------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Nuclear power plants vulnerable to terrorists
Families rush radiation tests
Pak has to save its nukes to fight India: Minister
Bush, Putin Report Progress on ABM, Missiles
US taking long-term aim at Pak nukes, ISI
Russia, China Back ABM Pact, Quick End to Afghan Fighting
Asian Leaders Commit to Bringing Sept. 11 Attackers to Justice
Nuclear power plants vulnerable to terrorists
Crashed plane's target may have been reactor
REP. KING: NUKES SHOULD BE AN OPTION IN AFGHANISTAN
Green Party Hears Call to Block N-Waste

MILITARY
U.S. Enters Third Week of Air Raids on Afghanistan
Taliban Strategy: Prolong Conflict
U.S. bombs kill 8 civilians, Afghans say
Bush warns Asians to fight terrorists or become targets
U.S. admits tests on sailors
Lethal pathogens handy in nations harboring terrorists
Preparing America for the Reality of Germ Warfare
If the CIA Had Butted Out ...
Saddam moved chemical weapons
Israeli troops hit two more towns
Israel Intensifies Deadly West Bank Offensive
Gorbachev: A Leading Role for the Security Council
UN Set to Appeal for Halt in the Bombing
U.S. soldiers seize Taliban airfield
Omar's Compound Was Raided
DOD ANNOUNCES NAMES OF SERVICEMEMBERS KILLED

OTHER
War Effort Pushes 'Green' Issues Aside
Environmentalists, Business Debate
Health Alert - CIPRO
10,000 refugees stuck at Pakistan border
A war ... by men
Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma
Focus of F.B.I. Is Seen Shifting to Terrorism
Kill order against bin Laden OK'd
CIA Told to Do 'Whatever Necessary' to Kill Bin Laden
Eavesdropping, U.S. Allies See New Terror Attack

ACTIVISTS
Farrakhan condemns U.S. war
RALLY AND MARCH AGAINST WAR, TERROR, RACISM, AND POVERTY
It's Simple. It's Not So Simple
Peace Coalition Calls for Cross Canada Day of Action



-------- NUCLEAR

OTHER OPINION:
Nuclear power plants vulnerable to terrorists

Tim Zink
Journal-Constitution
Sunday, October 21, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/opinion_b32dd47c81b5a07310d0.html

After emerging unscathed from the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was the ultimate possible consequence, the nuclear specter has again closed on us. Terrorists, our opponents in this newest war, have the capability to launch a nuclear attack on American soil, so long as the perimeters of domestic nuclear reactor sites remain chronically porous.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has in recent years attempted to move away from a highly effective security evaluation program known as Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations, in which teams simulating armed attacks attempt to penetrate reactor sites.

A former U.S. Navy SEAL and NRC contractor, Capt. David Orrick, ran the OSRE program. Orrick's teams often were able to compromise sensitive areas within reactor sites --- sometimes gaining access to plants' control rooms --- even though the managers of the sites frequently were notified in advance of coming evaluations.

Despite the proven ability of OSRE to expose weaknesses in reactor fortifications, the NRC in 1998 canceled the program. After apparently learning of the cancellation from media sources, NRC Director Richard Meserve reinstated OSRE, but the commission subsequently announced it would this fall start a pilot program under which the operators of reactor sites would essentially police themselves.

The move drew criticism from nuclear watchdog groups and Orrick himself. Orrick wrote in 1999, "In effect, it [OSRE] is the only program NRC has that directly focuses on the terrorist threat against nuclear power plants --- significant weaknesses were identified in 27 of 57 plants (or 47 percent) evaluated to date. 'Significant' here means a real attack would have put the reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and a radioactive release, i.e., an American Chernobyl." These results came after the average plant used 82 percent more armed defenders in the simulated attack than they commit to using in the event of a real attack.

Very few other potential terrorist operations could match the sheer destructive potential of a strike on a domestic nuclear reactor. After being considered unlikely targets for years because of a perceived unwillingness on the part of terrorists to kill extremely large numbers of civilians, the events of Sept. 11 forced an immediate re-evaluation of reactors' strategic importance.

As Congress crafts nuclear-specific measures as part of larger anti-terrorism legislation, guaranteeing the future of OSRE should be a priority. The project comes with a relatively low price tag --- its total operating budget is slightly more than $100,000 --- and is consistent with other recent congressional actions to bolster nuclear security.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently proposed extending laws prohibiting nuclear sabotage to include nuclear waste fabrication, treatment and disposal facilities. By extending these laws, legal protections would be bolstered should any aspect of the nuclear handling process come under attack.

The House also approved an amendment to study nuclear plants' design vulnerabilities and possible protection measures. If made law, the results of this analysis would be due back to Congress within 90 days of enactment, presumably to provide the basis for future, more stringent anti-terror measures.

Stronger action still needs to be taken now. Several measures to be debated could quickly elevate our national nuclear security.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has submitted legislation to take the design-vulnerabilities study steps further, guaranteeing revisions to NRC standards within one year of enactment. This revision would be done in consultation with the defense secretary; directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security; the national security adviser and others, including the public, before completion.

Other voices within Congress have called for the protection of reactor sites nationwide by National Guard troops. New York Gov. George Pataki dispatched guardsmen this month to the state's nuclear power plants, and troops have been in place at selected installations in New Jersey since the Sept. 11 attacks. The decision to use National Guard troops remains up to individual states, however, and many, including Georgia, have chosen not to use them for plant protection.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, spurred by a Sept. 13 incident in which an unidentified airplane swooped close to a nuclear power station, recently urged federal officials to create no-fly zones around U.S. reactors. The Federal Aviation Administration responded with a warning that these zones would allow terrorists to pinpoint the exact location of every plant in the country.

The locations of U.S. nuclear power plants are in no way secret, however, and recent events have transformed these plants into installations of fundamental military importance, in terms of their basic threat to American lives. The use of National Guard troops and no-fly zones to protect nuclear installments is now simply necessary, and will be well into the future.

-------- britain

Families rush radiation tests

21oct01
News Interactive Sunday Mail
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3087392%255E2,00.html

HUNDREDS of Australian families are having radiation levels checked in their homes after a British report found a link between high-voltage power lines and childhood cancer.

The demand has created a 10-week waiting period for radiation scans by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

A spokesman said the agency had received hundreds of inquiries from concerned parents since the British report, the first reputable investigation to find the leukaemia link, was published in March. The scans check for levels of radiation coming from power lines and household electrical wiring.

The agency reported the rush in its quarterly report to Parliament which details any nuclear or radiation accidents in Australia. There are very few radiation scanners in Australia and the agency's resources have been in constant use this year. They charge a nominal $25 fee. Scanners can also be hired at commercial rates from engineering firms.

The UK report from the National Radiological Protection Board found electromagnetic fields in the vast majority of homes were not of concern. But strong fields did increase the risk of childhood leukaemia.

-------- india / pakistan

Pak has to save its nukes to fight India: Minister

Times of India
October 21, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1630914162

ISLAMABAD: In a bid to pacify hardliners opposed to Pakistan supporting the US military action in Afghanistan, a senior minister has urged the Islamic clerics to restrain their emotions towards Taliban as Islamabad has to "save its nuclear assets to fight a war against India."

Pakistan has to save its nuclear capability and the atomic bomb for a war against India, Religious Affairs Minister Mehmood Ahmad Ghazi told a gathering of Islamic clerics here on Wednesday.

Addressing a seminar on Pakistan's security and Ulemas role, he said, Islamabad was ready for a war with New Delhi and since it was the first atomic power of the Islamic world, it should not become the victim of farce emotions and sentiments, local Urdu daily Ausaf reported today.

He asked the people to restrain themselves on the Afghan issue as President Pervez Musharraf had taken the right decision in Pakistan's national interest.

While attempting to save Pakistan, Musharraf had opted for a lesser evil. "The bad thing is that our brethren are being killed but, on the other hand, the destruction of Pakistan would be worst and disastrous for the entire Islamic world," he added. ( PTI )

-------- missile defense

Bush, Putin Report Progress on ABM, Missiles

By Patricia Wilson
Reuters
Sunday October 21 10:37 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20011021/ts/apec_bush_putin_dc_4.html

SHANGHAI - President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin reported progress on Sunday on lowering nuclear arsenals and bridging differences on the future of a Cold War-era arms control treaty.

In a warm display between two leaders who have grown closer since the September 11 hijack attacks on the United States, Bush and Putin also expressed a common desire to fight terrorism.

The two leaders, meeting after a Pacific Rim summit, also issued a tough statement vowing to cooperate more closely to stop weapons of mass destruction -- including biological weapons -- being used for terrorism.

``Both of us see positive good that has come out of the evil f September 11,'' Bush said at a joint news conference after an hour and a half of talks following a Pacific Rim summit.

``Both of us are willing to work hard to seize the moment, to make sure we foster a new and unique and constructive relationship between our two great lands,'' Bush said.

The differences seemed to be narrowing between the two countries on reducing nuclear stockpiles and Bush's desire to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, once the bedrock of U.S.-Soviet stability during the Cold War.

Bush said he gave Putin no concrete figures on missile cuts and repeated his view the ABM treaty banning missile defense systems was ``outdated and, I believe, dangerous.''

But he added: ``We discussed significantly lowering offensive nuclear weapon arsenals, within a framework that includes limited defenses, defenses that are able to protect both our lands from political blackmail, from potential terrorist attack.''

Putin said they had made progress on ABM, but did not say how.

``I believe we do have understanding that we can reach agreement taking into account national interests of Russia and the United States and taking into account the necessity to strengthen international stability in this very important area,'' the Kremlin chief said.

HEAVY LIFTING STILL AHEAD

``We agree we should think about the future, look into the future and discuss possible threats in the future,'' he told the news conference. ``We are willing to discuss this with our American partner.''

Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin Saturday reaffirmed their commitment to the ABM treaty, which Bush wants to abandon to allow deployment of a high-tech missile defense system. Putin was not so forceful Sunday.

Bush has vowed to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile below the 3,500 warheads for each side set by the START 2 treaty, which has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate. Putin has proposed a ceiling of 1,500 each. The United States has about 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads while Russia has about 6,000.

Some in the U.S. military want to keep the arsenal at around 2,200 to 2,500.

Bush praised Putin, saying the Russian leader strongly supported U.S. military operations in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks, in which some 5,400 people died.

Putin, in turn, called Washington's response ``measured and adequate.''

That response has included two weeks of military strikes on Afghanistan, its Taliban rulers and their guest Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, the prime suspects in the attacks.

It was a key statement of support after an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that included the airing of concerns from some leaders about civilian casualties from the air strikes.

A summit declaration failed to mention support for the air strikes nor did it cite by name the prime suspect in the September 11 attacks, Saudi-born exile Osama bin Laden.

But Bush declared himself satisfied.

``I'm most appreciative of the support we received,'' he said. ``It was strong, it was steady and it's real.''

On arms control, the two leaders appeared to leave the heavy lifting on the details of a new strategic framework to a summit next month in Washington and at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

U.S. officials said Sunday's session was part of the process ``leading to Crawford and beyond.''

Bush said he held back from serving notice to Putin of U.S. intention to withdraw from the ABM treaty if no agreement can be reached to amend it to allow deployment of a missile defense.

A U.S. official had said shortly before the Bush-Putin meeting began that Bush might well serve such notice to Putin that the United States would begin the six-month process of abandoning the treaty at the end of the year.

Washington is coming under increasing pressure to begin abandoning the ABM treaty because of the timetable of tests for a system costing billions of dollars.

(Additional reporting by Kremlin reporter Patrick Lannin)

-------- pakistan

US taking long-term aim at Pak nukes, ISI

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
The Times of India
October 21, 2001
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1048949448

WASHINGTON: Beyond the immediate objective of decimating Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda and toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the US has some long-term collateral targets in the region: Pakistan's nukes and spooks.

While the bombing campaign against the Taliban is making headlines, the Bush administration is quietly moving behind the scenes to try and ensure it has some kind of handle on Pakistan's nuclear assets. Informed sources say Pakistan has rejected Washington's offer --made over the last month -- of enhancing the safety and security measures of its nuclear force, believing it will constitute an intrusive inspection of its weapons program.

In turn, Islamabad has assured the US that it has effectively put its command and control system in place. But the assertion is being taken with a fistful of salt

Proliferation experts within and outside the administration are increasingly invoking the nightmare scenario of the nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a fundamentalist jehadi regime that could overthrow the Musharraf rule.

The fears have been aggravated by the unending street protests now roiling Pakistan and polls showing that contrary to Musharraf's claim that 80 per cent of the people back him, 80 per cent actually oppose his support to the US.

"The US campaign against terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan is likely to add considerable strain on Pakistan's chain of command... Internal stresses within Pakistan could have dire consequences for the entire region," says Stimson Center's Michael Krepon, a South Asia expert who is advocating supply of US nuclear safety instruments to both Pakistan and India.

US officials are, however, less concerned about India's nuclear program, rooted as it is in institutional strength and a no-first-use policy. Although it is politic in the administration to talk about nuclear tensions in the region involving both India and Pakistan, the real worry now is the latter -- and the consequences of the bomb falling into the hands of extremists. It is a thought that was on the edge of US consciousness for a long time but has now moved sharply to the forefront. Disclosures and comments by bin Laden and his cohorts that they were aiming to get their hands on the nukes have given the administration the willies.

Some experts are now pushing for a back-up plan that includes deployment of US forces to remove Pakistan's nuclear weapons should a jehadi regime take over.

Unless Pakistan agrees to accept international help to secure its nuclear program "the US should begin to work immediately on contingency plans (that) include the ability to rapidly deploy forces to Pakistan to find and regain control of any lost nuclear materials and, only as a last option in a crisis, remove them from Pakistan to a secure location," says John Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation expert with the Carnegie Endowment.

While Pakistan's nuclear assets constitute one set of worries, the US is also concerned about the ISI, Pakistan's premier spook agency which is coming under increasing scrutiny and muted criticism within the administration. Although the CIA has had strong institutional ties with the ISI in the past, the Pakistani outfit has been doing its own thing over the past few years, especially in Afghanistan.

Over the past few weeks, there is a growing realisation in the intelligence community here that the ISI's links and loyalty to the Taliban, which it created and nurtured, is far stronger than support to the US war effort. According to one account, the intelligence supplied by the ISI to US forces has amounted to zilch so far. Having directed the removal of the pro-Taliban ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmed, the US is now set to oversee a purge in the ISI ranks of senior and mid-level operatives who it identifies as having sympathies with the fundamentalists.

-------- treaties

Russia, China Back ABM Pact, Quick End to Afghan Fighting
U.S.-Moscow Deal On Treaty Would Concern Beijing

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27272-2001Oct20.html

SHANGHAI, Oct. 20 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin today called for a quick end to fighting in Afghanistan and reaffirmed their commitment to the 1972 treaty that sharply limits missile defense systems like the one planned by the Bush administration.

Putin has been a more vocal supporter of the U.S.-led campaign on terrorism than Jiang, but both men urged the establishment of a coalition government to replace the ruling Taliban militia in Afghanistan. They said after meeting today that the war against terrorism also should target Chechen rebels in southern Russia and ethnic separatists in western China.

Their endorsement of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty came on the eve of a critical meeting between President Bush and Putin and one day after Bush attempted to convince Jiang that the U.S. missile defense plan would not threaten China. All three leaders are in Shanghai to attend an economic summit of Asian-Pacific countries.

Bush wants Putin to agree to scrap the ABM Treaty, the basis for nuclear security for nearly three decades, in favor of what he calls a "new strategic framework" that would allow missile defenses. Putin opened the door to a possible deal after his first meetings with Bush in Slovenia and Italy last summer, suggesting the treaty might be modified if the two countries also made deep cuts in their nuclear weapons stockpiles.

Bush and Putin are expected to hold their most detailed talks on the subject on Sunday. It will be their third meeting this year; a fourth is scheduled to take place in Crawford, Tex., next month.

Bush aides worked late tonight to complete a specific arms reduction offer for Putin, according to one U.S. official. "They're getting close, but there's still review going on," the official said.

The United States has about 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads, while Russia has about 6,000. Bush has promised to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile below the ceiling of 3,500 for each side mandated by the START II treaty, which was never ratified by the U.S. Senate.

Putin has called for both countries to cut back to 1,500 long-range weapons, while some U.S. military officials want to keep 2,200 to 2,500 each.

Any deal to abandon the ABM Treaty or alter it to allow the United States to build a missile defense system would put China in a difficult position. China has criticized the proposed missile shield because it could neutralize its small arsenal of about 25 nuclear weapons. China has threatened to accelerate its nuclear modernization program.

