loaded casks is not publicly disclosed and such a cask would present a small target to an aircraft .

If an airliner crashed into a cask, there could be some localized impacts. Regulations require special accident response training of those involved in shipping, as well as coordination with state, local and tribal emergency response personnel. In addition, redundant communications must be maintained during shipment with the transporter vehicle; this would facilitate emergency response, if necessary.

Q: Could such a crash into a nuclear power plant, or a storage or shipping cask trigger a nuclear explosion?

A: No.

Q: What are the consequences if an airliner crashed into a uranium fuel cycle facility?

A: Because of the nature of the material, there would likely be only minimal off-site radiological consequences. Some such facilities use chemicals similar to those found at many industrial facilities. In the event of a release, comprehensive emergency response procedures would be immediately implemented.

Q: Have nuclear power plants been subject to attack in the past?

A: There has never been an attack on a nuclear power plant. On very rare occasions there have been intrusions. For example, there was a 1993 car crash through the gates of Three Mile Island plant by an individual with a history of treatment for mental illness. Such intrusions have not resulted in harm to public health or safety.

Q: What are the normal security measures at commercial nuclear power plants.

A: Licensees are required to implement security programs that include well-armed civilian guard forces, physical barriers, detection systems, access controls, alarm stations, and detailed response strategies. NRC routinely inspects security measures as part of its normal reactor oversight process and periodically undertakes various exercises, including force-on-force exercises, so as to assure that any vulnerabilities are exposed and corrected .

Q: Is an attack using an airplane part of the NRC's design basis threat against which its licensees have to defend?

A: No. The NRC has been in close and continuing contact with law enforcement and the military regarding such a threat.

Q: What exactly is the so-called design basis threat?

A: The details of the design basis threat are classified, but it includes the characteristics of a possible sabotage attempt that NRC licensees are required to protect against. The agency continually assesses the adequacy of the design basis threat in consultation with local law enforcement and federal intelligence agencies.

Q:Is the NRC contemplating a modification of the design basis threat?

A: The agency will continue to coordinate with law enforcement and intelligence agencies to assess the implications of this new manifestation of terrorism. If the NRC determines that the design basis threat warrants revision, such changes would occur through a public rulemaking.

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs
Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-001
E-mail: opa@nrc.gov

-------- maryland

PUMP FAILURE AT NUCLEAR PLANT CONSIDERED SERIOUS

September 21, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/sep2001/2001L-09-21-09.html

LUSBY, Maryland, A pump failure at the Calvert Cliffs Unit 1 nuclear power plant in May has "substantial" safety implications, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has determined.

The failure is a violation of NRC regulations that should be characterized as "yellow," meaning it is an issue of "substantial importance to safety" that will result in additional NRC inspection, the agency said.

An NRC inspection was conducted in June and July of this year to look into the failure of an auxiliary feedwater pump during a test on May 16. The auxiliary feedwater system is a backup system that provides water to the plant's steam generators in the event that the main feedwater system is lost.

The inspectors found that workers failed to follow maintenance instructions during maintenance on the pump and applied too much sealant to the bearing housing, contaminating the bearing oil and resulting in the bearing failure.

Under the NRC's new reactor oversight process, inspection findings are assigned a color that indicates the safety significance of the problems. Findings with very low safety significance are labeled green. White findings have low to moderate importance to safety and may require additional NRC inspection. Yellow findings have "substantial" safety significance, and red findings high safety significance.

The company has taken action to correct the problem and the pump was tested and performed as designed. The company is required to respond in writing within 30 days, detailing its immediate and long term corrective actions.

The plant, located in Lusby, is operated by Constellation Nuclear. A supplemental NRC inspection will be scheduled to follow up on Constellation's corrective actions.

-------- tennessee

NRC RECEIVES APPLICATION FROM TVA TO PRODUCE TRITIUM AT WATTS BAR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN TENNESSEE

No. 01-111 - September 21, 2001
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received an application from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to produce tritium at its Watts Bar nuclear power plant for use by the Department of Energy (DOE).

The application specifically requests that TVA be permitted to install tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at the Watts Bar facility, located near Spring City, Tenn. The DOE has developed technology that would produce tritium using lithium, rather than boron, in burnable absorber rods to be installed in commercial pressurized-water nuclear reactors, such as Watts Bar. The irradiated rods would be removed from the power plant and shipped to the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., where DOE would extract the tritium.

The license amendment would allow, for the first time, tritium production by a commercial nuclear reactor to ensure future tritium stockpiling for military use. The United States has not produced tritium -- a radioactive form of hydrogen used in the fusion stage of nuclear weapons -- since 1988, when DOE closed a special production facility at its Savannah River Site. Current short-term tritium needs are being met by recycling tritium from dismantled nuclear weapons. The Department of Energy is responsible for establishing the capability to produce tritium by the end of 2005, in accordance with a Presidential directive.

The NRC staff held a public meeting on the issue in Rockville, Md., in February 1997, and in Sweetwater, Tenn., in August 1997 to provide an opportunity for public comment. The NRC staff determined in September 1997 that TVA could place 32 of the burnable absorber rods in the Watts Bar reactor core to test the technology. TVA irradiated the rods until the spring of 1999 and removed them from the reactor. The DOE shipped the rods to the Savannah River Site, examined them and confirmed that the technology worked.

TVA's license amendment, if approved, would permit it to install 2,304 of the rods into the Watts Bar reactor and irradiate them for one fuel cycle, which lasts about 18 months. There will be an opportunity for interested persons to request a hearing on the amendment. TVA would remove the irradiated rods and the DOE would ship them to its tritium extraction facility at the Savannah River Site. TVA would subsequently install new rods in the reactor and continue the process for the life of the plant.

A public meeting to discuss the tritium production and the NRC's process for reviewing the TVA license amendment request will be held in Evensville, TN., on the evening of October 2. A separate meeting notice will be issued. Another public meeting will be scheduled prior to completion of the agency's review of the application.

The TVA Watts Bar application will be publicly accessible from the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management Systems (ADAMS) Public Electronic Room, and is expected to be available on NRC's web site sometime in September. Help in using ADAMS is available from the NRC Public Document Room at 301-415-4737 or 800-397-4209.

-------- utah

GOSHUTES DEMAND FAIR ELECTIONS AND OUSTER OF THE CORRUPT LEON BEAR REGIME

September 21,2001
CONTACT: Environmental Justice Foundation
Alberta Mason 801-374-6757
Anne Sward Hansen: 801-763-0551 / cell: 755-4950

Skull Valley Goshutes to Hold Special Election on Saturday, September 22nd, 2001

In response to tribal demands for a fair election to oust Leon Bear, a special election has been called by the Goshute Tribal General Council. The election will be held on the Skull Valley Reservation at 10 a.m., tomorrow Saturday September 22, 2001, to elect new officers for the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes Indians. The Goshutes insist that they will not tolerate BIA or other outside interference in tomorrow's election.

The unlawful Leon Bear regime responsible for the High-level Nuclear Waste dump scheduled for the Utah reservation shortly after the 2002 Olympic Games, was removed from power at an August 25th Tribal General Council meeting. The recall process will be finalized as the first order of business tomorrow. Leon Bear and his cousin Lori Bear Skiby have refused to step down from their positions as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Skull Valley Band, despite overwhelming Tribal opposition to their seizure of control of the Tribe, its bank accounts and the millions of dollars generated by the nuclear waste dump. Leon Bear and Lori Bear Skiby have refused to acknowledge the upcoming special election for their replacements. They have instead circulated their own recall petition for Secretary Rex Allen, and have set an October 13th meeting to elect Allen's replacement.

A Tribal General Council legislative body consisting of all adult members governs the Skull Valley Goshutes. Any time a majority of the Tribal General Council is present, all Tribal business, including recalls and elections, may be conducted. Leon Bear and Lori Bear Skiby are urging all members to boycott tomorrow's special meeting to defeat their recall and replacement elections. Leon Bear has promised supporters massive payments if they will keep the Bear's in power.

The Tribal General Council elects the General Council legislative body, three officers, a Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Secretary. While these officers have no general powers other than those specially granted to them by the General Council, the unlawful Leon Bear regime has gradually seized control of the Tribe and its money after they convinced Private Fuel Storage (PFS), the operator of the nuclear waste dump, to give all payments directly to the unlawful Leon Bear regime instead of to the Tribe and its members. In testimony before the Utah Legislature, Leon Bear claims to have abolished all quorum requirements for tribal meetings. Once the quorum requirements were unlawfully removed, Leon Bear created a tribal resolution giving himself total control of the tribe. He now runs the tribe as a dictatorship and sets tribal policy and spends tribal funds while acting alone. No report or accounting has ever been made to the General Council for Leon Bear's unlawful and unilateral spending and actions.

Attempts to resolve the current recall dispute by the local Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) superintendent David Allison failed. Superintendent Allison refused to allow members of the Tribal General Council to participate in a special meeting he called to negotiate a 'stipulated agreement ' for the recall. Superintendent Allison restricted his negotiations to the alleged Tribal officers, Leon Bear

(Chairman), Lori Bear Skibi (Vice-Chairperson) and Rex Allen (Secretary) only. When Rex Allen refused to sign a stipulated joint notice of election without consulting with the Tribal General Council, Leon Bear and Lori Bear Skibi walked out of the negotiations.

Leon Bear and his cronies were last recalled from Tribal Leadership in 1994, when Bert Wash and Sammy Blackbear were elected as Chairman and Vice-chairman. The unlawful Leon Bear regime complained to the local BIA office that they could not be removed from office without their consent, so the BIA imposed and conducted its own election with mail-in ballots. Federal law prohibits BIA offices from imposing or conducting such elections. When the BIA declared its election resulted in a tie, the BIA told the recalled Leon Bear regime it should decide what to do next. Leon Bear decided to stay in power, and was supported by local BIA officials.

BIA Superintendent David Allison has publicly stated that he believes Leon Bear and the PFS nuclear waste dump proposal are the only viable options the Skull Valley Goshutes have for effective Tribal leadership and significant economic development. Most Goshutes believe the BIA and Superindent Allison will do whatever is necessary to keep Leon Bear in power, and any resistance by the tribe is futile. Until now, all attempts to oust Leon Bear since 1994 have failed and many tribal members expect the BIA to again rescue Leon Bear, even though federal law prohibits BIA superintendents from interfering in tribal elections and politics.

Many observers are shocked by Superintendent Allison's apparent support for the Leon Bear regime because Allison ignores claims by tribal members of the regime's embezzlement of millions of dollars of tribal funds and charges of other abuses and civil rights violations.

The General Council froze all tribal bank accounts and has demanded a complete audit of all tribal accounts and funds, but Leon Bear and the BIA have opposed any audit. Leon Bear has regained control of the tribal accounts, apparently with the assistance of BIA Superintendent Allison.

Several lawsuits have been filed in federal court concerning the PFS nuclear waste dump and the claims of embezzlement and other corruption by the unlawful Leon Bear regime. A federal criminal grand jury is also investigating these matters according to Tribal Secretary Rex Allen. Last week, Allen notified general council members that Leon Bear and other tribal officers were served federal grand jury subpoenas by the FBI. The Goshute General Council is ousting the unlawful Leon Bear regime from office in order to restore the Band's General Council governing authority.

Kalynda Tilges Nuclear Issues Coordinator Citizen Alert - Las Vegas P.O.Box 17173 Las Vegas, NV 89114 702-796-5662 702-796-4886 Fax lvcitizenalert@earthlink.net http://www.citizenalert.org

--------

More N-Waste Headed Through Moab?

Friday, September 21, 2001
BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/09212001/utah/133797.htm

Moab's already jammed Main Street would carry eight or nine more heavy trucks each day for about seven years under a proposal being considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

More upsetting to many residents, the trucks would be hauling Superfund radioactive waste from a 102-year-old thorium plant the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cleaning up in Maywood, New Jersey. The International Uranium Corp. (IUC) has told the NRC the Maywood contract could mean an average of as many as 17 additional trucks a day, although the company said the lower number is more likely.

If residents want a hearing on the proposal, they must ask the NRC for one by Monday. The federal government -- and not the state -- oversees mill tailings in Utah.

So far there has been no hearing request: County and city officials said they were not aware of IUC's proposal. And, with an average of 3,264 semis rolling through town each day, IUC engineer Ron Hochstein downplayed the impacts of more truck traffic on Moab.

"It's just a perception," Hochstein said. "There are a lot of trucks going though there, and I understand the issue [residents raise] but we are only a small part of that."

IUC first asked federal regulators to consider the Maywood waste in June. The Denver-based company said it would ship the waste to Cisco by train, then haul it down I-70 and State Highway 191, which runs through Moab, to its White Mesa Mill south of Blanding. The estimated number of truckloads varies because IUC said it only will accept waste that contains enough uranium to make extracting the material cost effective.

The rest of this "dirty dirt" would go to a disposal site, probably Envirocare of Utah in Tooele County or an Idaho site.

Moab resident Sarah Fields is concerned that, because "radio-toxic" thorium will be a by-product of the Maywood waste and it is not covered under state or federal regulations at White Mesa, people and the environment could be put at risk. She noted the federal licensing process means little or no input by local residents.

-------- us nuc politics

Text of George Bush's speech

Friday September 21, 2001
UK Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,555616,00.html

This is the full text of George Bush's address to a joint jession of Congress and the American people

Mr Speaker, Mr President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans:

In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed. It has already been delivered by the American people.

We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground - passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer. And would you please help me to welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight.

We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We have seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers - in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own.

My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union - and it is strong.

Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.

I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol, singing "God Bless America." And you did more than sing; you acted, by delivering $40 billion to rebuild our communities and meet the needs of our military.

Speaker Hastert, Minority Leader Gephardt, Majority Leader Daschle and Senator Lott, I thank you for your friendship, for your leadership and for your service to our country.

And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.

We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo. We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa and Latin America.

Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 Israelis; more than 250 citizens of India; men and women from El Salvador, Iran, Mexico and Japan; and hundreds of British citizens. America has no truer friend than Great Britain. Once again, we are joined together in a great cause - so honored the British Prime Minister has crossed an ocean to show his unity of purpose with America. Thank you for coming, friend.

On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars - but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war - but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks - but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day - and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.

Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda. They are the same murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.

Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world - and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.

The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics - a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists' directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children.

This group and its leader - a person named Osama bin Laden - are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction.

The leadership of al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaeda's vision for the world.

Afghanistan's people have been brutalized - many are starving and many have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate. A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.

The United States respects the people of Afghanistan - after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid - but we condemn the Taliban regime. It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.

And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate.

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.

Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.

These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions - by abandoning every value except the will to power - they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command - every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war - to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Our nation has been put on notice: We are not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans. Today, dozens of federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments, have responsibilities affecting homeland security. These efforts must be coordinated at the highest level. So tonight I announce the creation of a Cabinet-level position reporting directly to me - the Office of Homeland Security.

And tonight I also announce a distinguished American to lead this effort, to strengthen American security: a military veteran, an effective governor, a true patriot, a trusted friend - Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge. He will lead, oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism, and respond to any attacks that may come.

These measures are essential. But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.

Many will be involved in this effort, from FBI agents to intelligence operatives to the reservists we have called to active duty. All deserve our thanks, and all have our prayers. And tonight, a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready. I've called the Armed Forces to alert, and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud.

This is not, however, just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.

We ask every nation to join us. We will ask, and we will need, the help of police forces, intelligence services, and banking systems around the world. The United States is grateful that many nations and many international organizations have already responded - with sympathy and with support. Nations from Latin America, to Asia, to Africa, to Europe, to the Islamic world. Perhaps the NATO Charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all.

The civilized world is rallying to America's side. They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next. Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments. And you know what - we're not going to allow it.

Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat.

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

I ask you to continue to support the victims of this tragedy with your contributions. Those who want to give can go to a central source of information, libertyunites.org, to find the names of groups providing direct help in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The thousands of FBI agents who are now at work in this investigation may need your cooperation, and I ask you to give it.

I ask for your patience, with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security; and for your patience in what will be a long struggle.

I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source. America is successful because of the hard work, and creativity, and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11th, and they are our strengths today.

And, finally, please continue praying for the victims of terror and their families, for those in uniform, and for our great country. Prayer has comforted us in sorrow, and will help strengthen us for the journey ahead.

Tonight I thank my fellow Americans for what you have already done and for what you will do. And ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, I thank you, their representatives, for what you have already done and for what we will do together.

Tonight, we face new and sudden national challenges. We will come together to improve air safety, to dramatically expand the number of air marshals on domestic flights, and take new measures to prevent hijacking. We will come together to promote stability and keep our airlines flying, with direct assistance during this emergency.

We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act, and find them before they strike.

We will come together to take active steps that strengthen America's economy, and put our people back to work.

Tonight we welcome two leaders who embody the extraordinary spirit of all New Yorkers: Governor George Pataki, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As a symbol of America's resolve, my administration will work with Congress, and these two leaders, to show the world that we will rebuild New York City.

After all that has just passed - all the lives taken, and all the possibilities and hopes that died with them - it is natural to wonder if America's future is one of fear. Some speak of an age of terror. I know there are struggles ahead, and dangers to face. But this country will define our times, not be defined by them. As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world.

Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom - the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time - now depends on us. Our nation - this generation - will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal. We'll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We'll remember the moment the news came - where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever.

And I will carry this: It is the police shield of a man named George Howard, who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. This is my reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end.

I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Fellow citizens, we'll meet violence with patient justice - assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America.

Thank you.

Special report: terrorism in the US
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usterrorism/

--------

Global Eye-Blank Check

Friday, September 21, 2001,
by Chris Floyd,
Moscow Times.Com
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/09/21/107-print.html

"The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

-- Joint Resolution, U.S. Congress, Sept. 15, 2001

An extraordinary document, unprecedented in U.S. history. Although modeled on the Tonkin Gulf resolution that opened the spigots for the Vietnam War, and on the narrowly passed measure that belatedly gave George Bush I constitutional cover for the vast army he had already marshaled in the Persian Gulf, the emergency powers awarded last week to George Bush II surpass anything yet seen in the American republic.

Never has a president been given such sweeping authority. It's true that some have taken it: most notably Abraham Lincoln, who used what he called his "inherent powers" to quash civil liberties, jail dissidents, even suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the cornerstone of 800 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence. But these draconian measures -- imposed, after all, when the Union was under sustained assault by a million homegrown rebels, not 19 God-maddened criminals on a suicide run -- were met with violent protests, Congressional investigations, bitter partisan invective and court challenges.

Yet there was nary a peep out of the modern guardians of the Republic in the Senate as they voted Caesar this dictatorial power. For note carefully that it is Bush alone who decides who is a terrorist; it is Bush alone who decides what constitutes the "aiding" of terrorism.

The Congressional lambkins of course believe that Bush will not abuse these powers. And no doubt he and his Praetorians will show the same tender concern for liberty, legality and constitutional authority they displayed last year when they sent hired thugs to break up the vote recount in Miami, then successfully urged the Supreme Court to strip Congress of its clearly defined constitutional responsibility to resolve disputed elections, thereby shutting down the vote and transforming callow Octavian into the manly Augustus who rules today.

Poor lambkins, so trusting. But what else can they do? What can any of us do? We must all now trust that this man who can't hold his liquor will be able to hold near-absolute power without getting drunk on it. We must trust that he will somehow ignore the counsels of the conservative faithful who have heretofore molded his thinking and guided all his actions.

For these wise guides have been busy defining just who is a terrorist -- and a terrorist sympathizer. In U.S. newspapers, on radio and television, in weighty journals, they're naming and shaming the guilty. The list is long: Anyone who criticizes the president in this time of crisis. Anyone who has ever criticized him before. Anyone who gives information to the American people about what has happened to them and what is being done in their name -- including a conservative senator like Orrin Hatch, who was publicly slapped down by the White House for speaking without permission. Anyone who suggests that there may be a complicated historical context to the tragedy, one in which America is not entirely without a tincture of culpability for helping create the scenario that belched forth this hell.

All of these constitute a "fifth column," an "internal enemy," a "corps of traitors," we are told by Bush's patrons and mentors. Every day, they pour this poison into Caesar's ear -- but we must trust that he's not listening. We must trust that although he has always believed and embraced their Talebanic precepts before, he will now, miraculously, discard them.

We must trust that Caesar will only sip at the cup of power that's been given him, just enough to rouse his spirits without disordering his senses. For it's entirely up to him now; Congress has abandoned its ancient duty to represent the people. If he decides you're a terrorist -- you are. If he decides you helped them -- you did. Vengeance is his; he will repay. Don't you feel safer already?

Fog Bound

In the aftermath of terror, a fog of deceit is rising from the Potomac, as deadly as the asbestos haze hanging over Manhattan. Congress is being shut out of intelligence briefings; it is to act as a rubber stamp, nothing more. Dick Cheney has taken charge as "War Minister," as the press approvingly calls him. The new war will be run by the same people who ran the last one: the one against the "terrorist evildoer" who is still in power 10 years later; the evildoer with whom Dick Cheney did $70 million worth of business -- after the war -- as head of Halliburton.

The same people who hired a PR firm -- Hill and Knowlton -- to control public perception of the Gulf War; who imposed press censorship far beyond that seen even in World War II. To this day, most Americans don't know what was done in their name during the last war; don't know that Bush I was an enthusiastic backer of Saddam Hussein, supplying him with arms and materials for weapons of mass destruction almost to the day he crossed into Kuwait; don't know that American soldiers were ordered to massacre surrendering Iraqi conscripts; or that Bush I, with an army on the scene, allowed Saddam to slaughter Iraqi rebels trying to overthrow him just after the war.

