------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Federal Opposition makes no nuclear waste promise to SA
NKorea Denies CIA Missile Report
Senate restores cuts in missile defense
NEW COAST GUARD REGULATIONS
After months of hints, nuclear tests ruled out
MILITARY
Spy plane shot down over Afghanistan by Taliban
Biological Attack Concerns Spur Warnings
The hunt - Coalition troops set for covert action
Beneficiaries of the Military Buildup Await Their Orders
China, U.S. ready to share intelligence
Allies Hit Iraqi Air Defenses
Israelis rush to buy protection gear
Pakistanis vent rage over U.S. war plans
Saudis Balk at U.S. Use of Key Facility
Bush rejects deal for bin Laden
Funds Tapped for Military, Air Marshals, Rewards
Former Soviet Republics Are Key to U.S. Effort
U.S. special forces move near Afghani borders
U.S. Steps Up Military Mobilization
OTHER
Intercepts foretold of 'big attack'
Terrorists' trade in stolen identities
FBI issues alert on water supplies, film studios
Senate endorses Bush move to create terrorism office
ACTIVISTS
CALL FOR PEACE & JUSTICE!
Campuses divided as anti-war lobby grows
New York peace march is met with jeers
Protesters Oppose Military Action
A first hand report of the 3,000 strong anti-war meeting on Friday.
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- australia
Federal Opposition makes no nuclear waste promise to SA
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Sat, Sep 22 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/news/politics/2001/09/item20010921214935_1.htm
The Federal Opposition has promised a Labor Government will not build a nuclear waste dump in South Australia.
Sites in South Australia are being considered to store low level nuclear waste.
The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, says Labor accepts the need for long-term management of nuclear waste that is produced in Australia.
However, he has ruled out South Australia, saying it has had more than its share of unsafe and ill-considered nuclear experimentation in the past.
-------- korea
NKorea Denies CIA Missile Report
September 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Missiles.html?searchpv=aponline
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea denied a CIA report that said the communist state continued to export missile equipment and technology to countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa last year.
``It's nothing but a shameless allegation. The United States is absurdly picking quarrels with us and other countries,'' state-run Korean Central Radio said Friday in a commentary monitored by South Korean government officials, who faxed a transcript to The Associated Press.
In a report to Congress earlier this month, the CIA said North Korea ``places a high priority to the development and sale of ballistic missiles,'' one of the isolated country's main sources of hard currency.
North Korea continued to sell ballistic missile parts, equipment and technology to countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa throughout the second half of 2000, it said. It did not elaborate.
For years, the United States has accused North Korea of being a leading exporter of missile parts and technology to countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Pakistan.
South Korean officials estimate that North Korea earned between $500 million and $1 billion annually in the 1980s from its missile exports.
Washington has often cited the potential threat of long-range missiles from North Korea as a reason for its plan for a missile defense system.
North Korea rattled nerves in Asia and Washington in 1998 by firing a rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.
-------- missile defense
Senate restores cuts in missile defense
September 22, 2001
By John Godfrey
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010922-384416.htm
The Senate restored $1.3 billion in cuts in missile defense yesterday as it took up the $344 billion Department of Defense budget for 2002.
Democrats on the Armed Services Committee put the missile-defense cuts in the bill, which passed on a party-line vote. But to avoid a floor fight, panel Chairman Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, and ranking Republican John W. Warner of Virginia jointly offered an amendment that would add $1.3 billion to the bill.
"We operate differently in times of emergency," said Mr. Levin, referring to last week's terrorist attacks. "We set aside those differences we can't bridge."
Although the amendment restores the amount cut from missile defense, it leaves it to the president to choose how much of that amount will be spent on the research and development, and how much will be spent to combat terrorism.
"This bill will communicate to our citizens and to the world that the United States is resolved to do whatever is necessary to protect our homeland," Mr. Warner said.
Mr. Levin, Mr. Warner and others asked senators to help in that effort.
The Senate majority and minority leaders "want as little controversy with this legislation as possible," said Majority Whip Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. He said the leaders were particularly concerned about controversial or unrelated amendments that might be offered during debate.
"I would hope that members would be cautious about making this a Christmas tree," Mr. Reid said.
The measure authorizes $343.5 billion for defense, a 10 percent increase over the amount authorized for fiscal 2001.
While the Senate was debating the overall defense authorization, the House passed unanimously the fiscal 2002 Military Construction Appropriations bill. An authorization bill says how much can be spent on a program, while an appropriations bill actually provides the money.
"In light of last week's tragic events, it is more important than ever before to ensure that our critical military infrastructure and our military personnel are adequately protected," said Rep. David L. Hobson, Ohio Republican and chairman of the subcommittee in charge of the military-construction bill.
The measure, which passed with 401 votes, provides $10.5 billion for construction projects, such as barracks and family housing.
Despite quick action on the bill, agreement on an overall budget framework for fiscal 2002 eluded negotiators.
House and Senate appropriators proposed to the White House discretionary spending for 2002 of $686 billion, $25 billion more than was proposed under the budget approved by Congress this spring. Of that increase, $18 billion is for Mr. Bush's own supplemental defense request. Another $4 billion would go for education, and $2.2 billion would be to pay for emergency and disaster assistance.
Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, was not enthusiastic about the proposal, but agreed to discuss it with the president, according to sources close to the negotiations.
The White House would like to find $4 billion in cuts, possibly with an across-the-board reduction in spending, to offset the proposed spending increases.
Appropriations staff did meet yesterday with administration officials, but that was to discuss the first $5.1 billion in emergency spending to assist in the humanitarian, recovery, and national-security needs.
This is the first installment from the $40 billion in emergency funds enacted earlier this week.
Additional installments will be released in the coming weeks, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
NEW COAST GUARD REGULATIONS
Sub fleet warned of general terrorist threats
By Lloyd A. Pritchett,
The Sun,
Sept 22. 2001
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>
Bremerton, WA, Increased security at Bangor since last October's USS Cole bombing didn't mean the terrorist attacks in the East were expected.
Earlier this summer, a government document described a "real, credible, immediate" terrorist threat to the Navy's Trident submarine fleet at Bangor.
Then on Sept. 11, terrorists crashed airliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Was there a connection?
That question is on a lot of minds - especially in the Puget Sound region - as Americans ask whether the U.S. intelligence community had some kind of advance warning of imminent attacks.
But it's a question without a clear answer.
"At this time, it is not appropriate to talk about the level of threat before or after the incidents of last week," said Lt. Scott Casad of the U.S. Coast Guard, which enforces the expanded security zones around Trident subs.
But U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Belfair, suggested the possibility of an indirect link.
"I don't think there's a direct link, but I think the CIA had a warning ... about the possibility of increased terrorist activities," he said this week.
"And I can't think of a more significant target on the West Coast than the Trident submarine base."
Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Karen Sellers of Seattle said Friday the Navy had recognized a general threat ever since last October's bombing of the destroyer USS Cole while it was in port in Yemen, but there was no specific threats against specific targets.
"We conducted a bottom-up review ... and identified areas where we could strengthen our security," she said. "This (Trident fleet security) is just one area we found that could be strengthened."
A potential threat to the Bangor-based Trident fleet was first described in a July 9 notice by the Coast Guard establishing expanded security zones around Navy submarines in Puget Sound - two months before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The regulation was issued under an emergency provision that allows the government to bypass normal rulemaking procedures in order to preserve national security.
The July 9 notice, published in the Federal Register, said a Navy security review "determined that immediate threats exist to naval bases and submarines in Puget Sound."
The nature of the threat is "highly classified" but could include "sabotage ... or other subversive acts," the notice said.
A few weeks later, in early August, a Coast Guard official said the Navy was still concerned about possible terrorist acts.
"That potential threat still exists," said Lt. Paul M. Stocklin Jr. of the Coast Guard's Seattle Marine Safety Office.
But Navy officials distanced themselves from that statement, saying there was "no specific threat" to naval forces in Puget Sound.
Navy spokeswoman Lt. Kim Marks of Seattle observed at the time that "U.S. forces worldwide have implemented measures to safeguard against terrorist actions" after last October's bombing of the destroyer USS Cole.
Whatever the nature of the original threat, the expanded security zones were implemented around Trident submarines in July and will remain in effect indefinitely.
Since last week's terror attacks, security zones also have been established around Navy surface ships in Puget Sound as well.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which protested the expansion of security zones around Trident subs in an Aug. 31 letter to the Coast Guard, has now withdrawn its objections, a spokesman said.
Doug Honig, the ACLU's public education director, said the group previously had objected to the emergency rule because it had been put into effect without a public hearing when there was no evidence of an emergency.
Now, Honig said, the situation has changed. "There's obviously an emergency ... so of course there's not a need for a hearing."
The expanded security zones prohibit any vessel from approaching within 300 yards of a Navy submarine or within 100 yards of a Navy surface ship in Puget Sound or the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
New Coast Guard rules enacted this week also require civilian vessels operating within 500 yards of a Navy ship or submarine to operate at minimum speed.
In addition, the Navy and Coast Guard have implemented a host of other security measures to protect submarines and surface ships. The extra precautions include armed Coast Guard escorts.
The U.S. Navy submarine service, which relies on stealth to operate effectively, also has increased security by making almost no public statements about its activities.
But Lt. Kevin Stephens, spokesman for the Bangor-based fleet, speaking in the aftermath of last week's attacks, did have one statement to make:
"We are the Silent Service. ... And it is time we became silent again."
-------- us nuc politics
NEVADA TEST SITE: After months of hints, nuclear tests ruled out
Officials say Bush didn't plan to end nine-year moratorium
Saturday, September 22, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By TONY BATT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-22-Sat-2001/news/17058474.html
WASHINGTON -- Before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration appeared to be moving toward resuming nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site.
But, instead of adding momentum to a push for new nuclear tests, the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington seem to have had the opposite effect.
Government officials repeated their insistence this week that there never was a plan to end a nine-year moratorium on nuclear testing.
"We have to maintain readiness to test within 24 to 36 months, and we have not heard anything from the (Bush administration) to suggest we should be doing anything differently," test site spokesman Darwin Morgan said.
A source in the Washington office of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the test site, also said there are no plans to resume nuclear detonations at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Between 1951 and 1992, the government conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground tests at the test site. The last test, Divider, occurred Sept. 23, 1992.
"Resuming nuclear testing would only hurt our efforts to gain the full cooperation of countries in the non-rogue world to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Osama Bin Laden." the prime suspect behind the Sept. 11 attacks, said Robert Sherman, director of the strategic security project at the Federation of American Scientists.
Even conservatives such as Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., a veteran of the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, are skeptical that new nuclear tests would be useful. "Quite honestly, I don't think testing at the (Nevada Test) site will influence a terrorist group like al Qaeda," Gibbons said. "The terrorists are so isolated and spread out that the use of nuclear weapons against them might prove expensive and ineffective."
Nevertheless, there were signals earlier this year that the Bush administration might be interested in reviving nuclear testing.
At the end of June, the administration ordered scientists at national laboratories to determine if the preparation for nuclear tests in Nevada could be reduced to six to nine months from the current range of two to three years.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile can be assured only by periodic tests.
While President Bush has said he does not intend to resume nuclear testing, he has not sent the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to the Senate for ratification.
As a presidential candidate, Bush agreed when the Senate rejected ratification of the treaty in 1999, citing the difficulty of verifying a permanent ban on testing. Stephen Schwartz, publisher of Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists, an arms control journal, said the Bush administration is not leading the charge for more nuclear testing.
"I think it's mostly the weapons labs that are pushing this," Schwartz said. "This has never been driven by urgent political or military needs. (The scientists) simply desire to do the tests more quickly if the need arises."
Susan Houten, deputy director of public affairs at the Livermore National Laboratory in California, said the labs are doing what they've been told.
"We were officially asked by the Department of Energy to examine our state of readiness if U.S. policy changes to resume testing," Houten said. "We don't have an opinion either way."
The test site would need 18 to 24 months to prepare for a nuclear test if U.S. policy changes, Morgan said.
After a nine-year moratorium, there is a question whether the test site would have enough experienced employees to conduct a nuclear test. "We are constantly looking at personnel who would be needed if tests resumed, and that might include recent retirees," Morgan said. Before the moratorium, the test site employed as many as 11,000 workers. The work force now is 1,472, according to test site spokeswoman Nancy Harkess.