In their talks Friday, Bush told Jiang the missile shield would protect the United States only from "rogue states" and could be overwhelmed by a country that launched multiple nuclear missiles, U.S. officials said. But Beijing is worried the United States could destroy most of China's nuclear arsenal in a first strike and use the missile shield to defend itself from any remaining weapons.

Bush has said he is determined to build the missile defense system and would withdraw from the ABM Treaty unilaterally if he could not reach an agreement with Putin. He has also said he would make unilateral nuclear arms cuts.

Bush and Putin are scheduled to meet for more than an hour Sunday evening. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice have been laying the groundwork for the meeting for the past three days. Powell met with the Russian foreign minister on Friday, and Rice has met with her Russian counterpart.

Negotiations between the two countries appeared to have bogged down over the past several months as the United States conducted a review of its nuclear arsenal to help Bush determine how deeply he would be willing to cut it. The review was complicated by the difficulties in judging how China might react to the missile defense program.

But talks gained momentum after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Putin has demonstrated support for the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, opening Russian airspace to U.S. planes, pressuring Central Asian countries to cooperate with the United States and promising to arm opposition forces fighting the Taliban.

A senior State Department official said this week that there had been an "across the board" change in the attitude of Russian officials toward cooperation on a variety of subjects, including missile defense and closer relations with NATO.

Bush and other administration officials have been playing down expectations for Sunday's meeting.

"I think it's a very important meeting with President Putin tomorrow. . . . I look forward to the continued progress toward our Crawford meeting," Bush said. "Somebody said there's great anticipation that there will be so-called breakthroughs. But I wouldn't expect any startling news except for the fact that we're continuing the dialogue."

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.

--------

Asian Leaders Commit to Bringing Sept. 11 Attackers to Justice

New York Times
October 21, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/international/21CND-PREX.html

SHANGHAI, Oct. 21 - President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia met here for more than an hour today, and when they emerged Mr. Putin declared that he believes the two men can reach agreements that would alter the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, freeing the United States to test a proposed anti-missile system.

While both men were elusive about the progress they said they made here, Mr. Putin's comments made it clear that the two countries were racing to try to reach the outlines of an accord in the next three weeks, before Mr. Putin travels to Washington and Mr. Bush's home in Crawford, Texas for a three day visit, Nov. 12 to 14.

"I believe we do have understanding that we can reach agreements," Mr. Putin told reporters, "taking into account national interests of Russia, the United States, and taking into account the necessity to strengthen international security."

Before that understanding can be reached, Mr. Bush must deliver to the Russian leader a proposal for deep cuts in both nations' nuclear missiles, which the Pentagon was supposed to provide before today's meeting.

Earlier today, an administration official said that Mr. Bush would enter the session with a written outline of the administration's positions that included a strong caution to Mr. Putin: If an accord could not be reached by the end of this year, the United States would give formal notice that it intended to withdraw from the treaty, after the required six-month waiting period.

However, at a briefing for reporters here tonight, Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said "he did not deliver a deadline" to the Russian leader, whose support Mr. Bush needs in the war on terrorism. She declined to confirm whether Mr. Bush's "talking points" for the meeting had included any such warning.

For his part, Mr. Bush was lavish in his public praise of Mr. Putin and their relationship, which is obviously far warmer than the one he tried to develop this week with President Jiang Zemin of China. Twice during a joint press conference, Mr. Bush referred to his counterpart as Vladimir, and recounted several ways that he had aided Washington in the battle over terrorism.

The meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin came on the last day of a summit forum of 21 leaders of Asian and Pacific nations, who used their session in this booming city to issue a strongly worded statement condemning the terrorist attacks on the United States and committing themselves to helping "bring the perpetrators to justice."

The statement also committed the member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which has rarely before issued a communique on a political subject rather than on economic management, to take a series of steps to implement United Nations counterterror resolutions.

Those include "appropriate measures to prevent the flow of funds to terrorists," and the development of "a global integrated electronic customs network and electronic movement records."

Currently there is scant connection between the customs systems of most countries, impeding their ability to warn about suspected terrorists or arrest them at borders.

The statement made no mention of the American bombing and commando operations in Afghanistan, or the effort to oust its Taliban government. That reflected the fact that several countries at the summit meeting here were uneasy about the administration's military actions, especially Indonesia and Malaysia, which both have large Islamic populations.

China urged the United States to get its work in Afghanistan done fast and accurately - a reminder of the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade several years ago - and to get out as fast as possible.

Despite their hesitations, Mr. Bush went to extraordinary lengths today to argue that he is getting all the backing he needs, and more. At his news conference with Mr. Putin, Mr. Bush waved away a question about nations that do not agree with the American strategy. "We've got universal support around the world," he said.

But Mr. Bush did win an unexpected public vote of confidence for his military actions from Mr. Putin. "I believe that his action was measured and adequate to the threat the United States was confronted with," Mr. Putin said of President Bush.

This was the ninth annual meeting of the APEC leaders, since President Clinton initiated a leaders' summit in 1993. The organization was created to press for free trade in a region that has long been home to enormous trade barriers, and it has created deadlines for the opening of markets across the Pacific. But the presence of the leaders of member countries has meant that more and more, the event is being used to tackle political issues.

And that is exactly what Mr. Bush did over the past two days: He had relatively little to say about the economy, or about any comprehensive strategy for preventing global recession.

"It's not where his head is," said one senior official of another country who sat in on meetings the president had here. "We talk trade, he nods, then steers things back to terrorism."

"Everybody would like to see this campaign end," Ms. Rice said today. "But it's not going to end until the goals have been achieved. And the goals are to root out Al Qaeda and render it incapable of carrying out its murderous campaigns."

Mr. Bush clearly had second thoughts about leaving the United States at a time of anthrax attacks and fear of further terrorism at home. This evening, after dinner with Mr. Putin, he headed straight for Air Force One, 12 hours ahead of schedule. He wanted to sleep in the White House tonight, officials said. He has no other international travel currently planned for the rest of the year.

It was a sign of Mr. Bush's preoccupation that he engaged in no tourism here, and never once stepped out of his car to greet ordinary Chinese, a staple of such visits since Richard M. Nixon, who was awkward in any crowd, cast himself among Chinese throngs in 1972.

Mr. Bush conducted morning national security meetings from secure teleconference facilities set up in a giant hotel complex here, creating the odd image of an American president conducting a war in Afghanistan in the heart of a crowded city that is the prosperous, capitalist outpost of the world's largest Communist country.

But today's meeting set the stage for a huge diplomatic accord, if it can be reached when Mr. Putin comes to Washington in several weeks and then moves on to Mr. Bush's beloved ranch. The two men are planning to tour the trails Mr. Bush has been clearing..

If there were nothing else going on, it would be difficult enough to put together a major agreement so quickly. In this case, Mr. Bush will have to prosecute a war and try to re-write the rules of the peace at the same time. And that means the Pentagon, while running daily operations in Afghanistan, will also have to come up with numbers on how deeply the United States can reduce its fleet of ground-, air- and sea-based nuclear weapons, under complex scenarios that would allow for full protection of the United States.

In Genoa, Italy last July, Mr. Bush promised to deal with the nuclear cuts and the ABM treaty's fate at the same time, which suggested that the depth of the cuts was a prerequisite before any deal could be reached on the ABM treaty.

But this evening, Ms. Rice suggested that even the Crawford meeting may not be definitive. "In terms of the numbers or levels" of missiles to be eliminated, she said, the President said that he would be getting back to President Putin soon. "The review is not quite finished," she said.

She also indicated that Russia was running out of time. Testing and evaluation of anti-missile system must begin next year, she has said in the past; today she added that while past tests have complied with the ABM treaty, "we don't intend to do that in the future."

While Ms. Rice offered up the hard edge of the deal, Mr. Bush put it in terms of a partnership. "We must truly and finally move beyond the Cold War," he said after his meeting with Mr. Putin. "We can report progress toward that goal."

The President insisted that the terrorist attacks "make it clearer than ever that a cold war ABM treaty that prevents us from defending our people is outdated, and I believe, dangerous."

Mr. Putin held to his main view, however, that the treaty is still useful, even if it is imperfect and in need of amendment.

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

Nuclear power plants vulnerable to terrorists

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tim Zink - For the Journal-Constitution
Sunday, October 21, 2001
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/sunday/opinion_b32dd47c81b5a07310d0.html

<http://www.accessatlanta.com/global/images/1pix_trans.gif>

After emerging unscathed from the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was the ultimate possible consequence, the nuclear specter has again closed on us. Terrorists, our opponents in this newest war, have the capability to launch a nuclear attack on American soil, so long as the perimeters of domestic nuclear reactor sites remain chronically porous.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has in recent years attempted to move away from a highly effective security evaluation program known as Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations, in which teams simulating armed attacks attempt to penetrate reactor sites.

A former U.S. Navy SEAL and NRC contractor, Capt. David Orrick, ran the OSRE program. Orrick's teams often were able to compromise sensitive areas within reactor sites --- sometimes gaining access to plants' control rooms --- even though the managers of the sites frequently were notified in advance of coming evaluations.

Despite the proven ability of OSRE to expose weaknesses in reactor fortifications, the NRC in 1998 canceled the program. After apparently learning of the cancellation from media sources, NRC Director Richard Meserve reinstated OSRE, but the commission subsequently announced it would this fall start a pilot program under which the operators of reactor sites would essentially police themselves.

The move drew criticism from nuclear watchdog groups and Orrick himself. Orrick wrote in 1999, "In effect, it [OSRE] is the only program NRC has that directly focuses on the terrorist threat against nuclear power plants --- significant weaknesses were identified in 27 of 57 plants (or 47 percent) evaluated to date. 'Significant' here means a real attack would have put the reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and a radioactive release, i.e., an American Chernobyl." These results came after the average plant used 82 percent more armed defenders in the simulated attack than they commit to using in the event of a real attack.

Very few other potential terrorist operations could match the sheer destructive potential of a strike on a domestic nuclear reactor. After being considered unlikely targets for years because of a perceived unwillingness on the part of terrorists to kill extremely large numbers of civilians, the events of Sept. 11 forced an immediate re-evaluation of reactors' strategic importance.

As Congress crafts nuclear-specific measures as part of larger anti-terrorism legislation, guaranteeing the future of OSRE should be a priority. The project comes with a relatively low price tag --- its total operating budget is slightly more than $100,000 --- and is consistent with other recent congressional actions to bolster nuclear security.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently proposed extending laws prohibiting nuclear sabotage to include nuclear waste fabrication, treatment and disposal facilities. By extending these laws, legal protections would be bolstered should any aspect of the nuclear handling process come under attack.

The House also approved an amendment to study nuclear plants' design vulnerabilities and possible protection measures. If made law, the results of this analysis would be due back to Congress within 90 days of enactment, presumably to provide the basis for future, more stringent anti-terror measures.

Stronger action still needs to be taken now. Several measures to be debated could quickly elevate our national nuclear security.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has submitted legislation to take the design-vulnerabilities study steps further, guaranteeing revisions to NRC standards within one year of enactment. This revision would be done in consultation with the defense secretary; directors of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security; the national security adviser and others, including the public, before completion.

Other voices within Congress have called for the protection of reactor sites nationwide by National Guard troops. New York Gov. George Pataki dispatched guardsmen this month to the state's nuclear power plants, and troops have been in place at selected installations in New Jersey since the Sept. 11 attacks. The decision to use National Guard troops remains up to individual states, however, and many, including Georgia, have chosen not to use them for plant protection.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, spurred by a Sept. 13 incident in which an unidentified airplane swooped close to a nuclear power station, recently urged federal officials to create no-fly zones around U.S. reactors. The Federal Aviation Administration responded with a warning that these zones would allow terrorists to pinpoint the exact location of every plant in the country.

The locations of U.S. nuclear power plants are in no way secret, however, and recent events have transformed these plants into installations of fundamental military importance, in terms of their basic threat to American lives. The use of National Guard troops and no-fly zones to protect nuclear installments is now simply necessary, and will be well into the future.


-------- pennsylvania

NUCLEAR MYSTERY:
Crashed plane's target may have been reactor

Nicholas Rufford, David Leppard and Paul Eddy,
October 21 2001
Sunday Times, UK
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2001/10/21/stiusausa02018.html

THE hijackers who forced a fourth passenger jet to crash during the September 11 attacks in America may have been intending to use it to bomb a nuclear power station to cause a Chernobyl-type disaster.

The FBI is studying a report that the four terrorists who seized the plane may have been attempting to steer it towards a cluster of nuclear power stations on the east coast of America. The most likely target was Three Mile Island, site of America's most serious nuclear accident in 1979.

United Airlines flight 93 crashed into a field near the tiny town of Shanksville, in Pennsylvania, 90 minutes after taking off from Newark, New Jersey. All 44 passengers and crew on board died.

Until this weekend it had been assumed that the hijackers of the plane, a Boeing 757, were planning to fly it either to the presidential retreat at Camp David, or to Washington and crash it into the White House or the Congress and Senate buildings on Capitol Hill. But security officials have now revealed that within a week of the attacks, the FBI sent a report to MI5 saying that a "credible source" had said that the terrorists might have been planning to hit a nuclear plant.

Had it breached the plant's reactor vessel, such a strike could have caused an incident on the scale of the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, which spread radioactive material over thousands of square miles in 1986.

US security sources say that Three Mile Island, which is part-owned by British Energy, was the subject of surveillance by some of the hijackers and their associates in the months before the terrorist attacks. One security official said: "Early on in the investigation we did receive a report from the FBI that the plane may have been heading for a nuclear power station. This was based on their analysis that Pittsburgh is near several power stations.

"There is some plausibility to this and we're not trying to dismiss it. But it may well be that nobody will ever know where the plane was going."

The "nuclear meltdown" assessment has not been independently confirmed but was taken seriously enough by the FBI to pass to European governments, including Britain and France.

The analysis is based on a study of flight 93's flight path and the fact that there are five nuclear power stations in the area. Experts say that the plane does not appear to have been hijacked until it was passing over West Virginia, some 200 miles beyond Washington. It then made a series of sharp turns before going into a steep descent. Aviation experts say that at this point there were three nuclear power stations between the plane and Washington and directly in its line of flight: Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom and Hope Creek.

Investigators cannot understand why the plane would have descended so early, unless its intended target was much nearer than Washington. The descent could have been an error by one of the hijackers, but if so, they cannot understand why the plane did not then climb again once control was regained.

America has since tightened security around nuclear stations and has taken steps to withdraw maps on the internet showing the location of nuclear plants. A French government minister said last week that fighters would shoot down aircraft heading for its nuclear plants. A missile defence system had been positioned at the Le Havre nuclear reprocessing plant.

In Britain, security around all nuclear sites has also been increased. David Blunkett, the home secretary, has given new powers to the 500-strong police force that guards the sites. Atomic Energy Authority police will be able to patrol an extra 13 civil nuclear sites, including Sizewell, Hinkley Point and Dungeness.

Engineering experts are divided over whether concrete containment shields around nuclear power stations could withstand a direct hit from a large passenger aircraft, especially one carrying 200,000lb of fuel, as was flight 93, enough to reach its destination of San Francisco.

The containment buildings generally have an outer structure, which for much of the dome is 3ft-thick concrete containing large amounts of reinforcing steel. Inside is a steel "lining" 1in-4in thick.

There are usually two more concrete walls close to the reactor, each 1ft thick and with reinforced steel bars. But these walls do not enclose the top of the reactor completely. The reactor vessel itself is about 4in-6in thick and made of high-carbon steel.

All reactors are designed to withstand impact by a light plane. Experts say it is unclear whether a larger modern jet loaded with fuel, deliberately flown at high speed, could break open the reactor vessel. The resultant fire could, however, cause enough damage to allow radioactive material into the air.

The drama aboard flight 93 as a small group of passengers tried to seize control of the plane from the hijackers during its final few minutes has become an emblem of American heroism during the events of September 11.

Delayed 40 minutes in taking off from Newark's congested airport, the plane was in the early stages of its journey when its passengers started hearing that other aircraft had been hijacked and at least one had flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Todd Beamer, one of the passengers, called an emergency operator on an onboard telephone after he and fellow passengers learnt of the first attack. He explained that flight 93 had also been hijacked. He said there were three hijackers - two with knives and one with what he thought was a bomb strapped to his waist. In fact, there were four, and by this time the fourth was almost certainly flying the plane.

Beamer, who was married with two young sons, told the operator: "We're going to do something. I know I'm not going to get out of this." He explained that some of passengers had decided to jump on the terrorist thought to have the bomb.