You can't even speak of such things; you sound like a madman, a crank raving on the street. There's no context where this history can resonate, no way for it to inform the debate on how America should respond without repeating past mistakes. It's all hidden in the fog, decades of murk; and the fog is rising again.

It's a cold, brutal fact, hard to face, hard to stomach: We are all living in a world of lies -- lies that don't even know they are lies, because they are the children and the grandchildren of lies.


-------- MILITARY

'We will not fail,' Bush tells nation

September 21, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20019212144.htm

President Bush last night told a joint session of Congress the war against terrorism might require U.S. ground troops and casualties. He also bluntly demanded the Taliban surrender Osama bin Laden or face annihilation.

"Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss," Mr. Bush declared during the prime-time, nationally televised address. "And in our grief and anger, we have found our mission and our moment.

"Freedom and fear are at war," the president intoned. "The advance of human freedom the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time now depends on us.

"Our nation, this generation will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future," he added. "We will rally the world to this cause, by our efforts and by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail."

Mr. Bush tried to explain, without giving away strategic details, how the United States will prosecute and prevail in an open-ended war against an amorphous enemy without national borders.

"Tonight, a few miles from the damaged Pentagon, I have a message for our military: Be ready," he said. "I have called the armed forces to alert, and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act, and you will make us proud."

In his most warlike rhetoric to date, Mr. Bush gave a chilling ultimatum to the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist organization that governs most of Afghanistan and harbors bin Laden and his terrorist network, known as al Qaeda.

"The Taliban regime is committing murder," Mr. Bush declared. "And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land."

Drawing thunderous applause from Democrats and Republicans alike in the heavily guarded Capitol, Mr. Bush also demanded the Taliban release unjustly jailed prisoners and permanently shutter its terrorist training camps.

"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion," the president warned. "The Taliban must act and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate."

The 40-minute address, which recalled the "infamy" speech of President Roosevelt nearly 60 years ago, was interrupted more than 30 times by applause, including more than two dozen standing ovations.

"We are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom," Mr. Bush said. "We will direct every resource at our command - every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence and every necessary weapon of war - to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network."

The president also tried to steel the nation against the potential that the United States would deploy ground troops, some of whom might be sent home in body bags.

"This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with its decisive liberation of territory and its swift conclusion," he said. "It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

"Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes," he said. "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on television, and covert operations, secret even in success."

Mr. Bush also put the nations of the world on notice that they must choose sides in the looming war.

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," he said. "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

Mr. Bush spent a significant portion of the speech giving Americans a primer on the most fundamental questions hanging over last week's catastrophic terrorist attacks against the United States. He outlined the global network of terrorists and the origins of their anti-American hatred.

"The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends," said the president, who wore an American flag pin on his lapel. "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them."

Finally, the president called on Congress to help him improve air safety, strengthen America's economy and give law enforcement additional powers.

Noticeably absent from the Capitol was Vice President Richard B. Cheney, who as president of the Senate normally would sit behind Mr. Bush in the well of the House. But security concerns kept Mr. Cheney away from the Capitol, which had been a potential target of the hijacked jetliner that instead crashed in Pennsylvania last week.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, took Mr. Cheney's place in a seat next to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. In keeping with normal security precautions, one member of the president's Cabinet also did not attend the speech.

Mr. Bush also announced the creation of a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security, a step that had been suggested by various task forces on terrorism.

He nominated Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a longtime Republican ally, to head the new agency. The president views the move as a way to shore up domestic defenses against further terrorist strikes.

With the death toll from last week's attacks now expected to surpass 6,500, Mr. Bush took pains to reassure a jittery public that it was safe to resume their everyday lives. He said he was confident that as long as Americans remained strong and determined, this would be an age of liberty, not terror.

In perhaps the most emotional moment of the speech, Mr. Bush brandished the badge of New York City police Officer George Howard, who was killed during rescue efforts.

"It was given to me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son," the president said. "This is my reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end.

"I will not forget this wound to our country, or those who inflicted it," he concluded. "I will not yield. I will not rest. I will not relent in waging this struggle for the freedom and security of the American people."

It was only the second time that Mr. Bush gave an address to a joint session of Congress. The first address came shortly after his inauguration, when he laid out his plan for revitalizing the slowing economy.

Mr. Bush thanked members of Congress for "what you have already done, and for what we will do together." He also thanked the world for its sympathy and support, and asked for the help of "police forces, intelligence services and banking systems around the world."

The White House designated five "hero guests" who sat in the Capitol's executive gallery during last night's speech. They were:

• New York City police Officer William Fisher, who was off duty at the time of the attacks but jumped into his car and sped to the scene, where he spent 17 hours trying to free victims from the rubble.

• New York City Fire Battalion Chief John A. Jonas, who helped evacuate victims before he was trapped in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. He and his men escaped after three hours.

• New York Port Authority police officer Padraig Carroll, who rushed to the scene of the terrorist attacks and has been there every day since.

• U.S. Navy Petty Officer Cean Whitmarsh, who used his shirt to extinguish a fire on a Navy lieutenant before pulling numerous people from the wreckage of the Pentagon.

• U.S. Army Spc. Terry Clausen, a medic on leave when he heard about the attack. He grabbed his medic bag and raced to the Pentagon, where he treated at least 11 injured persons.

Also attending last night's speech were New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, New York Gov. George E. Pataki and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who met with Mr. Bush earlier in the day.

-------- afghanistan

Nic Robertson's diary: A week in Afghanistan

September 21, 2001
By Nic Robertson,
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/central/09/21/ret.robertson.diary.focus/index.html

QUETTA, Pakistan (CNN) -- CNN correspondent Nic Robertson was in Kabul, Afghanistan, last week covering the trial of eight international aid workers when terrorists attacked New York and Washington. For days after other journalists fled the country, he and CNN cameraman/producer Alfredo DeLara were the only international correspondents to remain in the country. They finally left on Wednesday, September 19.

Following is a first-person account of Robertson's week:

September 11

It was Tuesday September 11, late in the afternoon our time, Tuesday morning in New York.

We were having a couple of difficult days covering the trial of the international aid workers, who are accused of promoting Christianity in this Muslim nation. The Taliban had really been clamping down on journalists, and we were arrested and placed under armed guard at the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel. I was calling the international news desk at CNN's headquarters in Atlanta to tell them our troubles, and a young intern answered the phone.

"It's chaos here," she told me. And I kind of thought, "Well, that's a regular day."

She put me on hold, and while I was on hold CNN Radio was playing -- heard that an airplane had slammed into the World Trade Center in New York. I thought some kid had freaked out and hacked into some air traffic control or navigational database or something.

I hung up and called my wife, Margaret Lowrie, who is a CNN reporter based in London. And while I was on the phone with her, we heard that another plane slammed into the towers.

We kind of looked at each other over the phone, if you know what I mean. When it was two planes, it was clear. We knew, right away, what it meant.

A few minutes later, the desk called and told us to be aware, that these were hallmarks of Osama Bin Laden. By that time, 12-15 journalists and others had streamed into our room, all trying to find out what had happened. Within a half-hour to an hour, a protocol minister of the Taliban had called to get a fix on what was going on.

To back up a little, our videophone - a device which, when connected to a satellite phone, allows us to send out live video reports -- had gone missing about a week earlier. We had ordered another one cargoed from London on Wednesday the week before. It had arrived in Pakistan, but was stuck there in customs. It was quite a chore convincing the Pakistanis to release it. Even though the display of pictures of any live being is banned in Afghanistan (a country in where there is no television), I have always felt it's worth pushing and pushing, even when the effort might seem worthless.

The videophone did make it through customs and finally arrived in Kabul on Tuesday morning, about six hours before the attacks in New York and Washington. Around five hours after the attacks, we used the videophone to show, live, the Taliban foreign minister talking about the situation from the Intercontinental.

September 12

At about 2:00 in the morning, after several reports from Kabul, we decided to put our heads down. We had the window open, mainly to keep an ear on what was going on outside. We heard an explosion, and I remember staggering out on the balcony while my cameraman and producer, Alfredo DeLara, grabbed the videophone. I was grabbing the microphone, still buttoning up my shirt. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the airport. But Kabul is on a plateau surrounded by mountains, and you get this echo, so it's really hard to tell what's going on. There was lightning and a thunderstorm in the mountains, which was rare, too. Afghanistan has been in a drought for four years. So it was really hard to determine exactly what was happening.

We found out through a Taliban commander that the Northern Alliance (the opposition military grouping that controls a part of the country) was bombing the city in retaliation for the suicide attack on the alliance's leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the weekend before.

The next couple of days, especially on Wednesday, people around us all started getting a little jittery, afraid the Taliban were going to be implicated in the attacks in the U.S. A lot of United Nation workers, international diplomats and journalists left. The city already was under tight control. We just tried to stay low.

September 14

Friday was the next big day. By then, the United States government was implying that Bin Laden was a prime suspect in the attacks, and pressuring the Taliban to turn him over. Suddenly, the word was that foreigners weren't going to be safe, and all the other journalists left.

You ride an emotional roller coaster at a time like that. People are freaking out and saying, "We have to leave, we have to leave." But I learned a lot about those situations while working in Baghdad with the CNN team of Peter Arnett, Bernard Shaw and John Holliman to cover the Gulf War under fire while in Baghdad. Arnett blocked out what people had to say, once they said they were leaving. I realized now why he did it. You have to ignore. You form your own decision.

There was never a question: I wanted to stay. You just don't walk away from stuff like that. But I began to see where Arnett was coming from. The Pakistani guys whom I'd come to trust and rely on in the years I had worked with them were beginning to have a hard time handling the situation and wanted us all to get out as fast as possible. But we had no hard information that an attack was imminent.

My thinking is, you can get very close to a situation and still not be in danger. The situation is only real if something happens. I just felt we still had an opportunity to tell the story.

So I talked to the deputy chief of protocol for the foreign ministry, Mr. Halimee, and asked him if we could stay. He did not seem encouraging. The people, he said, could be angry. "We are made of steel and concrete," he said. "All the blood has been squeezed out of us." He said he could not guarantee our safety, that if mobs got hold of us they would tear us apart.

"We're made of concrete and steel, too," I told him. "Let us stay." At that point, he kind of looked and me and smiled and said, "Fine. You can stay." He recognized we were taking a bold step by staying.

It was a bit eerie to be the only ones left in town. We needed a translator -- ours had left -- so a young trainee doctor who was working at the hotel as a receptionist agreed to translate for us. We also had other people who helped. We had people who told us they could hide us in the hotel basement if things started to get out of hand

I need to say here: I could not have done this without Alfredo. Along with running the camera, he's also the producer and he has been doing a lot of on-air work for CNN Espanol. It takes two to remain in a situation like that. I couldn't have done any of this without him.

September 15

On Saturday, we spent most of the day sitting tight. We did not want to go out into the town too much. We knew we couldn't take photos. It was against the law. And we did not want to draw attention to ourselves. Things quieted down quite a bit. But we knew things weren't getting any better.

September 16

On Sunday, they got even worse. There was an edict from the Taliban that all foreigners must absolutely leave. I tried to convince a Taliban official that it was important for the country to have outside broadcasts, because the way the Taliban leadership could get its cause to the rest of the world. I told him that it was also a way to get the plight of Afghanistan's people to the rest of the world. I told him how we had done stories on the Taliban's crackdown on drugs. If anyone stays, I told him, it should be us.

I asked them to let me go to the foreign minister and ask him personally to stay. By that time, a meeting between the Taliban leadership and some Pakistani diplomats was scheduled to be held in Kandahar, about 300 miles to the south of Kabul. That's where the foreign minister was. We had wanted to wait until the next day to drive down, just to buy some time, but we decided it probably was best to drive down overnight.

It was a 14-hour drive. It was the Road from Hell. Really, it wasn't much of a road at all. It was dirty, it was bumpy, there was no tarmac. But the story had switched from Kabul to Kandahar. We had to be there.

On the drive down, I thought that this was a forsaken country. It is just a hard, hard life. Twenty-some odd years of war. The fourth year of a drought. Now the potential of a whole lot more going wrong.

It is a hand-to-mouth life for many Afghans. Driving down to Kandahar, we saw many of the nomadic tribesmen on their camel trains, donkey trains. Beautiful-colored silk clothing. But for some of them, their flocks were all gone because of the drought. We saw dozens and dozens of families like that with the kids, dressed in rags, holding their hands out, hoping someone would throw out some money while they drive by.

September 17

We arrived Monday about 11:30 in the morning. Kandahar is much more of a rural town. In Kabul, you get a sense just from the size of the buildings that it is the capital. In Kandahar, there are only one- or two-story buildings. It's a city, but it's very, very rural. There were loads of Taliban around, driving around in their four-wheel-drive vehicles.

A year before CNN had hired a stringer in Kandahar. It is the spiritual capital of the Taliban and the best place to be plugged into Taliban thinking. Kamal had the foresight to set up an office in a large house, it was to this sanctuary we headed

The compound where we stayed had big iron gates all around it, fancy metal work, and had 12-foot-high walls all around it. It was a house, but it also served as an office, all on one level. I noted that there were a lot of windows and thought that, with blast damage, windows were going to be a liability.

But there was a good basement we could work out of, and had a cook who made up some omelets and chips for us. Later, we heard the announcement on the radio that the council of clerics was being called.

September 18

By Tuesday, we were still very much on the defensive. We didn't want to go out and say, "Hey, hey, can we stay?" and someone say, "No. You have to go."

Late, late in the day we made contact with the foreign ministry. They knew we were there. They have intelligence all around. They have people who could see us. Still, nobody had been knocking on our door saying, "What are you guys still doing in the country?"

That night, I stayed up all night writing a letter to the foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, outlining all the reasons I thought we should be allowed to stay.

September 19

On Wednesday morning, the foreign minister said he wouldn't meet with us, and told our local translator it was time for us to go, that this was an order from the top and it could not be changed. We had enlisted Eason Jordan, the chief news executive for CNN, to talk to one of the foreign ministers on Monday, so the Taliban officials knew that our top-level guys really wanted us to stay, too.

But we had pushed the envelope for five days and before we headed out, finally, for Quetta, Pakistan, we were able to report that the council of clerics was meeting to discuss how to respond U.S. demands.

I felt really bad to go. There's a damn good story there to be told. Afghanistan is a country that has been decimated by 20-some years of war, and it's about to be thrown into it again. There's a good human angle there, and a huge political angle as well. There's international diplomacy, there's military conflict.

The last time I was asked to leave Afghanistan was last October, after the attack on the USS Cole. That was on a Monday. By the next Wednesday, I was back in Kandahar again.

I'm an optimist. I still believe there's a good chance to get back in this time, as well.

Footnote:

Did I think of my family during all this? Of course. Much of this may sound very dangerous, and perhaps some of it is. But I wouldn't go into a situation where I thought I would get killed. No story is worth that.

I'm really lucky that I have a supportive wife who is familiar with reporting tough stories. She was in Beirut, and she's been a lot of other bad places. I think I'm lucky that she can kind of picture the situation and know how it works. I think that helps here.

My two daughters, ages five and nine, are back in London. The truth of the matter is, they are not with me, so they worry. I know it's very tough on them. They don't articulate it, but it bothers them. And that bothers me.

My youngest one is going to turn six next week, and she asked me on the phone (I talk with them quite often while I am on the road) if I were going to be there for her birthday party. I think it was her way of telling me she's worried about me.

----

U.S. takes on war-hardened Taliban it helped create
Afghan troops are ill-equipped but ready 'to kill the infidels'

09/21/2001
By Jack Kelley,
USA TODAY
http://cgi.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010921/3651403s.htm

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Their edicts - forbidding women to attend school, banning everything from makeup to kite flying - are infamous. So are their punishments, ranging from amputation to public stoning. In five years, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia has become one of the best-known and most-hated regimes in the world. President Bush has threatened to unleash a massive military retaliation against the fundamentalist Muslim group for harboring its most famous "guest": Osama bin Laden. The Saudi millionaire, already indicted for plotting the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa, is the chief suspect in last week's terrorist attacks in the USA.

Facing the prospect of a massive U.S. military assault on Afghanistan, the Taliban's 1,000 clerics asked bin Laden on Thursday to leave the country voluntarily. It was not known if or where he would go; the Taliban has protected him for 5 years. The clerics also called Thursday for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States if its forces attack the country.

"We don't want a confrontation with the U.S. We never asked for this," the Taliban's deputy leader, Mullah Hasan Akhund, said by telephone Thursday from the Afghan capital Kabul. "But if President Bush wants war, then we will give it to him. Tell Bush the Taliban soldiers are not going to run. We are ready."

An American creation

U.S. and Pakistani officials concede that the United States is partly responsible for the conditions that bred both the Taliban and bin Laden. In the words of one senior U.S. intelligence official, the United States is about to go to war with an enemy that it helped create in the 1980s.

And the Taliban forces, while small and poorly equipped, do have three significant advantages: They will be fighting on their own territory, they have the moral support of many of the world's 1 billion Muslims and they believe they are doing the will of God.

Taliban troops - most U.S. analysts say there are 50,000 to 60,000 - have been hardened by their battles with the dwindling Afghan opposition, which controls only 10% of the country.

Pakistani intelligence officials say the Taliban is already deploying tanks and troops along its border with Pakistan and digging trenches from which they expect to fight members of the U.S. Special Forces who will be charged with trying to capture or kill bin Laden. Some Taliban soldiers appear ready.

"We are fighting for God," said Jawad Abd Rahman, a 31-year-old Taliban soldier. He left Afghanistan Sunday to escort his wife and six children to a Pakistani-run refugee camp here in the border city of Peshawar. Rahman, who said he was trained in one of bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan from March to early September, said he plans to return to the Afghan city of Kandahar - a Taliban stronghold - today to prepare for battle.

"This is a holy crusade to kill the infidels," he said. "It will be a dream come true to fight and kill an American. Whatever happens to me from then on will not matter. I will have lived."

The creation of the West's newest and perhaps deadliest enemy began in 1979, when the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in an effort to prop up the country's communist government. The CIA, eager to stop the spread of Marxist ideology, spent $3 billion arming and equipping the Islamic rebels, known as the mujahedin. The rebels objected to the secular, puppet government.

After a decade of combat that has been compared to the U.S. experience in Vietnam, war-weary Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and the United States stopped supporting the rebels. The CIA didn't offer to rebuild the ravaged country or work out a replacement government. Soon, civil strife erupted among Afghanistan's tribes, leaving the country's 21 million residents without running water or health care.

In 1994, a reclusive, one-eyed religious cleric, Mullah Mohammed Omar, proclaimed himself the "king of all Muslims" and began what is known as the Taliban militia. An Afghan, he said the Taliban, which means "students of religion" in the Pashto language of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, was established to combat the lawlessness and tribal fighting that had descended upon Afghanistan. He promised to restore peace and transform the country into the purest Islamic state in the world. His forces included many of the U.S.-trained mujahedin.

In 1996, Omar and his rebels, armed and supported by a Pakistani government that believed the Taliban would create more stability along the border, captured the Afghan capital of Kabul.

"In an ironic reversal of roles, it is this militancy, born in the crucible of the Cold War and baptized in Afghanistan by the U.S. itself, which the U.S. now proclaims as its principal enemy," Pakistani political analyst Ayaz Amir said.

In July 1999, the United States imposed economic sanctions on the Taliban for harboring bin Laden, who had been exiled from his native Saudi Arabia and then from Sudan. Last January, the United States also spearheaded an effort to impose arms sanctions against the Taliban.

Now, many Afghans feel angry and used by the United States.

"The anti-Americanism that has developed in this region has developed as a result of what many Islamists call 'the great American betrayal': We fought your war for you and then you walked away from us," said Ahmed Rashid, author of the book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

The Taliban may still have several Stinger anti-aircraft missiles provided by the U.S., though Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, says they're probably not in working order. They may have stockpiled some Russian-made missiles as well.

The authoritative Jane's Information Group says the Taliban arsenal also includes about 650 aging tanks and armored vehicles, perhaps 10 combat helicopters, about 15 warplanes and another 40 cargo planes left over from the Soviet era.

Tony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International studies in Washington, says most of the Taliban equipment is so old that "it cannot be sustained in combat. More importantly, most of it is irrelevant to U.S. forces."

Rubin says U.S. troops "are not in any danger of (meeting) a sustained opposition" going into Afghanistan, if that becomes necessary. "The question is what will we do when we get there and how will we get out."

A special form of Islam

When Omar assumed power, he ordered all men to grow beards and pray five times a day. He also ordered women to cover themselves in an all-encompassing gown, or burqa, and closed all schools for girls over the age of 8.

Since then, under his orders, the Taliban has destroyed two 1,400-year-old statues of Buddha in the Afghan city of Bamian that were regarded in the West as major art treasures. He also issued a decree on May 22 that all non-Muslims wear identification marks. That decree has not yet been enforced.

Omar, like many of his followers, was educated in one of the tens of thousands of religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan. Most of these schools adhere to a hard-line form of Islam. That is where he, like other students, learned the Muslim holy book - the Koran - and acquired some of his beliefs.

"It is biologically, religiously and prophetically proven that men are superior to women," said Maulana Adil Siddiqu, spokesman for the Dar-ul Uloom Haqqani school in the northwest Pakistan city of Akora Khattack. It is one of Pakistan's largest Muslim schools.