Nevada lawmakers no longer view nuclear testing as a viable job source. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has become a champion of subcritical experiments, which began at the test site in July 1997. Subcritical experiments check the safety and reliability of weapons without causing nuclear explosions and "have done a good job of making sure our stockpile is safe and reliable," Reid said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Spy plane shot down over Afghanistan by Taliban
USA TODAY
09/22/2001
The Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/hlead.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Taliban forces shot down an unmanned spy plane in northern Afghanistan on Saturday and were trying to determine what nation it belonged to, a Taliban official said. A Pentagon official declined to comment on the reported downing, which came as U.S. forces were preparing for a possible military assault on Afghanistan, which harbors Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said the aircraft was shot down over Tashgurgan Pass in Afghanistan's northern Samangan province by Taliban soldiers armed with Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons.
"We are still trying to ascertain what country this plane belongs to," Zaeef said in an interview.
The Afghan Islamic Press, an Afghan news agency based in Islamabad, first reported that it was a U.S. spy plane, then said it wasn't sure which country it was from.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Milord said he would not discuss operational issues. "We will not respond to each and every statement of the Taliban," he said.
The aircraft could have entered northern Afghanistan from Russia or one of the nearby Central Asian states, such as bordering Uzbekistan.
For years, the Taliban have given sanctuary to bin Laden, a Saudi exile, who is accused of masterminding terrorist attacks around the world, using camps to train some of the assailants.
After failing to persuade the Taliban to comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution to hand over bin Laden, the United Arab Emirates announced Saturday it would cut ties with the hard-line Islamic militia.
"The United Arab Emirates does not believe that it is possible to continue to maintain diplomatic relations with a government that refuses to respond to the clear will of the international community," an unidentified Foreign Ministry official told the news agency.
That left only two countries - Saudi Arabia and Pakistan - that continue to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. Other countries recognize the government-in-exile of President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Pakistan's ties with the Taliban were recently strained by Islamabad's offer to help U.S. forces in an attack on Afghanistan by providing them access to its air space and land.
In another development, heavy fighting was reported Saturday between the Taliban militia and opposition forces in northern Afghanistan.
Taliban's official Bakhtar news agency in Kabul said that their forces shot down an opposition helicopter in the same area where the foreign spy plane reportedly was destroyed. The helicopter was hit in the Dar-e-suf district during a battle being waged there.
Northern Alliance spokesman Mohammed Ashraf Nadim said two of its fighters were injured and at least 39 of Taliban's were killed in the battles.
But it was not possible to independently confirm the death toll.
The Taliban control 95% of Afghanistan and have been fighting an opposition force based mostly in the north for the last five years. Dar-e-suf has been the scene of the heaviest fighting between the Taliban and the opposition this year.
Both sides are equipped with antiquated Russian fighter jets and helicopter gunships, most of them leftovers from the 10-year Soviet occupation that ended in 1989 with the Soviets' withdrawal.
In recent years, the opposition has received new helicopters from Russia.
-------- biological weapons
Biological Attack Concerns Spur Warnings
Restoration of Broken Public Health System is Best Preparation, Experts Say
By Rick Weiss and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6638-2001Sep21?language=printer
Soon after last week's terrorist attacks, federal health authorities told public health agencies to be on the alert for "unusual disease patterns associated with today's events," a bureaucratically phrased but nonetheless chilling hint of fear that the nation might be under biological attack.
In the Washington area, police surrounded local reservoirs in an effort to stop, or at least notice, any effort to contaminate the local water supply.
In Virginia, the world's largest archive and distribution center for frozen, living microbes -- which ships bacteria and viruses to scientists around the world -- beefed up security at its Manassas facility.
And this week, the FBI asked operators of the nation's 3,500 crop-duster planes to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior around their hangars as the fleet resumed its seasonal schedule of low-altitude spraying.
So far, there is no evidence that the nation has suffered a bioterrorist attack, which could leave thousands of citizens infected and sickened within days after a clandestine microbial release. But given the nation's vulnerability to a biological assault -- well documented in a number of recent federal and independent studies -- experts in bioterrorism say they are concerned that the array of responses in the past 10 days has been scattered and uncoordinated. Such a haphazard response would not suffice, these experts say, if the country were to face an actual biological attack.
President Bush in his national address Thursday night announced the creation of an Office of Homeland Security to help fulfill that need for coordination. The aim is to combat in an integrated fashion a wide range of threats, including chemical, nuclear and biological.
But biological attacks present unique challenges not posed by other forms of terrorism, experts said yesterday. Unlike, for example, an explosion, a cloud of microbes released from a small plane won't trigger alarms. Yet it's crucial that officials respond quickly while a disease is still treatable and before the first wave of infections spreads widely through the population.
That reality has prompted scientists to start developing high-tech microbe detectors that may someday provide early warning of a biological attack. But meanwhile, experts said, the best preparation is perhaps the least obvious: Reassemble the nation's broken public health system.
For decades before bioterrorism was on anyone's mind, that publicly supported system -- built around community hospitals and closely linked public health laboratories -- offered a sensitive mechanism for detecting emerging epidemics. Local public health departments, hospitals and clinics were the listening posts of disease detection and the headquarters where specialists designed and implemented vaccination programs.
But a dramatic economic shift to privatized medicine and managed care -- and a mistaken impression among policymakers that infectious diseases had been beaten by antibiotics -- have together decimated that world-class early warning system, leaving the public vulnerable to naturally emerging problems such as West Nile fever and those perpetrated by terrorists.
"Our public health infrastructure has decayed to an alarming extent," said Richard Levinson, associate executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Until recently, for example, publicly supported hospitals and labs gathered large amounts of data beyond those needed for patient care, allowing them to track disease trends and keep one step ahead of epidemics. But with increased privatization, cost-consciousness and the shift from inpatient to outpatient care, most laboratories today conduct only those tests that health insurance will pay for -- just those necessary to decide how to treat a person.
"The pressures of managed care led to laboratory cutbacks and less diagnostics," said Peggy Hamburg, a former New York City health commissioner who is nowwith the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.
The old system was also a victim of political shortsightedness as tuberculosis, syphilis and other infectious scourges went into decline in the 1970s. Federal and state legislators repeatedly cut spending on public health or shifted that support to flexible "block grants" that states chose to spend on more politically visible priorities.
"Public health programs are absolutely necessary, but good public health isn't noticed until it's failed," said Lee B. Reichman of the New Jersey Medical School in Newark.
But even as public health budgets shrank, the threat of disease was growing. Tuberculosis, which in the 1970s was well on its way to being vanquished, has returned with a vengeance -- and this time it is resistant to standard medicines. Centralized food sourcing has led to widely dispersed and sometimes fatal outbreaks of food-borne diseases. And ailments never before seen in this hemisphere, such as West Nile fever, are appearing and seem to be settling in for good.
Those realities alone are reason enough to reinvigorate the nation's public health system, Hamburg and others said. But quick and accurate disease detection is especially important because some of the deadly diseases that might be unleashed by terrorists, such as anthrax and smallpox, could at first be mistaken as an ordinary cold or a flu.
"Many people in the political and military hierarchy don't understand how different a biological attack is from explosives or a nuclear or chemical attack," said George Poste, who heads the bioterrorism task force of the Defense Science Board, an independent advisory panel that assists Pentagon leaders. "Most physicians, delightfully, have not had to think about bioterrorism," Poste said, "so the first thing they think about is a conventional infection. By the time you realize you've got a problem on your hands, people are in the health care system and potentially infecting others."
The United States is not completely unprepared. In 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered the stockpiling of enough vaccines and antibiotics to treat massive numbers of civilians in the wake of a bioterrorist attack. His administration also stepped up spending for training of medical personnel and improved laboratory testing.
Last week, some of that preparation got its first test. In New York, a National Guard unit with special training in bioterrorism was mobilized, as was a team with similar expertise from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
But public health experts say the country is still tens of millions of vaccine doses short; medicine stockpiles remain inadequate and would be unavailable to much of the country if air traffic were again curtailed; and hospitals -- which have greatly reduced their inpatient capacities in recent years -- are unprepared to handle large numbers of critically ill patients.
A survey of 186 emergency rooms in the Northwest, published in May, found that less than 20 percent had plans in place for a biological weapons incident and less than two-thirds had enough drugs in stock to treat 50 cases of anthrax.
It will take years to increase those capacities, but it would not necessarily take much effort to jumpstart the process by reinstating the communications network that once formed the backbone of the nation's public health system, said Tara O'Toole, deputy director of the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategy at Johns Hopkins University.
"Doctors have to know who to call, and they have to be reachable 24 hours a day, and there has to be somebody who can respond responsibly," O'Toole said. "We can do that immediately."
Staff writers Caroline Mayer, Carol Leonnig, Steve Twomey and Justin Gillis contributed to this report.
-------- britain
The hunt - Coalition troops set for covert action
BY MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22 2001
Times of London
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001320012-2001330325,00.html
TONY BLAIR returned from Washington last night with a briefcase containing the American "war" plan for combating the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
For the scenarios that President Bush has in mind, the emphasis will be on covert operations, for which military planners in Britain, working under the codename Operation Veritas, have already scheduled various forces.
These include special forces; elements of the Parachute Regiment, including a specialist team of 12 snipers in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia who are soon to return to Britain; the Royal Marines, some of whom are on their way to Oman for a major excise; the RAF's four C17 Globemaster transport aircraft, which are on standby at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire; and the Royal Navy's three nuclear-powered submarines equipped with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.
Every effort is still being made to build a coalition to attack terrorism on all fronts, not just the military, but the American war scenarios, when put into place, are expected to include:
An American-British, and possibly French, special forces hunt for bin Laden. Such an operation could be launched from northern Pakistan, or more practically from Tajikistan or Uzbekistan. From Pakistan, the elite covert troops would have to pass through hostile pro-Taleban areas. Entry points through Tajikistan or Uzbekistan, which are geographically closer to the 5 per cent of Afghan territory controlled by the Northern Alliance of anti-Taleban guerrilla forces, would make more sense. If permission is given by either government, it is unlikely to be acknowledged in public.
The mission for the special forces would be to link up, as a first phase, with the Northern Alliance, now under a new commander after the assassination of its leader, Ahmed Shah Masood.
The Russian military say that bin Laden is in the Kandahar mountains in the South, and the Western special forces teams will need guides to take them through the heavily mined terrain. Bin Laden has any number of hideouts - caves and deep tunnels, constructed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan - into which he can vanish.
He has four bases, two of which are in Kandahar. He also has a heavily guarded, camouflaged bunker in the Farah province. Flying the special forces' helicopters in the mountainous areas would be extremely hazardous.
The last time that American special forces launched a similar manhunt, albeit in a very different terrain, was in Somalia in 1993 when they sought to capture two top aides to a Somali warlord. For that mission, the American assault force, called Task Force Ranger, consisted of a squadron of the US Army's counter-terrorist Delta Force and a company of Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, backed by three surveillance helicopters, a spy plane, four MH6 Little Bird helicopters and eight Black Hawk troop-carrying helicopters.
They were supported on the ground by eight Humvee vehicles carrying Rangers, Delta Force troops and four members of the US Navy SEALs - a total of about 160 men.
They succeeded in capturing the two men but two Black Hawks were shot down and two more crash-landed; 18 special forces troops were killed. Such past operations underline the risks ahead in Afghanistan for even the most highly trained troops.
Airstrikes. These are likely to range from close air support missions - to protect the special forces and provide additional firepower - to precision guided missile attacks on terrorist targets pinpointed by the American and British covert troops. There could also be anti-radar strikes to destroy Taleban air defences which pose a threat to overflying bombers and other aircraft, although the Afghan capability to threaten Western aircraft is limited. The biggest threat will come from shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, left over from the war with Russian forces in the 1980s and supplied by the CIA.
The airstrikes would have to be launched from carriers in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, with air-to-air refuelling, or from bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Incirlik in Turkey, unless Pakistan allows raids to be mounted from bases there.
Heavy bombing. This would involve B52s, based at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and B1s in the Persian Gulf. The bombing option could be brought into play if America decided to try to flush out bin Laden and his terrorist network. However, the Russians tried the same method in the 1980s, using fuel-air, or vacuum, bombs to suck the oxygen out of underground sites. They even dropped three-ton bombs designed to cause localised earthquakes hoping to bury Mujahidin guerrillas. But the caves in the Kandahar gorge lead into such deep tunnels that hundreds of people could hide in them without being affected.
Airborne attack. Although the main thrust of any operation will be driven by special forces, American airborne units, such as the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, have been put on notice to deploy and could be used if there were a decision to seize an airfield or secure a strategic area identified by special forces.