With the telephone left on, he could be heard saying: "Are you guys ready? Let's roll." The operator heard screams and a few minutes later the line went dead.

The FBI is looking into whether another United Airlines flight, scheduled to leave Kennedy International Airport for San Francisco, was a target of hijackers on September 11. When the plane was grounded because of the attacks, four Middle Eastern-looking men refused to return to their seats and hurriedly left as soon as its doors opened.

-------- us nuc politics

REP. KING: NUKES SHOULD BE AN OPTION IN AFGHANISTAN

Newmax.com,
Sunday, October 21, 2001,
From: David Culp <david@fcnl.org>

New York Congressman Peter King said Sunday that the U.S. shouldn't rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons to stop Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban government from using chemical weapons against American troops.

"I would never rule out tactical nuclear weapons if I thought they could do the job and if they were needed," King told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.

The conservative Republican said going nuclear is "a question of military necessity."

"If the military people said that we think that certain chemical weapons are going to be used, we know where they are and the only way we can stop their use is by using tactical nuclear weapons -- obviously we have to use them," King told Malzberg.

The New York congressman warned that going nuclear "should always be a last resort," then added:

"But having said that, our national security has to come first if that is what would be necessary to stop the use of chemical weapons."

King is the second member of Congress to voice support for the nuclear option.

On Thursday, Indiana Republican Stephen Buyer told an Indiana television station that if the United States can prove a causal link between the recent spate of anthrax-contaminated letters and bin Laden's organization, "I would support the use of a limited precision tactical nuclear device."

"When there are hardened caves that go back a half a mile," Buyer said, "don't send in Special Forces to sweep. We'd be naive to think biotoxins are not in there. Put in tactical nuclear devices and close these caves for a thousand years."

King also complained to Malzberg that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was double-crossed on Thursday when Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle first agreed to close the Senate, then reversed course.

"I was really disgusted by it. ... The fact is that the House leadership, Democrat and Republican, were specifically requested by the police and by the medical officers to close down our office building so they could conduct a full sweep.

This was part of a biochemical criminal investigation," King told Malzberg. "We had no choice. We had to do it."

King said that, contrary to media reports, the Senate also evacuated its offices but Senators were able to use back-up facilities that House members don't have.

"These guys get secret hideaway offices in the Capitol building and that's where they went. We didn't have that luxury of going there."

King excoriated the media for painting House members as cowards, telling Malzberg, "As far as I know, Tom Brokaw still hasn't moved back into his office at 30 Rock."

Last week Brokaw's assistant opened an anthrax-laden letter that investigators believe came from the same source that targeted Congress.

The New York Republican also commented on Sen. Hillary Clinton getting booed at Saturday night's Twin Towers benefit concert staged by Paul McCartney at New York's Madison Square Garden.

"That wasn't exactly a vote of confidence," King told Malzberg.

"I would bet a lot of those people who were booing were registered Democrats, they were Reagan Democrats. ... It shows that people like Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are never going to be accepted by the real working people of this city and state."

-------- us nuc waste

Green Party Hears Call to Block N-Waste

Sunday, October 21, 2001
BY MIKE GORRELL
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/10212001/utah/142033.htm

Unless Utahns want to pay a fatal price once again, environmental activist Chip Ward said Saturday, now is the time for residents to organize a grassroots campaign to keep nuclear waste out of the state.

Delivering the keynote address at the first Green Party of Utah convention in Salt Lake City, Ward spoke out against efforts by the nuclear-power industry to move spent fuel rods to the west desert lands of the impoverished Goshute Tribe, and by Envirocare of Utah to accept greater quantities of mildly radioactive waste at its disposal facility in western Tooele County.

"Nuclear power is fundamentally unacceptable. Once we grasp that, we can turn to alternatives," said Ward, a Grantsville resident who also has fought against the U.S. Army's program to incinerate aging chemical weapons at Tooele Army Depot and for tighter controls on chlorine emissions from MagCorp's production plant along the Great Salt Lake's southwestern shore.

"We must build a civic culture from the ground up. The challenge is worth taking because we have a unique chance to make difference," he said. "Let's not shy away from it. Let's embrace it."

The opportunity presents itself now because environmentalists are in a rare position: Their effort to stop Private Fuel Storage from moving spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants to the Goshute Reservation has unlikely allies in Gov. Mike Leavitt, Rep. Jim Hansen and Tooele County commissioners.

Ward attributed Leavitt's support to his background as a native of southwestern Utah, a region victimized by exposure to radiation from open-air nuclear testing in the 1950s. Other Utahns died from cancers contracted while mining uranium for nuclear weapons and the power industry, despite shallow assurances from government officials that the work they were doing was safe.

"Utahns could write a book about misunderstood risks," Ward said, contending that even with the backing of people such as Leavitt and Hansen, a grassroots effort is needed to raise the consciousness of a populace "vulnerable to predatory corporations because it is reticent to challenge authority" and to overcome a state bureaucracy "indifferent or at worst hostile to environmental regulations."

Beyond human protection, he said, advocacy also is essential to protect the fragile desert environment from contamination by fuel rods that remain radioactive for roughly 10,000 years.

Ward's speech highlighted the Green Party's inaugural convention, which attracted three dozen delegates to adopt bylaws, elect state officers, establish an affiliation with the national party and to discuss issues from electoral reform to promoting a "living wage" for all employees.

Delegates elected Penny Archibald-Stone of Salt Lake City and Rob Morrison of Logan as spokespersons; Linda Parsons, West Valley City, secretary; Andy Schoenberg, Salt Lake City, treasurer, and David Orr, Moab, local liaison.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

U.S. Enters Third Week of Air Raids on Afghanistan

Sun, Oct 21
Reuters
By Sayed Salahuddin and Brian Williams
http://news.excite.com/printstory/news/r/011021/07/news-attack-dc

KABUL/WASHINGTON - The United States began a third week of air strikes against Afghanistan Sunday with blistering bombing around the capital of Kabul, where the defiant ruling Taliban vowed to bolster the country's defenses.

President Bush won strong political support in his war on terrorism at a meeting in China of Asia Pacific leaders who denounced the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York and vowed to find the perpetrators.

But the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum stopped short of backing U.S. strikes on Afghanistan or naming Washington's prime suspect in the September attacks -- Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

Sunday's air strikes, which came a day after Washington claimed an intelligence coup from its first use of ground troops in Afghanistan, were believed aimed at Taliban front lines north of Kabul, where troops were massed to hold off any attack by the opposition Northern Alliance.

"There have been a lot of planes overhead, and I've heard at least seven explosions," a witness told Reuters.

The Taliban said the morning raids had killed 18 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 23. It says 900 civilians have been killed since the raids began on October 7, a figure hotly disputed by the United States.

The Taliban cabinet held a special cabinet session in which they decided to step up their defenses against U.S. commando raids by distributing more heavy weapons, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.

It decided to distribute more rocket launchers, heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns to respond effectively to U.S. raids, AIP quoted Taliban Education Minister Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi as saying.

The meeting, chaired by Mullah Mohammad Hassan, the Taliban's number two, voiced satisfaction at the response to Friday's midnight raid by U.S. special forces near the southern city of Kandahar.

The Taliban said they had successfully repulsed the first U.S.-led strike on Afghan soil, which included a search of a home used by their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, as a command center.

More than 100 troops were involved, U.S. officials said.

The Pentagon said two members of the armed forces were killed and three injured when a helicopter supporting the commando raid crashed on landing in Pakistan. They dismissed Taliban statements they had shot down the aircraft.

The Taliban said 20 to 25 U.S. commandos died and insisted they had downed a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

"We believe that between 20 or 25 of the American fighters have perished in the incident," Education Minister Muttaqi told Reuters.

Giving the U.S. version of the raid, Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed dramatic near-real-time film of night parachute drops in the Kandahar area, bordering Pakistan.

One raid was on Omar's command center near Kandahar, and another was on an airfield, also in southern Afghanistan, once the main stronghold of the fundamentalist Taliban, who took power in 1996 and are accused of sheltering bin Laden's network.

'BROWNOUT' BLAMED IN HELICOPTER CRASH

Defense officials said the Black Hawk helicopter may have crashed due to "brownout" when the rotor blades stirred up dust and other debris around the aircraft as it descended.

Two soldiers were lightly injured in the parachute drop, and the troops ran into some resistance.

"We met resistance at both objectives -- the airfield and the other objective. I guess you could characterize it as light. There were casualties on the other side," Myers said, adding that no Taliban or leaders of bin Laden's al Qaeda network had been captured.

"I'll characterize the one target as one of the locations where Omar lives. It's a fairly large complex. It's a command and control compound for the Taliban leadership," Myers said.

"We gathered up some intelligence, some items, and we're going to evaluate that."

The Taliban warned any U.S.-led ground assault would bring a high death toll for Americans, and said it had executed five men in the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for spying for Washington.

"Their decision on war is a wrong one," said Muttaqi. "It is an un-ideal aim and they should not sacrifice themselves for it and they should not shed the blood of Afghans.

"Afghans have full preparations for a ground attack and Americans will a suffer high death toll in the ground assault."

The APEC leaders wrapped up their summit vowing to prevent "all forms of terrorist acts" and to boost cooperation to catch those who carry out such crimes.

It said leaders "unequivocally condemn in the strongest terms" the hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

A U.S. official said Washington was "thrilled" by the statement, the first-ever political stand by APEC, which mustered support despite misgivings by predominantly Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia about U.S. military action.

"GLOVES ARE OFF"

The Washington Post reported Sunday that Bush last month gave the CIA its broadest authority yet to conduct lethal covert action against Saudi-born Islamic militant bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.

"The gloves are off. The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-Sept. 11 are now underway," the newspaper quoted a senior official as saying.

The raids have worsened an already serious humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, with aid agencies reporting hundreds of thousands of Afghans on the move inside the country and thousands trying to cross into neighboring Pakistan or Iran.

There was no let-up in an anthrax scare sweeping the United States, with a mail worker in Washington hospitalized with possible symptoms of the bacterium and traces of the potential germ warfare agent found in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A swab from the House of Representatives mailroom proved positive for the bacterium and a Washington postal worker was in a hospital in nearby Virginia for tests.

Close to 40 people in the United States, including 28 Capitol Hill workers from the nearby Senate, have been exposed to anthrax in the past month. Eight people have been infected with the disease, and one man has died.

In his weekly radio speech, Bush addressed the nation's fears, saying there was no hard evidence linking letters containing anthrax spores to bin Laden.

"We do not yet know who sent anthrax to the United States Capitol or several different media organizations," Bush said. "We do know that anyone who deliberately delivers anthrax is engaged in a crime and an act of terror."

Bush, who has decided to return to the United States from Shanghai some 12 hours earlier than scheduled, said Americans should expect "moments of sacrifice" in the fight against terrorism.

A who's who of western popular music over the past 30 years came together for a series of marathon concerts aimed at raising millions of dollars for the thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Friends, rivals, golden oldies and teen bands shared the stage in New York Saturday and were to take the stage in Washington and Nashville, Tennessee, Sunday, in a show of songs and solidarity unseen since the 1985 Live Aid concert for famine relief in Africa.

----

Taliban Strategy: Prolong Conflict

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27434-2001Oct20.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 20 -- In their words and their actions, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers are revealing a military strategy that relies on U.S. reluctance to take casualties and the legendary ability of Afghan guerrillas to endure prolonged hardships in the mountains of the rugged country.

The hide-and-wait tactics -- tested during more than two decades of irregular warfare -- assume new importance now that the United States has moved into the ground phase of its battle to dislodge the Taliban and hunt down accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. As the tough Afghan winter settles in, Taliban fighters could seek to capitalize on the country's natural obstacles to frustrate U.S. commando raids such as the one mounted early this morning near the southern city of Kandahar.

For two weeks, as high-flying U.S. warplanes pummeled targets across Afghanistan, the Taliban military has sought mainly to survive, unable to fight back effectively with its primitive air defenses. Now that U.S. soldiers have begun raids on the ground, Taliban officials express confidence that the fight will become more even, with guerrillas hiding and letting U.S. troops come to them just as Afghan mujaheddin did against the Soviets in the 1980s.

"We are eagerly awaiting the American troops to land on our soil, where we will deal with them in our own way," said Jalaluddin Haqqani, a senior Taliban commander renowned for his role in the battle against Soviet occupation.

"I tell you the Soviets were a brave enemy, and their soldiers could withstand tough conditions. The Americans are creatures of comfort," he said in an interview today with the Pakistani newspaper the News. Haqqani was in Pakistan for meetings with the government on the Taliban's role in a future, broad-based Afghan government, the Foreign Ministry said.

American soldiers "will not be able to sustain the harsh conditions that await them," Haqqani said. ". . . Afghanistan will prove to be the graveyard of the Americans."

Haqqani, a strategic adviser to the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, was displaying a bluster common to military commanders. But he was also describing the patient strategy that Taliban troops seem to be pursuing since the bombs began to fall Oct. 7.

According to refugees and aid organizations with Afghan employees, the Taliban military has dispersed equipment such as tanks and artillery, seeking to save it from marauding U.S. warplanes, and has spread most of its 40,000-man force around urban residential areas and the countryside to rob U.S. jets of concentrated military targets.

A Pentagon official agreed with this assessment, saying that, "so far the Taliban isn't concentrating resources. They're staying dispersed."

Partly as a result, Taliban officials said, military casualties have not been heavy. One aid worker who just returned from Kabul said Taliban leaders there are "cheered by the low casualty figures."

Refugees from Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual and political base and Omar's headquarters before the bombing, said Taliban forces there have fanned out in two directions. "They are either heading into the mountains and caves, or they are entering populated areas," said an aid worker who arrived this morning in Quetta, on the Pakistani side of the border.

He said Taliban forces have largely evacuated their camps and military installations to avoid U.S. airstrikes. The leadership, he said, left for caves and other secure areas in the mountains, but the rank and file remained and have cached some of their heavy weapons in residential neighborhoods.

In Kabul as well, aid workers said, Taliban leaders have moved military equipment to scattered sites outside the city or have kept moving it around to avoid U.S. warplanes.

Only in the plains north of Kabul has the Taliban mobilized large numbers of troops in one area. This was to create a buffer against any advance by the Northern Alliance rebel groups, whose front lines for the last several years have been about 40 miles north of the capital.

Many of the troops in these defensive lines were drawn from the 5,000 to 15,000 Arabs incorporated into the Taliban army, part of those attracted to Afghanistan for training by bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. According to experts here and Northern Alliance leaders, they are among the Taliban's most motivated fighters.

The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said the Taliban military leadership has decided to "safeguard" its ammunition and military capabilities as much as possible to await the arrival of U.S. ground troops and winter. Zaeef, a former military commander, spoke to reporters in Islamabad after consultations in Kandahar with Omar and other senior Taliban leaders.

"We are going to exercise patience," he said.

According to Pakistani experts, the destruction of Taliban airports, air defense batteries and command and control centers has not changed the equation dramatically on the ground. The radical Islamic militia functions as a low-tech guerrilla force, they noted, and transmits more orders by hand-carried pieces of paper than by encrypted military radios.

"All this is bunkum, that their command and control system has been destroyed," snorted retired Gen. Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency. "They have no command and control system."

Haqqani, who has had differences with the Taliban leadership and has been cited as a possible defector, said in the interview that the movement's leadership remains united behind Omar, who has the Islamic title Leader of the Faithful. Haqqani's loyalty is key; he lives in Khost, which is near the border with Pakistan in Paktia province and is the site of a cave system used by the mujaheddin to hide from Soviet forces.

Ali Jalali, Farsi language chief for the Voice of America and a former Afghan army colonel who has written extensively on the country's military, has suggested that bin Laden and his followers could also use the impenetrable Jawar cave system, also in Paktia province, to hide from U.S. troops. Combing the caves would likely produce U.S. casualties, unless it could be done by anti-Taliban Afghan guerrillas with experience from the 1980s, he told reporters in New York.

Taliban officials have derided U.S. attempts to enlist such anti-Taliban leaders, saying the country is behind Omar except for the Northern Alliance, which is made up mainly of Tajik and Uzbek minorities on the border with Central Asia. But refugees and other Afghans in Pakistan suggest that opposition is growing among the 40 percent Pashtun plurality that is the Taliban's base.

This could complicate the Taliban military strategy -- or at least reduce it to hiding out in remote caves.

Some Kandahar residents have expressed displeasure, for instance, hat Taliban forces have moved equipment and troops into residential areas of the city, an aid worker said after crossing into Pakistan. "I saw women and children coming into the streets asking the Taliban not to stay too long in one neighborhood in the second district," he said.