Although the Taliban only accounts for a tiny percentage of Afghanistan's people, the punishments the rulers dispense have spread fear throughout the country:

Sex outside of marriage is punishable with 100 lashes. Adultery is punishable with death by stoning. Depending on the crime, thieves face the amputation of fingers, hands or legs.

These rules are enforced by the Taliban's Ministry of Virtue and Vice.

Supporters credit Omar for ending the lawlessness that pervaded Afghanistan and eliminating the opium crop that once accounted for 75% of the world's harvest. Opium, itself an addictive substance, is used to make morphine, heroin and other drugs. Omar ruled in 2000 that opium is "un-Islamic" and forced farmers to plant wheat and other, less lucrative crops.

Adding to the farmers' misfortunes, the country for 5 years has suffered a drought that shows no signs of abating. Nearly 4 million people are on the verge of starvation, says the United Nations World Food Program.

"We have turned this country around," Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, the Taliban's chief spokesman, said in a telephone interview Thursday from Kabul. "No one else has been able to do that."

Omar has said his religious edicts are based on the Sharia, the legal code of the Koran. But few religious scholars agree with his interpretation and accuse him of taking advantage of Afghans, many of whom are illiterate and have little knowledge of Islam.

"I don't know where the Taliban gets some of their ideas," said religious scholar Anis Ahmed of Pakistan's Islamic University. "Many of them have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Islam."

Bin Laden has helped bankroll the Taliban, so surrendering him would be costly to the rulers. He inherited an estimated $300 million when his father Mohammed, a Saudi construction mogul, died in 1968. He has given the Taliban millions of dollars to support its fight against the Northern Alliance, the opposition group that controls about 10% of Afghanistan. U.S. officials jokingly call bin Laden the "Ford Foundation of Terror."

He also supplied the Taliban with nearly 6,000 Muslim militants who, after attending his training camps, have been sent to fight alongside Afghan soldiers against the Northern Alliance forces, U.S. officials say.

In return for his money and men, bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, like Ayman Zawahiri, head of Islamic Jihad of Egypt and bin Laden's chief lieutenant, have been allowed to live in Afghanistan as "guests" of the Taliban. Zawahiri is a prime suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in which 17 sailors died.

"Where the Taliban ends and bin Laden's al-Qa'eda organization begins is difficult to determine," said Afghan expert Julie Sirrs, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst. "Both the Taliban and al-Qa'eda are perhaps best viewed as links in the same chain of the international terrorist network."

Contributing: Barbara Slavin, Andrea Stone

---------

Muslim clerics urge bin Laden to leave

September 21, 2001
By Amir Shah
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010921-30793936.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - Islamic clerics, facing the prospect of U.S. attacks, urged Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan yesterday. The United States said the call fell short of its demands, and a Taliban official acknowledged the suspected terrorist mastermind might have problems finding another nation willing to accept him.

The clerics' statement, issued at the end of a two-day meeting of the Ulema, or council of religious leaders, set no deadline for bin Laden to depart and included a warning of a jihad, or holy war, against the United States if its forces attacked this impoverished country.

In a statement issued late yesterday through its embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, the Taliban government repeated its stand that it would not force bin Laden to leave because that "would be an insult to Islam."

Nevertheless, the clerics' statement represented the first sign that some figures in Afghan leadership wanted to compromise on the previous hard-line stance against any move to surrender bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

"This Ulema council requests the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to persuade Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan and select a new place for himself," said the clerical statement. In Washington, the Bush administration dismissed the clerics' decision.

"We want action, not just statements," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said. He said bin Laden must be surrendered and not given continued haven in Afghanistan or any other country.

"The sooner he leaves and is brought to justice, the better off I think the world will be," said Mr. Powell. The United States has also insisted that bin Laden's training camps be closed and his hundreds of followers driven out of Afghanistan.

The government of Pakistan, which has offered U.S. forces access to its airspace and land for an attack on its neighbor, refused to comment on the clerics' action. "We have not received an authoritative version of the decision, so we are not in a position to respond," Mohammed Riaz Khan, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters in Islamabad.

Religious leaders in Pakistan have called a nationwide strike today to protest the government's decision to stand by the United States in the fight against terrorism.

Already, thousands of people have taken to the streets to burn American flags and effigies of President Bush, vowing to fight a jihad against their own government if it supports a U.S. attack on Afghanistan.

The protests, many of which were small, came a day after President Pervez Musharraf delivered a nationally televised speech to rally support for his decision to give "full support" to any such attack, in effect suspending Pakistan's long-standing alliance with Afghanistan and its radical Taliban rulers.

In Kabul, a senior Afghan government official said that in spite of the clerical statement, it could take bin Laden a long time to decide where he will go.

No government could accept him without risking economic and political isolation as well as a possible U.S. attack.

That would effectively limit his options to places like Chechnya, Somalia or northern Yemen - all of which are largely under the control of warlords.

"Osama has many enemies, and he must find an appropriate place to go. This is a big task, and it needs time. It must happen slowly," said Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. "The United States must not set itself and the Afghans on fire."

The London Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that law and order was breaking down in Kabul yesterday as Taliban soldiers and poverty-stricken civilians carried out armed daylight robberies and looted houses left empty by people who have fled.

In many areas of the Afghan capital, discipline among the Taliban appeared to be collapsing ahead of an expected American assault, the paper reported from Lahore, Pakistan.

Tens of thousands who have fled the city for the countryside in recent days have left behind most of their possessions. Their empty houses have attracted looters.

"Armed men are entering people's homes under the guise of checking to see if they have arms, are watching a film or listening to music," said one resident of banned activities.

"The owner of the house lets them in because he has nothing to hide. Then he and the male family members are rounded up and the women are forced to hand over cash or jewelry."

Another complained: "I have lost everything."

The Taliban, a devoutly Muslim religious militia that controls about 95 percent of the country, has allowed bin Laden to live in Afghanistan for the last five years after the government of Sudan pressured him to leave. The Taliban leaders say they are able to convey information to bin Laden through radio communication with Taliban security personnel who travel with him.

Fahmi Howeidi, a Cairo-based source knowledgeable in Taliban affairs, described the clerics' action as "a cunning move. Now the ball is in the American court."

"It seems that the Pakistani threat was strong," he said of a message delivered to Kabul by a Pakistani delegation earlier this week. "The Taliban cannot continue [to exist] without Pakistani support," he said.

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TALIBAN REACTION
Without Evidence, the Taliban Refuses to Turn Over bin Laden

New York Times
September 21, 2001
By JOHN F. BURNS with CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/international/21CND-PAK.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 21 - The ruling Taliban of Afghanistan today further complicated the status of Osama bin Laden and rejected the ultimatum of the United States that he and his lieutenants be handed over to answer for their suspected role in last week's terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said at a news conference in Islamabad, "Our position in this regard is that if the Americans have evidence, they should produce it." If they can prove their allegations, he said, "we are ready for a trial of Osama bin Laden."

Asked again whether Mr. bin Laden would be surrendered, the ambassador replied, "Without evidence, no." In response to another question, he said he had no "exact information" as to whether Mr. bin Laden was still in Afghanistan. He said the Taliban would have nothing more to say regarding Mr. bin Laden.

The ambassador spoke in Arabic, suggesting that his comments were intended for Islamic countries and the one billion Muslims around the world.

The United States had created many enemies for itself in world hotspots, Mullah Zaeef contended, and compared to these foes, Mr. bin Laden was a very small one.

The ambassador's defiant comments quashed suggestions that a decree promulgated on Thursday by the Taliban's senior Muslim clerics might open the way to the handover of Mr. bin Laden. Mullah Zaeef described the clerics' decision as a suggestion and not a judicial decision.

On Thursday Afghanistan's senior Muslim clerics issued an edict that suggested that Mr. bin Laden might be persuaded to leave the country.

The White House quickly rejected the move, saying it did not "meet American requirements" that Afghanistan immediately hand over the prime suspect in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a speech on Thursday night to a joint session of Congress President Bush demanded that the Taliban promptly deliver Mr. bin Laden and the rest of his network to American authorities and "immediately and permanently" close down terrorist training camps inside Afghanistan.

"These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion," Mr. Bush said.

The earlier decision by a grand council of nearly 1,000 clerics in Kabul, the Afghan capital, had come after days of refusals by the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to surrender Mr. bin Laden or end the sanctuary the Taliban have given him and his armed force, Al Qaeda (pronounced al-KYE-dah). But it was not clear where Mullah Omar stood on the decree - whether he had inspired it, whether he would accept it - or whether Mr. bin Laden would comply.

The decree and the seemingly contradictory statement from the Afghan ambassador served only to intensify speculation as to what the Taliban are up to, or even whether they have any plan to extricate themselves from the crisis.

In any case, they appeared to do nothing to deter the Bush administration from its readiness to use military force if necessary to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden.

In the religious decree, or fatwa, issued earlier Thursday, the Afghan Islamic clerics had left little doubt that they were acting under the pressure of American military threats, and made their own threat, of a worldwide holy war, or jihad, against the United States in response to any American thrust into Afghanistan.

Although Mr. bin Laden declared a jihad against the United States five years ago, calling for the killing of American civilians and military personnel, the Taliban have not threatened a jihad of their own until the United States demanded Mr. bin Laden's handover last week.

The clerics said: "To avoid the current tumult, and also to allay future suspicions, the Supreme Council of the Islamic clergy recommends to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to persuade Mr. bin Laden to leave Afghanistan whenever possible."

To this, they added a conciliatory statement of condolence for the victims of the attacks in the United States. "The ulema," they said, using an Arabic term for Islamic clergy, "voice their sadness over American deaths and hope America does not attack Afghanistan."

This, too, was immediately followed by a harsh warning of retaliation. "If infidels invade an Islamic country and that country does not have the ability to defend itself, it becomes the binding obligation of all the world's Muslims to declare a holy war," the decree said. It also warned that any Muslim cooperation with the "infidels" - an apparent reference to neighboring Pakistan, among other countries - was punishable by death.

Protests in major cities in Pakistan continued today against the decision by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, to agree to United States demands for cooperation in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden. Islamic militant groups linked to Mr. bin Laden and some political parties have promised to do everything possible to disrupt any American military venture involving Pakistan. A general strike is planned for Friday.

All week, reports from Kabul and Kandahar have indicated that the Taliban leaders were engaging in a cat-and-mouse game with the United States, with Mullah Omar saying Mr. bin Laden would never be handed over, then suggesting that he might be under certain conditions. The conditions changed from day to day. It appears clear that there are significant splits within the Taliban movement, although their exact nature is not easy to determine.

One new condition that appeared in the decree Thursday was that President Bush apologize to Muslims for using the word "crusade," derived from the Christian military campaigns that overran Muslims 1,000 years ago, to describe his plans to fight international terrorism.

The United States has repeatedly refused to negotiate with the Taliban over Mr. bin Laden. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking in Washington, said that "voluntarily, or involuntarily," Mr. bin Laden had to be brought to justice. "The sooner he is brought to justice, the better off the world will be, and the better off the Afghan people will be," he said.

The clerics' decree came less than 12 hours after President Bush ordered heavy bombers and other forces deployed to bases within striking range of Afghanistan.

Islamic specialists and experts on Afghanistan had various interpretations of the latest developments. One was that Mullah Omar, and the wider clergy, wanted to try to rid themselves of responsibility for Mr. bin Laden without explicitly breaking previous assertions that Islamic injunctions would not permit them to endanger their "guest."

Perhaps, too, these experts suggested, the Taliban thought that by allowing Mr. bin Laden to slip out of their control, they could escape the full weight of American wrath.

Other views were less complex: that the Taliban leaders were confused, considering that their own harsh form of Islamic rule has eliminated television in the parts of Afghanistan they control, and restricted the state-controlled radio and newspapers to "Islamic" news.

Most simply, some experts felt that Mullah Omar and the clerics were simply playing for time, hoping that a growing tide of reluctance to join in or endorse American military action across the Muslim world might yet get them out of a corner.

Officials in Pakistan, which sent a high-ranking military delegation to Kandahar and Kabul earlier in the week to tell Mullah Omar to surrender Mr. bin Laden or face being toppled from power, said they had left officers behind in case the Taliban had a change of heart.

The Pakistan generals who led the delegation said they hoped realists in the Taliban government in Kabul might prevail over unworldly clerics in Kandahar, where Mullah Omar and other members of the Taliban's supreme council spent much of their time reading the Koran.

One senior government official in Kabul, Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, said after the clerics' meeting that Mullah Omar would follow the "guidance" of the clerics and encourage Mr. bin Laden to leave, but implied that this would not be soon. "It will take time," he said. "You know that Osama bin Laden has a lot of opponents. It can't be that he goes out on the street and catches a taxi to go to another roundabout."

In Islamabad, a Taliban official at the Afghan Embassy said Mr. bin Laden was ready to give himself up, if the United States provided evidence of his involvement in the attacks in the United States. "He said, `I am not involved in this terrorist action. I am a guest in Afghanistan. But if they have evidence, I am ready for a trial,' " Suhail Shaheen, the deputy ambassador said. "We are telling the Americans, if he has violated his commitment, please prove it."

--------

Islamic fears of terror ahead

The Scotsman (UK)
Paul Gallagher In Islamabad
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=109919

A GROUP of boys enjoyed a game of cricket in the midday sun before Friday prayers. All around them the cars, mopeds and multicoloured buses were weaving their way through the thunderous traffic on Islamabad's concrete-lined boulevards. A few streets away, on a quiet garden veranda, the delegation of the Taleban lined up behind a table under a corrugated iron roof to deliver their crushing message.

Few had expected the ruling Afghan regime to accede to America's demands that they hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden. Nor did they doubt that there would be calls for a war against the US if Afghanistan is attacked.

For those living in the Pakistan capital it was a sub-clause in the Taleban statement which may be more ominous, one which is a little more than an incitement to civil war.

"The people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are brothers," the bespectacled Taleban official said. "They are one people."

He added: "We do not expect that brotherhood to be turned into hostility."

In case there was any doubt, there was a further statement. "The Jihad becomes a religious obligation of all Muslims. The US is launching a war against our Muslim world."

The Taleban message delivered in the heart of the Pakistan capital sets the country's military leaders on a collision course with the religious convictions of its Islamic faithful. With the world waiting for an American response to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the people of Pakistan wait to see if the fault lines within their own country will tear open again.

The Taleban, which has outlawed television and photography in Afghanistan, took the unprecedented step of calling a press conference to deliver the verdict of the Shura Council of Afghan Muslim clerics.

The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan peered over a mass of microphones as he said the Shura Council "express their sorrow" over the victims of the terrorist attacks in America. He left his audience in no doubt as to the response of the Taleban to any US attack on its soil. "There will be a Holy War."

Throughout the centre of Islamabad, armed soldiers patrol the street corners. On a junction of the main Luqman Hakeem Road, two youths strain to reach the lower branches of a tree where they tied a banner with the letters USA beginning the words unrighteous, seditious and arrogant.

"The USA will be taught a terrible lesson," one of them said. "They think they can win a war against Islam - they do not know what they are doing. Bin Laden will never be caught."

Regardless of their views on bin Laden's activities, many share a respect for the Saudi exile which has only grown with his status as America's most wanted man.

The brooding power of bin Laden's ominous reputation is felt far from the Afghan mountains where he is thought to be hiding behind the protection of his most loyal adherents. "He has survived six assassination attempts," one middle-aged man said, echoing one of the most frequently quoted facts about the terrorist leader.

"He and his men do not fear death and they cannot be beaten by America."

The Taleban view that the US should present evidence linking bin Laden with the suicide jet attacks has also taken root in Pakistan.

Despite rising tension after the Taleban statement, a general strike called for yesterday did not appear to garner the support organisers hoped for. The strike was observed along a main street in one of the poorer districts of Rawalpindi where an entire row of shops put up their shutters for the afternoon.

A group of demonstrators chanting anti-US slogans, weaved their way along the roads of Rawalpindi in the late afternoon but the demonstration passed off peacefully.

"We will not stand aside and allow our country to be used in an attack on fellow Muslims," one of the protesters said. Many parts of Islamabad did not appear to observe the strike. The lack of street violence suggested that the Muslim clerics of Pakistan have not forcefully condemned the decision of President General Pervez Musharraf to co-operate with the US in their sermons, according to some in the city.

Others suggest it will be different if air strikes are launched on Afghanistan. "It is a terrible time of uncertainty. Nobody knows how this will work out," said one shopkeeper. "The army will deal strongly with disturbances and then we will see if people still want to fight a Jihad."

The hardline approach of Pakistan's security forces were demonstrated elsewhere as two protesters were killed in Karachi yesterday evening. As the people of America attempt to return - albeit slowly - to normal life after the horrors of 11 September, in Pakistan they are waiting for the terror to come.

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Kashmiris Burn US Flag, Vow Support for Afghanistan

September 21, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-kashmir.html

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas shells on hundreds of demonstrators in Indian Kashmir on Friday after they burned the American flag in protest against possible U.S. strikes on Afghanistan.

Demonstrators gathered outside the biggest mosque in the city of Srinagar, vowing to defend Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden -- the prime suspect of last week's hijacked airliner attacks on the New York and Washington -- is believed to be hiding.

``Afghan warriors, we are with you! Long live Afghanistan! Long live Pakistan!'' they chanted as they burned and trampled upon the American flag immediately after Friday prayers in the summer capital of India's Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state.

The Himalayan state, roiled for nearly 12 years by a rebellion against Indian rule, was gripped on Friday by a general strike which was called by guerrilla groups to express solidarity with the Afghan people.

Shops, schools and government offices were shut across a state where more than 30,000 people -- separatists say 80,000 --- have died in insurgency-related violence since 1989.

One guerrilla group said bin Laden was a holy warrior and vowed to repulse any retaliatory attacks on his home base.

``An attack on Afghanistan will be considered an attack on the whole Muslim world,'' Al-Umar Chief Commander Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar said in a statement sent to newspaper offices in Srinagar.

Zargar was one of the men India freed from its prisons in exchange for the release of passengers on an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Afghanistan by Muslim militants in December 1999.

SEPARATIST ALLIANCE OPPOSES PROTEST

The militants' call on Kashmiris to protest was unexpectedly opposed by the region's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (freedom) Conference, which put its faith in international efforts for a peaceful settlement of the crisis.

``We hope that the Osama problem will be peacefully resolved,'' said Abdul Gani Bhat, chairman of the umbrella group which includes nearly two dozen Kashmiri political, social and religious organizations.

The Hurriyat has condemned the attacks on the U.S. cities and backed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's decision to offer support to the United States, despite Pakistan's close ties with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

Bhat told Reuters that the September 11 attacks were a lesson for India and Pakistan to tackle their long-standing dispute over Kashmir, the trigger for two of the three wars between the nuclear rivals since 1947.

``If you don't treat a disease, it becomes fatal,'' he said. ''There were 5,000 dead in New York and Washington, we have lost 80,000 people. They were not goats, they were people.''

A dozen rebel groups, including fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Islamic countries, are fighting Indian forces in Indian Kashmir.

Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh said on Thursday the leader of the Taliban had called on guerrillas in Kashmir to head to Afghanistan to meet any U.S. attack.

-------- biological weapons

Averting Bioterrorism Begins with US Reforms

by Edward Hammond
21 September 2001
http://www.sunshine-project.org/comment210901.html

The author is Director of the US office of the Sunshine Project, an international non-profit organization dedicated to biological weapons control. Online at www.sunshine-project.org. Copyleft 2001. This paper may be freely reproduced and redistributed in its entirety.

The United States feels an imminent threat of biological or chemical terrorist attack. How do our own policies relate to the rise of this frightening situation? Why has our government been throwing away so many opportunities to work with other nations to control weapons of mass destruction? This paper, for the US peace movement and non-profit activists, explains the key avoidable factors that have led to this predicament, and suggests what US policy changes can be made to help us find a peaceful way out.

Shaken and angered by cruel terrorist attacks, the United States has announced a war on terrorism. Although no legal declaration has been made, US leaders are emphatic that they are not using the word in a figurative sense. This time, war really means war. Our nation's goals include not only capturing the attacks' perpetrators "dead or alive" and ending state-sponsored terrorism (although none is yet proven); but ridding the globe of the threat posed by terrorist use of biological and chemical weapons.

The latter is certainly a noble goal, although many thoughtful citizens and peaceniks (including the author) oppose the US's military methods. The killing power of biological and chemical weapons is unfathomable. There is no defense but to avoid it happening in the first place. In 1983, the US Army estimated that one thousand kilograms (2200 lbs.) of sarin nerve gas aerosolized over an urban area on a clear, calm night would kill 3,000 - 8,000 people, an attack in terms of human lives roughly proportionate to that on the World Trade Center. One tenth of the amount of anthrax spores - one hundred kilograms - distributed under similar conditions would be likely to result in the death of one to three million people, an unimaginable toll two hundred to six hundred times that in New York.

Once Upon a Time

There was a time when the US arguably could muster sufficient credibility to lead a campaign to eliminate chemical and biological weapons. In 1973, President Nixon renounced biological weapons and mostly dismembered the US bioweapons apparatus. It wasn't an altruistic move so much as a way to discourage poorer countries from developing offensive biological warfare capabilities that could rival nuclear weapons in killing power. All without making a Manhattan Project-sized investment in science and infrastructure.