-------- business
THE MILITARY CONTRACTORS
Beneficiaries of the Military Buildup Await Their Orders
New York Times
September 22, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/22/business/22DEFE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - Early last week, Frank C. Lanza, the chief executive of L-3 Communications, an aerospace and communications company in New York, received a not-too-surprising telephone call from military officials.
"They asked us, `Can you do the following things, and how long will it take you to do it,' " Mr. Lanza said. "They are in the planning process. And they need to know about our ability to deliver certain products."
That planning process is about war: the Pentagon is preparing a shopping list for the global struggle against terrorism promised by President Bush. As a result, scores of military contractors, from giants like Lockheed Martin to smaller companies like L-3, could be among the corporate beneficiaries of the devastating attacks of Sept. 11.
Even as those assaults have sent the stock market plummeting and caused havoc for much of American business, prospects for the military-industrial complex are looking stronger than they have in years.
Overnight, political opposition in Congress to huge increases in Pentagon spending has vanished, along with concerns about dipping into surplus Social Security funds. Consequently, what had seemed to the industry like a disappointingly small military budget just two weeks ago is now climbing toward unanticipated heights, providing a lift for military contractors and a quick Keynesian stimulus for the economy.
Beyond the buildup for war, winners and losers in the race for Pentagon money will also be determined by the outcome of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's efforts to transform the military. His goals have included improving intelligence, expanding long-strike capabilities and making the forces lighter, faster and more high-tech.
But the process has faced stiff resistance from some commanders and lawmakers who fear Mr. Rumsfeld wants to starve programs for modernizing conventional ships, planes and howitzers to nurture untried products, like space planes or remotely piloted submarines.
"The services are going to want to try to use some money to address their modernization needs," said Jacques S. Gansler, an under secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who now teaches public policy at the University of Maryland. "And that's where you get a conundrum over whether to buy a new tank, or equipment you'd like to have for 21st-century warfare against terrorists. You'll have a battle between those two options."
The budget numbers tell the story. Three days after the attack, Congress overwhelmingly approved $40 billion in emergency funds, with $10 billion to $15 billion for the armed services. In the next few weeks, Congress is also expected to approve, with little dissent, a $33 billion increase in the Pentagon budget, raising it to $329 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
And before final votes on the 2002 spending plan are even cast, the Pentagon is expected to ask for an additional $15 billion to $25 billion. There is bipartisan support for that, too.
"Capitol Hill is prepared to do whatever the Pentagon wants," said Gordon Adams, a budget official in the Clinton administration who is now director of security policy studies at the Elliot School of International Security Studies at George Washington University.
Much of the initial wave of money will go toward rebuilding the smoldering hole left in the Pentagon by the hijacked airliner, paying for heightened security at military installations worldwide and preparing for retaliatory strikes. That will mean buying new bullets, cruise missiles, boots, reconnaissance equipment and spare parts.
But many analysts and military officials say they expect there to be a significant amount of money left over after those basic needs are met. The service chiefs and senior lawmakers will probably want to spend those funds on favored weapons programs, like Boeing (news/quote)'s F-18 E and F fighters, United Defense's Crusader artillery system, and Northrop Grumman and General Dynamic's DD-21 stealth destroyer. It will not matter if those systems are not clearly useful in the war on terrorism, the analysts say.
"There is a heightened sense of danger out there," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military policy organization based in Arlington, Va.
"There are increased resources," he added. "There is muted partisanship. And those three factors combine to improve the prospects of many defense programs, even those that don't appear immediately relevant to the current operations."
Whether that buying spree lasts will depend on the nature and duration of the military operation Mr. Bush orders. A ground war could help builders of armored equipment, like General Dynamics. A war fought mainly from the air could benefit Lockheed or Boeing. And a totally different kind of battle, where rooting out an elusive enemy will require intelligence and surveillance skills more than sheer firepower, could help companies like Northrop, maker of the Global Hawk, an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
Yet the influx of money soon to flow from Capitol Hill seems certain to trickle down to a wide array of military contractors, big and small.
"A rising tide does lift all boats," said John Williams, a spokesman for the National Defense Industrial Association, a trade group representing 900 military contractors.
There will be new purchases of explosion-proof windows and doors for the Pentagon and other military buildings. Spare parts and maintenance contracts will grow as more ships, planes and helicopters undergo the relentless wear-and-tear of overseas deployment.
Munitions makers can also count on new orders for items like cruise missiles and other kinds of precision- guided weapons.
Companies like Alliant Techsystems (news/quote), a munitions maker in Minneapolis, and Boeing, which makes highly accurate gravity bombs and cruise missiles, would be candidates for new orders. And there has been talk among military planners of speeding up a Raytheon (news/quote) contract to refurbish older Tomahawk missiles with Global Positioning Systems for greater accuracy.
That $414 million program to upgrade 644 missiles was started as an emergency contract after the Air Force ran short of Tomahawks during the bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1998 - an embarrassment the Pentagon wants to avoid repeating.
"The prospects for smart weapons really look favorable," said William J. Frost, vice president for administration for the EDO Corporation, a New York-based company that makes targeting, radar jamming and sonar equipment.
But some Pentagon planners are talking about speeding up production of much bigger items as well, should the struggle be as protracted as Mr. Bush has predicted.
For instance, Mr. Rumsfeld has urged the services to increase the number of reconnaissance planes available for hunting down Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network.
One option would be to accelerate an existing Boeing program for equipping six C-9's with sophisticated surveillance equipment. Boeing has delivered the first four planes at an average cost of $54 million each. Now, the Navy has asked the company if it could expand production. Deena Weiss, a Boeing spokeswoman, said that would not be a problem.
Some analysts and Navy officials also say that a prolonged battle overseas could require buying more carrier-based aircraft. Boeing is scheduled to deliver 39 of the F-18 E and F fighters in 2002.
"As ever, carriers are useful for a full spectrum of conflict," said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.
The Pentagon is also planning to seek money to speed up a program, led by General Dynamics, to replace the 24 nuclear-tipped missiles on aging Trident submarines with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
If Mr. Rumsfeld has his way in transforming the military, the biggest winners will be companies that build intelligence-gathering equipment, wireless communications systems, precision-guided weapons and missile-defense components.
"At least on the face of it, you would think that the people who are strongly focused on surveillance and precision weapons would do relatively better," said Wolfgang Demisch, managing director with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities.
Indeed, he added, "you could be looking at a significant reduction in available funds for ordinary military affairs and purchases."
L-3, created out of a division of Loral after that company was purchased by Lockheed Martin, is cited by some analysts as the kind of high- technology company that stands to gain from Mr. Rumsfeld's new vision. It produces equipment that provides security for wireless communications and components for aircraft and airport security systems. The company also makes products that help intelligence officers scan, filter and analyze huge quantities of voice and electronic data.
Mr. Lanza said he was convinced that the impending mobilization, combined with Mr. Rumsfeld's plans, would hasten a realignment of Pentagon budget priorities away from cold war weapons toward the new technology his company produces.
"Sept. 11 is going to change the landscape for this industry," he said.
National missile defense is another high priority of the Bush administration that seems to have gained political momentum from the terrorist attack, analysts say.
"There is a clear linkage between terrorism and missile defense," said David E. Baker, a retired Air Force general who is now managing director for the Schwab Washington Research Group. "If these terrorists could get a hold of a missile and put some bad stuff into that nose cone and launch it on Manhattan, they would."
Before Sept. 11, Democrats on Capitol Hill were hoping to trim back President Bush's $8.3 billion first- year missile shield program and place tight restrictions on testing and development. But that opposition has softened, with many Democrats saying they have lost the stomach for a partisan fight - even as they privately argue that a missile shield could not have prevented the attacks.
Contractors on the program include TRW, which builds satellites; Raytheon, which builds "antimissile kill" vehicles; Lockheed, which makes missiles and communications equipment; and Boeing, which in addition to building booster rockets is the lead contractor on the program.
Indeed, for Boeing, military business in general has been a silver lining in an otherwise bleak fall.
Last week, the company's stock price fell sharply in tandem with the airline industry's, and it announced plans for as many as 30,000 layoffs. But its military business, which accounts for about a quarter of its revenue, remains healthy.
"Boeing has taken a thrashing," Mr. Baker said. "But their military sector is pounding away like a Ferrari on all cylinders."
Many military contractors have been hesitant to talk publicly about their improved economic prospects. "This is such a gruesome way to make money," a lobbyist said.
But some companies have been openly lobbying for new business. Indeed, several executives have called the Pentagon directly in the last week to say they were prepared to ramp up production. One was Continental Electronics, a communication equipment company with annual revenue of $26 million.
"We believe that our radio transmitters would be desperately needed in places like Pakistan," said John Uvodich, the company's president. "We are just trying to let people in Washington know that we are here to assist."
-------- china
China, U.S. ready to share intelligence
September 22, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010922-853547.htm
The United States and China agreed yesterday to share intelligence against terrorism, and the State Department announced that a bilateral expert group will meet on Tuesday in Washington.
During a 21/2-hour meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan offered "cooperation in the anti-terrorism field." Cooperation in any military operations against those responsible for last week's attacks was not discussed, according to Mr. Powell.
He said he had not asked Mr. Tang how China would react to U.S. military action. But he cited areas in which Beijing could help the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban for harboring suspect Osama bin Laden.
China "has influence in that region. It has knowledge and information. It has intelligence that might be of help to us, and our counterterrorism experts will be getting together next week to explore every way in which the two sides can cooperate," he told reporters.
Another senior State Department official later said the discussion next week "will be devoted primarily to the al Qaeda organization," referring to bin Laden's extensive terrorist network, "but also more generally on the phenomenon."
"The Chinese have proximity. They have contacts. They have understanding of the region. They have perhaps some information on how these people travel and where they go. Who knows? They may have some insights into finance," the official said.
Asked whether Mr. Tang had mentioned military action in their conversation yesterday, Mr. Powell said: "I made the point to the foreign minister that we would be looking at a complete campaign that would involve going after finances, information, intelligence and law enforcement. It might have a military component.
"But we did not get into any details of the military component, nor did I ask the Chinese government what their reaction might be, nor did they suggest to me any participation. It just didn't come up."
In brief comments after the meeting, Mr. Tang told reporters at the State Department that China's "attitude on the question of terrorism has always been clear-cut and consistent."
"We firmly oppose and strongly condemn all forms of terrorism in all their evil acts," he said through an interpreter.
The senior State Department official said Mr. Tang told Mr. Powell that China had its own "terrorism" problem in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where some Uighur Muslims oppose Chinese rule.
But Mr. Powell said Mr. Tang had not sought U.S. concessions in return for cooperation in Washington's anti-terrorism campaign.
"Both sides recognize that this is a threat to both countries. They have their terrorism problems, and there are terrorism problems here in the United States, so there was absolutely no discussion of a quid pro quo," he said.
The two top diplomats also made preparations for a summit meeting in Shanghai next month between President Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
In addition, they scheduled the first U.S.-China talks on human rights in more than two years for Oct. 1-3, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
The dialogue was suspended after the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, was accidentally bombed during the 1999 Kosovo war. Mr. Powell and Mr. Tang agreed in principle to resume the talks when Mr. Powell visited China in July.
The Chinese foreign minister yesterday also paid a courtesy call to President Bush.
Mr. Powell added that his guest told him about his Thursday evening visit with the daughter and son-in-law of a Chinese couple who were aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
"It just shows how this is an international crisis, and it all has to do with the loss of innocent humanity. So we agreed to cooperate in this campaign against terrorism," Mr. Powell said.
-------- iraq
Allies Hit Iraqi Air Defenses
Associated Press
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7204-2001Sep21?language=printer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 21 -- U.S. and British warplanes struck two anti-aircraft sites in southern Iraq today in their second attack in two days, a U.S. military spokesman said.
He said the bombings were a response to Baghdad's hostile activity against allied planes patrolling the "no-fly zones" set up to protect anti-government forces in northern and southern Iraq.
The U.S. and British planes targeted military vehicles and equipment in al-Amrah, 155 miles south of Baghdad, and Talil, 170 miles south of Baghdad, said Chief Petty Officer David Nagle, deputy spokesman for the Joint Task Force Southwest Asia. The planes returned safely.
The Iraqi News Agency quoted military spokesmen as saying warplanes hit civil and service installations. It gave no details.
Britain's Defense Ministry said the airstrikes had nothing to do with last week's attacks in the United States.
-------- israel
Israelis rush to buy protection gear
September 22, 2001
By Dan Ephron
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010922-26271850.htm
ASHDOD, Israel - Israelis, fearing a U.S. assault on Iraq could trigger Scud missile strikes on their state, flocked to army distribution centers to get new gas masks and other gear for protection from a chemical attack.