An anti-Taliban guerrilla fighter interviewed in Peshawar said many people in Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan have also become disenchanted with the Taliban movement. In that city, too, he said, residents have begun asking Taliban militia units to move out of their neighborhoods to avoid drawing U.S. airstrikes.

Arabs in the Taliban military have drawn particular opposition, he said, even though they make an effort to stay away from the city center except to buy fruit and vegetables in the markets. But in the end, he added, they probably will be the most determined to continue resisting U.S. or allied Afghan forces "because they have no other option."

Correspondents John Pomfret in Quetta and Pamela Constable in Islamabad contributed to this report.

--------

U.S. bombs kill 8 civilians, Afghans say

USA TODAY
10/21/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/10/21/attack.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S.-led bombardment flattened two homes in a residential neighborhood of Kabul on Sunday, killing at least eight civilians, including four children, neighbors said. An Associated Press reporter at the scene in the Khair Khana residential district and at a hospital later saw the bodies of seven of the dead - three women and four children, all boys.

At the hospital where all the victims were taken, a doctor wept as he showed the dust-covered bodies of the children, who appeared between 8 and 13 years old. He said there were 13 dead - all apparently of the same family - who were brought to the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital. There were also 10 wounded, eight of them children.

"This pilot was like he was blind. There are no military bases here - only innocent people," said Haziz Ullah, one of a crowd of distraught, edgy residents at the scene.

"We don't care about military targets, if they want to hit military targets, let them,' said Bacha Gul, the brother of one of the dead. "But these are not terrorists."

The United States previously has expressed regret for any civilian deaths in its now two-week old military campaign in Afghanistan, saying terror suspect Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies are its true targets.

This particular section of the Khair Khana neighborhood holds no known Taliban military sites, although a Taliban army garrison and other installations are housed several kilometers away in the same direction.

Other bombs hit hard Sunday in the southern city of Kandahar, which serves as the headquarters for the Taliban. On the ground in the north, opposition forces were reportedly keeping up their own offensive against the strategic, Taliban-held city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

An opposition spokesman said the Taliban and opposition forces were battling "face-to-face" at one front near Mazar-e-Sharif. Taliban Information Ministry confirmed heavy fighting near Mazar-e-Sharif, but claimed to have pushed the opposition back.

Afghanistan's opposition - a northern-based alliance mainly of ethnic minority Uzbeks and Tajiks - is waging its first major battle since the U.S.-led military campaign started - trying to move forward on Mazar-e-Sharif after U.S. airstrikes helped clear the way.

The U.S. bombardment of the Afghan capital opened at dawn Sunday, as jets roared in for bombing runs to the east. Four bombs hit Kabul's eastern edge, home to a Taliban military academy and several Taliban army installations.

Jets returned for strikes on the city's northern edge, hitting the homes at Khair Khana.

Last week as a U.S. bomb struck a Red Cross compound in the same neighborhood. The Pentagon had said that it thought the Taliban militia was using warehouses there for storage.

Sunday's raids left bulldozers scraping through the rubble of the demolished homes, as residents searched for more victims.

Another U.S. jet screamed high overhead as the search crews worked, sending people scrambling for cover and an ambulance at the scene screeching away. The aircraft left without attacking.

Whirring U.S. helicopters had patrolled over Kabul throughout the night Sunday, making their first sustained appearance over the capital. They drew only slight Taliban anti-aircraft fire.

President Bush launched the air campaign Oct. 7 after the Taliban repeatedly refused to hand over bin Laden, the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

On Sunday, the Taliban claimed to have killed 20-25 U.S. soldiers in the first ground attacks of the campaign, Saturday at and around Kandahar.

Taliban spokesman Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi said Taliban firing killed the U.S. soldiers during hours of battling there, but gave no details.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman dismissed the claim as baseless propaganda.

"It's clearly another attempt at false information," Capt. Riccoh Player said.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, an opposition diplomat gave a rare suggestion that some Taliban might have a role in any post-Taliban government.

Opposition forces hope the U.S.-led military campaign will lead to routing of the Taliban fundamentalist regime, which seized the capital in 1996 and now holds about 90% of the country.

The international community is trying to help a multiethnic, coalition government take shape - one that would be acceptable to Afghanistan's Pashtun majority.

On Saturday, U.N. ambassador Ravan Farhadi of the Afghan opposition government in exile said a post-Taliban government could include so-called moderates of the Taliban. They would only be those found innocent of crimes against Afghan civilians, however, Farhadi said.

Opposition foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah has vehemently dismissed that same suggestion when it comes from outside, saying there is no such thing as a "moderate" Taliban.

As fighting continues, a refugee crisis built on Afghanistan's borders. At least 5,000 crossed into Pakistan Saturday in what was the single largest one-day exodus in the U.S.-led military campaign. Another 10,000 were barred from entering and are believed stranded at a border no man's land.

The U.N. refugee agency says thousands of Afghan civilians are in flight from Kandahar and other cities, with most seeking refugee in the mountains and countryside.

-------- asia

Bush warns Asians to fight terrorists or become targets

October 21, 2001
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011021-333004.htm

SHANGHAI - President Bush yesterday called on Asian nations to join the U.S.-led war against terrorism. "This conflict is a fight to save the civilized world and values common to the West, to Asia, to Islam," he said in a speech to business executives.

"Our enemies are murderers with global reach," Mr. Bush said. "They seek weapons to kill on a global scale. Every nation now must oppose this enemy or be, in turn, its target."

Meanwhile, Pacific Rim leaders vowed today to prevent "all forms of terrorist acts" and to boost cooperation to catch those who carry out such crimes, according to a copy of an anti-terrorism declaration obtained by Reuters news agency.

Leaders of the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are scheduled to issue their unprecedented political statement after their second and final day of talks today. APEC officials say leaders could still make minor text changes.

"Leaders commit to prevent and suppress all forms of terrorist acts," says the text, which went further than earlier drafts but still does not refer to U.S.-led strikes on Afghanistan or Saudi-born Osama bin Laden who masterminded the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The president spent much of yesterday meeting privately with world leaders attending the annual APEC forum, including Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, who has publicly called for an end to the U.S. retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan.

"He is concerned about the deaths of innocent people in Afghanistan, and I assured him I am, too," Mr. Bush said. "I assured him that we were trying to be as careful as we possibly could to achieve our military objective."

Mr. Mahathir said after his half-hour meeting that he and the U.S. president had agreed to disagree, but he did not repeat his call for the United States to call off its military campaign. He did suggest, however, that a resolution to the conflict in the Middle East is necessary to stem terrorism.

In his speech, Mr. Bush said the Sept. 11 attacks "took place in my country, but they were really an attack on all civilized countries."

"The roll of the dead and the missing includes citizens from over 80 nations - 96 Russians, 23 Australians, at least 30 Chinese, 24 Japanese, 20 Malaysians, 16 Mexicans, 21 Indonesians."

The goal of the terrorists was to topple the world economy, but they failed, Mr. Bush said.

"I'm here in Shanghai to assure our friends - and to inform our foes - that the progress of trade and freedom will continue," the president said. "The ties of culture and commerce will grow stronger. Economic development will grow broader.

"Terrorists want to turn the openness of the global economy against itself," Mr. Bush said. "We must not let them. We need customs, financial, immigration and transportation systems that make it easier for us to do our business and much harder for terrorists to do theirs.

"Pursuing both openness and security is difficult, but it is necessary, and it is the aim of the counterterror measures the APEC leaders will commit themselves to tomorrow," the president said.

The unprecedented joint declaration on terrorism is also expected to call to limit the economic fallout of the "murderous deeds" of Sept. 11 and press for a major U.N. role in the war on terror, according to APEC sources.

The APEC statement will stop short of endorsing the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan and will not refer specifically to bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, but Mr. Bush said he is pleased with world support for the war against terrorism.

"The coalition is broad and deep and strong and committed," he said yesterday. "Tomorrow, APEC leaders will pledge to work together to deny the terrorists any sanctuary, any funding, any material or moral support. Together, we will, patiently and diligently, pursue the terrorists from place to place until justice is done."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin said after a meeting yesterday they hope the U.S.-led military operation to destroy the terrorist al Qaeda network will give way rapidly to a political solution.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said the two nations want the U.N. Security Council to play a prominent role. China and Russia both wield vetoes on Security Council decisions.

"It is necessary to pass from the military phase to the use of political means in the settlement in Afghanistan," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said after the leaders' meeting, "and to create a new coalition government in which all ethnic groups would participate."

Some leaders have been cool to the U.S. president - Mr. Jiang expressed no remorse over the Sept. 11 attack and gave only a lukewarm endorsement of the U.S. war against terrorism - but Mr. Bush praised Japan's commitment.

"We have no stronger friend in the fight against terror than the prime minister of Japan," he said. "I have been impressed by his resolve and determination."

Mr. Koizumi said Japan would do its utmost, short of waging offensive military action, to aid the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan: "Japan wants to support U.S. efforts through logistical assistance."

Just before their meeting, Mr. Bush was asked about the death of two soldiers killed in a helicopter crash. "The thing that's important for me to tell the American people, that these soldiers will not have died in vain," he said. "This is a just cause. It's an important cause."

Mr. Bush and Mr. Koizumi exchanged gifts - the U.S. president offered a baseball mitt signed by future Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles, and the Japanese prime minister delivered a bow and arrow, specially designed to whistle when fired to announce the beginning of a battle.

-------- biological weapons

U.S. admits tests on sailors
Navy sprayed biological, chemical agents over ships 30 years ago

Albany Times Union
October 21, 2001
By MARK PAZNIOKAS and DENNIS WILLIAMS,
Hartford Courant
From: Jacksha1@aol.com

He kept the secret for 30 years. The former Navy skipper told no one about the classified tests of Project Shad, how the Marine jets came screaming out of the night off a remote Pacific atoll, spraying a 100-mile-long aerosol cloud over his five tugboats. Then Jack Alderson's men started getting sick.

"Some of the guys tried to go to the Pentagon or the American Legion and said, 'I did biological warfare testing.' They basically threw them out, told them they were crazy,' said Alderson, many of whose former crew complain of chronic respiratory problems. "They told them, 'We didn't do things like that.' ''

But now, after seven years of inquiries from veterans, Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon has confirmed that thousands of sailors were present during a decade-long series of classified tests to determine the vulnerability of U.S. warships to attack by chemical and biological warfare.

In a series of "fact sheets'' given to veterans hospitals and organizations last month without wider public notice, the Pentagon acknowledged that some of the tests involved spraying live biological weapons over U.S. ships, including Alderson's tugs. Pentagon officials say that nerve agents including sarin and VX gas also were used, but they refuse to disclose where, when and how.

Other tests involved exposure to "simulants,'' relatively harmless microbes and chemical markers used as stand-ins for a potentially deadly biological agent that resonates so powerfully today: anthrax. In all, more than a dozen ships were used, in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, from 1960 to 1970. Involvement was brief for some ships and crews. For others, it was a full-time assignment lasting years.

In the tests, Marine attack bombers sprayed either simulants or live biological agents. Then the ships sailed through the resulting cloud and collected air samples. In some tests, caged monkeys were placed on deck and later tested to determine whether they had inhaled the material.

In the "hot tests,'' involving live biological warfare agents, the sailors took shelter in compartments rigged with positive-pressure ventilation designed to prevent the test material from infiltrating the ships. Other precautions included inoculations for rabbit fever and Q fever, two of the illnesses caused by the biological weapons employed, Pasteurella tularensis and Coxiella burnetti.

"The crews who participated ... were not test subjects, but test conductors,'' according to the fact sheets.

The Pentagon says no health problems have been linked to the tests, but the veterans say no one has looked. A dozen test veterans reached by The Courant in recent weeks, including a former medical services officer, say they were not examined for exposure to the test material in the 1960s or monitored in later years.

"I've had some concerns, respiratory problems like the others,'' said Norman LaChapelle, the former medical officer. "You go to the VA, a good physician will ask you, 'What were you exposed to? What was your work?' Most of us until now couldn't say.''

One former tug skipper has cancer of the esophagus. Another officer died after developing fibrous growths in his lungs. Dozens of others have varying degrees of respiratory problems, Alderson and others said. One old skipper, who did not want to be quoted by name, said that he collapsed and was critically ill for 18 days shortly after his Pacific service. The Navy doctors, who were not told of his involvement in the secret program, never diagnosed the cause of his collapse.

The veterans say they are more concerned about the risks posed by the powerful cleansing agents used to decontaminate their ships than they are about the biological warfare agents. Some of the cleansing agents are suspected of causing cancer.

The recently released fact sheets detail only three series of tests, conducted in 1963 and 1965 under the code names "Autumn Gold,'' "Shady Grove'' and "Copper Head.'' They are only a fraction of the tests conducted as part of Shad, an acronym for "shipboard hazard and defense.''

LaChapelle helped oversee Project Shad from the "mother ship,'' USS Granville S. Hall. It was a converted Liberty ship with a mysterious past: In the 1950s, rigged with remote-control steering, it was sent into the atomic fallout from nuclear tests.

Years later, the Hall's crew members joked about setting off the radiation alarms every time they sailed into Pearl Harbor.

"Every time we pulled into Pearl, it was as if we were a spook. We were looked on as if we were orphans in the view of the 'real Navy' or combat Navy,'' LaChapelle said.

To test simulants, the Hall and the accompanying fleet of tugs sailed only 60 miles off the Hawaiian island of Oahu. For the hot tests, they traveled 800 miles to Johnston Island, a remote atoll controlled by the Army's chemical warfare program. It was a rough trip for the tugs. Designed for sheltered waters, they pitched and rolled, as much as a stomach-churning 60.

Secrecy was paramount, especially when the crews returned to Pearl. J.B. Stone, a radioman assigned to the Hall in 1967 and 1968, said, "Guys who got drunk and blathered in a bar in Honolulu would disappear,'' reassigned to less-sensitive work.

The only tests known to take place in the Atlantic, "Copper Head,'' involved only simulated biological agents, according to the fact sheets. The Navy provided a destroyer, the USS Power. Its crew was told nothing -- only that it was to steam from Florida to Newfoundland in January, one of its more unpopular deployments.

"They wanted cold-weather testing. They got it. The winds were horrible,'' said Larry Ginter, then a petty officer. He remembers a special crew that came aboard. "They told me they were testing air currents and the air tightness of the ship.''

Homer Tack Jr., a torpedoman from Butler, Pa., recalls conducting perhaps four tests in January and February of 1965.

"We'd go to sea. The jets would fly overhead and spray. We'd get wet. We all asked what went on. They said nothing,'' Tack said.

Alderson started asking the Pentagon in 1994 to open its files and provide Veterans Affairs with enough data to evaluate what he and others believe is a rash of chronic respiratory illness among veterans of Project Shad. At the time, he was the chief executive officer of the marine district that manages the port of Humboldt Bay, Calif. Even with the help of a congressman, he got nowhere.

A book published in 1999, "The Biology of Doom,'' described some of Project Shad. Then CBS News aired two stories about the secret tests in early 2000. Officials say that was the impetus for the disclosures about "Shady Grove,'' "Autumn Gold'' and "Copper Head.''

----

Lethal pathogens handy in nations harboring terrorists

By August Gribbin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011021-72903752.htm

Terrorists bent on waging germ warfare have a range of biological agents to choose from, and although all are terrifying, they are hard to use effectively.

Reports published by the Department of Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) plus recent studies by counterterrorism specialists all confirm that biological weapons can be developed from a huge range of disease-causing microorganisms. Many of the available pathogens are found in countries suspected of harboring terrorists.

"Because biological agents may be cheap and easy to obtain, any nation with a basic industry or facility such as a brewery has a de facto capability to produce biological weapons," Jack Spencer and Michael Scardaville, defense analysts at the Heritage Foundation, note in a recent study on bioterrorism.

"We have to remember that none of the biological weapons are easy for terrorists to get, and once procured they are even more difficult to disseminate to kill a few people, and more difficult to cause mass casualties. But we also have to understand that events have shown that at least the first two things are possible," Mr. Spencer said in an interview.

"Terrorists can attack tens, maybe hundreds or thousands of people, but it's not likely they have developed mass weaponization," he said.

Along with other experts, Mr. Spencer said that about a dozen nations have offensive biological weapons programs, including China, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Russia doesn't claim to have such weapons. However, the Soviet Union had a giant bioweapons program during the Cold War and is believed to have stockpiled smallpox.

Counterterrorism specialists agree that terrorists who are linked to states with biological warfare programs are likely to have access to germ weapons.