Not produced in large quantities for so long that many are actually leaking their deadly contents, old stocks of chemical weapons began to be incinerated at the end of the Cold War (the process continues today). Russian inspectors were even allowed to enter and examine US facilities that they thought might be producing biological weapons. The US ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, and was in talks with other nations to develop a UN system to verify global compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention.

In short, we were cooperative and did not seem to be threatening the world with chemical and biological warfare.

The Present

Sadly, it is no longer the case that the US can lead the world against chemical and biological weapons. Our leaders have sacrificed our progress in bungled attempts to address policy problems of the present. The US may have the military muscle to stamp out the current generation of active terrorists; but does not possess the moral authority to spearhead a crusade against weapons of mass destruction. Certainly not nukes. Vice President Cheney refuses to rule out dropping the bomb on terrorists. Chemical and biological weapons? Our actions and policy are even worse.

There has always been a shadier side to the US renunciation of chemical and biological weapons. For example: Cuban accusations of biological attack with agricultural pests (unproven; but stridently alleged and not without evidence), enemies convinced that the US maintains offensive biological weapons (incorrect as alleged; but some biodefense research walks a razor-thin line), and refusal to accept responsibility for the horrendous human and environmental effects of Agent Orange, the latter most recently, shamefully repeated by Bill Clinton in Hanoi itself.

Some problems - like Agent Orange - are ongoing moral failures. Others, as troubling as they are, remain unproven, pertain to events dating from years ago, or were sufficiently ambiguous (at least in terms of the public's knowledge), to shield the US from many critics. For problems like the Cuban allegations, it will take years for the truth to be known with certainty, if ever. They have damaged; but in themselves did not destroy US ability to lead the struggle against biological and chemical weapons. At least until now.

The fact that the US maintains what is far and away the largest biological weapons defense program in the world doesn't help either. Even the greatest experts disagree on which specific activities are offensive and which can be classified as defensive. The tendency among governments has been toward classifying all "research" (as opposed to weapons-building and testing) as the latter. The laxity of interpretation has given rise to potential misunderstandings and opened doors to would-be biological weapons developers. Genetic engineering and its proliferation has made matters worse, further blurring the line between offensive and defense and giving rise to the technical possibility to create genetically-engineered superbugs and even entirely new classes of biological weapons. The billions recently authorized by Congress for homeland defense will swell this opaque military-scientific-corporate biotechnology bureaucracy and the instability it creates to even larger proportions.

Demolishing Cooperation

The demolition of international confidence in the US has come more recently, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame. Bumbling attempts to address several post-Cold War problems were allowed to so completely convolute chemical and biological weapons control commitments that we sacrificed whatever moral high ground we might have had. Now, many international critics convincingly argue the US is a chemical and biological weapons control "rogue state".

Where did we go wrong? Three main areas: First, fear of terrorism and "rogue states" and, particularly, their access to the military talent and technology of our Cold War enemies. Second, missteps retooling the US military for greater involvement in peacekeeping and military "operations other than war" (such as Somalia). Third, a foolish attempt to find the ever-elusive "silver bullet" to win the Drug War that has resulted in US development of biological weapons. In more detail:

Biological Warfare in the Name of America's Children

For more than three years the US has menaced other countries with the threat of biological attack. Not just any countries. We've mainly harassed two of the world's terrorism hotspots: Afghanistan and Colombia.

The ostensible US motive is to prevent American kids from becoming drug addicts by using biological weapons on Third World countries that produce the drugs we buy and then snort, inject, and smoke. In Afghanistan the target is opium poppy, source of heroin. Our weapon is a dangerous fungus developed by a perverse alliance of militaristic US drug warriors and ex-Soviet bioweapons researchers who previously dedicated themselves to developing pathogens to destroy US food supplies. The legal pretext includes attempts to gain the "approval" of the Afghan government in exile (in Pakistan), a bitter enemy of the Taliban that has no de facto power. The environmental and human effects of use of these fungi could be devastating.

Our troops are a surprise. This biological weapon is not in our military arsenal; but that of the State Department's anti-narcotics division, supported by US diplomatic missions (repeat: diplomatic missions) that provide cash, political, and intelligence support.

The US also supports using bioweapons in other conflict-torn countries, such as Burma and Colombia, site of the largest armed conflict in the Americas. Colombia has no fewer than three terrorist organizations as defined by the State Department, including FARC, one of the world's largest terrorist groups and an organization that has repeatedly killed Americans. It is a testament to the severity of the conflict in Colombia that it has the second largest number of war-displaced persons in the world (after Sudan). Into this mix, the US wants to throw biological weapons.

(In case you were wondering, it was proposed here too - to eradicate pot in Florida - but environmental officials immediately shot it down.)

Burning the Treaties to Save Them - Non-Lethal Weapons

Mogadishu was a harrowing disaster for the US armed forces. Sadly, Somali civilians literally tore to pieces several US servicemen who thought they were on a mission to help the poor and feed the hungry. The military, understandably anxious to prevent a recurrence, vows it will never happen again. The Pentagon's solution, of course, is not politics; but weapons. Specifically, it started a huge program to delve into new and controversial "non-lethal" weapons systems. Non-lethal should not be understood as benign. In fact, these are powerful weapons designed not to prevent death or permanent injury; only to lessen its frequency.

Apart from microwaves to heat the skin, sound generators to vibrate internal organs, lasers to confuse the eyes, and other non-chemical and biological systems, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) has entertained proposals to dose people, especially rioters and "potentially hostile civilians", with drugs. These drugs include sedatives, "calmatives" (such as hallucinogens and ketamine, a DEA schedule narcotic), muscle relaxants, opioids (the class of chemicals in heroin), and "malodorants" (indescribably foul smelling substances). JNLWP has weighed genetically engineered microbes to destroy enemy vehicles, machinery, and supplies.

It isn't just blackboard and small-scale laboratory work. The Navy has a genetically modified microbe to destroy plastics and, in the words of one researcher "There is almost nothing some bug won't eat." Delivery mechanisms under consideration or development include backpack sprayers, land mines, mortars, and payloads for unmanned aerial vehicles. JNLWP has planned computer simulations of the offensive use of calmative agents, contracted with a major US military supplier to develop an overhead-exploding chemical riot control mortar round, and field-tested new non-lethal weapons (but not biological ones) on humans in Kosovo.

The Pentagon claims - and desperately wants to hypnotize itself into believing - that these arms are not chemical and biological weapons, rather, that they are a potentially less bloody way to conduct peacekeeping operations, isolate terrorists, and squelch civil disobedience. But it is exceedingly unlikely that people forcibly gassed with mind-altering drugs will view the hijacking of their brains and bodies as a humane act. Much more probably, when their motor control returns and hallucinations fade away, they may have permanent psychological damage and feel enraged at the denial of their freedom of thought and expression.

These weapons are not a panacea for death at the hands of US soldiers, they are cruel and unusual biological and chemical weapons banned under international laws for arms control, those prohibiting torture, and those for protection of Human Rights. This is how the world, and especially the victims, will understand and react to these weapons if they are used. US attempts to characterize them as anything else are not only wrong; but run the terrible risk of provoking a biological or chemical attack on the US and its allies.

Blunders and Backsliding on the Bioweapons Convention

As 2001 opened, biological weapons control was focused on the completion of six years of negotiations to develop an inspection system to verify global compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the main international law against biological weapons. The inspection system, called the Verification Protocol, was designed to give teeth to this important international agreement by, among other things, mandating declaration of biodefense research and permitting the UN to inspect suspected bioweapons facilities.

Signs early this year from the USA were ominous. At a non-lethal weapons meeting in Scotland, US military officers left arms control experts slack jawed when they called for the renegotiation of the bioweapons treaty to allow the US to produce and use anti-material biological weapons like those being investigated by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program.

Things only got worse, and Uncle Sam led the way. In July, bioweapons negotiators were set to meet and try to finalize the verification agreement. The day before the meeting opened, the US press was so uninterested that a back pages New York Times headline declared the meeting was taking place in London, more than 450 miles away from the actual site in Geneva, Switzerland.

Unfortunately, the US diplomatic team didn't divert to London and, as expected arrived in Geneva and trashed the Verification Protocol. Six years of negotiations were rendered at least temporarily useless, and perhaps permanently. The US backed away just as other countries approached agreement. It was reminiscent - and close on the heels - of the US's withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement to control global warming. In this case not content to simply walk away, the US went a big step further. Adoption of the Verification Protocol needs consensus. The US said it will sit in the negotiations and kill the Verification Protocol by deliberately blocking the efforts of others, including the European Union. The United States, standing alone, delivered what may have been a knockout punch to the world's efforts to combat biological weapons cooperatively.

The CIA's Monstrous Mistake

Not everybody at the New York Times had been asleep. Although the timing was unusual, in early September, a Times article made stunning revelations about the US biodefense program. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is conducting a secret program of biodefense research that, in the opinion of many experts, violates the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. The CIA tested mock biological bombs and built a real bioweapons production facility in Nevada. If any other country conducted this research, it would have drawn the US's harshest denunciations and, quite possibly, military attack. The real reasons for the US rejection of the Verification Protocol suddenly became much more clear.

The date of the New York Times story (September 4) was unusual because persons close to the reporters' investigation, including US officials, confirm that the Times was in possession of information about the CIA's Nevada facility and bomb testing by May, 2001 - over a month before the US trashed the Protocol. Yet the Times waited to enlighten the rest of the world until September, altering the course of events in Geneva. This has led to quiet accusations that instead of printing the news when it was fit to be printed, the Times withheld the information in order for its release to more closely coincide with distribution of review copies of the journalists' new book on the US biodefense program. Or, some have suggested more ominously, somebody at the Times may have placed protecting US diplomatic interests ahead of journalistic ethics.

It gets even worse. Much worse. The CIA's research activities were not disclosed in annual declarations of biodefense activities to the Bioweapons Convention. Without actually mentioning it, the Times article incontrovertibly demonstrated that the US had flouted a UN mechanism to enhance transparency and trust between nations. The US remained recalcitrant, claiming the CIA was "entirely appropriate, necessary, consistent with US treaty obligations". The diplomatic significance of this is difficult to overstate. The most powerful country in the world proved itself untrustworthy on biological weapons research. The CIA research has undermined faith in voluntary confidence building measures to promote transparency between nations. To US enemies, the CIA's work looks like nothing short of a biological weapons threat and means that pious declarations about the danger of bioweapons will ring hollow and be interpreted by US enemies as lies - or even threats.

The CIA activities not only threaten arms control; but may have contributed to expanding the black market for bioweapons technology. Part of the CIA effort involved (failed) attempts to buy and then test small biological bombs ("bomblets") manufactured by the Soviet Union in its final years. According to University of Maryland expert Milton Leitenberg:

CIA operatives would have had to inform various networks of essentially criminal elements -- smugglers and middlemen in Russia -- of what it was that the Agency was seeking. Those criminal networks would then have tried to obtain the item. If they did not succeed this time, as was apparently the case, they have learned that it is a sought-after commodity, and they may be motivated to continue that effort on their own, understanding that there will be an interested purchaser sometime later. The next time the interested buyer might not be the US CIA. This duplicates the process that occurred in the mid-1990s when covert operations by German intelligence agencies [seeking] sellers of fissionable materials [i.e. fuel for constructing nuclear weapons] in former East European nations produced a flow of items of varying quality. When it was understood that this program had stimulated individuals in Russia to find things to sell, the operation was quickly shut down. Since these events occurred only a half dozen years ago, one might have imagined that the vaunted CIA might have remembered the lesson.

The Bang of Big Buried Biological Bombs

Next, in mid-September, Dr. Barbara Rosenburg of the Federation of American Scientists dropped another (figurative) bomb detailing the US's disregard for bioweapons control. Rosenburg found Department of Energy documents stating that the US is planning (and might already have begun) to test biological weapons loaded with live agents in two large underground aerosol chambers at the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland. A similar facility is suspected to exist for use by researchers pursuing similar aerosol projects at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Its precise location is unknown. Not by coincidence, Sandia is headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, a major research center for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program.

To the initiated in the technical world of bioweapons research, the kind of research planned is a big no-no. It is of a scale unnecessary for defensive research and apparently designed to yield the exact kinds of data needed to build new biological weapons.

Unfortunately Not the End

Before the Twin Towers crashed to the ground, America's international reputation on control of chemical and, especially, biological weapons was punched full of holes and sinking fast. Staunch allies are appalled. Before September 11th, UK officials made less than complimentary remarks to the US press. Australia's Foreign Minster upset Colin Powell's otherwise warm and cuddly kangaroo-hop Down Under by blasting US rejection of bioweapons verification at a press conference. If the US's most obedient international lap dogs are biting, it's hard to fathom what could be running through the mind of leaders of many other political persuasions - Iran, Libya, Israel, Sudan, Egypt, Iraq (all accused by the US of developing biological or chemical weapons). Not to mention terrorists. A faÁade of cooperation between most of these states has been achieved; but very deep suspicions on weapons of mass destruction lurk just beneath the surface and will come out, sooner or later.

What happened in New York and Washington was truly terrible. The authors of the attacks and those that can be proven to have knowingly assisted them should be tried in a court of law and face punishment. But the war on terrorism isn't going to do anything good for Americans' security from biological and chemical weapons attack. To the contrary, there are many things that may actually heighten the risk, like spraying pathogenic fungus on Colombia, gassing people who disagree with us with inhumane chemical weapons, or continuing to flout international commitments on biological weapons.

After thinking about the victims, it's also useful to think about Mohammed Atta, who is alleged to have flown the first plane into the World Trade Center. If what the FBI says is true, Atta was nothing like the stereotyped "Arab terrorist". Atta reportedly was a disenchanted urban planning student alienated during his time in Hamburg, Germany. He smoked, drank and, supposedly, enjoyed video games. He raised no suspicion in the US because he knew how to fit in. More so than many isolated Americans, Atta was a product of globalization and knew both sides of rich and poor, powerful and passive. He also knew from whence so many unpopular; but global-imposed economic and social policies come, and whose will prevails when they are at issue. Which might explain why he didn't fly an Airbus into the Brandenburg Gate, or even the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Which isn't the slightest justification for his alleged actions. But don't be fooled for a minute into thinking that waging war against terrorism will do anything to improve the long-term prospects of avoiding the use of biological and chemical weapons. Key elements of the solution to those problems lie inside our own institutions.

-------- chemical accidents

Ten Dead in French Plant Blast

By FRANCK DEMAY
The Associated Press,
September 21, 2001
From: DSNurse@aol.com

TOULOUSE, France (AP) - A huge explosion ripped through a petrochemical plant Friday, blowing out windows across this southern French city. French television reported at least 10 dead and more than 200 injured, many seriously.

It was unclear what caused the midmorning blast at the AZF chemical plant, the biggest fertilizer producer in France and Europe's third-largest. But authorities said it appeared to be accidental.

Authorities blocked off the industrial area just south of Toulouse, evacuated schools, closed the airport and subway and told people to stay home as a precaution. There were early fears that plumes of smoke drifting across the city could be toxic, though officials said that appeared not to be the case.

Officials did not immediately give a death toll. TF1 television reported 15 deaths; other media reports cited at least 10 deaths, with more than 200 injured, about 50 seriously. Phone service to Toulouse was heavily disrupted and calls to the chemical plant, the prefect and other officials did not go through.

Some residents were trying to leave the city, causing large traffic jams at exits.

``We thought it was a plane exploding,'' said Sandra Muller, a mother of three reached by The Associated Press. ``All the houses trembled.''

Muller, who lives about 15 miles from the site, said a neighbor had returned from the direction of the blast with the windows of his car blown out.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was on his way to the scene.

Toulouse is home to Airbus as well as Arianespace, the European Space Agency's commercial arm.

---

Blast kills 10, injures 150 at Toulouse plant

By Nicolas Fichot,
Sept 21 2001
Reuters
From: DSNurse@aol.com

TOULOUSE, France - A powerful blast ripped through a petrochemicals factory in the southern French city of Toulouse on Friday, killing 10 people and injuring 150, including 30 seriously, local officials said.

Police urged residents to stay inside their homes as a red cloud, which could be toxic, was spotted near the factory after the blast. Residents reported a strong ammoniac odour.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin headed to Toulouse shortly after hearing of the incident, his office said.

The explosion, apparently accidental, rocked the AZF plant in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Toulouse at around 10.20 a.m. local time (0820 GMT).

The local government said 10 people were killed inside the plant and "a very large number" injured.

Emergency workers earlier said 150 people were injured, 30 of them seriously. Local hospitals reported many people were wounded by flying glass.

Witnesses reported hearing two loud booms and seeing a cloud of smoke. Panic spread as people, unnerved by last week's attacks on the United States, ran for cover.

"I heard two booms," one woman told the television station M6. "There was panic in the street, it was terrible. There is some sort of dust in the air. It's scary."

The force of the blast toppled two chimneys at the chemicals plant, which produces nitrogen and phosphate products used in the making of explosives.

The director of an ammunition factory nearby, owned by the Societe Nationale des Poudres et Explosifs, said there had been a second, lesser explosion there as a result of the original blast at neighbouring AZF, but nobody was injured.

An electrical goods store 300 metres (yards) from the AZF plant collapsed 45 minutes after the explosion. A nearby school was evacuated amid fears it too would collapse.

Flights to Toulouse were being rerouted to other airports, according to a local crisis emergency centre.

Local residents said the force of the blast blew out windows and cut off telephone lines.

"The whole town heard it. Everybody left the building. Phone lines are no longer working," said a receptionist at the Airbus plant on the outskirts of Toulouse, which was not affected by the explosions.

Emergency workers blocked streets in the centre of town and trucks equipped with loudspeakers broadcast messages advising residents to stay indoors.

France has deployed thousands of troops and police in airports and rail and metro stations and stepped up street and border controls in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

-------- iraq

Iraq suspected of sponsoring terrorist attacks

September 21, 2001
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010921-94732490.htm

Osama bin Laden was in contact with Iraqi government agents from his base in Afghanistan in the days leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Officials also told The Washington Times there are indications bin Laden, the leading suspect in the deadly attacks, is preparing to flee Afghanistan and set up operations in the African nation of Somalia.

Bin Laden's contacts with the Iraqi government were detected before the attacks, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

"This is the basis for signs of state sponsorship," said one official.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday that foreign governments likely provided safe haven and support for the 19 terrorists who hijacked four U.S. airliners. Three of the airliners were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; another crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers apparently fought their captors.

Mr. Ashcroft did not identify what foreign governments are believed to be behind the attacks.

Officials said the intelligence of direct Iraqi government contacts with bin Laden is one of several pieces pointing to Baghdad's involvement in the attacks.

U.S. warplanes attacked air- defense sites in Iraq yesterday, but the Pentagon said the attacks are unrelated to U.S. anti-terrorism operations.

President Bush and other U.S. officials have said bin Laden is the key suspect in masterminding last week's kamikaze attacks that killed more than 6,000 Americans.

Mr. Bush told a joint session of Congress last night that all governments are on notice that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

David Ivry, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said yesterday it was too soon to make conclusions about an Iraqi role in the attacks.

"My opinion is the investigation is being done by the United States by professionals," Mr. Ivry told editors and reporters in a meeting at The Washington Times. "They are going to come to conclusions. We are going to try to assist as much as we are going to be asked. But I think it's too early to come up with a kind of fingering of somebody."

Mr. Ivry said Iraq has been supporting Palestinian terrorists in Israel by giving financial aid to the families of suicide bombers who have launched attacks.

Earlier this week, intelligence officials said one of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in the months before the attack.

The Bush administration is considering whether to target Iraq as part of an international campaign to destroy terrorists and their networks.

Some Bush administration officials, especially within the Pentagon, favor attacking Iraq when operations against Afghanistan are begun, possibly within the next few weeks. Other administration officials are said to favor limiting the first strikes to Afghanistan.

Asked about public calls for going after state sponsors of terrorism like Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said President Bush "has a clear idea in his mind and has given us our instructions as to how we will begin this campaign and what the focus of our efforts will be initially."

"We welcome the views from everybody as to how we might go about this campaign," Mr. Powell said.

Regarding bin Laden's future in Afghanistan, officials said the indications of his flight to Somalia were received in the past few days.

"There are indications he is heading to Somalia," said one official.

The indications are said to include plans for bin Laden to relocate himself and his wives and other family members from locations in Afghanistan to an undisclosed location in Somalia, the official said.

Disclosure of the relocation comes as the ruling Taliban militia announced yesterday in Kabul that bin Laden would be asked to leave the country.

A statement issued by the Ulema, or council of some 1,000 Taliban clerics, was not an order for bin Laden to leave. Afghan officials quoted by U.S. wire services stated that bin Laden would be given time to leave "whenever possible."

Asked about the Taliban statement, Mr. Powell said the announcement was not enough.

"Voluntarily or involuntarily, we believe that Osama bin Laden has to be put under control and turned over to authorities who can bring him to justice, and it should be done rather quickly," Mr. Powell said. "We want action, not just statements."

Mr. Powell said bin Laden was responsible for "tragedies around the world."

The Taliban must turn over bin Laden and "all of the other lieutenants and the infrastructure that exists within Afghanistan," Mr. Powell said.

"This isn't a campaign against one individual, but also the network that he is the leader of," Mr. Powell said. "And when we have dealt with al Qaeda, the network, Osama bin Laden, the individual, we will then broaden our campaign to go after other terrorist organizations and forms of terrorism around the world. It is a long-term campaign. It will be done in a deliberate way. It will be done in a decisive way."