The rush for equipment came despite the fact that the government here has made no announcement that Israel could face an assault similar to the one during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Iraq fired dozens of missiles.
Some American officials have said Iraq might have aided the terrorists involved in the attacks on the United States, prompting assessments that Iraq will be targeted for American reprisal.
However, a senior military official here said yesterday that Israel believes Baghdad was probably not involved.
At one center in the southern town of Ashdod this week, Israelis, clutching their old cardboard gas mask kits, waited for hours to get new ones.
"We're not panicking but we're not taking any chances either," said Shlomo Balam, who came with his three children.
The center, housed in the clammy basement of a shopping center, was sectioned off into stations where Israelis handed in their old equipment, tried on new masks, and watched an instructional video.
Many at the center skipped the instruction, relying on their experience from 1991, but Mr. Balam said he had been out of the country at the time and would need to watch the video.
At a distribution center in Tel Aviv, the crowd got so large at one point this week that soldiers resorted to handing out numbers and asking people to come back hours later.
A military official briefing a group of foreign reporters in Tel Aviv said Israel had forwarded to Washington several months ago general information about Osama bin Laden's plan to stage a large attack on the United States but the intelligence had not been specific.
Israel's security branches closely monitor Islamic groups, including bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, and regularly share intelligence with the United States under a joint defense agreement.
"We don't know for sure who was behind this attack. It was obviously radical Islam but who was the precise person, we don't know," the Israeli official said. "Iraq is from a different camp. They don't come from the camp of radical Islam."
Several officials in Washington, including former CIA Director James Woolsey, have said Iraq might have sponsored the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, one of Washington's most bitter foes in the Arab world, has denied his country was involved, though he did say a day after the attack that the United States got what it deserved.
Asked about the possibility that Iraq could repeat its 1991 Scud missile attacks on Israel in the event the United States attacks Iraq, the Israeli official said:
"I don't see any threat from the Iraqis and I don't want to provoke the Iraqis. We don't have any information that Iraq was involved in this act and we don't see a reason for this to happen."
The military official said Israel's more immediate neighbor, Syria, was harboring a number of militant groups, including Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah.
-------- pakistan
Pakistanis vent rage over U.S. war plans
September 22, 2001
From combined dispatches
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20010922-705635.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Pakistan's major cities yesterday, burning effigies of President Bush and screaming opposition to their government's support for the U.S. campaign against terrorism. At least two civilians died.
However, in a boost for Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's handling of the crisis, turnouts for demonstrations after Friday prayers in most major cities were below expectations and passed off peacefully.
The exception was Karachi, where crowds swelled to 40,000 and at least two persons died as the protests turned violent in Afghan-dominated areas of the city.
The demonstrations were called after Gen. Musharraf backed U.S. efforts to apprehend terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and to break up his suspected terrorist network operating from Afghanistan. Demonstrators vowed to fight U.S. forces if they attack Afghanistan.
"The terrorist attacks in the United States were so monstrous, so big, that no sane person would like to implicate himself with such action. Many Pakistanis now feel that Osama bin Laden may not be as innocent as they once thought," said Riffat Hussain, a political analyst at Qauid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
However, he also said public support for religious parties that want to unseat Gen. Musharraf could quickly swell if U.S. forces attack Afghanistan, especially if innocent people are killed.
In neighboring Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban militia defied the warning from Mr. Bush Thursday, saying it was not prepared to surrender bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's attacks on New York and Washington.
"We are not ready to hand over Osama bin Laden without evidence," Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salaam Zaeef told reporters.
Mr. Bush said Thursday he wanted the Taliban to hand over both bin Laden and senior officials in his al Qaeda terror network "immediately" and that the demands "are not open to negotiation."
The words angered ordinary Afghans, who said Washington was uniting people behind the Taliban and appeared to be signaling that its quarry was not bin Laden but the Islam religion.
"The U.S. should revise its stubborn decision and no more bring about a situation whereby youngsters like me join the Taliban against the devil America," said one grocer in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
In their sermons at Friday prayers, mullahs called on the faithful - men and women - to join a holy war, or jihad, against the United States.
In an aside to the anti-U.S. rhetoric, Taliban fighters found themselves locked in bloody battles in the north against the main opposition Northern Alliance, which said the ruling movement had suffered setbacks.
In addition, the leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek minority, Gen. Rashid Dostum, joined the fray, sending his forces against the Taliban.
But back in Kabul, Mohammed Muslim Haqqani, the Taliban's deputy higher education minister, told a congregation of several hundred in the city's main mosque:
"Jihad is the soul of Islam. We believe that the time of death will come when Allah wants it and there is no better honor than being martyred."
In Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, as many as 10,000 people marched, screaming slogans against the U.S. and Pakistani governments.
They gathered in front of the main mosque, where religious leaders made speeches supporting bin Laden and the Taliban leadership that has protected him and his followers in Afghanistan for years.
Jamming the streets, the protesters burned at least three life-size effigies of Mr. Bush and shouted slogans, including "long live Osama."
One tribal leader told the crowd that, in his region, the price of guns would be reduced 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 fired tear gas and clashed with protesters who threw stones and burned tires.
At least 70 demonstrators were arrested. One demonstrator was killed and a shopkeeper was beaten to death by protesters when he refused to close his business for the strike, police said.
In Islamabad, the capital, a preacher at the towering Lal Masjid mosque warned: "Musharraf, listen.
The nation will not accept your decision, and any collaboration with the United States is treason."
In the southwestern city of Quetta, several thousand people rallied outside the central mosque, holding signs saying "Osama: Hero No. 1" and pictures of bin Laden. They chanted "Death to America." After several hours, the rally dispersed peacefully.
In defying the United States, Afghanistan's Taliban leaders and militants in Pakistan picked up support through the Arab world.
Cleric Bakir Abdul-Razak, in prayers carried on Iraqi state television, condemned "the new crusade" as "war with a new cover."
"By God's will, the Americans will not have an upper hand on us," the Iraqi cleric said. "We call for jihad, and we defy you, the Americans."
In Amman, Jordan, cleric Mussa Abu-Sweilem said that "the Muslim people are united, just like one body."
At the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of Palestinian supporters of the militant Muslim group Hamas urged bin Laden to bomb Tel Aviv and the United States.
"The Americans cover their colonial aims with hollow slogans such as war against terrorism while everyone knows that the real American motives are not that," said cleric Sheik Maher Hammoud in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.
In Egypt, hard-line clerics of the Al-Azhar Ulama Front said those Arab countries that join the alliance may one day find themselves the target of it.
An until-now unknown organization, the Islamic Quzeda Army, Unity of the Arabian Peninsula, said in a statement released in Beirut that it would "strike with an iron fist" if Muslim governments provided the United States with any assistance, information or ground, air and naval installations.
"Revenge will increase against the United States if it takes any action," a cleric warned at Bahrain's Grand Mosque in Manama. "The United States has no right to take action before investigating this matter."
-------- saudi arabia
Saudis Balk at U.S. Use of Key Facility
Powell Seeks Reversal of Policy; Refusal Could Delay Airstrikes at Terrorists
By Vernon Loeb and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6731-2001Sep21?language=printer
Saudi Arabia is resisting the United States' request to use a new command center on a Saudi military base in any air war against terrorists, forcing Pentagon planners to consider alternatives that could delay a campaign for weeks, defense officials said yesterday.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is trying to persuade the Saudi government to reverse a decade-old policy in which it has refused to allow the United States to stage or command offensive air operations from Saudi air bases, officials said.
While high-level talks aimed at resolving the matter are underway, the Pentagon is already considering moving the operations center to another country, the officials added. They did not specify where.
A refusal by the Saudis would deal a significant blow to the Bush administration's efforts to build a broad international coalition in its effort to destroy the terrorist network of Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which has harbored bin Laden and many of his top lieutenants.
The Pentagon had been counting on using the command center at Prince Sultan Air Base in the coming air war. Besides delaying any operation, Saudi unwillingness to allow the United Sates to use Saudi bases for offensive operations could send a strong signal to the Arab world that accepting Washington's demands is not a prerequisite for ongoing relations with Washington.
The Combined Air Operations Center at Prince Sultan Air Base, located outside Al Kharj about 70 miles southeast of Riyadh and completed just six weeks ago, is the Air Force's most advanced command and control center. It is capable of controlling the movements of hundreds of aircraft over an area of thousands of miles.
The two nations have different perspectives on the Air Force facility: The United States sees it as capable of running operations throughout the Mideast, while the Saudi government would like -- at least publicly -- to see it used only to defend Saudi territory.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who until last year commanded U.S. military operations in the Mideast, said losing the ability to run combat missions from the new air operations center would be problematic only in the short term.
"Obviously, it's easier to go into a place where you're already set up," he said. "But we have really worked to make our capability expeditionary and can set up fairly quickly" at bases in other countries.
Victoria Clarke, the chief spokesperson for the Pentagon, declined to comment on the discussions with the Saudis. "We think it is appropriate for countries to announce what they are doing, not us," she said. "Different countries will be doing different things at different times. We have been very pleased by this response."
Greg Sullivan, spokesman for the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, said he was unaware of any dispute with the Saudis. "We've gotten everything we've asked for from the Saudis and we're very pleased with their cooperation," he said.
Despite military ties with Washington that are decades old, the Saudi royal family remains extremely sensitive about cooperating with the U.S. military, given feelings among many Saudi citizens that their leaders are too closely allied with the United States.
During the Persian Gulf War, the Saudis permitted the United States to fly combat missions from their soil. But afterward, the Saudis repeatedly refused Washington's request to base attack aircraft there for various military strikes against Iraq.
The matter is so sensitive that U.S. officials often do not even ask the Saudis for permission to use their bases for offensive purposes. Such was the case when 40,000 troops and coalition forces moved into the Gulf region after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein prohibited United Nations inspectors from entering certain suspected chemical and biological weapons sites. Airstrikes were averted after Saddam relented.
A cardinal rule in dealing with the Saudi government has been secrecy, or "plausible deniability," said one general who worked for years in Saudi Arabia.
"Saudi cooperation was always something they did not want to broadcast," he said, referring to media accounts earlier this week in The Washington Post and the New York Times about the U.S. plan to run the coming air war out of the new operations center at Prince Sultan base.
Public discussion of that plan, the general said, "put them in a really tough position. We should have known better."
In the past, the Saudis have told U.S. officials that they cannot support strikes from their territory, or advocate strikes publicly, unless the target of the strikes, which in most cases has been Iraq, had struck first, in which case the U.S. action could be considered defensive.
While the Saudis have balked at allowing combat missions to be flown or controlled from their soil, they have allowed refuelers, reconnaissance and other support aircraft to fly from Saudi bases. They have also allowed 5,000 U.S. troops to be stationed there, but have severely limited reporting on their presence or operations.
In another war-related development yesterday, a spokesman at Fort Bragg, N.C., confirmed that the U.S. Army Special Operations Command had received a deployment order for sending troops and units abroad as part of the war on terrorism.
But Maj. Rob Gowan said he could not comment on how many troops or which units were affected by the order.
Staff writer Alan Sipress contributed to this report.
-------- u.s.
Bush rejects deal for bin Laden
September 22, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010922-76669001.htm
The White House yesterday rejected the Taliban's demand for evidence of Osama bin Laden's guilt, insisting there is no room for negotiation when it comes to handing over terrorists.
"There will be no negotiations and no discussions," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The war preparations continue."
He added: "The Taliban have not agreed to the demands the president laid out, and therefore, the president will continue to take every action necessary to protect this country."
The White House took this hard line after the Taliban announced yesterday it would not turn over bin Laden without proof that he masterminded last week's catastrophic terrorist attacks against the United States. Mr. Fleischer countered that publicly disclosing such proof would give "valuable information" to targets such as bin Laden.
"They would like nothing better than to be able to hide where they are hiding and have the United States reveal what we know and how we know it," he said, "which will make it easier for them to hide and will make it easier for them to carry out further actions if we report our sources and methods or how we obtain information. We're just not going to do that."
Besides, bin Laden and his terrorist network, known as al Qaeda, have already been implicated in earlier attacks against the United States.
"Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization have been indicted in connection with the bombings of the United States facilities in Kenya and Tanzania," said Mr. Fleischer. "That indictment stands on the books today. There are also indications that the al Qaeda organization was involved in the bombing of the [USS] Cole."
As the White House ratcheted up the rhetoric against the Taliban, President Bush continued to assemble his global coalition against terrorism, enlisting the support of three more nations with significant Muslim populations - Turkey, Kenya and Oman. In Brussels, the European Union also pledged its support for "targeted retaliation" against states that harbor terrorism.