Anthrax is the preferred weapon because it is common in nature and easier to process and deliver to targets than most germs. But of the rest, smallpox is perhaps the most fearsome. It spreads easily from person to person, few are immune to it, there is little vaccine readily available, and there is no effective treatment for it.

Symptoms of smallpox appear seven to 17 days following exposure and include high fever, headache, shivering, vomiting and back pain. Sores appear and spread. Victims are most infectious three to six days after the onset of fever.

In the last century, smallpox killed more than 500 million people. It was eradicated in 1980.

Plague, or the Black Death, is another favored warfare disease. During five years of the 14th century, it killed 25 million people - a third of Europe's population. Between 1980 and 1994, some 18,750 cases were reported. The disease spreads swiftly, causing fever, cough, labored breathing, respiratory failure and death. However, it can be treated with antibiotics if caught in time.

Among the other commonly discussed biological agents are:

• Botulism toxin: The poison is called Earth's most toxic substance. It produces symptoms within 36 hours, causing blurred vision and difficulty in swallowing and speaking. It finally paralyzes muscles and brings on respiratory failure and death. The CDC maintains an antitoxin, but it is reportedly in short supply. Iraq produced 5,000 gallons of the toxin before Desert Storm and may still maintain a supply.

• Tularemia: A plague-like infectious disease, tularemia produces pneumonia, chills, vomiting, chest pain, respiratory failure, shock and death. It can be treated with antibiotics, but one researcher noted in JAMA that he knows "of no other infection of animals communicable to man that can be acquired from sources so numerous and so diverse. In short, one can but feel that the status of tularemia, both as a disease in nature and of man, is one of potentiality."

• Hemorrhagic fevers, especially Ebola: A severe, virus-caused, mostly fatal disease, Ebola was first discovered in 1976. It causes fever and manifests extreme flu-like symptoms followed by hiccups, rash, vomiting blood, hemorrhaging of fluids from tissues and orifices, and blindness. Sometimes antiviral drugs prevent death, but they are in short supply. Some 30 to 90 percent of victims die.

--------

BUGGY
Preparing America for the Reality of Germ Warfare

By WILLIAM J. BROAD
New York Times
October 21, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/weekinreview/21BROA.html

AMERICA is overreacting. Lost in the pandemonium over the recent anthrax attacks is good news: experts say the tainted letters are easy to detect, their effects easy to treat and their origins relatively easy to trace. Simple precautions involving the delivery and opening of mail, they say, can prevent further infections with the lethal germ.

"This is the first biological threat that this country has had in modern times," the editors of ProMed, a Harvard-based news service of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, said last week. "Yes, mistakes are being made but the risks posed by the current series of events are really very small and readily treatable."

Unlike the covert biological attacks often anticipated by weapon experts, the current strikes have also presented federal investigators with a surfeit of clues: envelopes, handwriting, cancellation dates, mail routes, potential finger prints, as well as the germs themselves.

Paradoxically, the apparently high grade of at least some of the dry anthrax powders also helps, said Dr. David R. Franz, former commander of the Army's germ-defense laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., and now vice president for chemical and biological defense at the Southern Research Institute, an arm of the University of Alabama.

Dr. Franz and other experts in biological arms said federal investigators are likely to glean more clues about the origins of advanced powders than crude ones, especially since they've all been found to be the same strain.

"It's sophisticated science, but it can be done," said Ken Alibek, a former Soviet germ warrior who is now president of Advanced Biosystems, Inc., a biodefense consulting company in Manassas, Va.

Last week, federal scientists examining the anthrax tentatively concluded that the type is a domestic strain that bears no resemblance to the strains Russia and Iraq turned into biological weapons. They stressed, however, that the clues in no way rule out foreign work since the identified strain is available overseas.

The scientists said the anthrax used in the attacks is similar to a highly virulent type known as the Ames strain, which was discovered in Iowa in 1980 (not in the 1950's as is sometimes reported). Reputedly, it is even more dangerous that the type the American military used.

Looking at other characteristics of the anthrax powder - the size of the particles, their shape, whether they have been damaged or deformed by milling, whether they carry a static charge that makes them stick together, whether chemical additives are present - will tell investigators volumes about the terrorists.

WITH a crude preparation, there would be a large number of places to look for suspects," said Dr. Franz. An advanced one, he said, "narrows the field."

Dr. Alibek said that the federal investigation, if done correctly, will yield huge insights into the perpetrators of the crimes.

"Much information could be derived form these powders," he said, including serious clues about terrorist skills and origins.

"We need," he said, "to establish a completely new kind of science." The bad news is that the letter attacks are small stuff compared to possible future threats, experts on biological weapons warn. At some point the issue may not be mass disruption but mass destruction.

For example, a range of antibiotics - including ciprofloxacin, penicillin and tetracyclines like doxycyline - can rout anthrax if administered soon after exposure. But stealthy attacks might leave thousands of people unaware of biological time bombs ticking away inside their bodies.

Amy E. Smithson, an expert on biological weapons at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a private group in Washington, has noted that anthrax spores by weight are far more deadly than nerve gas or nuclear arms.

Before President Richard M. Nixon renounced germ warfare in 1969, for example, the United States Army produced dried anthrax, a single gallon of which could hold up to eight billion lethal doses - enough in theory to kill every person on the planet, twice.

But there is good news even when speaking of weapons of such mind-boggling power, said Dr. Franz. Quite simply, they are hard to deploy.

FOR example, if terrorists were to use a crop duster to spread germs, they would face a number of problems. Cities generate heat, creating rising air currents that could carry anthrax germs high into the wind, diluting the microbes and making them less likely to kill. And the wind could, literally, blow the germs away.

The technical obstacles to a mass-casualty attack are so high, Dr. Smithson of the Stimson Center told Congress, that the likelihood of failure has haunted even terrorists with "a wealth of time, money, and technical skill."

In the end, then, recent events, nightmarish as they seem, should perhaps be regarded as offering a chance to learn how to cope more effectively with the danger of biological weapons. "One learns by mistakes," the ProMed editors wrote in an editorial. "If there is a next time, there will be far, far fewer errors and thus, hopefully, even less of an impact."

-------- iran

If the CIA Had Butted Out ...

COMMENTARY
October 21 2001
By AHMED BOUZID, president of Palestine Media Watch.
Web site: www.pmwatch.org
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000083832oct21.story

Imagine if Aug. 19, 1953, had come and gone, uneventfully. Imagine if Operation Ajax, coordinated by the British MI6 and the American CIA, which toppled the flourishing democracy in Iran of Mohammed Mossadeq, had never left the drawing board. Imagine if the Western-educated Mossadeq, a charismatic leader who was massively backed in Iran by a burgeoning middle class, had been allowed to peacefully lead his country to become the first truly Muslim democracy in the Middle East. And imagine if his government had been allowed to assume its obligations and responsibilities, as stipulated by the 1906 constitution, and if the shah had been allowed to reign but not rule, as again stipulated by the Iranian constitution, and imagine if Britain and the U.S. had not been egged on by oil companies livid over Mossadeq's nationalization of oil interests in Iran but instead had stayed out of Iran's business and not intervened. Imagine what would have likely happened.

Had the coup never taken place, Iran probably would have gone on to build a sturdy, inclusive democracy that would have brought about a far more durable stability than what the shah--forever tainted in the eyes of his people as a weak, easily manipulated Western puppet--ever managed to deliver.

Had the coup never taken place, democratic Iran would have long ago done away with the myth that Islam and democracy are incompatible. More important, nationalist and anti-colonialist as it was, Iran would have handsomely served as the model to follow for the dozens of Arab and Muslim states that had recently gained, or were about to gain, independence from colonial occupation, thus averting their alignment with the Soviet bloc as well as the rise of homegrown thugs and dictators.

Had the coup never taken place, the ayatollahs, who had supported the coup against Mossadeq, would never have gained their political clout. Indeed, the shah saw in the conservative ayatollahs the perfect partners against the radicalism of the left and the liberalism of the middle class.

Had the coup never taken place and the ayatollahs never been given the political clout they had enjoyed under the shah, the June uprising of 1963, which was fueled by the clerics' unhappiness with the shah's attempts at modernization, would also have never taken place.

Hence no harsh crackdown would have followed the uprising, nor would have a little-known cleric, a certain Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, gained international attention as the spiritual leader of that confrontation against the shah.

Had the coup never taken place, Khomeini would have remained a little-known cleric. Instead, he was exiled for 14 years, a time during which he cultivated his image from that of a charismatic leader to that of a sacred returning messiah. And during those 14 years, the prospect for the emergence of a truly democratic Iran grew dimmer while Islamic radicalism, associating all that is Western with the hated shah and his supporters--principally the U.S.--took a deeper hold on the passions of an increasingly frustrated younger generation.

Had the coup never taken place, there would not have been a hostage crisis, and neither would the U.S. have severed its relations with Iran and imposed economic sanctions. Both actions, more than 20 years later, remain in effect to this day.

Had the coup never taken place, Saddam Hussein would have never dared invade Iran in September 1980. The U.S. would never have sided with Iraq's dictator and neither would it have committed itself to a policy of ensuring that Iraq not lose the war. It would not have supplied Hussein with crucial assistance or turned a blind eye to his egregious crimes against his people.

Had the coup never taken place, Hussein would not have found himself by the end of the war against Iran as the commander of one of the largest armies in the Middle East.

More important, he would have never been under the impression that, as long as he restricted his aggression to fellow Muslims and kept off Israel, the world would only decry and condemn him but never act.

Had the coup never taken place, chances are that Iraq never would have invaded Kuwait, and the U.S. never would have had to orchestrate a massive military campaign against his army, let alone establish bases on Saudi soil. It would not have rendered talk about human rights and international law totally meaningless and hypocritical to Arab and Muslim ears.

Imagine a new era of foreign policy--an era in which international law is taken seriously, respected, in which sovereign democracies are encouraged, nurtured, applauded, rather than fought against, stifled and killed. Imagine if we abandoned, once and for all the poisonous doctrines of "Iron Chancellor" Bismarck and Henry Kissinger and instead subscribed to those of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Imagine if we took the United Nations and The Hague seriously, rather than treating them as kangaroo courts in which only those causes championed by the mighty and powerful were pursued with vigor, while other grievances were neglected and scorned.

How many millions of lives would we have saved, and how much safer and more prosperous would the world be today?

-------- iraq

Saddam moved chemical weapons

October 21, 2001
By Jessica Berry
LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011021-4300968.htm

LONDON - Saddam Hussein has relocated his chemical weapons factories after the first case of anthrax poisoning in the United States in apparent anticipation of an imminent bombardment by the U.S.-led coalition.

A senior Western intelligence official said that since the death of British-born picture editor Bob Stevens in Florida on Oct. 5, there has been a "mass movement of weapons" to protected "no-go" areas in the north, northwest and west of the country.

"The entire contents of their chemical weapons factories around Baghdad have been moving through the nights to specially built bunkers," he said.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraqi dictator had put his troops on high alert, but little was done at the time to move crucial weaponry. When the Pentagon said it was investigating the possibility that Iraq might not only have been involved in the assault on the New York towers but may also have been behind the anthrax attacks in the United States, Iraq began moving its chemical weapons factories, the intelligence officer said.

Western intelligence officers said yesterday that the northeast region of Hemrin was the center of most activity. Saddam ordered his troops to dig 60-foot-deep holes in the area and to bury chemical and biological cargo arriving from the capital. Six pits have been dug.

Meanwhile, factories which make missiles and chemical weapons have been relocated to the areas of Baiji and al Safar in the northwest, they said.

"These are heavily protected no-go areas with massive infrastructure," one said. "They have everything - bunkers, sophisticated communications systems and living quarters for the military and senior intelligence officers."

Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector between 1991 and 1998, cautioned against blaming Iraq for the attacks. He said that while it was true that the regime "had not fully complied with its disarmament obligation, particularly in the field of biological weapons," the failure did not "equate to a retained biological weapons capability." He said accusations that Iraq is the source of the anthrax were unsubstantiated and irresponsible.

In a further sign of preparation for eventual conflict, Izzet Douri, one of Iraq's vice presidents, last week ordered a conference of 300 Islamic clerics to issue a fatwa, or religious order, denouncing the United States and Britain and defending the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

-------- israel

Israeli troops hit two more towns

October 21, 2001
By Steve Weizman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011021-15999198.htm

JERUSALEM - Israel's multiple thrust into Palestinian territory was shaping up as the broadest military operation in more than a year of fighting, with Israeli troops entering two more West Bank towns yesterday. Eight Palestinians, among them three bystanders, were killed by Israeli fire.

It was the highest single-day death toll in more than two months.

The incursions - a total of six in three days - were triggered by the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister by Palestinian militants. The raids sparked concern among the United States, Russia and church leaders.

But they also brought a Palestinian pledge to clamp down on armed militias who have been regularly attacking Israelis with guns and bombs.

Asked to confirm a Palestinian leadership statement that all those breaking a Sept. 26 truce with Israel would be considered outlaws, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said he had reined in armed militants before and would do it again.

"The decision is the decision," he told reporters in Gaza Strip yesterday. "We are committed to fulfilling our decisions."

However, this appeared to be more of a warning to militants than a declaration that all those belonging to military wings of various Palestinian factions were now subject to arrest.

Israel has complained that Mr. Arafat is doing little to crack down on militants. Israel has demanded that Palestinian security forces arrest and hand over the killers of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, as well as the leaders of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction that claimed responsibility for the assassination.

As of yesterday, 20 PFLP activists were in Palestinian custody.

With its military offensive, Israel sought to pressure the Palestinian Authority to hand over Mr. Zeevi's assassins, something Palestinian officials have said they would not do.

Early yesterday, Israeli tanks entered the West Bank towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarem. They were met by Palestinian fire, and four Palestinians were killed in the fighting, doctors said.

Among the six towns targeted by Israeli forces since Thursday was biblical Bethlehem, where a 19-year-old Palestinian was shot dead yesterday as he stood a few yards from the Church of the Nativity, the traditional site of Jesus' birth. Witnesses said that the shot was fired at some distance, and that there was no fighting near the church.

In the town of Beit Jalla, where troops set up positions Friday, a 23-year-old Palestinian woman was killed yesterday by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell and machine-gun rounds that hit her as she stood at the entrance to a friend's house, doctors said.

A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by soldiers in Palestinian territory southeast of Bethlehem. The military said he was shot by troops at an army post after he stabbed and lightly wounded a soldier.

In Bethlehem's Aida refugee camp, a female visitor was shot dead, apparently in cross fire between troops and Palestinian gunmen.

An Israeli government spokesman, Arnon Perlman, said troops sealed Tulkarem and Qalqilya because of warnings that militants there were preparing to carry out suicide attacks in Israel.

The leaders of major Christian denominations in Jerusalem issued a joint call for an Israeli withdrawal from Bethlehem.

"Whilst we deplore all acts of violence, we appeal to world church leaders and the international community to make urgent representation to the Israeli government to bring this intolerable situation to an immediate end," the statement said.

The U.S. State Department demanded Friday that Israel halt the incursions. The Israeli offensive threatens Washington's efforts to retain Arab and Muslim support for military action against Islamic militants suspected of having masterminded the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and on the Pentagon.

There was a display of anger by Israeli Arabs yesterday, when several thousand supporters of the Islamic movement staged an anti-U.S. rally in the Galilee town of Tamra. One banner read: "Afghanistan is the new holocaust."

In the Gaza Strip, visiting Russian Mideast peace envoy Andrei Vedozen said after meeting Mr. Arafat that the situation in the Palestinian areas had become critical.

"What is happening now is a dangerous military escalation," he said. "This is a dangerous threat to the peace process."

Israeli officials would not say how long the troops will stay. "There is no ideological or strategic decision by the Israeli government to conquer these areas and stay there," Cabinet Minister Tsipi Livni told Israel Radio. "Everything depends on how the Palestinian Authority will react."

The incursions into Beit Jalla and Bethlehem were triggered by shooting on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, built on war-won land on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Israeli troops have repeatedly entered Palestinian towns in the past year, but the raids begun on Thursday marked the broadest Israeli military strike so far.

Since the killing of Mr. Zeevi, 21 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed in fighting between the two sides.

--------

Israel Intensifies Deadly West Bank Offensive

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27542-2001Oct20.html

BETHLEHEM, West Bank, Oct. 20 -- Israeli tanks and infantry pressed ahead today with their widest-ranging offensive against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority since its establishment in 1994, pushing into two more West Bank cities, entering the heart of Bethlehem and killing several Arab Christians.

Since the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister Wednesday, the army has entered five of the seven major Palestinian urban areas of the West Bank, taking key strategic positions and threatening to stay indefinitely. Fighting has been intense, and at least eight Palestinians were killed today.