A military source said bin Laden's relocation to Somalia would put that nation on the Pentagon's list of targets of planned military operations against international terrorists.

Moving to Somalia would have symbolic value for bin Laden, who has called on his followers to kill Americans.

The U.S. military withdrew from Somalia in 1993 following a deadly battle in Mogadishu that left 18 U.S. Army Rangers dead. The operation was part of a U.S. military humanitarian operation to help feed starving Somalis that degenerated into an effort to hunt down Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid.

--------

Iraq's role - if any - splits the US on possible action

Independent (UK)
By Stephen Castle and Andrew Gumbel
22 September 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=95420

Splits are developing in the Bush administration over suspected Iraqi involvement in last week's attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre.

A growing body of intelligence experts, military planners and administration officials believes Iraqi intelligence played a role in the attacks. Their number includes Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defence Secretary, and Lewis Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff.

They say Saddam Hussein, poses by far the most serious terrorist threat, citing fears that Iraq is continuing to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in the absence of UN weapons inspectors.

Several more conservative cabinet members, contacted by US media, have alluded to unnamed foreign governments both harbouring terrorist groups and sponsoring their activities. Those cabinet members include John Ashcroft, who as Attorney General is co-ordinating the criminal investigation into the attacks, and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary. But their view does not appear to be shared by Secretary of State Colin Powell's camp, which feels less certain of Iraq's involvement and worries about both the military and diplomatic consequences of waging a rerun of the Gulf War, at least at this stage.

Even beyond the Iraq issue, cabinet members have had disagreements behind the scenes over what military power, if any, to use, when to use it and who to use it against.

European diplomats returning from high-level talks in Washington said the White House was trying to find a compromise between the more hawkish leadership at the Pentagon and General Powell, who believes diplomatic pressure and intelligence-gathering are more important at this stage than military action.

Vice-President Cheney set a general tone of caution last Sunday when he said in a television interview that the administration had no evidence of Iraqi involvement, but that its policy against Saddam Hussein remained "fairly tough".

European diplomats said their impression was that, with the division between the two big offices of state, and US authorities emphasising their need for more intelligence on potential targets, military action may still be some way off.

"Colin Powell has a major role but the Pentagon takes a different position, with the White House rebalancing again," said one EU diplomat.

The hawks on Iraq argue that Sadaam Hussein has never stopped waging the Gulf War; that the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, Ramzi Yousef, was an Iraqi intelligence agent; that Osama bin Laden is working with the Iraqis; and that the Clinton administration fatally let down its guard in its belief that occasional air strikes would be sufficient to keep President Sadaam in check.

US newspapers reported that one of the suspected hijackers, Mohamed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence operative in Europe earlier this year. The Iraqis deny any role in the attacks.

--------

2 Iraqi Antiaircraft Sites Are Hit

Associated Press
Friday, September 21, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1229-2001Sep20?language=printer

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 20 -- U.S. and British warplanes hit two antiaircraft sites in southern Iraq today after coming under fire, a U.S. Air Force spokesman said. Iraq said the strike targeted "civil and service installations" in the provinces of Basra and Nasiriya.

Maj. Brett Morris, spokesman for the Joint Task Force Southwest Asia, said the planes struck Iraqi surface-to-air sites in Basra and Shahban, about 245 miles south of Baghdad.

An unidentified Iraqi military spokesman told the official Iraqi News Agency there were "signs that two enemies warplanes have been possibly hit." Morris said all aircraft, including U.S. F-16s and British Tornadoes, returned safely.

It was the second attack in a week in southern Iraq. The Iraqi military said a U.S.-British airstrike on Tuesday at Iraqi air defense installations in the southern Al-Muthana province injured four people.

Iraqi air defense targets in southern Iraq have come under attack by U.S. and British warplanes with increased regularity. The United States and Britain set up "no-fly" zones after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect anti-government forces in the north and the south.

-------- pakistan

Influential Pakistanis Call U.S. Alliance Necessary

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 21, 2001; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A691-2001Sep20?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 20 -- Religious minority groups in Pakistan are loudly protesting the country's support for a possible U.S. attack on Afghanistan, but a quieter majority of Pakistanis have accepted the government's decision as the lesser of two evils, according to a variety of observers here.

Siding against the United States could have made Pakistan an international pariah, a number of influential Pakistanis say, and possibly endangered its nuclear weapons facilities. Helping the Americans, they argue, provides a welcome excuse to jettison Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which has only brought trouble to its Pakistani ally. It means swallowing national pride but could bring desperately needed economic aid.

The question in the minds of those who support the course decided by President Pervez Musharraf is whether it will unleash uncontrollable religious violence in Pakistan by the Taliban's friends here and bring a new wave of Afghan refugees into Pakistan.

Over the past several days, Musharraf, an army general, has met with a cross section of prominent Pakistanis, including retired generals and civilian politicians, to explain his decision and solicit advice. On Wednesday he went on national television to ask his people for support, saying that in order to protect Pakistan's security and future, he had no choice but to side with the United States.

The Taliban, a rigid Islamic militia that until now counted Pakistan as one of its few friends in the world, harbors Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive U.S. officials have called the top suspect in planning the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington. The Bush administration and the U.N. Security Council have demanded bin Laden's extradition; the United States is now threatening military action against targets in Afghanistan.

One public opinion poll by a religious institute said up to 60 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of the president's decision to support the Americans, but other independent analysts contend the figure is closer to 25 percent, still a large number.

"Musharraf's new policy is not acceptable to much of public opinion, but it is in the nation's best interest, so we must try to help," said Hamid Mir, editor of Ausaf, an influential daily newspaper that often criticizes the Pakistani president.

Some opinion makers said the president's quick decision had prevented India, Pakistan's traditional rival, from taking advantage of the crisis. In this view, it preserved Pakistan's nuclear facilities from potential U.S. attack and salvaged its ability to continue supporting the Muslim guerrilla conflict in Indian Kashmir, a popular mainstay of Pakistan's foreign policy.

India and Pakistan have both tested nuclear weapons, and both claim Kashmir, a mountainous border region, as their territory.

Other political and academic figures said they hoped the new U.S.-Pakistan alliance could result in a new economic lease on life for the beleaguered country. An impoverished country of 140 million, Pakistan is mired in foreign debt and desperately seeking new Western loans and investment.

"We had an overwhelming consensus that before trying to save Afghanistan, Musharraf had to save Pakistan," said Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawyer and former Senate majority leader who took part in one of the meetings with the president. "Musharraf has chosen the lesser evil, and it will lead to some domestic unrest, but he has avoided the greater damage that would come from continuing to support the Taliban."

Some observers said Musharraf did the right thing but went about it the wrong way. They criticized him for pledging support for U.S. military action before he consulted public opinion, and said they were not convinced he had exacted enough payment from Washington. Pakistan is currently under U.S. economic sanctions because of its nuclear tests in 1998 and military coup in 1999.

But several sources said Musharraf had deliberated for 18 straight hours with his top military advisers before agreeing to support Washington.

"I'm sure they calculated that a lot of goodies will come if they ride the storm together" with the world community, said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of strategic and defense studies at Quaid-I-Azam University here, who met with Musharraf Wednesday.

Several other people who met with Musharraf -- including retired generals whose army was once allied with the United States, and radical Islamic mujaheddin fighters against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan -- said they wished the government had long ago distanced itself from the ruling Taliban regime.

Still, Musharraf's haste to comply with U.S. demands for cooperation in a military attack grated on many Pakistanis' sense of national pride.

A number of observers described the United States as an unreliable partner, pointing out that it quickly abandoned the Afghan cause once the Soviets withdrew in 1989, leaving a void in which violence and religious extremism soon spilled into Pakistan.

Indeed, it is the threat of radical Islam and the potential for full-scale extremist violence inside Pakistan that has left many Pakistanis confused and alarmed about the current crisis and their government's ability to defuse it.

"Musharraf has the latent support of Pakistan's silent majority, but it may not be enough," said Hussain. "Those who oppose him may not be large in numbers, but they are willing to shed blood."

--------

Bin Laden haven just across border

September 21, 2001
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010921-89936264.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of global terrorism, has a score of remote places in Pakistan where he would be welcome and protected from authorities, former Pakistani army and intelligence officers said yesterday.

Other intelligence sources said that if bin Laden leaves Afghanistan in response to a request from the ruling Taliban, he could seek the protection of supporters in Somalia, Chechnya or a Central Asian republic.

Speaking not for attribution, a former Pakistani intelligence chief said: "All Osama bin Laden has to do is cross over into Pakistan anywhere along a largely mountainous and unguarded 1,300-mile border and turn himself over to any sardar [tribal chief] and request his protection.

"It is both custom and tradition among the Pathan tribes that straddle both sides of the border to extend both hospitality and security for the uninvited guest.

"The Pakistani central government's writ does not run through these regions. The tribal chiefs are in charge and they are fiercely independent and deeply religious."

The Pathan mountain tribes that live in both Pakistan and Afghanistan also are known collectively as the Pashtun.

A former army corps commander, who did not wish to be identified, said if bin Laden sought refuge in a frontier tribal area, "he would become a great embarrassment to the Pakistani government. The U.S. would demand that he be found, arrested and extradited.

"But this would be mission impossible, like finding a needle in a haystack. Bin Laden is a hero to millions of fundamentalists everywhere. And in the present situation, it wouldn't take much to cause a national explosion."

U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times yesterday there were signs that bin Laden will flee to Somalia. Supporters in that country appear to be making unspecified preparations to receive bin Laden and his family, the officials said.

Other reports say the Taliban has been in contact with rebel leaders in the Russian territory of Chechnya about a new sanctuary for bin Laden since the bombings of two U.S. embassies in east Africa in 1998.

"If he leaves at all, he will go to Chechnya. He has already established a network there," a Pakistani source who has met bin Laden told the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

In Egypt, Diaa Rashwan, a Cairo-based specialist on Islamic activism, told the Associated Press that bin Laden already may have left Afghanistan, secretly fleeing to a nearby Central Asian republic such as Tajikistan, where his terror network has established cells.

Religious zealots have convinced themselves that Israel's Mossad intelligence agency organized the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in order to provoke the United States into a war against Islam. They now are hoping for some kind of U.S. military intervention in the region in order to trigger a general Muslim uprising against the American "infidel."

Mass demonstrations and a nationwide strike have been called for today in Pakistan by a coalition of 26 religious parties. Yesterday, several thousand demonstrators in Peshawar, Islamabad and Karachi burned President Bush in effigy and set fire to U.S. and Israeli flags.

Also yesterday, the Mariott Hotel in Islamabad, where 227 journalists from all over the world were staying, installed a metal detector at the entrance following rumors of a plot to blow up the establishment.

A Muslim radical buttonholed the hotel manager in the middle of the lobby and told him in a threatening voice, "I hear you have even given your roof to American journalists who are anti-Pakistani for a mere $2,000 a day."

Unfazed, the manager replied, "No, it's $6,000." He was referring to the space occupied by U.S. TV crews.

Retired Pakistani generals who are knowledgeable about the Taliban regime do not believe bin Laden is the mastermind of a global terrorist network.

"Something much bigger than bin Laden is at work here," said the former intelligence chief. "Bin Laden is a figurehead hero for jihadis everywhere" he added, "but there is a global underground that is bent on the destruction of global capitalism.

"So far, they've accomplished their mission beyond their wildest expectations. From their standpoint, a global recession is a major victory. The shadowy leader or leaders of such an enterprise remain to be determined."

Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, a former Pakistani army chief, said in an interview: "The clash of civilizations is not a threat. It is today's reality. Washington should understand that the fuse has been lit.

"The U.S. should also realize that the palpable hatred you are witnessing today was generated to a large degree by ill-guided policies, especially in the Middle East, and by a string of broken U.S. promises to Pakistan.

"My own university-educated 32-year-old son shares the sense of indignation and anger that has seized the masses. He sees 17 percent of university graduates jobless and most of them say U.S. sanctions against Pakistan are to blame."

Gen. Beg said that all of the U.S. aircraft carriers, fighter bombers and precision-guided bombs "won't make a particle of difference." Their use against targets in a Muslim country would guarantee a trail of death and destruction in a general jihad.

--------

Hard - Liners Challenge Pakistan Stance

September 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Pakistan.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Burning effigies of President Bush, thousands of people held rallies in Pakistan on Friday during a nationwide strike to protest their government's support for Washington's campaign against terrorism. At least three people were killed.

The demonstrations were called by Muslim parties after Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, backed U.S. efforts to apprehend alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to break up his suspected network operating from neighboring Afghanistan.

The day of strikes was seen as an early test of the strength of Islamic militants who support bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. Some of the heavily armed militant groups have threatened civil war in this South Asian nuclear power if Musharraf sides with Washington in military action.

Crowds as large as 12,000 people turned out at the anti-U.S. and anti-Pakistan rallies in the cities of Peshawar, Islamabad, Quetta and Lahore following services at mosques on the Muslim day of prayer.

Some of the demonstrations were smaller than expected, and most were peaceful in cities where markets were closed and the streets empty of traffic. But at least three civilians were killed and five policemen injured in clashes in Karachi, the southern port city.

In Peshawar, as many as 10,000 people marched to the center of the northwestern city, screaming slogans against the U.S. and Pakistani governments. They gathered in front of the main mosque where their religious leaders made speeches over a microphone supporting bin Laden and the Taliban, who have protected him in Afghanistan for years.

Jamming the streets, the protesters burned at least three life-size effigies of Bush, shouting, ``Long live Osama'' and other slogans.

``We will fight until the death and destruction of the United States,'' said one sign. ``Crush America and Bush,'' said another.

With heavily armed police standing by, hundreds of people watched the procession from rooftops and balconies in a city where most people are Pashtun, the same ethnic group as most of the Taliban. Still, many stores outside the city center defied the strike and remained open for business.

One tribal leader, Sabar Abdul Rehman, told the crowd that his area near the Khyber Pass will reduce the price of guns from $124 to $8. ``I invite the Americans to come to our land so you can see for yourselves what will be done to you,'' he said.

In Karachi, the country's biggest city and commercial hub, police armed with iron-tipped sticks fired tear gas and clashed with protesters who were throwing stones and burning tires in several locations. At least 70 demonstrators were arrested and one was killed, police said.

The largest rally in the city of 12 million took place in the working-class neighborhood of Banaras Chowk, where about 10,000 protesters gathered. Some threw rocks that injured five policemen.

In other incidents, one person was killed when a security guard at a factory fired a gun at demonstrators who were trying to block a road in the Mauripur industrial district, and a shopkeeper was beaten to death by protesters when he refused to close his business for the strike, police said.

Islamic militant groups also called a strike in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, and some 200 people demonstrated outside the main mosque in Srinigar shouting slogans in support of bin Laden. But leaders of Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Party Hurriyat Conference, did not join the strike and said most shops that participated did so out of fear of militants.

In Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, the service at the towering Lal Masjid mosque warned Musharraf not to cooperate with the United States. ``The nation will not accept your decision, and any collaboration with the United States is treason,'' the preacher said.

After prayers, a crowd of about 3,000 gathered outside the mosque, carrying banners condemning the governments of the United States and Pakistan.

``Afghanistan is the graveyard of the Americans,'' they chanted, and vowed to join a ``jihad,'' or holy war against the United States.

In the southwestern city of Quetta, several thousand people rallied outside the central mosque holding signs saying ``Osama: Hero No. 1.'' They chanted ``Death to America'' and ``America's graveyard: Afghanistan.'' The rally dispersed peacefully after several hours.

In Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's most populous province, 12,000 people rallied outside the Masjid-e-Shudha mosque. The key speaker, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan's main religious parties, opposed any attack on Afghanistan and called Musharraf a coward.

--------

Pakistan protests turn violent

BBC News
Friday, 21 September, 2001,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1555000/1555688.stm

Four people have died and several others have been injured in the Pakistani city of Karachi as pro-Taleban protests there turned violent.

They are the first deaths after days of protests against the Pakistan Government's decision to back the United States in its campaign against Afghanistan.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country in what correspondents describe as the largest such gatherings in recent days.

But correspondents say most of the protesters appear to be supporters of religious parties who have called the nationwide strike.

Lynching

Three people were shot dead in Karachi during violent demonstrators in areas dominated by Afghans.

Police used tear gas to break up several rallies as the demonstrators hurled stones and attacked shops and business establishments.

A shopkeeper was lynched to death when he tried to defy the strike call and open his shop.

In Peshawar, which borders Afghanistan, angry protesters gathered before and after Friday prayers to hear religious leaders make speeches in support of the Taleban and Osama Bin Laden.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged to co-operate with Washington in trying to capture Bin Laden, who it says was behind last week's attacks in New York and Washington.

Speakers at the rallies attacked US President George W Bush's use of the word "crusade" to describe his planned war on terrorism.

"If America wants a crusade, then we are ready for a holy war," said one preacher.

Cleric warning

In the capital Islamabad, a cleric at the Lal Masjid mosque warned President Musharraf against co-operating with the US.

"Musharraf, listen: The nation will not accept your decision, and any collaboration with the United States is treason," he said.

"The government's hasty decision doesn't enjoy support of the people," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's main religious party.

Correspondents say Pakistan is critical to the US campaign and the strike will be an important barometer of public opinion.

Senior Muslim clerics in Afghanistan have called on Bin Laden to leave the country voluntarily.

But they have also passed a resolution calling for a jihad, or holy war, in response to any American attack on Afghanistan, and vowed retaliation against any country supporting US action.

A Peshawar protest organiser told the Associated Press news agency: "If our government gives air or ground space to America, we will declare a jihad against the government."

High alert

In Karachi, some 15,000 police have been put on high alert, concentrating on the airport as well as foreign consulates and businesses.

Police officials said they had received assurances from Muslim leaders that there would be no violence.

A former Pakistani intelligence chief, Hameed Gul, warned that any US attack on Afghanistan would destabilise the entire region.

Pakistan's main political parties, including the Pakistan People's Party and the Muslim League, have however indicated they will support President Musharraf's stance.

Kashmir protest

Meanwhile, police in Indian-administered Kashmir fired teargas on hundreds of Muslims protesting against a possible US attack on Afghanistan.

Security forces also used batons to disperse the demonstrators, who took to the streets of the capital Srinagar to mark a general strike.

The demonstration turned violent after Friday prayers as militants torched US flags outside the city's main mosque.

-------- russia

Russian troops and armour mass on Afghan border
Moscow beefs up surveillance in frontier zone

Ian Traynor in Dushanbe
Friday September 21, 2001
The Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,555510,00.html

The Kremlin is pouring troops, tanks, and military equipment on to the border with Afghanistan in anticipation of an American onslaught on the Taliban regime.

In addition to 10,000 border guards under Russian command guarding the ex-Soviet state of Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, Moscow has sent tanks and several thousand crack troops to the border zone over the past week, according to Tajik, Afghan opposition, and western European sources in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

For days the airport in Dushanbe has been closed for several hours each day as the Russians fly in more men and equipment. A tank battalion was seen moving to the border last weekend.

On Wednesday Russia's top army officer, General Anatoly Kvashnin, arrived in Dushanbe to be briefed by commanders of the 15,000-strong 201st motorised infantry division, most of which has been moved from Dushanbe to the border in recent days. The forces have been put on high alert.

The Russians are also believed to have updated some of their aged surveillance equipment on the Afghan border.

A western diplomat who has toured parts of the 700-mile border that Tajikistan shares with Afghanistan said the Russian equipment was in a sorry state.

The Kremlin security council chief, Vladimir Rushailo, went to the border yesterday to in spect the Russian forces, accompanied by the Tajik president, Emomali Rahmonov.

The Izvestiya newspaper in Moscow said the intelligence gathered from a fibre optic spy station could be shared with the Americans. "The purchase of information from this station will inevitably become one topic of negotiations between Russia and the United States," the newspaper said.

Unlike the other Afghanistan "frontline states" of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, Tajikistan is widely seen as a Russian satellite.

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, ordered the troops on the Afghan border and in Dushanbe to be beefed up and put on alert in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington.

Most of the Afghan territory on the other side of the Russia-secured border is under the control not of the Taliban, but of the opposition Northern Al liance forces backed by Russia Iran and India.

The 201st division also has air support units, fuelling speculation that the Russian build-up could be deployed to join the expected US attacks on the Taliban.

But Gen Kvashnin, Mr Ivanov and other senior Russian officials have repeatedly stressed that they have no intention of participating in any war, nor of allowing Tajikistan to grant the Americans use of military facilities to attack Afghanistan.

It seemed more plausible that the Russians were tightening control of the border to try to prevent any spillover of conflict into Tajikistan, impoverished after years of civil war involving Islamist militants in the mid-90s.

"I don't think these reports are true. I see no preparations in Dushanbe," said Colonel Saleh Registani, a senior officer of the Northern Alliance.

-------- u.n.

U.N. seeks bigger role in anti-terrorism

September 21, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010921-5578837.htm

The United Nations yesterday sought a bigger role in the battle against terrorism, calling a special General Assembly meeting for Oct. 1.

The announcement in New York followed a statement Wednesday by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the world body would push to complete a global anti-terror treaty in response to last week's attacks in New York and Washington.

"The General Assembly is in the process of discussing a convention against terrorism," Mr. Annan said. "We already have 12 conventions. I think that this year, given what we lived through last week, we can go forward and conclude the 13th convention.

"That will impose certain obligations on member states and encourage them to act together and cooperate," he added.

Apart from resolutions passed by the General Assembly and the Security Council condemning the Sept. 11 attacks, the United Nations has been on the sidelines of the U.S.-led response.