Mr. Bush released the first $5.1 billion in emergency spending that Congress authorized last week in a $40 billion package. The money will help pay for yesterday's additional military deployments and the placement of federal marshals on some airline flights. A portion was also earmarked for rewards for information about terrorists.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, who pledged nonmilitary cooperation in America's war against terrorism, especially in Central Asia.
"It has influence in that region," Mr. Powell said. "It has knowledge and information. It has intelligence that might be of help to us. And our counterterrorism experts will be getting together next week to explore every way in which the two sides can cooperate."
Mr. Tang said: "We firmly oppose and strongly condemn all forms of terrorism in all their evil acts, and both sides agree to carry out even better cooperation on these questions in the future." He later met with Mr. Bush.
For the first time in the 10 days since the terrorist attacks, which killed more than 6,500 people, Mr. Bush did not speak in public yesterday.
The White House did not want to dilute the lingering impact of his Thursday night address to a joint session of Congress, in which the president laid out his case for war.
A poll by NBC News yesterday showed a whopping 95 percent of Americans reacted favorably to the speech, with only 2 percent reacting unfavorably.
A Fox News Channel poll found the president's overall job-performance rating, which stood at 55 percent just weeks ago, has skyrocketed to 81 percent.
The public appears particularly supportive of Mr. Bush's tough stance against the Taliban, the Islamic organization that controls most of Afghanistan. During his address Thursday, Mr. Bush gave the Taliban a stark ultimatum that was reiterated yesterday by the White House.
Mr. Fleischer said the president "expects the Taliban to honor the demands that he made in his speech last night: to cease their efforts to support and harbor terrorists; and to turn terrorists over to the United States or other authorities; and to allow the United States access to the terrorists' camps."
But with the Taliban already refusing to carry out such tasks without proof of bin Laden's culpability, the U.S. military is coiling to make good on the president's threat to annihilate the Taliban.
"He's put them on notice," Mr. Fleischer said of his boss. "And he is preparing to do what must inevitably come next."
He added: "Suffice it to say, the reason the president met with his National Security Council this morning, that he will do so again tomorrow, is because the planning is active and under way."
Meanwhile, a Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters yesterday that Islamabad, which has pledged its support to the U.S. war on terrorism, also is urging bin Laden to leave Afghanistan amid preparations for possible retaliatory attacks.
"We hope that the Taliban leadership, keeping in view the gravity of the situation, will take a prompt decision which is in the interest of Afghanistan and its people and which satisfies the concerns and demands of the international community," Riaz Mohammed Khan said in a statement.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld scoffed at reports that the United States is contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in its war against terrorism.
He also said the United States is seeking ideas and intelligence from the Northern Alliance, a group of anti-Taliban rebels that controls less than 10 percent of Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush met yesterday in the White House with insurance-industry executives who are facing tens of billions of dollars in life and property claims in the wake of last week's terrorist strikes. While the executives said the industry could absorb the blow without a government bailout, they called for federal help in the event of future terrorist strikes.
Afterward, the president and Mrs. Bush departed for Camp David.
As they emerged on the South Lawn to board Marine One, the presidential helicopter, they were greeted by 300 White House employees who cheered and waved American flags.
Mr. Bush gave them a thumbs-up before departing for a weekend of national security meetings at the presidential retreat in Maryland. In a display of stepped-up security, Marine One was escorted by F-16 fighter jets.
Tomorrow, Mr. Bush will hold a ceremony raising U.S. flags to their full height after a dozen days of mourning, during which Old Glory was flown at half-mast. Upon returning to the White House next week, the president will meet with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Monday and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Tuesday.
--------
Funds Tapped for Military, Air Marshals, Rewards
Associated Press
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A15
President Bush has decided to use $5.1 billion in emergency funds to increase military spending, put federal marshals on some airline flights and give rewards for information about terrorists. The money, which Bush released yesterday, is the first installment of the $40 billion emergency package that Congress enacted last week after the attacks in New York and Washington.
Half the money would go to the Defense Department for improving intelligence and repairing the damaged Pentagon, and for other activities. The rest would be divided among 20 Cabinet-level departments and agencies, as well as Congress and the judicial branch. Included is $2.5 million for the White House, Capitol and the Supreme Court to put a substance on windows that is supposed to prevent them from shattering in an explosion.
After the $2.5 billion for the Defense Department, the next biggest piece is $2 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The money is for debris removal at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, aid for victims and their families, and search-and-rescue efforts.
Also included is $123 million for the Federal Aviation Administration to boost airport security, including paying federal law enforcement officers serving as sky marshals aboard some flights. The State Department will receive $49 million, half of it for rewards that help apprehend terrorists.
The Small Business Administration will get $100 million to help finance $400 million of low-interest loans for residents and businesses in the affected areas. The Department of Health and Human Services will get $126 million to help medical centers and mental health services in the areas.
Other activities for which Bush released funds include increasing security at the Energy Department's national laboratories, paying the FBI's extra expenses for its investigation, evacuating foreign embassies if necessary and relocating more than 1,000 federal employees who worked in or near the World Trade Center.
----------
Former Soviet Republics Are Key to U.S. Effort
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6780-2001Sep21?language=printer
The planned deployment of American fighter jets and ground forces to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is the payoff for a three-year-old program of U.S. military engagement with the two former Soviet republics that are strategically perched along Afghanistan's northern border, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The deployment would be the first by a U.S. military force to an area that was once part of the Soviet Union, a precedent that experts say may arouse concern with Russia andChina. Both have longtime strategic and economic interests in the area. It also would draw the United States into closer relations with an Uzbek government that human rights groups have accused of indiscriminately jailing scores of innocent people in the name of combating Islamic militancy.
Uzbekistan, which has shown the most independent attitude toward Moscow among the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, has been open about welcoming the U.S. forces, which under current planning would be sent to the region to take part in a U.S. military move against terrorist sites in Afghanistan and the country's ruling Taliban militia.
Tajikistan, on the other hand, has been sensitive to having U.S. forces on its territory, and it is not expected to officially acknowledge their presence, U.S. officials said. They said the U.S. deployment will be deliberately low profile, with the Americans likely operating from former Soviet bases and kept far from the media and the local population. Tajikistan has maintained closer ties to Moscow than Uzbekistan, and still has thousands of Russian troops on its soil.
Tajikistan is close to eastern and southern Afghanistan, where the United States is likely to focus its attacks on suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, his supporters and the Taliban. For that reason, Pentagon planners said, the Air Force wants to have Tajik airstrips available for U.S. aircraft to land quickly in emergencies.
Pentagon officials are still reviewing their options for a counter-terrorism campaign, and they said a final decision on the role for U.S. forces in Central Asia -- and their makeup -- has not been made.
Under the current thinking, the United States will fly F-15E fighter-bombers from Uzbekistan, and put combat search-and-rescue teams in Tajikistan, with Special Forces liaison units operating in both countries. F-16 fighters may occasionally move into Tajikistan, but only at remote locations, and will not operate there on a long-term basis, a Defense Department official said.
In 1998, the U.S. Central Command, which is based in Tampa and oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, organized a joint exercise of U.S. forces and Central Asian militaries in the town of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan.
But the effort ended on a sour note when a group of Kazakh paratroopers jumped from their planes ahead of schedule, showing up and angering the Uzbeks. The U.S. delegation, led by now-retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, then flew out in an old Soviet transport aircraft that was inadequately pressurized, and in which the pilot was swigging vodka. "Everybody got sick," recalled one participant.
"I think it is astonishing" that the U.S. relationship in the area has moved from that star-crossed first exercise to having U.S. combat forces based there, this participant recalled.
But Zinni, who headed the Central Command until August 2000, said he thought in 1998 that the U.S. military would wind up on the ground in Central Asia.
"I saw Central Asia as a bulwark against what I saw coming out of Afghanistan -- terrorism, drugs, extremism," Zinni said in an interview yesterday. And even in 1998, he added, the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, expressed an interest in having U.S. troops based there. Earlier this week, Karimov had a short telephone conversation with President Bush in which both presidents expressed the willingness of their nations to fight terrorism, a White House spokesman said.
"They wanted a special relationship," Zinni said of the Uzbek government. To that end, he said, the United States began conducting military exercises in the region and provided some military equipment, such as radios, to the Uzbeks. Earlier this year, the two countries signed a treaty providing for the elimination of Soviet-era chemical and biological weapons facilities.
The 5th Group of U.S. Army Special Forces, which is based at Fort Campbell, Ky., has also been training the Uzbek military in peacekeeping operations. The Army Special Forces Command said yesterday that some of its units are deploying overseas now as part of the anti-terrorism campaign, but declined to identify which units.
Experts disagree over whether the U.S. military deployment to Central Asia would be more significant politically or militarily. The political payoffs are significant. It broadens the new anti-terrorism coalition the Bush administration is trying to assemble, and includes more countries that are at least ostensibly Muslim. Also, the deployment increases the diplomatic pressure on Pakistan to permit the United States to conduct combat operations from its soil against targets in Afghanistan.
"This is going to give us a wedge into an area that three years ago we wouldn't have even considered friendly," one Air Force official said.
Zinni said he thought that having U.S. aircraft able to operate from bases near Afghanistan notably increased the flexibility of U.S. military operations. Land-based aircraft have much longer range than do planes based on aircraft carriers, which the United States currently has in the Arabian Sea.
The United States is reluctant to base aircraft in Pakistan, which shares a 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan. Pakistan wants to keep the U.S. military presence as small as possible out of concern it will spark unrest by the country's predominantly Muslim population.
The air bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan could be used as staging bases for ground troop assaults in Afghanistan, another expert said. In addition, should the United States decide to become involved in Afghanistan's civil war, Zinni said, it could fly airstrikes on behalf of the Northern Alliance rebels who oppose the Taliban leadership in Kabul that has been harboring bin Laden.
There could be some costs associated with the U.S. move. "I'm sure this really bugs the Russians," Zinni said. "This is their back yard."
Indeed, Sergei Rogov, director of Moscow's USA and Canada Studies Institute, said at a Washington news conference yesterday that it appeared the "Americans are trying to score points at our expense" in Central Asia. In addition, China may look askance at the U.S. presence in the energy-rich region, where Chinese influence has grown in the post-Soviet era.
"If it turns into a long-term presence, that could change the security equation in the region, and that could be troublesome for both China and Russia," said Martha Brill Olcott, a specialist in Central Asian issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.
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U.S. special forces move near Afghani borders
09/22/2001
By Jack Kelley,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/21/border.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - U.S. Special Operations Forces have begun moving into countries bordering Afghanistan to begin a covert mission to capture or kill indicted terrorist Osama bin Laden, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials tell USA TODAY. A Special Operations Command Center has already been set up in the region to coordinate their activities, the officials add. Teams of three to five camouflaged soldiers are expected to soon deploy into Afghanistan's vast mountainous regions in an attempt to locate the elusive bin Laden, Pakistani officials say. Bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, is believed to be hiding in caves or underground bunkers in southwest Afghanistan but officials say they do not know exactly where.
U.S. officials described the mission to track bin Laden as difficult, dangerous and expansive.
Several elite U.S. and British military units will be involved in the effort, including the Army's Green Berets, Navy SEALs and the British Army Special Air Services, U.S. officials say. Afghan citizens will also be used as paid informants to supply information on his whereabouts, Pakistan officials add.
Army Special Operations Blackhawk MH-60K helicopters, outfitted with elaborate radar guidance systems and weapons, will also be used in the tracking operation, U.S. military planners say.
The Special Operations teams have been told to capture or kill bin Laden or, if that is not possible, pin him down in an area until U.S. air strikes can be launched, the officials add. Dozens of fighter jets and support aircraft are already based in the region and more are on their way, U.S. officials said Thursday in Washington.
Also Friday, Taliban officials here reiterated that they would not hand-over bin Laden to the United States or a third country for trial until they have been given proof of his involvement in any terrorist activities. They also warned Muslim countries, including Pakistan, that if they cooperate with the United States in any retaliatory strike on bin Laden or Afghanistan, they would be subject to jihad, or holy war.
Militant groups in Pakistan called for a nationwide strike and protest Friday to denounce President Pervez Musharraf's decision to cooperate with the United States in any retaliatory strike. Musharraf has agreed to provide U.S. officials with information on bin Laden's whereabouts and open up Pakistani airspace to U.S. fighter jets.
President Bush has warned that any retaliatory strike against bin Laden and other terrorist networks, and the countries that harbor them, would be massive and sustained.