More than at any point in the seven years since Arafat established his self-governing Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, its territory and influence on the ground have been compromised in what Israeli military and civilian officials say is a new get-tough policy.

"We plan to stay," a top-ranking Israeli army officer said in an interview tonight, speaking on condition of anonymity. The incursion "can last days, it can last weeks, and it can last more. We have no orders to change anything either forward or backward. It all depends very much on the Palestinian reaction."

There have been many Israeli incursions into Palestinian-held areas since the current Palestinian uprising began 13 months ago. The difference now is that the army has entered so many Palestinian cities simultaneously -- including Bethlehem, a place with religious significance to Christians as the birthplace of Jesus -- and gives no indication of leaving.

Israel says the goal of its thrusts into West Bank cities is to tighten its chokehold to stop terrorist attacks, to arrest militants on Israel's most-wanted list and to signal Arafat that his authority will be further eroded unless he takes swift steps to crack down on militant groups and terrorists operating from Palestinian-controlled territory.

The Palestinians say that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's goal is broader -- to eradicate Arafat's regime.

"Sharon is destroying the Palestinian Authority and the peace process," said Saeb Erekat, a close aide to Arafat and formerly a top peace negotiator. "He is testing the international community's reaction and especially the American reaction."

In addition to Bethlehem and the adjacent, predominantly Christian town of Beit Jala, Israeli forces have entered the Palestinian towns of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem; Jenin, at the northern edge of the West Bank; and, today, Tulkarm and Qalqilyah northeast of Tel Aviv and along the line separating Israel from the West Bank.

The cost in lives has been great. Since Palestinian gunmen killed Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi on Wednesday, at least 20 Palestinians have been killed. Perhaps half the recent Palestinian casualties have been civilians. The others have been members of Arafat's security forces and armed militants, including one member of the Islamic group Hamas killed today. Dozens of Palestinians have been injured.

One Israeli soldier was also killed, and several injured.

Those killed late Friday and today included three Palestinian Christians in and around Bethlehem, one of them a 23-year-old woman who, terrified by gunfire, leapt from a car in which she and her two small children were passengers and was then shot to death.

Another was a 19-year-old Christian man, George Abu Eid Moussa, who was in his house carrying a television for his father late Friday, when a bullet passed through a veranda, struck him in the neck and exited his back, Palestinians said.

He was buried today after a funeral service at the Virgin Mary Orthodox Greek church in Beit Jala. Priests in tall black hats and nuns in habits were among the hundreds of mourners, and a choir of men sang Arab Christian hymns over Moussa's open casket. His corpse was strewn with flowers and his clean-cut features were framed by a red-and-white checked Arab headdress.

"This man was not [only] a Christian, he's a Palestinian citizen," said the Christian mayor of Beit Jala, Bishara Dahoud. "The guns of the Israelis did not discriminate. An Israeli soldiers killed him in cold blood in his home. He wasn't throwing stones or shooting or anything."

About three-quarters of Beit Jala's 15,000 residents are Palestinian Christians. Earlier in the Palestinian uprising, some of them were unhappy that Muslim gunmen were firing from the town at the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo on Jerusalem's southern fringe, which is built on land captured by Israel in 1967.

But now, it is nearly impossible to find Christians in Beit Jala who do not embrace what the Palestinians call armed resistance to the Israeli occupation.

The Israelis "are just shooting at anything that moves, even dogs, cats or cars," said Maher Abu Amsha, a Palestinian Christian who is a cousin of Moussa, the man killed late Friday.

Another casualty today was a 39-year-old Muslim woman, the mother of eight children, who was killed in the Palestinians' Aida refugee camp, just north of Bethlehem. A Palestinian teenager was reportedly killed a few steps from the Church of the Nativity, the traditional site of Jesus's birth, apparently by a stray bullet. Fighting did not come close to the church.

The Israeli army acknowledged that there have been Palestinian civilian casualties, including a 12-year-old girl killed in her school Thursday by Israeli forces that the army said were engaged in a firefight.

"When you operate in a built-up area like the Palestinian cities that are so crowded, [it] is almost impossible to avoid this number of civilian casualties completely," said the top-ranking army officer. "It is not that we operate with no resistance -- there are a lot of little battles in every place."

The officer stressed that the army had also killed 15 Palestinian fighters in the past three weeks, including militants from Hamas, which has carried out suicide bombings and other attacks inside Israel.

Amid heavy fighting tonight, as Palestinian gunmen fired automatic weapons at Israeli troops, Israeli helicopters fired antitank missiles at a shopping arcade in downtown Bethlehem, injuring at least four and as many as eight Palestinians -- at least some of them gunmen, according to local journalists.

In Bethlehem, hundreds of armed young men -- members of the local Palestinian Tanzim militia -- were offering some resistance to the Israeli forces. That was largely ineffectual against the Israeli tanks and armored vehicles.

However, journalists in Bethlehem also saw a group of Palestinian militants, their faces hidden by balaclavas, carrying a crate of fat, finned mortar shells as well as a box that appeared to contain explosives this afternoon. Several mortar shells have been fired from the Bethlehem area.

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

Gorbachev: A Leading Role for the Security Council

By MIKHAIL S. GORBACHEV
October 21, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/opinion/21GORB.html

MOSCOW - In the past month, the world has witnessed something previously unknown: a common stand taken by America, Russia, Europe, India, China, Cuba, most of the Islamic world and numerous other regions and countries. Despite many serious differences between them, they united to save civilization.

It is now the responsibility of the world community to transform the coalition against terrorism into a coalition for a peaceful world order. Let us not, as we did in the 1990's, miss the chance to build such an order.

Concepts like solidarity and helping third world countries to fight poverty and backwardness have disappeared from the political vocabulary. But if these concepts are not revived politically, the worst scenarios of a clash of civilizations could become reality.

I believe the United Nations Security Council should take the lead in fighting terrorism and in dealing with other global problems. All the main issues considered by the United Nations affect mankind's security. It is time to stop reviling the United Nations and get on with the work of adapting the institution to new tasks.

Concrete steps should include accelerated nuclear and chemical disarmament and control over the remaining stocks of dangerous substances, including chemical and biological agents. No amount of money is too much for that. I hope the United States will support the verification protocol of the convention banning biological weapons and ratify the treaty to prohibit all nuclear tests - though both steps would reverse the Bush administration's current positions.

We should also heed those who have pointed out the negative consequences of globalization for hundreds of millions of people. Globalization cannot be stopped, but it can be made more humane and more balanced for those it affects.

If the battle against terrorism is limited to military operations, the world could be the loser. But if it becomes an integral part of common efforts to build a more just world order, everyone will win - including those who now do not support American actions or the antiterrorism coalition. Those people, and they are many, should not all be branded as enemies.

Russia has shown its solidarity with America. President Vladimir Putin immediately sent a telegram to President Bush on Sept. 11 condemning the "inhuman act" of that day. Russia has been sharing information, coordinating positions with the West and with its neighbors, opening its air space, and providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people and weapons to the Northern Alliance.

This has been good policy. But we should bear in mind that both in the Russian establishment and among the people, reaction to it has been mixed. Some people are still prone to old ways of understanding the world and Russia's place in it. Others sincerely wonder whether the world's most powerful country should be bombing impoverished Afghanistan. Still others ask: We have supported America in its hour of need, but will it meet us halfway on issues important to us?

I am sure Russia will be a serious partner in fighting international terrorism. But equally, it is important that its voice be heard in building a new international order. If not, Russians could conclude that they have merely been used.

Irritants in American-Russian relations - issues like missile defense and the admission of new members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - will be addressed in due course, but they will be easier to solve once we have moved toward a new global agenda and a deeper partnership between our two countries.

Finally, it would be wrong to use the battle against terrorism to establish control over countries or regions. This would discredit the coalition and close off the prospect of transforming it into a powerful mechanism for building a peaceful world.

Turning the coalition against terror into an alliance that works to achieve a just international order would be a lasting memorial to the thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 tragedy.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former Soviet president, heads the Gorbachev Foundation, a research institute.

-------

UN Set to Appeal for Halt in the Bombing

by Jason Burke in Peshawar
Sunday, October 21, 2001
Observer of London

The United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow time for a huge relief operation.

UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country - in part, they say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.

'The situation is completely untenable inside Afghanistan. We really need to get our point across here and have to be very bold in doing it. Unless the [US air] strikes stop, there will be a huge number of deaths,' one UN source said.

The move will embarrass Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, who said last week that there was no 'cause and effect' between the bombing and the ability of aid agencies to deliver much-needed food and shelter.

Aid workers yesterday strongly rejected Short's statements. 'Basically the bombing makes it difficult to get enough supplies in. It is as simple as that,' an Islamabad-based aid official told The Observer.

Dominic Nutt, a spokesman for the British charity Christian Aid, called Short's remarks sickening. 'Needy people are being put at risk by government spin-doctors who are showing a callous disregard for life,' he said. 'To say that there is no link is not just misleading but profoundly dangerous.' Christian Aid report 600 people have already died in the Dar-e-Suf region of northern Afghanistan due to starvation, malnutrition and related diseases.

Other agencies confirmed that the sick, the young and the old are already dying in refugee camps around the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The World Food Program has calculated that 52,000 tons of wheat must be distributed in Afghanistan each month to stave off mass starvation. Since the aid program was restarted - on 25 September - only 20,000 tons have been supplied and 15,000 distributed. The concern is that the coming winter will make relief efforts more difficult. The first snows have already fallen on the Hindu Kush mountains and the isolated highlands of Hazarajat.

But though the WFP is accelerating the supply of food, it says it is unlikely to be able to bring in more than two-thirds of what is required. And it is clear that little aid is reaching the most remote areas where the need is greatest.

A new assessment by aid workers on the ground in Afghanistan will be presented to UN co-ordinators in Islamabad this week. It shows that the effects of the three-year drought that has hit Afghanistan are far worse than previously thought. Areas in the north-east are of particular concern.

In the western city of Herat food deliveries are barely keeping up with demand from the 1,000 people a day who are arriving at refugee camps.

'We are getting a significant amount of food into the country and we are desperately trying to get it to more remote areas. The usual distribution networks are hugely disrupted. At the moment a trickle is getting through,' said Michael Huggins, a spokesman for the WFP.

He said the WFP operation was hampered by a lack of truck drivers willing to carry food through Afghanistan because of the bombing raids, high fuel prices and communication difficulties.

The Taliban have also caused problems for aid agencies. A series of offices have been looted in major cities, prompting French agency Médecins Sans Frontières to shut down its entire Afghan operation. There have been a number of attempts to steal vehicles from aid agencies. The Taliban have also delayed relief convoys by demanding high taxes on their passage.

Although the expected influx of refugees to Pakistan has yet to occur, there are signs of larger shifts of population than before. The last three days have seen more than 10,000 people cross the border from Afghanistan around the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

Refugees report a breakdown in law and order in Kandahar. 'It is impossible to live there now,' one said.

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

U.S. soldiers seize Taliban airfield

October 21, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011021-95477916.htm

American commandos seized an airfield in southern Afghanistan, and then launched a raid on a compound of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.

One senior official said the airfield has now become a critical piece of real estate but declined to say whether U.S. troops were still on the ground.

The airfield will be used to launch subsequent commando raids against the Taliban militia and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, at least three loud explosions were heard in Kabul before dawn today as U.S. aircraft made several sorties around the Afghan capital. Witnesses said the explosions seemed to be taking place in the east of the city.

The official also said additional ground operations were under way yesterday inside Afghanistan near Kabul. The Pentagon declined to comment but did discuss the airfield raid, which occurred early yesterday morning, Afghanistan time.

"The overall mission was successful. We accomplished our objectives," declared Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman.

Yesterday's twin attacks were a complex, one-two punch designed to be psychologically destructive as well as being militarily effective.

U.S. planners picked two lightly defended targets: the airfield and one of the compounds of Mullah Omar near Kandahar. The city is the spiritual and political stronghold of the radical Taliban regime that has harbored bin Laden since 1996. The forays by special-operations forces also were meant to deliver a public relations message to the American people that President Bush is making progress in his war on the al Qaeda network, the official said.

"The Taliban now knows we can hit them on the ground, from any direction," the official said. "They cannot spend the same night in the same place two nights in a row."

The official said the Pentagon, from this point forward, will launch special-operations raids on a fairly continuous basis to carry out its goal of ousting the Taliban militia from power, destroying the al Qaeda network inside Afghanistan and capturing or killing bin Laden.

Mr. Bush wants the fugitive "dead or alive" for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The U.S. bombing campaign, completing its first two weeks yesterday, had struck several of Mullah Omar's homes and headquarters. However, U.S. warplanes did not target the compound that was raided yesterday, apparently in the hope that covert commandos would find valuable intelligence.

"We did not expect to find significant Taliban leadership at these locations," Gen. Myers said. Mullah Omar and bin Laden are presumed to be in hiding in one of the country's massive cave complexes.

Gen. Myers did say the soldiers retrieved "items" from both targets. "We are in the process of evaluating the intelligence we brought out," he said. Gen. Myers said no one was captured.

The Pentagon declared on Friday the air strikes had "severed" all communications between the Taliban leadership, meaning that Mullah Omar is not able to coordinate troop movements via normal channels.

Gen. Myers reported no U.S. casualties and said the raid resulted in an unknown number of enemy dead. He called defenses "light without significant interference" from Taliban forces.

He declined to say which forces, other than airborne Army Rangers, participated.

An official said the attack was carried out by the Rangers, who seized the airport, and then by Army Green Berets and Delta Force soldiers who infiltrated Afghanistan on low-flying Black Hawk helicopters, first hitting the airfield, and then the compound near Kandahar.

More than 100 commandos took part in the operation.

They quickly returned to the seized airfield and exited the country on troop-carrying Black Hawk helicopters.

The helicopters' night-vision systems and ability to fly at tree-top level make them hard to detect, especially by the Taliban's bomb-damaged defenses.

However, today's editions of the New York Times quote defense department officials as saying that the twin attacks covered an operation by other elite commandos aimed at uncovering the locations and movements of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders.

The covert action could have continued long after the lightning strikes near Kandahar ended, and that intelligence material seized during the overt operations may have been used to fuel the secret mission, it said.

Gen. Myers displayed dramatic, soundless video clips showing quick scenes of the nighttime attack. Operations under the cover of darkness are a specialty of U.S. forces, who employ night-sight goggles and gunsights that let them operate while remaining undetected. The comparatively rudimentary Taliban and al Qaeda forces are not known to own such sophisticated equipment.

A military-operated night-vision camera captured video showing U.S. commandos packing their gear, boarding a C-130 cargo turboprop on a sandy airfield, parachuting into Afghanistan in white streams against the night sky and then inspecting seized weapons after securing one of their targets. The teams spent about three hours inside the country.

All commandos returned safely. Gen. Myers declined to say if any forces still occupied the airfield, which is "some distance" from the compound of the Kandahar target.

"They are now refitting and relocating for potential future operations against terrorist targets and other areas known to harbor terrorists," Gen. Myers said.

The commandos were reinforced by hovering AC-130 gunships, firing volleys of powerful 40 mm and 105 mm munitions, as well as jet fighters.

"They had all the support they needed," Gen. Myers declared.

But America did suffer its first two combat deaths in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Two military personnel, part of a search-and-rescue unit based in a remote desert region in south Pakistan, were killed when a Black Hawk pilot became disoriented as sand kicked up and the helicopter crashed.

Said Mr. Bush on an economic summit in Shanghai: "We are destroying terrorist hideaways. We are slowly but surely encircling the terrorist so that we can bring them to justice."

Gen. Myers labeled "absolutely false" a Taliban claim that its air defenses hit the Black Hawk and it limped back to Pakistan before crashing.

Gen. Myers also provided a brief description of Friday's air activity. It was the fifth straight day of heavy attacks, compared with the first week, when usually 10 to 20 strike planes took to the air. On Friday, around 100 aircraft hunted 15 planned target areas, including anti-aircraft sites.

The incessant air attacks had an especially pivotal goal this week: Destroy as many air-defense missiles and artillery guns as possible so the low, slow AC-130 gunships and special forces helicopters could operate in as low-risk an environment as possible.

Gen. Myers declined to say where Friday mission originated from.