Moreover, U.S. officials have voiced skepticism at calls by nations such as China, Iran and Pakistan that any military action first be approved by the Security Council.

The General Assembly special meeting was called following a decision this week to postpone the assembly's annual gathering of world leaders.

The Bush administration said the United States most likely will participate in the upcoming session.

"I suspect we will be" part of the session, a State Department official said. "We've been leading a global coalition - but I can't even comment on something that's a theory."

Despite its skepticism over Security Council involvement in military plans, Washington has said the United Nations has an important role to play in the fight against terrorism.

In the past - as during the 1999 Kosovo crisis - the United States avoided seeking approval for using force from the Security Council, where China and Russia have veto power as permanent members.

It did, however, win Security Council backing for the 1991 Persian Gulf war to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

Following last week's attacks, some countries have demanded evidence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden's involvement before endorsing military action.

Russia and France said yesterday they would like the Security Council to take an active role in coordinating the global effort, according to a joint statement released by the Kremlin after a telephone conversation between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac.

The leaders "stressed the need to involve all international mechanisms, and first of all the United Nations and the Security Council," the statement said.

The State Department official said the world organization is already a major player in the anti-terrorist effort.

"We'd like to use it and already have, as a place where countries come together to deal with issues that threaten peace and stability in the world.

"If we decide to get another resolution for whatever reasons, or if someone puts one forward, that's always a possibility. But the ones so far couldn't be stronger in their support and solidarity, and I don't know why they can't be taken at their value," the official said.

On Tuesday, the Security Council called on Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to hand over bin Laden "immediately and unconditionally."

The Council froze Taliban assets and imposed an international flight ban on Afghanistan's Ariana airlines in November 1999 to pressure the hard-line regime to turn over bin Laden. It added an arms embargo on the Taliban in January.

The assembly this week also postponed a summit on children, which would have brought 75 presidents and prime ministers to New York.

Yesterday, the United Nations canceled another international conference - on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) - because of the attacks on the United States.

President Bush has said he opposes the CTBT, which the United States helped initiate and signed under President Clinton in 1996. Congress refused to ratify it in 1999, and Mr. Bush has made clear he has no intention to resubmit it.

A U.N. spokesman said most countries involved in the CTBT conference wanted a delay after the general debate was postponed. The conference was to have taken place Tuesday to Thursday next week, alongside the General Assembly session.

"The new dates of the conference should coincide with the rescheduling of the first week of the general debate of the 56th session of the General Assembly," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

-------- u.s.

Pentagon prepares variety of responses

September 21, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010921-13315560.htm

The Pentagon is planning to use thousands of special-operations forces and send additional combat planes to the Persian Gulf region for a variety of possible attacks on terrorists, defense officials say.

The sources said there is no final battle plan for what the administration promises will be a long struggle against terrorists and countries such as Afghanistan that provide a haven to them. One senior official said he does not believe future deployments will involve huge numbers of ground troops.

"This is a special-operations war," he said.

The official said a consensus has been reached that "Operation Infinite Justice" will require extensive use of Army Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force and their commando air assets. They would be backed by some regular infantry units. The first likely operation would be a combined air/special-operations strike on Afghanistan to eliminate terrorist Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization.

President Bush wants bin Laden "dead or alive" for purportedly masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed more than 6,000 people.

Meanwhile, the White House has made decisions on how to spend $20 billion in emergency funding for the war on terrorism. A military source says $4.6 billion will be spent on buying precision-guided munitions such as satellite-guided bombs, cruise missiles and air-to-air rockets.

The White House also will spend money to buy new types of surveillance equipment and upgrade the Navy's EA-6B aerial electronic jammer.

Army Secretary Thomas White, in the most explicit statement to date on the breadth of the emerging assault, said yesterday, "We are ready to conduct sustained land combat operations as determined by the secretary of defense and the president. We are ready to deliver it across the whole array of force structure - heavy, light, air mobile, airborne, special operations. All of the combat capabilities."

Pentagon officials say the Army, which was largely kept out of the 1999 air assault on Serbia, is pushing for a major role in Mr. Bush's declared war on terrorism.

Aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had mounted an effort to cut the Army's 10 active divisions down to eight. But the Army appears to have won the budget battle, at least for now, to stay largely intact.

A senior Pentagon official said yesterday he has heard of no firm plans to introduce large numbers of ground troops into the region that includes the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, a predominately Muslim country that has pledged to help the U.S. catch bin Laden.

"The kind of job required does not require a lot of numbers," this official said. "I don't believe you are going to see any divisions that are deployed over there. Most of the land operations will be run by special operations."

Mr. White, appearing at a Pentagon press conference, declined to discuss any specific Army mission.

He made his remarks a day after Mr. Rumsfeld authorized the first major deployment of forces in Operation Infinite Justice.

More than 100 combat and support aircraft will move to the Gulf region in the coming days for possible air strikes against Afghanistan and other countries that harbor terrorists.

Possible additional targets are Iran and Iraq.

Mr. White said the deployment order also includes unspecified Army units. "A lot more will come," he said.

For starters, the Pentagon will likely want an increased Army presence in Kuwait to deter Saddam Hussein from trying to capitalize on the new war by invading Kuwait, as his forces did in 1990.

But defense officials say it would be too risky to mount a large land invasion of Afghanistan, a hilly, desert country the Soviets tried but failed to tame in the 1980s.

Instead, the most likely scenario is for Army special-operations units to infiltrate the country from Pakistan or from Navy carriers.

Backed by air power, the commandos would raid suspected bin Laden hide-outs.

The carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its battle group left Norfolk on Wednesday for a six-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea.

When it and the additional Air Force aircraft arrive in the region, the U.S. air armada will exceed 500.

The count includes jets already stationed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, and the air assets on two carriers, the Carl Vinson and the Enterprise, already in the region.

In addition, the carrier USS Kitty Hawk yesterday left its port in Japan for an undisclosed location.

The Air Force is also prepositioning B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. It can also dispatch B-2 stealth bombers on long strike missions from Whitman Air Force Base, Mo.

Mr. Rumsfeld plans to keep a tight lid on public information about troop movements.

Special-operations forces rely heavily on absolute operational security.

How and when they carry out some missions in this new war may never be reported back to the Pentagon.

"What we're doing is we are trying to get ourselves arranged in the world with our forces in places that we believe conceivably could be useful in the event the president decided to use them for one thing or another," the defense secretary said. "And I am not going to describe what forces we're moving, I'm not going to discuss the dates and times of when they leave and when they're going to arrive."

The defense secretary also said the public should be prepared for a war with no parallels.

"What we're engaged in is something that is very, very different from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf war, Kosovo, Bosnia, the kinds of things that people think of when they use the word 'war' or 'campaign' or 'conflict.' We really, almost, are going to have to fashion a new vocabulary and different constructs for thinking about what it is we're doing."

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Bush gives speech as war commander

September 21, 2001
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010921-69501032.htm

President Bush, looking confident and in command, delivered a toughly worded call to arms to Congress and the nation last night to prepare for an all-out war against America's terrorist enemies.

Appearing determined in his new role as a wartime president, and speaking in a calm but steely voice, his delivery drawing comparisons to the "Great Communicator" President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Bush set the nation on a war footing for the first time since the Persian Gulf war.

"Tonight he became a great communicator. He filled a huge stage that had to be filled," said Republican strategist Bill Dal Col who ran Steve Forbes' presidential campaign against Mr. Bush in last year's Republican primaries.

The president, repeatedly interrupted by applause, explained the elusive nature of the terrorists and why it will take time to hunt them down in what will likely be a long drawn-out struggle.

Mr. Bush demanded that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan turn over all of the terrorist leaders it harbors "or share in their fate." He reassured Americans that he would use "every resource at our command" to aggressively retaliate for the suicide airline attacks on New York and Washington that left more than 6,000 dead or missing.

Mr. Bush told the nation that "we will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail" until terrorism has been destroyed.

Unlike some of the earlier speeches in his young presidency, when he seemed a little tentative at times, Mr. Bush appeared in charge last night, fully presidential in expression and tone.

Only this time he was coming before the country as commander-in-chief, declaring war on an unseen enemy spread out over many countries, and rallying Americans for a long, armed engagement that could take years.

"He sent a direct message to the American people and to the world. He clearly got across the point that while bloodied we will not bow, that we will punish our enemies," Mr. Dal Col said.

"It was a powerful speech. He went beyond what people would expect of his abilities. I don't think anyone could have delivered it better," he said.

"I thought he appeared very strong and very presidential. He's a plain-talking, no-frills speaker but this time he was eloquent and almost Churchillian, inspiring the country," said Frank Donatelli, a former White House political adviser to Mr. Reagan.

"This will go down as one of the great speeches in American history," said pollster John Zogby. "He measured up tonight in every way. He was compassionate and he called us to greatness. I think he rallied the troops and rallied the American people to what needs to be done."

Going into last night's speech, Mr. Bush already had the strong, nearly united support of the American people for retaliating against the terrorists, according to the latest polls.

"The public is already convinced that military action has to be taken. Normally, the toughest thing for a president is to convince the public that military force is necessary and that our strategic interests are involved. In this case, the public is already there," Mr. Donatelli said.

Other wartime presidents have not had the intense support that Mr. Bush has, according to the latest polls. President Lyndon Johnson was never able to fully rally the country behind America's commitment to support the non-communist government in South Vietnam. Former President George Bush faced a divided Congress on the Persian Gulf war before troops were committed to that action.

Nevertheless, one of the president's major tasks was to explain who the enemy is and make clear it could take an extended campaign that risks the lives of American soldiers to end future terrorist threats. Unlike the Persian Gulf war, where the clear objective was to drive occupying Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, the profile of the enemy that Mr. Bush faces - and its whereabouts - is less clear.

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Second deployment order signed

USA TODAY
09/21/2001
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/21/buildup-intensifies.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon on Friday ordered more Air Force planes to support a buildup of U.S. firepower in the Persian Gulf area, as the Bush administration prepared to strike back at terrorism. A senior defense official said fewer than a dozen aircraft, including refueling planes, were covered by the order, which followed the deployment earlier this week of more than 100 combat and support aircraft to the Gulf area. The official discussed the matter on condition of anonymity and provided few details. The Pentagon has kept a lid on most information about military deployments following last week's twin terrorist attacks.

Victoria Clarke, spokeswoman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said the U.S. military is ready, but she did not comment on specific deployments.

"You'll see a lot of activity," she said in an interview. "We're preparing for what could very well be a wide range of options. So, you will see a lot of people moving, you'll see a lot of equipment moving."

The buildup of American forces in the Gulf region and a simultaneous bolstering of U.S. territorial defenses is requiring call-ups of thousands of members of the National Guard and Reserve.

The Air Force said Thursday that more than 5,000 reservists had been called to active duty. They include a B-52 bomber unit at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and a B-1 bomber unit at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., both of which are expected to fly to forward bases in the Gulf area.

Some of the reserves are from fighter units to be used as extra defenders of U.S. airspace.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday that although the Gulf is the focus of U.S. deployments right now, the coming fight will look nothing like the knockout punch U.S.-led forces delivered in the 1991 Gulf War.

"What we're engaged in is something that is very, very different from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Bosnia, the kinds of things people think of when they use the word 'war,' or 'campaign,' or 'conflict,"' Rumsfeld said.

President Bush made similar points Thursday night in his speech before Congress. Speaking to members of the armed forces, Bush told them why they are being called upon:

"This is not ... just America's fight. And what is at stake is not just America's freedom. This is the world's fight. This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom."

Rumsfeld said the American campaign will not mean the end of terrorism.

"I think what you can try to do is to go after this worldwide problem in a way that we can continue our way of life," Rumsfeld said. "It strikes at our way of life, and while we may not eliminate it completely from the face of the Earth, which we surely will not," it can be better controlled, he said.

The Air Force announced that 5,131 members of the Air Force National Guard and Air Force Reserve have been ordered to active duty. They are from 29 units in 24 states and the District of Columbia.

"No other single action more clearly demonstrates the national resolve than to mobilize the National Guard and Reserve forces of America," said Craig Duehring, the Pentagon's chief of reserve affairs.

Rumsfeld has said he expects 35,500 members of the Reserve and National Guard to be called up.

The Pentagon is repositioning military forces to prepare for action, Rumsfeld said, but would not provide details. Other officials said both active and reserve forces are beginning to move.

The Air Force is sending 100 to 130 aircraft to the Gulf region, a senior defense official said, including fighters and B-1 and B-52 bombers. Also, tanker aircraft began deploying from U.S. bases Thursday to establish an "air bridge" for refueling fighters and bombers as they cross the Atlantic.

The Air Force has fighter aircraft in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the Army keeps a virtually permanent presence in Kuwait with soldiers and war materiel sufficient to equip an additional 5,000 troops.

The Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters is on the Gulf island emirate Bahrain, and it normally keeps one aircraft carrier on patrol in the Gulf year-round. It now has one in the Gulf and one nearby in the Arabian Sea; a third - the USS Theodore Roosevelt - left port at Norfolk, Va., on Wednesday en route to the Mediterranean. Each carrier has 75 aircraft aboard and is accompanied by a dozen warships.

Early Friday in Japan, the USS Kitty Hawk, the only U.S. aircraft carrier stationed in the western Pacific, left its port in Yokosuka for an undisclosed location. The carrier has a crew of 5,500 sailors, naval aviators and Marines and typically carries 70 aircraft.

A contingent of about 2,100 Marines also is in the Gulf, and a similar-size unit is headed in that direction.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said bluntly that a ground war is expected. "We're going to have people on the ground somewhere, sometime and we're going to have to face these people - go into the shadows where they live and work and take them out," he said Friday on NBC's Today.

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U.S. Has Cruise Missiles for Strike

September 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Cruise-Missiles.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of low-flying, radar-evading cruise missiles are in the military's arsenal should President Bush order long-range strikes in retaliation for last week's terrorist attacks.

The unmanned weapons can be fired from Air Force B-52 bombers, Navy attack submarines, and guided missile cruisers.

The missile flies at subsonic speeds, close to the ground to avoid radar detection. Its guidance system analyzes the terrain it flies over with a map stored in its computer, which enables the missile to modify its course as it heads toward its programmed target. It can hit targets day or night, fly up to 1,000 miles over an evasive route and avoid an enemy's air defenses.

A drawback, however, is the missile cannot find a target that is moving about with little warning. Dozens of cruise missiles were fired at Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan training camps in 1998 but did little more than destroy empty tents. He and his lieutenants had left.

The weapons burst into the public's eye during the opening phases of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and have been used repeatedly in combat ever since. Targeted for heavily defended targets or precise military sites, the missiles hit Iraq in 1993, Bosnia in 1995, Iraq again in 1996 and Kosovo in 1999.

More than 300 Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in Operation Desert Storm, the military designation for the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The weapon was chosen so often during the 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia that the Air Force's stocks dwindled as low as 120. A senior Air Force official said Friday the service's inventory has been replenished but would not say how many missiles that entails.

The Navy has about 2,000 Tomahawks, the Air Force more than 1,500 of its air-to-ground versions, spokesmen said. The Pentagon is looking into adding more to its stocks.

The missiles were developed as nuclear weapons, but in the post-Cold War world, conversions have been ordered to switch older versions to conventional warheads.

Boeing Co. is under contract to convert 322 of the Air Force's nuclear missiles into nonnuclear ones. The first of the converted weapons was delivered in 1999, and production may be speeded up, said a military source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Navy is developing advanced versions of the missile to improve its ability to change course in flight or adjust its mission.

Air Force B-52 bombers, which could carry air-launched cruise missiles to the fight, have been ordered from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to the Arabian Sea region outside the Persian Gulf.

They are expected to arrive within several days, defense officials said Friday.

Guided missile cruisers and submarines are already there as part of the normal complement in aircraft carrier battle groups. The carriers USS Enterprise and USS Carl Vinson have been ordered to stay in the region.

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Bios of Armed Forces Commanders

September 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Commanders.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military commanders who will lead U.S. forces in the fight against terrorist organizations have served in conflicts from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf to the Balkans.

They now command Army, Navy and Air Force components of the U.S. Central Command, covering some two dozen countries in one of the most volatile parts of the world.

Their region stretches from East Africa through the Arabian Peninsula to Pakistan and includes 70 percent of the world's oil fields.

In one of the U.S. military's major theaters of operation, the command is helping enforce the 'no-fly' zone over Iraq and played a leading role in the Gulf War.

Here are brief biographies:

--

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks is the commander in chief of Central Command.

Franks was assigned to the 9th Infantry Division in Vietnam and later got a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Texas, Arlington.

He was posted to the Pentagon in 1976, serving as army inspector general in the investigations division and later headed congressional activities in the office of the Army Chief of Staff.

Franks earned a master's degree in public administration at Shippensburg University.

He was an assistant division commander with the 1st Calvary in the Persian Gulf War and commanded the Second Infantry division in Korea in the mid-1990s.

Franks became chief of the Central Command in July 2000.

--

Marine Lt. Gen. Michael P. DeLong is deputy commander in chief of the Central Command.

He served in a Marine helicopter squadron and took part in the evacuation from Vietnam.

DeLong also served in the Gulf campaign that kicked invading Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and was a commander in the campaign to bring food to lawless Somalia in the early 1990s.

He has held numerous staff assignments, including in intelligence, arms control and training.

DeLong is a Naval Academy graduate and holds a master's degree in industrial management from Central Michigan University.

--

Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr., is head of the U.S. 5th Fleet and the Navy component of U.S. Central Command.

The Navy pilot served two tours of duty in Vietnam.

He received an award for ``inspirational leadership'' after he led his squadron into combat in the 1986 raid on Libya that was in retaliation for the fatal bombing of a West Berlin disco frequented by US servicemen.

Moore is a 1968 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He earned his first master's degree in international relations from Salve Regina University and his second in strategic policy at the Naval War College.

He was deputy director for operations for the Joint Staff.

--

Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek has headed the Third U.S. Army and U.S. Army Forces Central Command since June 2000.

Mikolashek served in combat in Vietnam and has held a number of staff and operational jobs.

He was an aide to the U.S. military representative to NATO, chief of operations and contingency planning division at Army headquarters and chief of military cooperation in Kuwait.

Mikolashek has a master of arts degree in education administration from Michigan State University.

He is a former Ranger, a member of the Army's elite special forces unit.

--

Lt. Gen. Charles F. Wald is commander of the 9th Air Force and the air component of Central Command.

He logged more than 450 combat hours over Vietnam and was commander from 1995-97 of the 31st Fighter Wing, which took part in the Bosnia bombing campaign.

He has held a number of defense planning posts, including vice director for strategic plans and policy from 1998-2000 at the Joint Staff.

Wald has a bachelor's degree in pre-law from North Dakota State University, where he was a football star. He earned a masters degree in international relations from Troy State University.

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Rumsfeld Invokes Pentagon Debt Act

September 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Pentagon.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a sign of urgency, the Pentagon invoked an obscure law Friday allowing it to incur debt beyond what Congress has authorized.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked the Feed and Forage Act, a mechanism dating to the Civil War, which permits the Defense Department to buy clothing, food, fuel, medical supplies and other provisions in excess of its budget.

Similarly, it can take on unbudgeted financial obligations associated with calling reserve forces to active duty.

``Invoking the Feed and Forage Act ... will ensure the Department of Defense can fully support units of the U.S. armed forces involved in military operations and activities resulting from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the aircraft crash in Pennsylvania,'' the Pentagon said in a statement.

It said Congress was notified on Thursday. Although this allows the Pentagon to take on unbudgeted expenses, it is not permitted to actually pay these bills until Congress appropriates the extra money.

The statement did not say how much money the Pentagon might need to commit beyond its current budget.

The Feed and Forage Act was last invoked in 1996 after the terrorist attack on an Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia. Although it was invoked then, it was not used.


-------- OTHER

-------- human rights

Caution Is Urged on Terrorism Legislation
Measures Reviewed To Protect Liberties

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 21, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A370-2001Sep20?language=printer

The Justice Department's anti-terrorism legislation, which once seemed likely to sweep through Congress on the storm of anger arising out of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, has been slowed as legislators and public interest groups begin to review its provisions.

With dozens of proposed changes in criminal and immigration law, the package put together by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and his staff has quickly drawn opposition from some members of Congress, as well as a diverse collection of interest groups.

Yesterday, more than 125 of those organizations joined in a statement warning that legislation and regulations adopted in the heat of anger could "erode the liberties and freedoms that are at the core of the American way of life."

The coalition, whose members range from the conservative Eagle Forum and the Gun Owners of America to the liberal National Lawyers Guild and the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, called for calm and deliberate action that honors constitutional rights -- especially free speech -- and avoids stigmatizing any racial, religious or ethnic group.

Organizations representing Muslim, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese and Arab Americans joined the alliance, along with such traditional civil rights groups as the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

The target of their concern is still considered a work in progress as Justice Department lawyers and staff members from the House and Senate judiciary committees try to identify areas of agreement and work out points of disagreement.

Those differences "are expected to be narrowed" by the time the Senate panel holds a hearing on the measure on Tuesday, a committee spokesman said yesterday. House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) told reporters that lawmakers may be able to move quickly on sections of the legislation dealing with changes needed specifically for the current investigation.

Among the most controversial sections are those that would widen the government's ability to detain or deport foreigners. The government already has that power over foreigners who support terrorist organizations. The legislation would expand that to foreigners who support a sub-group not involved in terrorism but which is associated with a terrorist organization.