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U.S. Steps Up Military Mobilization
September 22, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international/attack-military.html
WASHINGTON, Sept 22 (Reuters) - The United States activated another 5,172 reserve troops on Saturday, stepping up its biggest military mobilization since the 1991 Gulf War as Washington advanced on a collision course with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban over Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden.
The call-up was announced a day after eight B-52 bombers, Vietnam-era giants armed with long-range cruise missiles, and dozens of other warplanes began departing U.S. bases toward a Gulf region build-up within striking range of Afghanistan.
U.S officials, who asked not to be identified, said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was also preparing a second deployment order to send more warplanes to the Gulf, bringing to more than 200 the number that would join about 350 U.S. aircraft already there.
The Pentagon on Saturday announced that it had called 5,172 Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard members to active duty in the wake of a Sept. 11 terror attack on the United States that left more than 6,800 people dead or missing.
Another 5,131 and reservists and guard members were called up earlier in the week under a National Emergency declared by President George W. Bush and authorizing Rumsfeld to activate up to 50,000 part-time troops for ``homeland defense'' and to fight Bush's declared ``War on Terrorism.''
Defense officials, meanwhile, refused to confirm or deny a report from Afghanistan on Saturday that the Taliban might have shot down an unmanned U.S. military spy plane near Kabul.
SILENT ON MILITARY OPERATIONS
``The Defense Department is not going to discuss operational issues, and we certainly are not going to respond to each and every statement of the Taliban,'' said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
Bush has accused the Taliban of harboring bin Laden, a primary suspect in devastating Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that left more than 6,800 people dead or missing. Bush has warned the Taliban that they face an attack if they continue to refuse to turn over bin Laden.
Rumsfeld has ordered B-1 and B-52 bombers along with dozens of fighters and support aircraft to the Gulf and Indian Ocean region along with elite Special Operations troops. But the Pentagon has refused to comment on all force movements.
Of the more than 200 warplanes expected to flow to the Gulf region are 75 on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which sailed from Virginia toward the Mediterranean this week. It will join the carriers USS Carl Vinson and USS Enterprise, now stationed in or near the Gulf with 75 warplanes each.
Those three ships are accompanied by battle groups totaling more than 20 warships, including cruisers and submarines capable of firing accurate cruise missiles with ranges of up to 1,000 miles (1,600 km).
The Taliban said their forces had shot down an unmanned spy plane and a helicopter in the north of the country in an area where the opposition Northern Alliance has recently reported military advances. The opposition confirmed the helicopter crash, but blamed it on a mechanical failure.
$3.2 MILLION 'PREDATOR'?
The Taliban's ambassador in Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Saleem Zaeef, told Reuters the spy plane, which had no pilot or passenger seats, was shot down while taking pictures over northern Afghanistan.
He said it made two or three rounds over the area before being downed. The people who shot it down were not aviation experts, he said, and could not say if it had any distinctive markings.
Iraq has recently claimed to have shot down two unmanned U.S. Predator spy planes, which can be remotely operated and remain aloft for nearly 24 hours at a time to relay information on targets and ground movements.
The $3.2 million Air Force RQ-1B Predator aircraft is part of a reconnaissance and targeting system, but one U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday he doubted the military had yet put such a system in place as part of the buildup around Afghanistan.
With a wingspan of 48.7 feet (14.6 metres), the Predator air vehicle weighs 950 pounds (430 kg) empty and 2,250 pounds (1,020 kg ) when fully equipped for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition. It cruises at up to 25,000 feet (7,500 metres) at speeds up to 140 miles (225 km) an hour, which makes it vulnerable not only to missiles but anti-aircraft gunfire.
The U.S. assault ship Essex left Sasebo naval base in Japan on Saturday and was expected to head for the Indian Ocean, Kyodo news agency reported. The carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which carries about 70 aircraft, left its home port near Tokyo on Friday. Officials declined to say where it was headed.
Bush, in a hard-hitting address to Congress on Thursday, portrayed the conflict with bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization as a fight to safeguard civilization and told foreign governments, ``Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.''
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Intercepts foretold of 'big attack'
September 22, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200192213012.htm
The day before terrorists struck the United States, its intelligence agencies detected discussions between Osama bin Laden's lieutenants of an impending "big attack," a senior administration official says.
The official said in an interview that the detection was not discovered until days after the Sept. 11 assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The time lapse is typical of intelligence analyses, in which computers sift through loads of that day's collection to find valuable material.
The detection explains, the source said, why President Bush increasingly pointed the finger of blame at bin Laden in the days following the kamikaze attacks. The source said the discussions were between bin Laden supporters in the United States and senior members of bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization.
As the U.S. military buildup continued yesterday in preparation for air strikes on bin Laden's adopted home of Afghanistan, the Bush administration has brought on board significant allies in its campaign against global terrorism.
Military sources said Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two former Soviet republics on Afghanistan's northern border, have agreed secretly to allow American special-operations troops to launch raids from their soil.
The U.S. Air Force is now operating Predator unmanned reconnaissance planes in the region. The RQ-1 Predator relays instantaneous images via a satellite link. It is being used over Afghanistan to locate military targets and possible bin Laden hide-outs.
Mr. Bush spoke to Uzbek President Islam A. Karimov on Wednesday in the administration's drive to build an international coalition against terrorism.
The two Central Asian countries have a strong motive for helping the United States dislodge the Taliban from power. The extremist Islamic rulers of Afghanistan reportedly have tried to spur a militant Muslim uprising in both neighboring states.
Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan on the south and east, has agreed to let American warplanes use its airspace. This means fighter-bombers on Navy carriers in the Arabian Sea would have a direct route to targets in Afghanistan.
The Predator flies up to 140 mph and below 25,000 feet. Several were shot down during NATO's air assaults on Yugoslavia in 1999. This summer, a Predator failed to return from a spy mission over southern Iraq amid Baghdad's claims it had downed an American plane.
A Pentagon official said at the time that, "The whole idea is to use them in high-risk areas. If you lose it, you don't lose a pilot."
Officials also said that around Sept. 11, Afghanistan ordered the scattering of heavy military weapons, such as MiG jet fighters and tanks. "They are not where they used to be," said an official. "They moved them up into the hills."
The Pentagon yesterday continued to direct what could be the largest deployment of weapons to the Persian Gulf region area since the 1991 war with Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has signed deployment orders for about 150 Air Force aircraft. The package includes heavy B-52 and B-1 bombers, F-15, F-16 and F-117 fighters, aerial refuelers, E-3 AWACs radar-surveillance aircraft and cargo planes.
The Pentagon will not say where the planes will be based. Most will likely go to airfields in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where American warplanes are stationed year-round. Some may launch their bombing runs from Central Asian countries.
Two Navy carriers, the Carl Vinson and Enterprise, are in the region. Two others, the Theodore Roosevelt and Kitty Hawk, have been deployed and may join the other two in waters near Afghanistan.
The Army is also moving ground troops in the form of special-operations soldiers. These will include elite Rangers, Green Berets and Delta Force commandos.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is starting to spend some of the billions of dollars in emergency funds approved by Congress. On the shopping list: new stocks of precision-guided munitions and improved surveillance equipment. Together, the systems would be used to locate and kill suspected terrorists.
The deployment is adding up to a combined air-special operations war against the Taliban and bin Laden's terrorist network. The only way the Taliban militia seems able to defuse an attack at this point is to meet Mr. Bush's demands to turn over bin Laden and other terrorists. The Taliban yesterday rejected the president's demands.
The U.S. alliance with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan means that a decade of forging military-to-military contacts with the Central Asian nations has paid off for Washington.
In 1995, Uzbekistan and the United States signed an agreement to conduct joint military exercises. The former Soviet republic has hosted Army commandos who advised the country's 80,000-strong armed forces. In 1999, 16 Uzbek officers from the 65th Special Operations Battalion visited Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Bragg, N.C., home of U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
The Uzbeks received instruction about close-quarter battle, sniper fire, mountaineering, water operations, paratroop jumps, and using the 9 mm pistol.
Military sources say no final battle plan has been approved. But the ongoing deployments signal the Pentagon plans to infiltrate Afghanistan with special-operations soldiers. Working in small teams and armed with the latest intelligence, the commandos would try to take down the Taliban militia of about 30,000 - one fighter at a time. Backed by air strikes, the U.S. soldiers would also seek and destroy bin Laden encampments, with the hope of encountering the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed over 6,500 people, most of them civilians.
"We'll make it so he can't spend the night in the same place twice," said one official.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which spent the 1980s trying to occupy Afghanistan and then retreated in disgrace, the United States will strike, then move back to base, officials said. And, unlike the Russians, the American troops will be backed by advanced surveillance equipment that can find pockets of Taliban militia.
The U.S. Army commandos have another advantage: they train, and are equipped, to fight at night.
"Night is day to us," said a military source. "And night is night to everyone else."
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Terrorists' trade in stolen identities
BY DANIEL MCGRORY
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22 2001
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001320012-2001330486,00.html
HAD FBI agents bothered to ask college lecturers in South Wales about the terrorist bomber they supposedly taught over a decade ago, then security chiefs would have realised how Osama bin Laden had carefully created a generation of impostors.
His agents stole the identities and life histories of at least a dozen Western-educated young men who were all murdered in 1990, according to a former head of the CIA.
Every document and record of those men's lives were either stolen or doctored to allow bin Laden's terrorists - or possibly Saddam Hussein's - to move freely around the world using a false identity, says James Woolsey, writing in New Republic magazine. Families of all 12 men were also killed and all their paperwork erased so nobody would stumble on bin Laden's lethal impostors.
Only now are security services realising the extent of his trickery. What nobody knows for sure is how many "jackals" bin Laden has at his disposal.
The man serving life in Colorado, in America's most secure prison, for bombing the World Trade Centre in 1993 is not who he says he is.
Ramzi Yousef, who aimed to demolish the centre by toppling one tower into the other, told his interrogators how he was first recruited to the Islamic cause while he was a student in Swansea. He described how while taking a Higher National Diploma in computer-aided electrical engineering at West Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in 1987 he gave up drinking in the student bars after being approached by local followers of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The FBI did not think it strange that Swansea should be a major recruiting station for Islamic militants. Nor did it think it curious that a young man who had taken an advanced language course at Oxford and lived in Britain for four years spoke appalling English.
Yousef went on to describe how during his summer holidays in 1988 he went to Afghanistan for military training to play his part in the holy war there against the Soviet invaders. After his stint on the front line, where he learnt to handle explosives, Yousef returned to his studies.
It was only then, he confessed, that the university authorities knew him as Abdul Kareem, a Pakistani whose wealthy family lived in Kuwait. What has now emerged is that this master bomber has successfully used nine aliases, among them the innocent computer student from Swansea and another murder victim.
Until two months ago the US security agencies had never asked anyone at the college to verify Ramzi Yousef's confession of his days in Wales. Why they suddenly re-opened the files on him only seven weeks before the suicide attacks in America is not clear.
Professor Ken Reid, the deputy principal of the institute, knew the real Abdul Kareem and from even a cursory glance at the photograph of the convicted World Trade bomber he realised these were two different men.
There was four inches' difference in height and more than 40lb in weight, and the impostor looked a lot older than Kareem, who was 27 when he left university. One had a deformed eye, smaller ears and mouth. A former CIA officer said it was also apparent that the impostor was not as proficent on a computer as the gifted young student whose identity he had assumed.
Their accents were different, and while the real Abdul Kareem was known at university for being shy and respectful to women, voice-mail messages taken from the impostor used foul language and graphic sexual imagery.
The real Abdul Kareem was murdered in Kuwait shortly after the Iraqi invasion in 1990. He had gone back to Kuwait City to be with his family but in the confusion at that time nobody paid much attention to his murder or of 11 other men of roughly the same age.
Their homes were not looted, but carefully ransacked to eliminate any personal trace that they had been there.
Passports vanished, along with driving licences and bank books. Nobody thought it suspicious at the time that there were no photographs left of the victims nor books with their names inscribed on the cover. Security chiefs now fear they were erased so somebody else could take their place.
When Yousef came to assume the Swansea student's identity the files in Kuwait had already been tampered with. Photocopied pages of earlier passports the genuine Kareem had applied for were among the few records not destroyed during Saddam Hussein's invasion. Fingerprints on official records held in Kuwait city were also doctored to match Ramzi Yousef's. Another man whose name he used was Abdul Basit, whose documents were skillfully altered to allow Yousef to adopt his identity.