Officials say there are at least three main launch points: the carrier USS Kitty Hawk operating near Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf country of Oman and the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. Pakistan is allowing the United States use of its air space, as well as its territory as a base of operations for search-and-rescue missions.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

--------

Omar's Compound Was Raided
Airfield Also Hit In Rangers' Hunt For Intelligence

By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27477-2001Oct20.html

U.S. Special Forces opened the ground war in southern Afghanistan with an airborne assault on a Taliban airfield and a raid on Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's compound near Kandahar designed primarily to gather intelligence, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

With U.S. aircraft bombing targets across Afghanistan for the 14th straight day, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers provided the Pentagon's first account of the early morning ground assaults but offered only limited detail, saying Army Rangers and other Special Forces overcame light resistance and inflicted an undetermined number of Taliban casualties.

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Myers said both Omar's compound and the airfield, a considerable distance southwest of Kandahar, were selected primarily to gather information on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, not to capture or kill senior leaders.

"We gathered some intelligence, which we're evaluating," said Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We did not expect to find significant Taliban leadership at these locations. We, of course, were hoping we would, but we did not expect it."

Myers and other military and intelligence officials have stressed the importance of intelligence in the war against terrorism as U.S. law enforcement and intelligence seek to uncover Taliban hideouts, locate bin Laden and his allies and understand the global structure of his terrorist network, al Qaeda.

One senior official said the U.S. troops would have been interested in accumulating computer discs, ledgers, documents and communications gear. "We're looking for information and things that will lead us to the leaders, the big ones, that's what we're looking for," another official said.

Three officials said no prisoners were taken during the raids.

Beyond whatever intelligence the Special Forces obtained, the raids appeared to have been orchestrated to make a point -- that U.S. military forces are capable of staging complex, simultaneous raids at night in the heart of Taliban territory. The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia, has ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996.

"U.S. forces were able to deploy, maneuver and operate inside Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces," Myers said. "They are now refitting and repositioning for potential future operations against terrorist targets in other areas known to harbor terrorists."

The other message of the raid, an administration official said, was to entice ethnic Pashtun leaders in southern Afghanistan to desert the Taliban by showing what the United States can do for them militarily. A major purpose of seizing the airfield, the official explained, was to demonstrate that "we can set up a base for someone else and supply them and equip them, if we're so disposed."

Senior officials declined to say whether any U.S. forces from the raid remain on the ground inside Afghanistan. "There's a certain amount of uncertainty we want to have in the minds we are opposing," one official said.

Myers came to the Pentagon briefing room prepared with night-vision video clips of Army Rangers parachuting from C-130 transport planes and clearing the airfield building by building. The C-130s flew out of a Special Forces base in Oman, one official said.

The Rangers left behind posters, visible in the videos, with photographs of New York firefighters raising the American flag at the World Trade Center site and rescue workers hanging the flag from the Pentagon's damaged facade in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the posters said, "Freedom Endures." The footage also showed grenade launchers, a machine gun and other weapons seized at Omar's compound.

Myers denied a Taliban claim that fighters from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia may have shot down a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter supporting the raids that crashed in Pakistan, killing two U.S. soldiers and injuring three others. Two other soldiers, Myers said, sustained minor injuries in the parachute jump.

Myers said the helicopter crash is being investigated as an "aircraft mishap" and added that "any claims that they shot this helicopter down are absolutely false."

Pentagon officials delayed releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the crash, saying it was taking longer than expected to find their next of kin for notification.

Asked what message should be drawn from the raids -- which took place early yesterday, Kabul time, and Friday night, Washington time -- Myers replied: "That we are capable of, at a time of our choosing, conducting the kind of operations we want to conduct."

The last combat jump by the Rangers was during the invasion of Panama in December 1989, when they parachuted into the country along with units of the 82nd Airborne Division, retired Army Col. Johnny Brooks said in an interview.

The message conveyed by the use of aircraft, helicopters and Special Forces on the ground, Brooks said, was that the military can fight in a variety of ways and would not be as doctrinaire as the Soviets were during their 10 years in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Brooks also said it was likely that the larger raid on the airfield conducted by the Rangers was done to distract attention from the other, smaller raid. That also might have been the reason for using parachutes rather than landing by helicopters. He noted that airborne assaults are usually used only when the point being attacked is so distant that helicopters can't reach it.

Myers declined to say how the Rangers left the site after the parachute drop, but Brooks said it is possible that they secured the airfield and that their planes then landed and picked them up and took them out of Afghanistan, probably to Oman.

Retired Army Capt. Todd Bearden, a former member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the unit that conducted the parachute jump, said the pattern of the action -- two raids, with the larger one conducted by Rangers and the smaller by Special Operations troops, probably the elite Delta Force -- is one of the basic Ranger missions.

"When I was in the regiment, we practiced that all the time," Bearden said. "I think the message that's being sent is that we have a force that can fight in any terrain, any weather, and at night -- so that if you Taliban think you can sleep at night, think again."

The Taliban remained defiant, however, and vowed to defeat the Americans. Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, a senior Taliban leader, said in an interview with Qatar's al Jazeera television that Taliban fighters repelled the Americans and said, "This commando attack has failed."

"God willing," he said, "all their aggressive planes will fail."

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said the militia has no intention of handing over bin Laden to the United States. The Bush administration holds bin Laden responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,, and holds the Taliban responsible for harboring him for the past five years.

A refugee crisis continued to escalate in southern Pakistan, near the Taliban's home city of Kandahar, where United Nations officials say virtually the entire population is fleeing U.S. airstrikes and heading for the border of Pakistan. An estimated 5,000 Afghans crossed into Pakistan at the crossing point of Chaman yesterday, with another 10,000 stranded on the Afghan side of the border without proper travel documents, a U.N. official said.

In northern Afghanistan, a Taliban offensive launched Friday around the besieged city of Mazar-e Sharif appeared to have driven forces from the opposition Northern Alliance back slightly. But a Northern Alliance spokesman told Reuters that opposition forces still occupied the Marmul area, 20 miles southeast of the strategic crossroads city.

At the Pentagon, Myers sidestepped questions about the Special Forces raids, declining to say where the raids originated, how many soldiers and which units participated, and how U.S. troops were removed once the raids were over.

"One of the things that I simply can't do is talk about any of the tactics, techniques and procedures that we use, beyond what you've seen on the tape," Myers said.

He also declined to describe the type of air power used to back up the raids, other than to say that it included a "full spectrum" of aircraft. "They had all the support they needed, let me assure you," Myers said.

The ground assaults followed a heavy day of bombing Friday, with 90 carrier-based fighters and 10 to 12 land-based bombers and AC-130 gunships participating in strikes, Myers said. Those planes dropped munitions in 15 target areas that included antiaircraft sites, ammunition storage depots, armored vehicles, trucks and buildings.

Myers said the helicopter crew that crashed apparently experienced unexpected problems at the landing site. "This was a middle-of-the-night landing," Myers said. "There was a significant amount of dust when you get to close to the ground. The rotor brings up the dust and makes landing very, very difficult. And we think that had something to do with it."

An official in the Baluchistan provincial government in Pakistan said that initial reports from the province's Frontier Corps, a Baluch-based border guard, indicated that the search and rescue helicopter crashed in the district of Chagai. The town lies just south of Afghanistan along the north-south line separating Helmand and Kandahar provinces, about about 160 miles southwest of Quetta, Pakistan.

In the Afghan capital of Kabul, Reuters said many planes and at least seven explosions were heard Sunday morning as the U.S. campaign entered its 15th day.

-------

DOD ANNOUNCES NAMES OF SERVICEMEMBERS KILLED IN HELICOPTER ACCIDENT

Department of Defense News
United States Department of Defense
No. 530-10 IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 21, 2001
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/b10212001_bt530-01.html

NEWS RELEASE
On the web: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/b10212001_bt530-01.html Media contact: media@defenselink.mil or +1 (703) 697-5131
Public contact: public@defenselink.mil or +1 (703) 697-5737

The Department of Defense announced today the names of two servicemembers killed in Friday's helicopter crash in Pakistan. Killed were Spc. Jonn J. Edmunds, 20, of Cheyenne, Wyo. and Pfc. Kristofor T. Stonesifer, 28, of Missoula, Mont.

The two Army Rangers were passengers in a Blackhawk helicopter that crashed while supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Hostile fire has been ruled out as a cause of the crash, which remains under investigation.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered his condolences to the families of those killed.

"They and all who are participating in Operation Enduring Freedom are heroes. They put their lives on the line on behalf of freedom and on behalf of America, and they do it each and every day. I'm so very proud of them and their comrades in arms," he said.

"As the president has said," added Myers, "they did not die in vain."

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/b10212001_bt530-01.html


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

War Effort Pushes 'Green' Issues Aside
Environmental Groups Rethink Agenda As Nation Focuses on Anti-Terror Fight

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24436-2001Oct20.html

For nearly five years, the Environmental Protection Agency complained that Air Force F-16s flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq and Kosovo were venting a gas that was punching holes in the Earth's ozone layer and posing a long-term threat to public health. The agency tried to persuade the Pentagon to eliminate the gas by changing the fire suppressant in the fighter jets' fuel tanks.

But when the Pentagon stepped up its missions over Iraq and dispatched F-16s to defend the skies over Washington and New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, EPA officials dropped their objections and abruptly closed the case. With the country at war with Afghanistan and battling anthrax terrorism at home, "it's not an issue worth worrying about," a senior EPA official said.

Now, much of the rest of the nation's environmental agenda has succumbed to the war effort: From global warming and power plant pollution to energy production and forest management, issues have been put on hold or transformed from concerns about the environment to concerns about national security.

Environmental groups that earlier this year waged million-dollar ad campaigns against President Bush's energy policies and efforts to roll back environmental regulations have muted their criticism, for fear of appearing churlish or unpatriotic. Although such groups were once convinced that Bush's environmental policies were costing him support among crucial swing voters, they are far more cautious in picking fights with him now that his job approval rating is nearing 90 percent.

"In the short term, we've shifted from trying to win high-profile defensive battles to basically deferring most of those battles," said Greg Wetstone of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a prominent environmental group. "We will continue to fight, but we'll do it in the right way."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a champion of environmental causes, said Tuesday that she was concerned that some conservatives were using the war on terrorism as an excuse to silence critics and push through environmentally damaging proposals, including the administration's proposal to explore for oil and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). "I want to make sure we don't lose our freedom and democracy here, and part of that is being able to question and challenge the administration if we think they're off base on a number of issues," Boxer said.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers and analysts say it is too soon to tell whether the nation's focus on war and homeland security will have a lasting impact on public attitudes toward environmental protection. But many agree that environmentalists will have much more difficulty blocking oil and gas exploration in environmentally sensitive areas, including ANWR, as Bush stresses the dangers of continued U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The House in August approved drilling in ANWR as part of a large energy production package sought by Bush, but many assumed the drilling proposal would founder in the Senate, where there is strong pro-environment sentiment among Democratic leaders and moderate Republicans. Last week, however, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) halted committee deliberations after Democrats concluded that there were enough votes on the panel -- and perhaps on the Senate floor -- to approve the drilling plan.

Although much of the House support for the plan stemmed from the desire of lawmakers and organized labor to create new jobs during an economic downturn, Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) and other Senate advocates have picked up support by arguing that the Alaskan project is essential to the nation's long-term energy security -- even though, as opponents note, it wouldn't begin to produce oil for nearly a decade.

"The less dependent we are on foreign sources of crude oil, the more secure we are at home," Bush declared last week.

Environmentalists and European and Asian leaders roundly criticized the president in March, when he disavowed an international global warming treaty, but they have said little about it since Sept. 11. Bush promised that his administration would offer alternatives to the treaty in time for a November meeting of international negotiators in Marrakesh, Morocco, but that pledge has been largely forgotten as White House policymakers have shifted their focus to anti-terrorism efforts.

The administration is also at least two months behind schedule for producing a promised plan for reducing power plant emissions of mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has drafted a plan of his own, but he and others are reluctant to forge ahead before the administration announces its approach.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "we are continuing to work on" plans for reducing global warming and power plant emissions, but "obviously, the president's focus continues to be on moving forward from the attacks of September 11."

Meanwhile, as Congress rushes to complete work on a package of anti-terrorism legislation and spending bills for the coming fiscal year, reticent environmentalists have been powerless to block administration efforts to scrap tough new hardrock mining regulations, circumvent a federal court ruling limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to visit Alaska's whale-friendly Glacier Bay and allow increased logging in some national forests. House and Senate negotiators last week included those provisions in a compromise Interior Department appropriations bill for fiscal 2002.

Still, some environmentalists contend that the nation's mounting security concerns may work to their advantage by sparking interest in conservation measures to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

They also say that as Bush tries to hold together an international coalition in his war on terrorism, he no longer can afford to act unilaterally on other issues, as he did in rejecting the global warming treaty. Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said it was highly significant that British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised concerns about U.S. opposition to the treaty in a speech after his visit to Washington last month to confer with Bush on terrorism.

"I don't have any indication at this point the administration is spending considerable time assessing its global warming position," Clapp said. "But it's clear that issue was raised at a critical time by a critical U.S. ally."

It is also clear that environmentalists inside and outside government are carefully recalibrating their policies and actions to avoid any appearance of detracting from the war effort. The little-known controversy over the F-16 is a case in point.

At issue was the Air Force's continued use of Halon 1301, a chemical once widely used as a fire suppressant before the United States and other countries signed an agreement in Montreal in 1994 banning its production.

According to an EPA study, the release of large amounts of Halon breaks down the ozone layer, which filters out the sun's ultraviolet rays, and increases the threat of skin cancer, malignant melanomas and cataracts. The F-16 -- one of the most widely proliferated aircraft in the U.S. inventory -- is the single largest emitter of Halon 1301.

The Air Force suspended its use of Halon 1301 in peacetime operations in 1994 but continued to use it for combat missions and dangerous reconnaissance operations, such as flights over southern and northern Iraq. The EPA and Defense Department scientists and researchers repeatedly urged the Air Force to replace Halon 1301 with another chemical they said was equally effective, but the Air Force refused, challenging their testing methods.

Yet the controversy evaporated after Sept. 11. As part of new homeland defense policies, the Pentagon ordered F-16 combat patrols over Washington, New York and nearly a dozen other major cities across the country.

Paul Stolpman, director of EPA's Office of Atmospheric Programs, said last week that "EPA fully supports the military in its ongoing use of Halon 1301 to safeguard our pilots, crews, aircraft and ships," adding that "any releases of Halon associated with current operations against terrorists will be minimal."

--------

Environmentalists, Business Debate

October 21, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-EXP-Toxic-Mud.html

MILLTOWN, Mont. (AP) -- Behind a dam that's pushing a century in age and below a calm surface where locals canoe and fish for pike lies enough mud contaminated with toxic metals to cover an NFL stadium and some of its parking lot.

Downstream from the dam is Missoula, Montana's second-largest city.

For environmentalists, the choice is clear: Remove the sediment, tear down the dam, return the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers to their natural state.

For others, the decision is not so easy. Removing a dam that restrains 6.6 million cubic yards of sediment contaminated with arsenic, copper, lead and other metals is a feat they fear will make things worse.

The dam and its Milltown Reservoir are the terminus of the nation's largest Superfund environmental cleanup site, the resting place for decades of mine waste that washed 120 miles down the Clark Fork River from Butte and Anaconda.

What to do with the contaminated sediment, and the dam that holds it all back, has become the focus of a growing debate between environmentalists and business.

For long-term river health, removing the sediment and the dam is ``absolutely the right thing to do,'' said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition, an environmental group.

``The confluence of two rivers behind an aging dam is a terrible place for millions of yards of toxic waste,'' she said.

But Atlantic Richfield Co., part of BP Amoco PLC , says that what the Clark Fork Coalition advocates is fraught with environmental risk. Atlantic Richfield, or Arco, is responsible for cleaning up the mess at Milltown.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been studying Milltown's contamination problem for a decade, is expected to make a decision next spring on what to do about contaminated sediment.

Chief among the options are two ideas: a $20 million plan to upgrade and strengthen the dam, built in 1907, and leave the sediment behind it untouched. Arco, which became responsible for the cleanup when it purchased the former Anaconda Co. in 1977, supports that proposal. In Milltown, the small working-class community of modest homes set just above the dam, support for keeping the dam in place runs high.

The second option, which has won support of community leaders downstream in Missoula, is a $120 million plan to remove the sediment and tear down the dam. Some envision the confluence of the two rivers one day returning to their wild glory, full of challenging rapids for kayakers and rafters.

Either way, Arco gets the cleanup bill.

The contaminated mud, 30 feet deep in places, poses no immediate danger to those who use the reservoir, said Russ Forba, head of EPA's Milltown work. Nor does the mud, as long as it sits at the bottom of the reservoir, pose an immediate danger to fish or wildlife.

The concern arises, though, when the sediment is disturbed.