The provision would apply "to all aliens regardless of when they entered the United States or when they committed the terrorist activity," according to a Justice Department analysis of the legislation.

Another provision would allow the attorney general to detain a foreigner by certifying that he or she poses a threat to national security -- even a person who has been granted political asylum in this country and, thus, cannot be deported.

Already under sharp criticism is a section that would permit a foreigner to be detained for an unlimited amount of time during a national emergency, such as the situation in the past week when scores of foreigners have been taken into custody.

The proposed changes also would permit investigators with simple search warrants to seize devices with voice mail messages and listen to them. Currently, investigators must obtain a wiretap court order before playing such a tape. This provision also would apply to unopened e-mail on computers seized pursuant to a search warrant and even to e-mail and unopened voice mail held by an individual's communications service provider.

Many provisions have no opposition. For example, one gives the secretary of state authority to pay a reward of $10 million or more in a case where "doing so would be important to the national security interests of the United States," according to the Justice Department analysis. One addition to the reward provision, the analysis says, would apply to "the identification or location of an individual who holds a key leadership position in a terrorist organization" -- such as Osama bin Laden.

Several provisions are designed to permit law enforcement officials and intelligence operators to share information obtained by their separate investigations. For example, wiretaps authorized under criminal investigations could be disclosed to the intelligence community. Now, such distribution for reasons other than use in a criminal probe is prohibited.

In addition, wiretaps authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which are obtained from a special court and without probable-cause requirements needed for criminal cases, also would be shared. Some critics of this proposal suggest criminal investigators unable to get a court order for a wiretap would use the intelligence rationale. FISA wiretaps also would be allowed to continue for up to a year, rather than the current 90 days.

Another change sought by the Justice Department would permit the use in U.S. courts of a foreign government's intercept of a U.S. citizen's telephone conversations abroad, "even if the collection violated" the Fourth Amendment rights guaranteed in this country. The one limitation is that U.S. law enforcement officials could not have been involved in arranging or suggesting the overseas wiretap.

Investigators also would be granted access to education records now shielded by privacy protections of federal education laws. That change would apply to general criminal prosecutions, as well as national security cases.

The legislation also addresses penalty issues. Anyone convicted of involvement in planning a terrorist act would be subject to the maximum penalty allowed for commission of the terrorism. This change would bring the terrorism conspiracy penalty provisions in line with those applicable in drug crimes.

Another provision would subject those convicted of terrorist crimes to post-imprisonment supervision. That means law enforcement officials could track them and maintain oversight over them after they have served any prison term, potentially for their lifetimes. A similar provision is part of the drug laws.

Staff writers Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Krim contributed to this report.

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Unfolding Catastrophe for Afghan Refugees

By Nora Boustany
Friday, September 21, 2001; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1152-2001Sep20?language=printer

In the clamor over how to retaliate for last week's deadly suicide hijackings, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is ringing its own alarm bell about the humanitarian disaster confronting millions of Afghan refugees.

Yesterday, the UNHCR launched a preliminary global appeal for $6 million and urged governments to factor into their budgets funding for the dire problems of the displaced.

High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers issued an impassioned plea in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington to give some consideration to the unfolding catastrophe for about 3.7 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and Iran and the 1 million displaced persons inside Afghanistan.

UNHCR spokesman Panos Moumtzis said yesterday that Afghans were fleeing not only civil war, drought and the oppressive rule of the Taliban, but also the "added dimension" of a possible major U.S. military attack because Afghanistan's Taliban rulers harbor chief terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden.

In Islamabad Wednesday, the regional spokesman for the World Food Program said pre-famine conditions existed in Afghanistan. The Reuters news agency quoted him as saying that people who made it across the border were eating grass and animal fodder.

Lamenting the pullout of all U.N. humanitarian workers from Afghanistan because of fears of a U.S. attack, Lubbers expressed hopes that Washington would work with others, particularly Pakistani authorities, to "improve the situation."

"This is about cooperation to fight terrorism and this is about making it possible" for people to work there, the former Dutch prime minister said during a briefing at the National Press Club. He indicated that the United States had promised to assist with financial resources and logistics.

On Tuesday, Lubbers met with the State Department's Marc Grossman, undersecretary for political affairs; Alan Kreczko, acting secretary for population, refugees and migration; James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific; and Christina Rocca, assistant secretary for South Asia. Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary for global affairs, gave a lunch for Lubbers that was also attended by James Ziglar, the new commissioner for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Andrew Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and others.

Russian: 'International Standards' Needed

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, saying both Russia and the United States were democracies under the threat of terrorists, said the two countries had no choice but to fight this war "together." When asked what he thought of Russian generals warning against a repetition of the messy, prolonged war they experienced in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Ivanov answered: "Well, you have to be careful."

Before sovereign nations accept foreign troops on their soil, he said, questions about the "purpose" of the deployment and the "consequences" of any military action should be asked. He added that the goals of any concerted action against terrorism should be clear, and he sought to underscore "how fragile things are in Central Asia in countries neighboring Afghanistan."

Speaking at a dinner given by the Nixon Center at the Monarch Hotel Wednesday, Ivanov said, "We need to develop very clear international standards, not just label people for political reasons." There should be no double standards, he warned. "There are no good or bad terrorists."

"Today," he continued, "we are sure there are countries that are allies with the United States which finance these[terrorist] organizations. We should be very candid and very frank. You cannot say, if this country is an ally we should close our eyes, and if not, we should prosecute it." He emphasized the need to develop a "global mechanism" that would deal with capital flows and information technology and a legal framework for combating terrorism and managing border controls. "This is not a one-time action, this is a long, continuous work and we are prepared to work together in this area with the United States," he said.

He referred to a new starting point between President Bush and President Vladimir Putin. Confronting new realities, "we need to forget the stereotypes of the Cold War," he said.

OAS Weighs Anti-Terrorism Measures

Diego Garcia Sayan, Peru's foreign minister, arrived in Washington yesterday morning to attend a permanent council meeting of the Organization of American States to consider new anti-terrorism measures and defense cooperation under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance.

He and President Alejandro Toledo were having breakfast with U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Sept. 11 in the government house in Lima when Powell started receiving notes about one plane, then another, crashing into the World Trade Center in New York. "Oh, terrible," were the first words he uttered before they headed to a session of the OAS General Assembly for a vote, which was rushed through so Powell could leave.

Garcia, previously minister of justice in Peru's provisional government, said his country would like to share its experience with terrorism during the 1990s and warned that a scorched-earth policy, employed for many years in his country, only made things worse. "Extreme measures may weaken democratic institutions and backfire and strengthen the enemy you are trying to weaken," he cautioned.

-------- police / prisoners

FBI expands terrorist hunt into U.S. banks

September 21, 2001
By Jerry Seper and Patrice Hill
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010921-17737826.htm

The FBI's manhunt for the terrorists who attacked America expanded yesterday to U.S. banks, as agents began tracking the money trail of those who financed the scheme, while a multiagency task force investigates whether some of those involved benefited financially in last-minute stock trades.

In seeking to answer the question of how the plot was financed, the FBI asked banks nationwide to search for financial transactions that may have been made by the 19 hijackers who commandeered the four jetliners used in the attacks, along with others now being sought.

"The FBI is requesting that all financial institutions check their records for any relationships or transactions with the named suspects," said an alert sent to banks by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt told a Senate committee yesterday the FBI-led task force is reviewing records to determine whether terrorists or their accomplices attempted to profit from the attacks by betting in the financial markets that the stocks of those companies targeted would fall.

Records show a highly unusual amount of activity in put-option contracts on the stock of AMR Corp. (American Airlines), UAL Corp. (United Airlines) and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. in the days before the terrorists crashed American and United airliners into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Morgan Stanley was one of the biggest tenants of the trade towers demolished in the attacks.

The stocks of all three companies fell precipitously when trading resumed this week. The put-option contracts, which rise when a stock falls, enable investors to profit from a stock's decline. It is estimated that the holders of United and American put-option contracts made millions of dollars.

"If there is any possibility that any nefarious activity took place in our markets, you and the American public can be sure that we are going to pursue it and bring anyone who is involved with it to justice," Mr. Pitt told the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

The FBI, which has detained 115 persons and is seeking to question 190 others in the attacks, arrested Nabil al-Marabh, a man identified as having the same name as a known associate of Osama bin Laden. The FBI's Terrorism Task Force is trying to determine whether the man, taken into custody in Chicago, is the bin Laden associate.

Al-Marabh is being held on a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service request and a warrant issued in Boston for assault with a knife.

He pleaded guilty in Boston in December to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and received a suspended sentence of six months, but later violated his parole.

Following Attorney General John Ashcroft's comments this week that the terrorists who attacked New York and Washington likely were "harbored, supported, sustained and protected" by foreign governments, police across Europe yesterday reported a number of arrests and detentions of suspected accomplices. Police in Germany, Belgium, France, Poland and Spain continued to trace the movements of several persons suspected of having ties to bin Laden's al-Qaeda organizations.

German officials have said that 100 guerrillas trained by the Taliban in Afghanistan may be living undercover in Germany. Belgian police arrested two men in Brussels they described as North Africans who belonged to "a radical Islamic movement" with ties to al-Qaeda, and police in Poland said they had evidence that a "significant element" of the scheme to attack the United States originated in that country.

Mr. Ashcroft, who yesterday toured the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in western Pennsylvania, paid tribute to the passengers who overpowered the hijackers on that United flight. The crash killed 40 passengers and crew members, along with the four hijackers.

"In the midst of this tragedy is a testimony of the American spirit, of individuals who bravely and courageously were willing to endure additional risks and pay an ultimate price so that others would be more secure," he said while standing on a hillside overlooking the crash site 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

The FBI is also focusing on reports that some of the hijackers already named publicly may have used stolen identities. Saudi officials have told U.S. authorities that as many as four Saudi citizens with similar or identical names as the hijackers have expressed concern that their identities were stolen. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said the names of several of the hijackers are known, but others "are still in question."

-------- spying

Pentagon Analyst Accused of Spying

September 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Spy-Case.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Pentagon intelligence analyst who attended war games conducted by the U.S. Atlantic Command in 1996 was charged Friday with spying for Cuba.

Ana Belen Montes, an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, transmitted a substantial amount of classified information to the Cuban intelligence service, an FBI affidavit alleged.

Montes appeared before a U.S. magistrate in Washington and was charged with conspiracy to deliver U.S. national defense information to Cuba. She entered no plea and was ordered held without bond.

Montes has worked for the DIA, the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, since 1985, authorities said.

In a 17-page affidavit, the FBI alleged that the Cuban intelligence service passed messages to Montes via shortwave radio and that the DIA analyst began spying for Cuba nearly five years ago.

The FBI secretly entered Montes' residence under a court order May 25 and uncovered information about several Defense Department issues, including a 1996 war games exercise conducted by the U.S. Atlantic Command, authorities said.

According to the affidavit, the DIA said that Montes attended the war games exercise in Norfolk, Va., as part of her official duties at DIA. The FBI said it found information on the hard drive of her laptop computer.

One partially recovered message deals with ``a particular special access program related to the national defense of the United States,'' which is so sensitive that it could not be publicly revealed in the court documents, the document said.

According to the FBI's affidavit, some of the messages suggested that Montes disclosed the upcoming arrival of a U.S. military intelligence officer in Cuba.

``As a result,'' the FBI said, ``the Cuban government was able to direct its counterintelligence resources against the U.S. officer.''

The FBI said Montes got a message back from her Cuban handlers stating, ``We were waiting here for him with open arms.''

One message found on the hard drive was from her Cuban intelligence service handlers and said that she had provided ``tremendously useful ... information,'' said the FBI.

According to the FBI, another message from her Cuban contact said in regard to the 1996 war games exercise: ``Practically everything that takes place there will be of intelligence value. Let's see if it deals with contingency plans and specific targets in Cuba.''

The DIA confirmed that Montes and a colleague were briefed on the highly sensitive program on May 15, 1997.

The FBI said they had Montes under surveillance since May.

It was unclear whether the Montes case was directly related to a ring in Florida convicted of spying for Cuba. However, the FBI affidavit notes repeatedly that methods of passing classified information that Montes allegedly used were the same as those used by the Miami defendants.

Five Florida defendants were convicted in June, and two pleaded guilty in Miami Friday, bringing to seven the number of defendants in a spy ring that prosecutors have labeled ``The Wasp Network.''

During their surveillance of Montes, the FBI trailed her around suburban Washington as she used a series of pay phones to make calls. The FBI said it believes that ``the pay phone calls were in furtherance of Montes' espionage.''

The FBI said the Cuban intelligence service often communicates with clandestine agents outside Cuba by broadcasting encrypted messages at high frequencies which transmits a series of numbers. The clandestine agents monitoring the message on a shortwave radio keys in the numbers onto a computer, then uses a disk containing a decryption program to convert the numbers into text.

The FBI said that is the method that Montes used to communicate. The affidavit said Montes also communicated with the Cuban intelligence service by making calls to a pager number during her pay telephone calls.

The FBI agent said that ``based on the evidence ... I believe probable cause exists'' that Montes has been conspiring to pass secrets to Cuba since Oct. 5, 1996, the day she purchased her laptop computer.

A DIA spokesman declined to comment beyond saying when Montes had gone to work for the agency.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla, said Cuba shares intelligence information with terrorist states. ``It was critically important that the spy be stopped now as the United States embarks upon a worldwide war against terrorism,'' he said.

The DIA, based at Bolling Air Force Base in southeast Washington, D.C., provides analyses of foreign countries' military capabilities and troop strengths for Pentagon planners. It also has offices within the Pentagon. Along with the CIA, National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, the DIA is one of the main agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.

The FBI affidavit said Montes worked at Bolling Air Force Base.

In June, Mariano Faget, a U.S. immigration official convicted of disclosing classified information to aid Cuba, was sentenced to five years in prison.

Faget, once the second-ranking immigration official in Miami, was convicted after an investigation that also lead to the expulsion of a Cuban spy.

-------- terrorism

FBI Arrests Kuwaiti Liquor Store Clerk
Money Trail Links Suspect to Hijackers, Bin Laden Operative

By John Mintz and Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 21, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1072-2001Sep20?language=printer

The FBI has arrested a Kuwaiti liquor store clerk who, authorities believe, engaged in numerous financial transactions with two of the hijackers in the World Trade Center attacks and has links to a suspected associate of Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.

The arrest of Nabil Almarabh, 34, came as the FBI raced to locate potential accomplices of the hijackers and to question people across the country who may have come in contact with them.

Federal investigators had spent days searching for Almarabh, who was wanted in Boston for a probation violation in connection with a stabbing there in May 2000. With guns drawn, FBI agents took him into custody late Wednesday night at a liquor store in the Chicago suburb of Burbank, Ill., where he was working as a clerk.

Now, investigators are trying to determine whether there is anything sinister about his having secured a Michigan license to haul hazardous materials such as dynamite, gases and toxic and radioactive waste.

Almarabh, who used to drive a cab in Boston, was a close friend of another former Boston taxi driver who has been identified by U.S. and Jordanian authorities as a bin Laden operative. That man, Raed Hijazi, has been convicted in Jordan of participating in an aborted plot to blow up ritzy hotels and Jordanian tourist sites where Americans and Israelis were expected to congregate during millennium celebrations on Jan. 1, 2000.

Over the past 18 months, U.S. Customs Service agents looking into bin Laden's money trail established that Almarabh and Hijazi had engaged in financial deals with Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam Al Suqami, two of the men who hijacked planes that took off from Boston and slammed into the World Trade Center's twin towers Sept. 11, law enforcement sources said.

Based initially on tips provided by Jordanian investigators, Customs agents for months traced money flowing from several Boston banks to banks overseas, where officials believe the funds were intended for bin Laden's network.

In the hours after Tuesday's bombings, investigators searched their files on Al Suqami and Alghamdi, noted the pair's ties to Almarabh and launched a hunt for him.

On Sept. 18, agents went to what they thought was Almarabh's home in Detroit. He was long gone, but agents arrested the three men there on charges of possessing fraudulent identification papers. Officials said they found what they considered suspicious items in the apartment, including a day planner with notations in Arabic about an "American base in Turkey" and "American foreign minister," and crude drawings of jetliner flight paths.

Investigators also established other connections between the two Boston cab drivers and the group that hijacked the planes. An FBI document circulated among law enforcement agencies last week noted that Hijazi, who is in a Jordanian jail, had shared a telephone number with another hijacker, Hamza Alghamdi. The document also said Hijazi was an "associate" of Almarabh.

These various connections not only suggest that investigators are probing ties between bin Laden and the hijackers, but also that federal authorities knew about some of those associations long before the bombings.

A federal investigator described Almarabh as "a player with bin Laden," but authorities said they have no evidence he played any direct role in last week's terrorist strikes. Almarabh was unavailable for comment, and efforts to identify his lawyer in Illinois were unsuccessful.

In December, Almarabh was convicted of assault and battery with a knife during an argument with a roommate in Boston. He failed to appear to begin serving his sentence in March, and has been wanted since then.

"In the few months that I worked with him, he did not give any outward appearance of being upset with the American people," said Robert F. Menton, who acted as Almarabh's court-appointed attorney in the Boston assault case. "His appearance was not menacing."

Lately, Almarabh appears to have moved every few months or continually changed his residence on official documents - at one point listing an address in Dearborn, Mich., that is a truck stop. He repeatedly claimed to Michigan state officials that he had lost his driver's permit and secured temporary driver's licenses without photographs.

He obtained such a license most recently on Monday in Three Oaks, Mich., near the Indiana border. Then he apparently traveled to Burbank, where he got a job as a clerk at the 7-Days Food & Liquor store.

One fact that has caught officials' attention is that in September 2000, he received a Michigan chauffeur's license that allowed him to haul hazardous materials. Sgt. Susan Fries of the Michigan State Police's hazardous waste unit said authorities had no indication what toxic waste companies he worked for, if any.

Hijazi, 35, was born in Los Angeles to Palestinian parents and grew up in Jordan. After studying business at California State University at Sacramento, he moved to Boston and became friendly with Almarabh. When Hijazi applied for a taxi license in Boston, he listed Almarabh as the person to contact in the event of an emergency, a law enforcement source said.

Last September, Hijazi was convicted in absentia in Jordan of helping to lead the planned terrorist bombings. Human rights activists have charged that Jordanian authorities tortured some of the defendants. But Almarabh was subsequently arrested in Syria and returned to Jordan, where, under that country's laws, he is to be retried.

In the original trial, he was convicted of the bomb plot but acquitted of being a bin Laden lieutenant, though U.S. and Jordanian officials still maintain bin Laden was behind the plot.

After the trial, officials in Amman sent information back to Washington saying that Almarabh and one of the men who later participated in the hijackings were associates of Hijazi, a law enforcement source said.

On Wednesday, FBI agents in Los Angeles detained another man, Tarak Mohamed Fayad, apparently on immigration charges. He had lived with Hijazi in the Boston suburb of Malden.

Authorities also have investigated a third Boston cabbie, Bassam Kanj, who was a Hijazi friend and died last year in a gun battle in northern Lebanon between Islamic militants and the Lebanese army. Lebanese newspapers identified him as a bin Laden lieutenant.

Meanwhile, a document containing names of suspects that was sent to banking officials this week by the FBI lists alleged hijacker Khalid Al-Midhar as "alive." Al-Midhar is believed to have piloted the flight that crashed into the Pentagon. FBI and Justice Department officials declined to comment on the document, but the notation adds to uncertainty over the identities of 19 men listed as hijackers by the FBI.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III acknowledged yesterday that investigators were unsure whether some of the hijackers stole the identities of other people. Saudi government officials say they have confirmed that at least two of the terrorists used the names of law-abiding Saudi citizens.

In other developments yesterday:

Mueller, joining Attorney General John D. Ashcroft in a visit to the United Airlines Flight 93 crash site in Shanksville, Pa., said the cockpit voice recorder recovered from the wreckage caught some conversation before the jet slammed into a hillside. Mueller added that investigators were "transcribing and translating the dialogue, what little there is."

Law enforcement officials said a man detained over the weekend in San Diego was flown to New York for questioning about Al-Midhar and suspected hijacker Nawaq Alhazmi. The officials identified the man as Omer Bakarbashat and said authorities were interested in questioning him about time he may have spent with the two men, the Associated Press reported.

A student at the University of Oklahoma has been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service because of a potential link to Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, a former flight school student with alleged ties to bin Laden, a local attorney said. The student, Hussein Attas, 23, was detained on the day of the attacks, according to Mitchell Gray, who is seeking to represent him.

Gray said Attas, a Saudi, may have driven Moussaoui to Minnesota, where Moussaoui was arrested in August after seeking commercial flight training despite a lack of experience. Gray said INS officials have rebuffed his attempts to reach Attas. INS officials in Oklahoma could not be reached for comment.

The Justice Department retracted its report Wednesday that 115 people connected to the investigation were in INS custody on immigration violations. The number is 76, officials said.

Staff writers Dan Eggen, Caroline E. Mayer, Scott Higham, Karen DeYoung, Ceci Connolly and Lois Romano contributed to this report. Correspondent Howard Schneider reported from Cairo. Staff writer Robert Pierre reported from Chicago, and special correspondent Pamela Ferdinand reported from Boston.