Mr Woolsey says that federal prosecutors were dangerously wrong to believe Yousef was just another Muslim who was seduced by the radical cause while at a British university.
Mr Woolsey writes in the New Republic that one way to prove the confusion over identities is to examine the fingerprints taken from the genuine students, some of which are believed to be held by Scotland Yard. But what it will not do is answer the question of who Ramzi Yousef really is.
Mr Woolsey questions whether Saddam Hussein had a part to play in this conspiracy over fake identities, as the murders of the innocents happened during his occupation of Kuwait.
At the time of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre, he says, it was easier to blame Osama bin Laden rather than examine who else was involved. What documentary evidence the security agencies found supported Yousef's story that he had lived in Wales.
Security agencies now face a monumental task in unravelling all the identities of the hijackers and suspects to discover how many are false jackals. The fear is that most of the 19 suicide bombers were using fake identities.
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FBI issues alert on water supplies, film studios
September 22, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010922-6324280.htm
The FBI yesterday warned the nation's utility companies to guard against possible contamination of water supplies by terrorists and asked U.S. military bases and Hollywood movie and television studios to increase security measures.
Federal authorities also prohibited indefinitely flights in the immediate vicinity of any major professional or collegiate sporting event.
The warnings are not based on any specific evidence of a direct threat, but rather on raw intelligence that there could be additional terrorists strikes in the wake of last week's attacks in New York and Washington, authorities said.
FBI officials said the concerns surfaced during its ongoing search for cohorts of the 19 hijackers who slammed three planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, killing more than 6,500 people. Eighty persons are being detained for questioning and another 200 being sought.
None has yet been formally charged in the attack, although prosecutors in Chicago yesterday charged Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohammed Hadi with attempting to fly into that city with an illegal passport and airline uniforms on the day of the attacks. Carrying airline tickets under different names and at least three passports, he is being detained in Toronto, where his German airliner was forced down after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yesterday's FBI advisory, a "terrorist threat advisory for infrastructures," was distributed by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), an industry group that represents 4,000 utilities that provide water to 180 million people in North America.
Pam Krider, AWWA spokeswoman, said the possible contamination of this country's water supply was identified in a 1998 report as one of eight key areas of concern. The association has been working with its members since to ensure they are prepared for "anything that might happen."
Liz Kalinowski, director of communications for the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), which supplies water to Prince George's and Montgomery counties, said WSSC was "taking all appropriate steps to ensure the safety of its customers." She said security has been placed at its highest level and that checks were continuously being made on water quality.
The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority has been assured by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, from which it buys water, that security has been upgraded and the water supply is safe, said Libby Lawson, its spokeswoman. She also said D.C. officials have upgraded security at the Blue Plains wastewater-treatment plant.
Sandy Farrell, spokeswoman for the Fairfax County Water Authority, said all its facilities have been "locked down," police patrols have been increased and additional water sampling has begun. Shahram Mohsenin, director of Fairfax City's Department of Utilities, said he also had ordered an upgrade in security.
The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing countermeasures against a possible chemical or biological attack, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said yesterday. Mrs. Whitman said that since Sept. 11, the EPA has met with officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in anticipation of terrorists releasing deadly viruses.
"We have preparations against that kind of eventuality," Mrs. Whitman said. "We're relooking at them. I want to make sure we keep up the focus."
The FBI warning to Hollywood prompted several studios to increase security, including shutting down entrances, erecting barricades and canceling studio tours.
One studio executive said the FBI provided "a threat advisory involving uncorroborated intelligence that a film studio in California could be the target of a terrorist attack in retaliation for any possible bombing attacks by the United States in Afghanistan."
The massive FBI investigation has sparked similar interest overseas, with authorities arresting or detaining several they believe may have been involved in the attack or have information about it.
In Germany, authorities said they were looking for two men believed to have helped plan the attacks and issued arrest warrants for Ramzi Binalshibh, 29, a Yemeni national, and Said Bahaji, 26, a German of Moroccan origin. Both are suspected of conspiring with three of the named hijackers, who also lived in Germany.
They said Mr. Bahaji lived in the same apartment as Mohamed Atta, identified by the FBI as one of five hijackers of the plane that hit the World Trade Center's north tower. Mr. Binalshibh lived at the same address, they said. Mr. Bahaji left Germany in September, flying via Turkey to Pakistan; Mr. Binalshibh was last seen in Hamburg, Germany, in August.
In London, a suspected leader of a terrorist group headed by bin Laden was en route to New York to be questioned by FBI agents after being arrested at Heathrow Airport soon after last week's attacks. Mufti Mohammed Khan, who security sources suspect is the second-in-command of the Jaish-i-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), flew in from New York only a couple of hours after the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been hit.
Police in France arrested seven persons suspected of plotting to attack U.S. sites in that country; Peruvian police have detained three men, including an Iraqi citizen, as possible suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Meanwhile, an FBI-led task force continued yesterday to check U.S. banks to determine whether some of those involved in the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks benefited financially in last-minute stock trades. On Wednesday, the FBI asked banks nationwide to search for financial transactions that may have been made by at least 21 persons whom agents want to question.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt told a Senate committee Thursday the multiagency task force was reviewing records to determine if the terrorists profited from 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 attacks.
Tom Ramstack contributed to this report.
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Senate endorses Bush move to create terrorism office
September 22, 2001
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010922-38002852.htm
The Democrat-led Senate yesterday endorsed President Bush's decision to create a national office for combatting terrorism and introduced legislation to establish the post permanently.
Sen. Bob Graham, Florida Democrat and chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the bill offers a prescription for the condition of terrorism.
"Terrorism is not a crisis. Terrorism is a cancerous condition, a condition that all Americans will have to come to terms with as we strive to return to normal lives," Mr. Graham said during a Capitol Hill news conference.
The bill complements Mr. Bush's announcement to a joint session of Congress Thursday night that he has created a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security. He has nominated Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to lead the new agency to protect the country against further terrorist attacks.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the office would be a separate organization in the White House to coordinate and integrate a comprehensive strategy to combat terrorism and to strengthen defense preparedness.
Such an office has been suggested by numerous task forces on terrorism, and Rep. William M. "Mac" Thornberry, Texas Republican, introduced a bill in March to create a National Homeland Security Agency.
"With more than 40 federal agencies currently overseeing homeland security, establishing a Cabinet-level office with primary responsibility in this area is clearly an important first step," said Mr. Thornberry, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
"The key thing now is to make sure it has the budget and authority and resources to get the job done," Mr. Thornberry said.
Mr. Bush created the office by executive order. Congressional approval would make it a permanent office with budget authority and create a symbol of national unity, Democrats said.
"We applaud what the president has done by executive order. We want to build on what the president has done," Mr. Graham said.
Mr. Graham's committee will begin hearings Monday to analyze the president's executive order and to extend that order into a permanent office.
Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat and assistant majority leader, said he also supports the president's initiative.
"What he did last night was a giant step forward," Mr. Reid said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said $12 billion was spent throughout the 40 different agencies combatting terrorism last year.
"What we do here today aims to complement what the president offered last night by giving it the precise authority that's necessary to cut across all of these departments," Mrs. Feinstein said.
Meanwhile, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to examine whether the federal government is adequately organized to face possible terrorist threats.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, committee chairman and Connecticut Democrat, said the hearing represents the "hope, unity, and purpose to a nation stunned by this tragedy, including, most recently, the magnificent statement of American principles and purpose that President Bush delivered to the Congress, to the nation, and indeed to the world last night."
Testifying before the committee was Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, who also chairs the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, a national commission established by Congress in 1999.
The commission recommended a national office to combat terrorism in December 2000.
"Our panel's review of the federal bureaucratic structure, spread across numerous agencies and vested with some responsibilities for combatting terrorism, revealed a structure that is uncoordinated, complex and confusing," Mr. Gilmore said.
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CALL FOR PEACE & JUSTICE!
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http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/224622495
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Thank you! Shyama Harris <Yogawithshyama@aol.com>
[ET Note: as of 7/22/01, 7 am, there were 173,914 signatures]
We the undersigned, endorse the following petition:
CALL FOR PEACE & JUSTICE!
Target: George W. Bush President of the United States The US Government
Sponsor: Eve Lyn
URGENT! In the aftermath of the ruthless attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, we implore the leaders of the United States to ensure that justice be served by protecting the innocent citizens of all nations.
We demand that the President maintain the civil liberties of all U.S. residents, protect the human rights of all people at home and abroad, and guarantee that this attempted attack on the principles and freedoms of the United States will not succeed.
We plead for a thorough investigation of the terrorist events before any retaliation.
We call for PEACE and JUSTICE, not revenge.
In Solidarity, The Undersigned
We have been sending emails to the President as they come in and we will be sending hard copies of the petition through the mail on an ongoing basis. Sign now - your comments will be delivered within 48 hours.
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Campuses divided as anti-war lobby grows
Peace Campaigners
The Independent (UK)
By David Usborne in New York
22 September 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=95418
It may be premature to call it a fully fledged anti-war movement, but voices are being raised across the United States, and elsewhere, urging George Bush and his military to show restraint in punishing those responsible for attacks on the World Trade Centre.
In scenes reminiscent of the peace protests during the Vietnam war, thousands of students rallied on more than a hundred US campuses on Thursday, the first of many more gatherings planned. Some of the protests drew counter-demonstrations demanding military retribution.
Some of the energy that has driven the anti-capitalist demonstrations at recent world trade and financial meetings is almost certain now to be redirected into the anti-war effort.
A peace protesters' gathering has been called for 30 September, in Washington DC. Many activists had been planning on that day to go to the city for a meeting of the World Bank - now cancelled.
Kit Bonson, a director of the Washington Peace Centre, which is planning the event, said: "I think there'll be a surprisingly large peace response to this crisis. I don't think the Bush administration understands that yet."
Mr Bonson, who said arrangements for the event would be finalised this weekend, echoed the feelings of many of the students who demonstrated on Thursday, when he added: "Violence begets violence and there are alternatives to open-ended war against an unidentified enemy."
Meanwhile, a coalition of business, religious and entertainment leaders has formed to denounce any military response to the atrocities. Those who have signed a document urging caution include the actor Martin Sheen and the civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. The group says military action will "spark a cycle of escalating violence, the loss of innocent lives and new acts of terrorism".
A statement from the group, which also includes Harry Belafonte, the actor Danny Glover and the co-founders of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, added: "The carnage of terror knows no borders. Our best chance for preventing such devastating acts of terror is to act decisively and co-operatively as part of a community of nations within the framework of international law."
The forum for such co-operation would be the United Nations. But so far the UN has been sidelined by the US, the group says. Ted Turner, the UN's most generous private benefactor, used an appearance at its headquarters on Wednesday to join those expressing concern. He warned Washington not to "indiscriminately start bombing countries". And he added: "I think that since we have had terrorism for more than 30 years in both Israel and Ireland, just by killing people, we have got to be awfully careful we don't hurt innocent people".
But just as recent polls have shown 90 per cent support among Americans for military action, there is no shortage of pro-war sentiment among the students, too. Some campuses in the US are showing signs of deep division. At Harvard, for example, the debate is being conducted through scrawled messages left on sheets of brown paper taped to common room walls.
"Find those responsible, their friends and accomplices, their families and neighbours, and destroy them," The New York Times reports one student writing. Next to it was the written rejoinder: "How does this make us better than them? You don't answer evil with evil." By far the biggest turn-out for the anti-war contingent has been at the University of California at Berkeley, which was the cradle of the peace and free-speech movements that developed in the Sixties.
About 2,000 anti-war protesters turned out to be met by a few hundred counter-demonstrators chanting "USA" and waving American flags.
Groups planning to switch, for the time being, the focus of the anti-capitalist movement to the anti-war effort, include Britain's Globalise Resistance Movement, based in London.
Guy Taylor, a spokesman, said: "We will be campaigning primarily against the war because you can't have global justice without a globe - that is the way a lot of people are seeing it. We don't see any action against Afghanistan remaining just that, it will very quickly generalise and become a much wider proposition."
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New York peace march is met with jeers
September 22, 2001
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200192293343.htm
NEW YORK - The first peace march in New York last night inspired waves of unpeaceful sentiment, as 1,500 protesters marched through the city.
The demonstrators snarled traffic and drew snarls as they walked up Park Avenue, over to the Avenue of the Americas and to Times Square.
"This is a disgrace," said Keith Valenti, 25, a restaurant manager. He came out of his Park Avenue establishment to stare at the passing throng. "This whole thing, the possibility of war, is about the safety of these people. And they don't even know that."
His friend wasn't as charitable. He denigrated the protesters with caustic, profane insults.