--------

U.S. Measures May Incite Domestic Terror

Strategic Forecasting
010921
http://www.stratfor.com/home/0109212300.htm

In the wake of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S. government is moving quickly to create a new Cabinet-level agency for homeland defense and ease restrictions on law enforcement agencies. But while these measures may prove effective against foreign attacks, they may also lead to increased domestic terrorism.

Analysis

In a televised State of the Union address Sept. 20, U.S. President George W. Bush announced the creation of a new Cabinet-level agency designed to "lead, oversee and coordinate" a national strategy to guard the United States against terrorism. Congress meanwhile is considering new laws to ease restrictions on wiretapping and eavesdropping.

These new measures may be necessary components to protect the United States from further attacks by foreign terrorists. But they will also likely fuel the fears and anger of domestic groups such as the Michigan Militia or the North American Volunteer Militia. In time, as the U.S. security apparatus looks for threats coming from outside the country, the United States may again face attacks from within.

More than 800 militia-style groups existed at the peak of the anti-government movement in the mid-1990s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The number has decreased dramatically in the past five years, thanks to a combination of a strong economy and heavy pressure from law enforcement agencies in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. The SPLC now identifies only 194 "Patriot" groups that were active in 2000.

Generally Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the "New World Order" or advocate extreme anti-government doctrines, fearing the growth of government bureaucracies and intrusion upon civil liberties. Such groups are likely to enjoy a resurgence in interest, membership and activities as the government adopts more stringent security measures.

U.S. lawmakers historically have been very cautious about tipping the balance between law enforcement and civil liberties. It took Congress nearly a year to pass former U.S. President Bill Clinton's anti-terrorism bill after the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. In the weeks before the recent terror attacks, privacy advocates hailed a major victory when a San Diego judge banned the use of automatic cameras to catch cars driving through red lights.

But the attacks in New York and Washington have dramatically altered much of the nation's thinking, as many Americans are beginning to place a greater value on security. This shift is reflected in the federal government.

The newly announced Office of Homeland Security, to be headed by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, is aimed at knitting together counter terrorism functions now scattered across more than 40 federal agencies, including the FBI, CIA, National Guard and local police and firefighting forces. It will focus not only on preventing terrorist attacks but also on fortifying potential targets by developing plans to protect the nation's transportation, power and food systems, according to officials cited by the Associated Press.

The "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act" still under consideration in Congress would rewrite laws dealing with wiretapping, eavesdropping and immigration. Included in the bill are provisions to ease the restrictions the FBI faces on installing its Carnivore Internet-surveillance system as well as streamlining procedures to obtaining voicemail recordings.

Further provisions include eliminating the statue of limitations for terrorism-related crimes and allowing federal authorities to detain without a court order non-U.S. citizens suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. Also under consideration is a modification to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for prosecutors in certain highly sensitive cases to look through the records of a business, credit card company or Internet provider.

Fewer restrictions on law enforcement agents and the creation of a new federal office may be necessary steps to protect the United States from foreign terrorists. But powerful bureaucracies and narrowed civil liberties are exactly the sort of triggers that set off militia groups.

We are likely to see a resurgence of militia group activity just at the time that law enforcement agencies are retasking themselves to counter foreign threats. Even if law enforcement agents continue to infiltrate militia groups, it is much more difficult to monitor and prevent activity from individuals. As militia ranks fill, it is not unlikely to expect some of them to resort to the same kind of armed activity as Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski did in the past.


-------- activists

Messages of Peace from Victims' Families

From: Marita McComiskey <mccomisk@uconnvm.uconn.edu>
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 16:10:34 -0400

They have asked that people share this copy of letter sent to NY Times as widely as possible.

Not in Our Son's Name Our son Greg is among the many missing from the World Trade Center attack.

Since we first heard the news, we have shared moments of grief, comfort, hope, despair, fond memories with his wife, the two families, our friends and neighbors, his loving colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald / ESpeed, and all the grieving families that daily meet at the Pierre Hotel. We see our hurt and anger reflected among everybody we meet. We cannot pay attention to the daily flow of news about this disaster. But we read enough of the news to sense that our government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying, suffering, and nursing further grievances against us.

It is not the way to go. It will not avenge our son's death. Not in our son's name. Our son died a victim of an inhuman ideology. Our actions should not serve the same purpose. Let us grieve. Let us reflect and pray. Let us think about a rational response that brings real peace and justice to our world. But let us not as a nation add to the inhumanity of our times.

Copy of letter to White House:

Dear President Bush: Our son is one of the victims of Tuesday's attack on the World Trade Center. We read about your response in the last few days and about the resolutions from both Houses, giving you undefined power to respond to the terror attacks. Your response to this attack does not make us feel better about our son's death. It makes us feel that our government is using our son's memory as a justification to cause suffering for other sons and parents in other lands.

This is not the time for empty gestures to make us feel better. It is not the time to act like bullies. We urge you to think about how our government can develop peaceful, rational solutions to terrorism, solutions that do not sink us to the inhuman level of terrorists. Sincerely,

Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez

==

Discovering A Voice From Within The Sadness

Friday, September 21
By RICK GREEN
The Hartford Courant

WETHERSFIELD ‹ Within the unspeakable sadness of loss, Judy Keane has discovered her own powerful voice.

Now this shy nurse is telling politicians, priests and CNN what she began to articulate in the hellish hours after the morning of Sept. 11, when Richard Keane, her husband of 31 years, vanished in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

"I don't want my children to have to go to war to avenge their father's death,'' she said Thursday, blue eyes blazing, her weary face momentarily seeming less worn.

Today, quiet Judy Keane's words are at the forefront of a gathering, if small, movement urging President Bush to show great restraint in the country's response to last week's attack. She'd rather not be doing all this, but feels she must.

So after the governor's kind comments on the telephone the other night, Keane ‹ mother of five boys, wife of a Vietnam veteran ‹ told John Rowland she wasn't quite ready to hang up.

"We have had an awful incident that should never have happened. And it is frightening and horrible. But we can stop it now,'' Keane recalled telling Rowland Monday evening. "Anybody that thinks that terrorism is going to stop because we bomb Afghanistan is wrong.''

In that phone conversation, Keane said, Rowland told her that "there is one person that we need to convince" and he said that is the president.'' She said he agreed to send Bush a huge banner signed by participants at a Wethersfield peace vigil Sunday night ‹ once he himself signed it.

Thursday evening, a spokesman for the governor said the banner was on its way to the White House. Signed by hundreds of people, the banner simply reads "Peace on Earth.''

It was in the tearful hours and days after the bombings, as the ghastly search for her husband and more than 6,000 others wore on, that Judy Keane noticed something. Her words were drawing wide media attention in a country that seemed to be beating drums for war. Last weekend, when she realized her own statements were being discussed even in church, quoted by a priest at the altar, she knew.

"I never sought the limelight. But I feel a need to do that now. I'm Catholic. I grew up Catholic. I remember the horrors of Vietnam,'' said Keane, sitting in her Early American-style living room.

She hangs two flags in front of her house. She wants those who orchestrated last Tuesday's attacks caught and brought to justice. But right now she'll do almost anything to avoid a war. It's a question that even her large, grieving family is debating.

Before she read aloud a letter she sent to President and Laura Bush this week she repeated that she is not a pacifist or merely a war protester. She's a mother whose husband has been murdered, and she wants the killing to stop.

"The recent events have overwhelmed many in the country with emotions of anger and frustration. Retaliation against another country for this horrendous crime is not the answer,'' she said, reading the letter she tucked in with the banner sent to Washington. "We cannot be responsible for the suffering of innocent families in America and abroad. We cannot send loved ones off to war.''

This week, Judy sent her husband's razor off to New York so a DNA sample could be collected. She doesn't watch the endless television news programs. The family hopes his body will be found.

Despite it all, Judy still can't believe it. She and Dick met in college, during their senior year at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. For most of their married life, the Keanes have lived in Wethersfield, raising a family, becoming active in their church and community. Along the way, Judy said, it was Dick who always urged her on, dragging her out of her shell.

She's certain Dick Keane is right there with her now.

"My husband knows that I do really well if I am busy. He has a lot to do with all this. I used to be very shy. It was his tutelage and fostering,'' she explained, as if Dick had only stepped out to his garden to pick a tomato or turn the compost pile.

"He'd always say to me, ŒYou can do this, you can do this,'?" Keane said. "And that is exactly what he is saying to me now: ŒYou can do this, Judy.¹''

==

Plea For Peace

Friday, September 21
By WILLIAM WEIR
The Hartford Courant

Two of his relatives were killed in the World Trade Center last week, but Wesleyan University junior Sajjadur Rahman insists military retaliation is not the answer.

"So many innocent lives have died through acts of war," Rahman, a Muslim, told the roughly 750 students gathered Thursday in front of the university's North College. "People's lives matter, and so many lives get afflicted by a few for their own interests."

Thousands of college students on about 150 campuses held similar rallies Thursday, putting them at the front of a growing movement urging military restraint in response to the last week's terrorist attacks.

At Wesleyan, students spoke of "peaceful justice" ‹ or narrowly targeting those responsible for the attacks instead of entire countries filled with innocent people. Sharing that view is a surprising coalition that includes Hollywood actors, business groups, clergy and conservativessuch as commentator Pat Buchanan.

In fact, some say there is a fast-growing network of peace activists who will likely outnumber the demonstrators who rallied during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago.

By Thursday, nearly 1,500 religious leaders had endorsed a statement by the National Council of Churches of Christ USA calling for "sober restraint," not military retribution.

Business executive and CNN founder Ted Turner argued against a military solution Wednesday at the United Nations as he delivered a $31 million check to cover part of the United States' U.N. dues.

"We should not, I don't think, go around and indiscriminately start bombing countries that we suspect the terrorists are in because there are terrorists everywhere, [including] here in the United States," he said. "What were [Oklahoma City bombers] Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh but terrorists?"

But the protesters are going against the national tide. A recent Gallup/CNN USA Today poll found that 88 percent of Americans favor military action not only against the guilty parties, but also against countries that harbor them.

At the University of Connecticut, veteran antiwar activist Joanne Sheehan was heartened to see students talking about peaceful alternatives to war.

"Some of us began our activism as college students," said Sheehan, who runs the New England office of the War Resisters League out of her Norwich home. "Colleges are places where people need to explore creative thinking processes, where people need to explore truth and reality."

Sheehan sees students today learning from the Vietnam-era antiwar movement.

"People want to find ways not to polarize discussion, so they can have a discussion," she said. "That didn't happen in Vietnam, and the discussion became very polarized."

On the University of Hartford campus, sociology professor Wick Griswold said the initial feelings of rage and hostility have mellowed.

"I think that we should be as measured and reasoned and peaceful in our response as possible," said Griswold, one of 30 at the school¹s rally. "We should temper our response with caution and restraint."

While bringing the perpetrators of the attacks to justice is an "admirable goal," said University of Hartford senior Brian Anderson, "given the recent history of U.S. military intervention, the victims are not going to be only the perpetrators."

Many students taking part in the rallies stress that "peaceful justice" doesn't mean inaction. U.S. officials should go after those responsible for the attacks, they say, but not in a way that jeopardizes more innocent people.

"We should treat it like a crime, not an act of war,'" said Tom Deere, a junior at Yale, where a few dozen Yale students gathered in a corner of Yale's campus.

Students have also been quick to point out that their sentiments are hardly shared by all on their campuses. The Yale students' calls for peace have raised more ire at Yale than previous protests. One critic scrawled expletive-laced graffiti across a peace flier tacked on a campus bulletin board.

"I expect it," said Deere, who added that the vigils Thursday don't have much chance in the face of the hawkish majority momentum. "To me, it looks like we're going to war whether my friends like it or not."

At Boston College, about 150 students held a peaceful rally ‹ but all visitors and media were kept away because the campus was shut down to anyone but students, faculty and staff.

"We wanted the students to have an opportunity to host their rally free from any security concerns that the result from outsiders coming on campus," said spokesman Jack Dunn.

In Amherst, the community's five colleges issued a joint statement imploring the U.S. government to seek justice in a way "that honors humanity, including through the resources of the national and international legal systems." The statement was signed by the directors of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and the University of Massachusetts.

Not everyone favored a peaceful resolution.

Tom Lancaster, 24, of Somerville, Mass., stood on the fringe of the Amherst Green holding "Support America" signs and engaged in lively debate with some of the students wearing peace signs on their shirts. He thinks the United States has been patient enough.

"I think we've tried it their way," said Lancaster, a graduate student in chemical engineering.

Wesleyan's Sarah Norr, who helped organize the "National Day of Action," said Thursday's event was held precisely to counter what participants see as a one-sided view presented in news reports.

"There's a lot of agreement on this," she said of the peace movement.

Staff writers Matthew Brown, Janice D¹Arcy and Dan Jones contributed to this story, which also includes a wire service report.

----

Yucca hearings set for October
Amargosa Valley, Pahrump play host

By KEITH ROGERS
Friday, September 21, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-21-Fri-2001/news/17047529.html

They're on again, off again, on again.

Ten days after the Department of Energy postponed the last two public hearings on its plans to bury nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain -- then rescheduled them for Monday at the same time in separate locations -- officials on Thursday delayed them again.

Now the hearings that were initially set for Sept. 12 in Amargosa Valley and Sept. 13 in Pahrump will be, respectively, on Oct. 10 and Oct. 12.

"As President Bush made clear, our government does not intend to allow the terrorists to keep us from conducting business of the American people," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a letter late Thursday to Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev.

"In light of your strong recommendation to postpone these hearings to a later date, I have directed the department to reschedule the hearings for Oct. 10 and Oct. 12," Abraham said in his letter.

Hours after terrorists used passenger jetliners on Sept. 11 to crumble the World Trade Center and demolish part of the Pentagon, Abraham postponed the two Yucca Mountain hearings.

Then this week, to the dismay of state and local officials and Nevada's congressional delegation, he rescheduled both hearings to begin at the same time Monday in Amargosa Valley and Pahrump. The rescheduling upset Nevada officials who complained that some citizens would not be able to speak at both hearings.

On Thursday, while Reid and Ensign were in New York surveying the rubble of the World Trade Center, they were notified by the Energy Department that hearings had been delayed until some time after Oct. 8.

"We're very pleased to hear that Secretary Abraham will delay the hearings on Yucca Mountain at this time of national crisis," Reid said in a statement. "We appreciate his understanding that Nevada families are grieving along with the families in New York and Washington, D.C."

The statement quotes Ensign as saying, "We're very grateful to hear that Secretary Abraham listened to our concerns and delayed the hearings. We are in a national crisis and many Nevadans are coping with great loss and not clearly focused on the issues surrounding Yucca Mountain."

Abraham's spokesman, Joe Davis, said the comment period, which had been extended to Oct. 5, would be further extended to allow more time to field comments from citizens who can't attend the hearings in Amargosa Valley and Pahrump. He said the new deadline for public comment had not been determined.

But both hearings, he said, would be held on their respective dates from 3 to 9 p.m., preceded by an hour-long "poster session." During that time and through the hearings, Yucca Mountain Project officials will be available to answer questions about the government's plans to bring 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste to Nevada for disposal in the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

After the first delay, Nevada lawmakers professed incredulity at the seemingly quick rescheduling, and that hearings planned to take place on separate days in the two communities instead would be held at the same time.

"Why the Department of Energy is so anxious to get on with these hearings at a time the nation is focused on tragedy is a mystery to me," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said earlier this week. Reid and Ensign placed separate protest calls to Abraham on Tuesday. Calls also were placed to the White House.

"We asked the White House to step on DOE's neck and say, `You guys are nuts!' " a Nevada congressional official said. "At a time when Bush is trying to bring the country together and looking at broader goals, why do this?"

Meanwhile, environmental groups completed a conference call Wednesday to discuss Yucca Mountain strategy -- short-term and long-term -- after the terrorist episodes, said Kalynda Tilges, nuclear issues coordinator for Citizen Alert, a statewide environmental group.

Reacting to the new postponement on Thursday, Tilges said, "This is a huge victory for the environmental groups, but we're still waiting to see if the Department of Energy actually got the message to hold the final hearings until after the final (environmental impact statement) is out."

She wrote Abraham on Monday asking that hearings not be conducted until after the final impact statement "is issued with transportation issues fully addressed."

Yucca Mountain opponents are expected to mount campaigns highlighting Abraham's decision during the crisis to suspend shipments of nuclear waste.

"Secretary Abraham's ban on nuclear material transport is a key issue," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "It's unavoidable now for the Department of Energy to downplay the transportation issues."

The Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocates construction of a Yucca Mountain repository, believes the hearings should go on, spokesman Mitch Singer said.

Yucca Mountain "is an issue that has been dealt with for a long time," Singer said. "It's not like we have to restudy it, and we say that without any disrespect for what happened last week.

"The government cannot ignore everything that goes on in the country," Singer said. "This is one of the things that is part of the nation's business."

Donrey Capital Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.

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An Anti-authoritarian Response to the War Efforts

September 21, 2001

We are living through scary times. Clearly the US Government and its allies believe they have a grand opportunity to realign domestic and international relationships in their interest. This is frightening: major shifts in the political landscape threaten to tear the ground from beneath our feet.

However, these glacial shifts in the political scene also offer anti-authoritarians a unique opportunity to obtain a new, more secure footing in our struggle against economic exploitation, political hierarchy, and cultural domination. Political conditions are changing radically and, if we respond correctly, we have the chance to advance our movement to a much higher level.

First of all, we must not be cowed by present circumstances, as disturbing as they are. On the contrary: recent events call upon us to exercise political leadership in the best, most principled and visionary sense of the term. This is our challenge, and one that we can meet with an anti-authoritarian vision and politics.

We believe it is imperative that anti-authoritarians formulate a coherent response to the war buildup and their role within the growing peace movement. We must not allow our perspective to be subsumed under more prominent but less radical tendencies in the left. Also, the peace movement is presently defining its politics and structures and we have a great opportunity - at this moment - to engage the movement and push it in the most radical direction.

This purpose of this letter is to explore the contours of an anti-authoritarian position on recent events. We encourage you to discuss this letter with your friends and comrades and to prepare for broader discussions that we intend to initiate in the near future (we will send more information soon).

We want to address three important issues in this letter: structure, politics, and the future.

STRUCTURE: We anticipate that the anti-war movement will experience divisions similar to those that beset the peace movement during the Gulf War. In other words, national organizing efforts will be split into two organizations: one will be pacifist and more libertarian in character, and the other will be more militant and Stalinist. Both will be top-down mobilizations, built around well-known "leaders", and awash with a moralism that would turn off even the most open-minded citizens and activists.

Thus, we think our immediate challenge is to ensure that the anti-war mobilizations are decentralized and democratic in structure: specifically, that those doing the work make the decisions in these organizations. We recommend the model of assemblies, spokescouncils, or other horizontal networks of small, decentralized groups that are unified around an anti-authoritarian vision of social change. This will assure that those at the base hold decision-making power and thus that the mobilization reflects the political consciousness of the base, which is typically more radical and sane than that held by the leadership. It will still be possible for sectarian groups to infiltrate the base, but much harder for them to seize control. We believe that instituting such a decentralized structure is consistent with a principled commitment to democracy and should be our first act of defense against the party building hacks and the omnipresent "leadership".

POLITICS: Decentralized political structures have little significance unless complemented by a decentralized, radically democratic politics. We need to have radically democratic goals as well as methods, anti-authoritarian means and ends. Our response to the war must be concrete, immediately comprehensible, and one that gives political content to our democratic structures.

Presently we are aware of two positions on the war:

The rightwing position asserts that the US is entitled to take unilateral military action against whomever. This position is not reasoned, just retaliatory, and is thus utterly barbaric. The argument crumbles when faced with questions of social justice.

The liberal-left position condones military action against Osama Bin Laden if - and only if - the UN or some pre-existing international legal body decides that such action is required and determines its nature. This appears to be Z Magazine's position, as well as many others.

This position is inadequate because it appeals to the political authority of the UN (and/or similar bodies). This is untenable because the UN is an illegitimate political body and thus incapable of determining a just or unjust response to the terror attacks. The UN is illegitimate because a) it presupposes the nation-state, which is inherently anti-democratic and b) because the US has veto power over many of the UN's most important decision-making bodies, such as the Security Council.

The anti-authoritarian position must obviously be much more radical than the liberal-left position. We believe that anti-authoritarians should advance the following demands:

· First, all war criminals must be brought to justice (and judged by an international people's tribunal). Osama Bin Laden, Augusto Pinochet, Henry Kissinger, and those who have committed acts of terror and violence must be held accountable for their actions and dealt with accordingly.

· Second, there should be an international grass roots assembly/plebiscite/encuentro/assembly/truth and reconciliation commission on global terror. This assembly will define the terms of terror and the appropriate responses to it. There are existing decentralized, grassroots networks and organizations that could provide basis for such an initiative.

· Third, we must oppose military action against Osama Bin Laden, Afghanistan, or anyone else until these first two conditions are met.

FUTURE: We believe that anti-authoritarians should work to radicalize the anti-war movement. We should ensure that it is democratic and decentralized in structure, that its demands are anti-authoritarian in content, and that we use this movement to build cooperative relationships with the oppressed and enraged throughout the world who share our horror at the US's impeding military action and the world it seeks to create.

We believe there is a great potential to create a radically democratic and deeply oppositional movement against the war. We believe this movement could sustain the accomplishments of the struggle against global capital and bring our movement to a new level of engagement, diversity, and radicalism.

Another world is possible,

Marina Sitrin (active with the Direct Action Network) & Chuck Morse (active with the Institute for Anarchist Studies)


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