"I am just livid," the man said.
In response, the demonstrators offered Mr. Valenti and his enraged pal leaflets and flashed them the peace sign.
Motorists were doubly angry. Besides tangling with their opposing views, the march tied up traffic.
One man jumped out of a sport utility vehicle with his fists clenched, until he saw a New York police officer trying to keep the traffic moving.
The marchers ended up at Times Square outside the U.S. Army recruitment headquarters, where they faced a beefed-up police patrol.
"I was down at the site digging," said one police officer who was directing traffic. "They told me they needed a whole bunch of people here."
Around 9:30 p.m., riot-gear-equipped police began shoving demonstrators and onlookers to clear the sidewalk in Times Square.
As if to taunt the demonstrators, a giant public video screen in the square ran news of President Bush's vow Thursday night to rally the nation behind a war against terrorism.
The peace march came a couple of days late to New York, on the heels of rallies in several college towns throughout the nation.
In Berkeley, Calif., 1,000 people gathered this week to protest what appears to be pending military action by the United States in response to last week's attacks on Washington and New York, which killed an estimated 6,500 people.
Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin also saw demonstrations as part of a "Stop the War" coalition that launched demonstrations on more than 30 campuses nationwide.
"This is the belly of the beast and this is where we need to be active," said a protester named Amy, as she drew up posters before last night's rally.
"No military retaliation," she wrote delicately in large poster board in thick black Magic Marker. Her idea joined others that were very similar.
"Don't create more terrorists," "Resist the racist war" and the plaintive "Stop scapegoating" were among the sentiments in banners that were held high above the crowd
The protestors drew from all age ranks, from a 59-year-old man from Westchester, N.Y., who said, "Yeah, I was there, doing the same thing in the '60s," to younger protest veterans, such as Harold Moss.
The 30-something New Yorker has been an activist for 15 years and said he is encouraged by the enthusiasm his fellow city denizens show for peace.
"We are now starting to have two to three events a day, from teach-ins to vigils, and they are drawing," Mr. Moss said. "These are not marginal opinions at all."
Nor was the view of Lexie Rouse, 20, a student from Los Angeles.
"Of course, I'm for peace. But in this situation, they've left us with no option."
She watched the long line of demonstrators march down Sixth Avenue and laughed.
"It's like they think they're in the Sixties or something," she said. "They look kind of funny."
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Protesters Oppose Military Action
September 22, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-British-Protests.html?searchpv=aponline
LONDON (AP) -- Thousands of protesters staged a series of rallies throughout Britain Saturday to voice opposition to military action against Afghanistan.
In London, police said approximately 3,000 people had gathered in the city center close to the official Downing Street residence of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Many of the protesters wore black and carried pieces of paper reading: ``Stand shoulder to shoulder for peace and justice. No more violence.''
The silent vigils -- organized by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament -- were mirrored in Manchester, 160 miles north of London, and also in Glasgow, Scotland.
``Any military strike is going to kill yet more civilians who don't deserve to die, in the same way as the Americans didn't deserve to die,'' said Carol Naughton, a spokeswoman for the group, in London.
``It will only create a spiral of violence, and it will create a huge uprising against the U.S., and possibly, Britain.''
It is estimated that between 200 and 300 British nationals were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Blair has said Britain is allied with President Bush, and fully backs America's war against terrorism -- having undertaken a 9,000-mile, 48-hour diplomatic mission to four countries to strengthen support for military action against those responsible for the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, however, called on Western powers Saturday not to launch a military attack against Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader thought to be behind the atrocities in New York and Washington, saying it would only lead to more bloodshed.
In Manchester, around 300 people marched through the city and gathered for speeches.
In Glasgow, the protest by approximately 1,000 people began with a minute's silence in memory of those who lost their lives in the attacks.
Police in all three cities said the protests had been peaceful and that no arrests were made.
European Union leaders declared their ``total solidarity'' with the United States during a special summit in Brussels Friday. They agreed to a package of measures designed to combat international terrorism and pledged support for a strike against those directly responsible for the tragedies.
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A first hand report of the 3,000 strong anti-war meeting on Friday.
From: Hilary Wainwright via Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>
Sent: September 22, 2001 1:44 PM
They do occasionally organise good meetings in London
My friend Jane Shallice was so inspired by this first major peace and justice meeting that she woke up at five to write these notes. I thought i'd share the inspiration with some firends in the great cities of the North - and in the rest of the world! love Hilary
Last night I attended the meeting called at the instigation of the Socialist Alliance to protest and organise against the war. There were in the end about 2500 - 3000 people stuffed into the large hall at Friend's Meeting House and swarming into other overflow meetings and crowded into the gardens outside. The speakers therefore were on a carousel of speeches. A truly brilliant turnout.
Bruce Kent spoke first, as he said he is usually described as being a 'veteran peace campaigner'; and the words that he spoke were immensely sombre. "I have a sense of dread in my heart ..I have a horrible feeling that the momentum that is developing is aimed at ending all states who sponsor terrorism." He argued that there must not be retribution in our name. There has to be the recognition of the International Criminal Court, a need for institutions of global justice, not the international institutions of capital, like the World Bank and the IMF. There should be security improved but not at the expense of others security. His greatest fear in the present situation was that nuclear weapons are central to this conflict.
Will Self, who was present had been asked to speak, and he said that he was no political activist, it is only the opposition to war that got him to meetings. He was concerned that we must be talking and arguing about the need for justice and not war, explaining that in talking to a woman he knew through his children, she had said that she was most terrified that her children would be killed in the horrifying way that she had witnessed on Sept 11th. She was thoughtful and when he replied that for him he was most frightened that such terrible deaths would be what huge numbers of children on the other side of the planet would experience. The movement for peace had to be non-partisan, and had to be clear in its campaign that there was a separation of responsibility between the American people and the American government. (Huge applause).
The next speaker was Helen John, the vice chair of CND and a woman who since 1994 had been campaigning against Star Wars at Menwith Hill. For her this would not be war but indiscriminate murder. The whole operations taking place would be coordinated by the American Space Command which depended on Fylingdales and Menwith as well as other British locations of US military bases. The response to the Afghanistan situation ought to be flying in aid and relief. Admiral Carroll, an American peace campaigner had visited Britain last year and talking about the dangers, which we are facing with the developments around Star Wars, and he called for more Greenham Commons. Clearly she thinks that this is central to any activity.
Liz Davies, the woman who had been a member of Labour's NEC, and who resigned from the party earlier this year and spoke for Socialist Alliance, made a really excellent speech. She laid out clearly the reasons why we had to build a huge opposition to the Bush / Blair war. One of the points that she made about the effects of terror was that when you looked at the effects of bombings and the destruction of popular regimes there was a case for indicting Kissinger. The hijackers purpose could be a desire to provoke a counter attack, wanting to polarise the world. The response of the Americans would accomplish this precisely. When talking about the way that the events of September 11th had affected cultural events, sports, financial operations and all activities, there was one event that was completely untouched by it, the International Arms Fair went ahead - the one group of people who would be making profits from the violence. It was these companies that when the whole of the stock market was on the slide their shares were rising, and it was such companies that when she had argued on the NEC that the party ought to not invest in them, and should be looking to ethical investment, was sharply informed that there would be no such policy. The voices of the grief stricken relations who were urging others not to create their anguish and loss in other people who were innocent of all crimes, had to be heard. She ended in saying that in the name of democracy we would be seeing the curtailing of democracy, and in the name of stopping terror, our states would become terrorist states. This opposition to the war was the greatest challenge for the left and the peace movement. (This is really truncated because she spoke so well I was quite transfixed but I will try to get a copy - one thing she argued was that there had to be acceptance by the Americans of the International Criminal Court, which they currently could not do as they were harbouring Kissinger! Let me know if you want a copy.)
Jeremy Corbyn, an exemplary socialist and still one of the few MPs to speak for us, started by looking at the British press, one of the least informative with little intention to debate or to provide alternative views of governments and their actions. It was a press that whilst pretending to be repelled by it, had a style of reporting that was xenophobic and racist. Clearly 'deeply troubled' by Bush, who he thought to be 'deeply dangerous', and who would say that this is not the work of Islam, whilst using the word 'crusade', with all the connotations that it held. He then talked about the way that when America had supported and created the extremist groups and leaders and the record of this over the last thirty or forty years. He said Kristy Wark had bravely suggested on the evening of Sept 11th , that what goes around comes around. When you have created such people and funded them, they might just turn against you. In looking at the causes of this attack, without doubt one of the issues was the fifty years that Palestinians had been living in camps, waiting for their return. Whatever one thinks of Iraq, it has not been helped by 10 years of bombing. The Vietnamese had fought and eventually won - at great cost to their own people but aided by the worldwide opposition to the US. This we need to build today. He said that a quarter of the world population is living on less than a dollar a day (restated by a World Bank spokesman said last week), and he ended by saying that "the world could be different, it could be fairer, it could be more just".
George Monbiot talked about the way that dissent is now becoming more difficult when dissent is more and more crucial. When the globalisation movements were beginning to form, dependent on civil liberties which we had gained, we were now seeing them being restricted. He called for an end to sanctions, for the end to the support for despotic regimes and for the end to the dirty wars such as those in Colombia.
John Rees, an SWP member and the editor of one of their theoretical journals, talked about the horror that all felt when witnessing the events of the 11th September. But then argued that the cost of the Stealth Bomber is $2.3B, and these were being commissioned by a state that was unable to afford a decent health service for its people. The $40B being allocated for this enterprise would fund decent health, education and transport. Speaking of Blunkett here, on a day when they were tightening the laws on asylum seekers they were threatening to go to war in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world and one which produced huge numbers of people seeking desperately a safer place to live. He made the point that when South Africa was the state, which formed and practices apartheid, a deeply racist and oppressive regime, there had never been any suggestion that the sate should be overthrown by mass bombing.
Tariq Ali was the last speaker and he certainly rose to the importance of this situation. Clear, confident, drawing out the ironies, counter posing the apparently obvious with its shocking reality, he spoke brilliantly. He opened talking about the grotesque simplification of the slogan, "You are either with us or you are for terrorism". Having seen the withdrawal of the British in 1947, we are in a time when we see their return. With all this rhetoric of war to defend civilisation he recalled Gandhi1s reply when asked what he thought of Western civilisation, "It would be a good idea". This whole project is one of recolonising the world, with the globalised strategic forces. He then spent some time asking why Blair had joined the Labour Party at all, being a man who came to life only when there was a war, offering hope and sustenance. Why hadn1t he joined the army and could have become a chaplain and gone with the troops to all the wars and been able to offer sympathy and support and unctuous words all the time.
However he believed that the US was now intent on revenge and blood lust, wanting to settle many accounts. "If they topple the Taliban, I for one shall not be crippled by remorse", but the way to remove them is by supporting the people of Afghanistan to do the thing themselves. It is worth recounting the ironies of history, who created the religious boarding schools which trained the Taliban? America, Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani military regimes. It was these forces that armed the mujahadeen and urged them into Afghanistan to fight the jihad to get rid of the Russians. Bin Laden himself was trained by the CIA and sent off to Afghanistan. The Pakistanis had asked Saudi Arabia to send a Saudi prince to lead the jihad, "clearly there were few volunteers", but they found Bin Laden. It was he who fought the war and wiped out all the secular forces within Afghanistan, the last leader being Najeeb Ullah, who was slaughtered and publicly disembowelled in a most horrific manner. The western leaders stood around and did not open their mouths. It is important to recall that they did not find any of these regimes offensive - until last week.
But at times like these the important thing is to ensure that people are told the truth. The history that they are being given is at best partial and at worst false. If we take the west at their word - that they need to destroy regimes that give succour and support to these groups - then they should be looking to act against Saudi Arabia and Egypt. But they do not want to embarrass their friends who guard their oil. The world of Islam is not different; it has experienced all the heat and flames of the twentieth century. We have only to look at Iraq and Indonesia. Indonesia with the largest communist party outside the communist world which was completely wiped out in the sixties with American instigation and support. In Iraq, the US backed Baathist regime wiped out the CP and the hugely well organised oil workers. Who was installed to accomplish this? Sadam Hussein.
Any movement against the war must also call for the end of the 11 years of bombing and sanctions against Iraq. A war which has now gone on longer that the Vietnam War. But also there has to be a political solution for the Palestinian people. He finished by reading a poem by Nizar Kabani, a Syrian poet who had died during the first intifada.
It was a most powerful and brilliant speech.
I therefore got up at about 5am having to write up the scraps of notes and get them out.
Jane Shallice
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