In 1996, ice running downstream toward the reservoir scoured the river bottom, stirring contaminated sediment. The emergency release of water to stall ice approaching the dam flushed some of that sediment downstream.

Health officials said copper concentrations in the water exploded. Surveys showed steep declines in rainbow and brown trout populations, although explanations for those declines vary.

Arco maintains trying to remove the sediment and the dam could cause similar problems, leading to more harm than good.

``Right now the sediment is environmentally stable,'' said Sandy Stash, vice president for Arco Environmental Remediation. ``Once you're in there mucking around with it, we have a great deal of concern about the downstream river.''

``It's important that we manage the sediments in such a way that we minimize the amount of mud that gets over the dam,'' Stash added.

The EPA's Forba figures it would take seven years to dredge the sediment behind the dam.

In a report released Aug. 13, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that without precautions, copper in the Clark Fork could exceed state water standards 19 percent of the time during dredging. Already, the limit is exceeded 17 percent of the time. The corps said concentrations of cadmium, zinc and arsenic would remain below allowable levels.

Stone-Manning said the options for dealing with the sediment are ``a permanent solution or the Band-Aid approaches.'' She contends Arco simply wants to do what costs the least.

``We have spent $750 million in Montana in the last 10 years,'' Stash countered. ``We're way past 'less expensive.'''

Some of that outlay has been for lawyers looking to minimize what Arco must do on the environmental front, Stone-Manning responded.

For Arco, most of its environmental cleanup to date has been concentrated in the Butte area, where for decades copper mines and smelters dumped their waste into the nearby Clark Fork River.

From there to Milltown, about 120 river miles, there are varying degrees of damage tied to the old Anaconda Co. operations.

In Milltown, an unincorporated community of about 3,500 residents along Interstate 90, the idea of removing the dam doesn't sit well with most people.

Reservoir recreation is part of the lifestyle and the dam is a historic landmark, said Bruce Hall, director of Bonner Development Group. The organization is a local activist group that relies heavily on grants, including some from Arco.

Hall said the dam accounts for about 15 percent of Milltown's tax base, money particularly important in the wake of cutbacks at the local sawmill.

He also said the dam, which is owned by Montana Power Co. and supports a small power plant, should not be disregarded as a power producer during turbulent times in the energy arena.

``There's not a lot of water storage, not a lot of power, but we do have them,'' he said. The plant produces about 3 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 2,000 homes.

Other issues that could affect the outcome of the debate include the bull trout, listed as ``threatened'' in 1998 under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The dam blocks the bull trout's migration to spawning grounds, and the reservoir provides an ideal environment for northern pike, an illegally introduced species that thrives there and preys on trout. For Milltown purveyors of fishing tackle and picnic supplies, pike fishing has produced a new industry.

Forba said the bull trout issue, like hydropower and a host of others at Milltown, is for consideration by other agencies, not his.

Whatever the EPA decides to do, state acceptance of the plan will be critical, Forba said.

So far, Gov. Judy Martz has no opinion, said Todd O'Hair, her natural resources adviser.

``It would be premature to jump ahead of this thing before we have all the information,'' O'Hair said. ``Ultimately, most of this is going to come down to the science of it and what the community feels.''

The Missoula County Commission unanimously favors removing the sediment and the dam.

``We have to be shown that the work can be done safely,'' Bill Carey said when he and other commissioners endorsed a resolution in March. ``But everything we've seen so far says it is possible and would not have long-term negative effects.''

Stash said more people should take time to examine $15 million worth of scientific information, then balance the risks and benefits of the Milltown options.

-------- health

Health Alert - CIPRO

October 21, 2001
From: pfpc@istar.ca

Dear All,

Two months ago we reported on the withdrawal of Bayer's BAYCOL (Cerivastatin), a fluorinated drug (statin class) which had caused deaths and serious adverse health effects worldwide (1,2,3).

BAYCOL had been found to cause muscle destruction/wasting - a condition known as rhabdomyolysis - and displayed compounded toxicity when used with other drugs. It had been linked to at least 31 deaths.

We also showed how the adverse reactions documented with BAYCOL were largely identical to those of numerous other fluorinated drugs - all of which had been withdrawn from the market in recent years (3).

ANTHRAX AND CIPRO

As a result of the current Anthrax scare another fluorinated drug called CIPRO has received extensive media coverage and the name has become familiar to millions almost overnight. As soon as the first cases of anthrax resulting from suspicious mail became known, there were wide reports of a hectic run on this drug.

Mass hysteria seems present as governments, pharmacies and individuals everywhere are stockpiling this drug. Pharmacies are reporting record sales, and on-line prescription services and Internet sites are found selling the drug at more than $7.00 per pill.

People everywhere, hyped into believing their flu-like symptoms are caused by anthrax exposure and mis-informed by irresponsible media reports, are taking CIPRO, and worse yet - are giving it to their children.

WHAT IS CIPRO?

CIPRO is ciprofloxacin, a fluorinated quinolone, belonging to a class of fluorinated antibiotics which also include enoxacin, fleroxacin, temafloxacin, grepafloxacin, norfloxacin, sparfloxacin, tosufloxacin, lomefloxacin, ofloxacin, etc..

Ciprofloxacin has been in use since 1987 for a variety of other indications and is the most-widely used fluoroquinolone in humans and animals worldwide (4).

In 2000 the FDA approved its use in treatment for inhalational anthrax under its "accelerated approval" regulations (5). It had actually taken the unusual step of urging Bayer - the sole manufacturer for all countries except India - to file for such approval, supposedly in order to protect the public from future terrorist attacks. The US Department of Defense had already ordered reserves of CIPRO during the 1991 Gulf War (6).

ADVERSE EFFECTS:

As mentioned in the info on BAYCOL, temafloxacin and grepafloxacin are two other fluoroquinolones now withdrawn from the market because they had caused severe liver and renal damage - and deaths, just like fluorinated drugs from other, different classifications (3).

The same information also exists for CIPRO.

Fatal liver failure associated with ciprofloxacin was reported in the Lancet in 1994 (7, 8 -> 150 more related refs).

Ciprofloxacin has been implicated in several cases of acute renal failure and is the most established fluoroquinolone to cause such renal dysfunction (4, 9, 10, 11 -> 96 related refs).

FLUORIDE

The most common side-effects reported due to CIPRO (2-16%) are gastrointestinal in nature and equal those reported when children accidentally ingest "too much" fluoride from their toothpaste - such as nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Why?

Ciprofloxacin administration results in elevated serum fluoride levels (12). In a series of tests evaluating the safety of ciprofloxacin in children, serum fluoride levels increased after 12 hours in 79% of the children; on day 7 the 24-hour urinary fluoride excretion was higher in 88.9% of children observed (12).

Just as in the case of Baycol and other fluorinated drugs, CIPRO can cause musculo-skeletal disorders such as rhabdomyolysis.

RHABDOMYOLYSIS

Since the introduction of fluoroquinolones on the market in 1987 more than 200 cases of rhabdomyolysis, tendinitis, tendon rupture etc. have been reported in the literature (4,13,14,15).

In October 1994 the Japan Pharmaceutical Affairs Bureau was first to amend the product information for fluoroquinolones to state that rhabdomyolysis may occur (16).

In 1996 the FDA also issued directives to manufacturers to include warning statements on all fluoroquinoline product inserts to alert patients and caregivers to the potential for tendinitis and tendon rupture (17). Also in 1996 the Sri Lanka Drug Evaluation Sub-Committee decided that the product information of fluoroquinolone antibiotics should include a warning stating: "The onset of tendon pain calls for immediate withdrawal of fluoroquinolone antibiotics." (18)

Achilles tendon rupture was shown to occur even after withdrawal of the drug. Pathologically there was ultrastructure alteration in tendinocytes. Just as in other cases of fluoride poisoning, studies in animals show that magnesium deficiency aggravate the induced tendinopathy (14,19).

DRUG INTERACTIONS/DEATH:

Just as with BAYCOL, drug interactions with ciprofloxacin have resulted in fatal outcomes due to potentiation of another drug's effects such theophylline (4,20), methadone (21), or warfarin (22).

Just like BAYCOL and other fluorinated drugs, ciprofloxacin is a potent inhibitor of the thyroid hormone-regulated P 450 enzyme system in the liver. Of all fluoroquinolones, ciprofloxacin and enoxacin have shown the greatest inhibitory capacity (4).

P450 IA2 prevents the metabolism/inactivation of methylxanthines, thereby causing increased serum concentrations of drugs like theophylline and caffeine, which in turn causes excess CNS and cardiac stimulation. As mentioned above, CIPRO also elevates serum fluoride levels.

The liver has been identified as a target organ of fluoroquinolone toxicity in animal studies (23). Already in the 1930s the same was shown by Bayer's scientists such as Litzka or Knoll's Kraft who found that ALL organic fluoride compounds tested (including those used for fluoroquinolone production) interfered with thyroid hormone activity in liver and muscle tissue. Meanwhile, they also showed "anti-bacterial" activity. This led to the development of many fluorinated medications, including the numerous compounds then used very successfully in the treatment of hyperthyroidism (24,25). Kraft invented many fluorinated "medications". When it was discovered that some of these organic compounds had the same detrimental effects on teeth and bone as inorganic fluoride - although much less actual F- was involved - he even filed patents on behalf of Knoll's using these compounds in dental preparations (26,27).

Pregnant women should never take ciprofloxacin. CIPRO transfers through the placenta. It inhibits P450 1A2 which has been shown to be critical for neonatal survival by influencing the physiology of respiration in neonates. Mice lacking this cytochrome died shortly after birth and showed symptoms of severe respiratory distress (28). Respiratory distress is a side-effect of ciprofloxacin also in adults (9). CIPRO also transfers through breastmilk.

RESISTANCE TO BACTERIA

Taking Ciprofloxacin can spur germs to mutate so that future bacterial infections become untreatable. During the last decades a dramatic increase in bacterial strains multiresistant to antibiotics, particlularly CIPRO - has been reported (30, 31, 32). This increase has led to the occurrence of incurable bacterial infections with a fatal outcome, and a particularly serious problem in connection with hospital-acquired infections.

For example, Clostridium difficile has become one of the most common acquired organisms in hospitals and long term care institutions. The organism typically infects patients whose normal intestinal flora has been disturbed by the administration of a broad-spectrum antibiotic such as CIPRO. The diarrhea and inflammatory colitis associated with infection represent a serious medical and surgical complication leading to increased morbidity and mortality, and prolonging hospital stays by an average of nearly three weeks. This is especially true for the elderly and for patients with serious underlying diseases who are the most likely to develop the infection. C. difficile associated diarrhea represents a major economic burden to the healthcare system, conservatively estimated at $3-6 billion per year in excess hospital costs in the U.S. alone (33).

The emergence of this "antibiotic resistance" is a result of the overwhelming use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine. High rates of fluoroquinolone resistance have been reported in many countries (30). For example, in Asia CIPRO no longer can be used to treat gonorrhea, because the disease has become resistant to the drug (34).

While the FDA in August 2000 approved CIPRO as the first-line treatment against anthrax, a few months later (October 2000) it asked Bayer to remove BAYTRIL - its equivalent for animals.

The FDA proposed banning the fluoroquinolones, which chicken and turkey farmers have given to birds in their water since 1995 to help shield the animals from infection. The agency acted after linking the drugs to a jump in Campylobacter bacteria immune to the medications. Nearly 18 percent of one common strain that infects humans are now immune to the very same drugs which were considered the last line of defense against the infection.

Campylobacter is the leading bacterial cause of food poisoning in the United States. Typically contracted through raw or undercooked meat, the germs afflict more than 2 million people and kill some 500 each year in the US, according to the CDC.

While Abbot voluntarily withdrew its version of the antibiotic (SaraFlox), Bayer decided to challenge the FDA. The company had the option to comply with the proposed ban or seek a hearing to determine whether such a move was justified. Bayer refused to comply with the ban, a move that kicked off a lengthy process that could take years (35). Meanwhile Bayer gets to poison the world, AND make huge profits from it...

The AMA has advised its members to prescribe CIPRO very cautiously, saying the worldwide problem of antibiotic resistance poses future dangers worse than the anthrax attacks of today (Orlando Sentinel, October 20, 2001).

PHOTOSENSITIVITY

Photosensitization can result when light interacts with chemical agents in the skin and eyes. This process can produce undesirable clinical consequences, such as phototoxicity (i.e. exaggerated sunburn), photoallergy, or photocarcinogenicity. People receiving CIPRO or any other fluoroquinolone are warned on the product inserts not to expose themselves to direct sunlight. Rashs develop on the areas exposed.

Upon UVA-irradiation the "fluorine" of numerous fluoroquinolones such as lomefloxacin and fleroxacin, are "lost" as fluoride (36).

"We have discovered that anions can activate visual photoreceptors in the dark. One anionic activator is the commonly used dental agent fluoride. The data on in vitro preparations indicate that these anions modulate photoreceptor biochemistry and may effect photoreceptors sensitivity..."

[Lewis A - "Fundamental studies in the molecular basis of laser induced retinal damage" Annual report (Final) March 1 1979 - March 15, 1985 US DTIC records (unclassified) AD#177817 (1985)]

MEDLINE has many articles on fluoride and photoreceptor activation (G protein-coupled) (35).

OTHER CIPRO SIDE EFFECTS (29):

Abnormal dread or fear, achiness, bleeding in the stomach and/or intestines, blood clots in the lungs, blurred vision, change in color perception, chills, confusion, constipation, convulsions, coughing up blood, decreased vision, depression, difficulty in swallowing, dizziness, double vision, drowsiness, eye pain, fainting, fever, flushing, gas, gout flare up, hallucinations, hearing loss, heart attack, hiccups, high blood pressure, hives, inability to fall or stay asleep, inability to urinate, indigestion, intestinal inflammation, involuntary eye movement, irregular heartbeat, irritability, itching, joint or back pain, joint stiffness, kidney failure, labored breathing, lack of muscle coordination, lack or loss of appetite, large volumes of urine, light-headedness, loss of sense of identity, loss of sense of smell, mouth sores, neck pain, nightmares, nosebleed, pounding heartbeat, ringing in the ears, seizures, sensitivity to light, severe allergic reaction, skin peeling, redness, sluggishness, speech difficulties, swelling of the face, neck, lips, eyes, or hands, swelling of the throat, tender, red bumps on skin, tingling sensation, tremors, unpleasant taste, unusual darkening of the skin, vaginal inflammation, vague feeling of illness, weakness, yellowed eyes and skin.

CIPRO causes fluoride poisoning. Will any practioner know how to deal with this, considering that the ADA has shielded all from proper knowledge of fluoride toxicity?

Andreas Schuld, Wendy Small, Trent Harris Parents of Fluoride Poisoned Children (PFPC) Vancouver, BC, Canada pfpc@istar.ca

1) "Poison Control: Fluorides, the deadly toxin within" http://www.prn.usm.my/bulletin/nst/2001/nst34.html

2) 7AM - News: "Cures That Kill?" http://www.7amnews.com/2001/features/081801.shtml

3) Dr. Mercola - "Baycol - Another Fluoride Drug Bites the Dust" (PFPC News, August 18, 2001) http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/18/fluoride_drugs.htm

4) Clinical Toxicology Review - "What Are Fluoroquinolones?" CTR, Massachusetts Poison Control System, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1997)

5) FDA TALK PAPER " APPROVAL OF CIPRO(r) FOR USE AFTER EXPOSURE TO INHALATIONAL ANTHRAX" Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service 5600 Fishers Lane Rockville, MD 20857 (2000)

6) CNN - Reuter's, July 27, 2000

7) Fuchs S, Simon Z, Brezis M - "Fatal hepatic failure associated with ciprofloxacin" Lancet 242:738-739 (1994)

8) 150+ Related References : CIPRO - Liver

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=4&db=m&term=cipro&liver

9) Hootkins R, Fenves AZ, Stephens MK - "Acute renal failure secondary to oral ciprofloxacin therapy: a presentation of three cases and a review of the literature" Clin Nephrol 32(2):75-8 (1989)

10) Reece RJ, Nicholls AJ - "Ciprofloxacin-induced acute interstitial nephritis" Nephrol Dial Transplant 11(2):393 (1996)

11) 90+ Related References : CIPRO - Renal failure

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=4&db=m&term=cipro&renal&failure

12) Pradhan KM, Arora NK, Jena A, Susheela AK, Bhan MK - "Safety of ciprofloxacin therapy in children: magnetic resonance images, body fluid levels of fluoride and linear growth" Acta Paediatr 84(5):555-60 (1995)

13) Australian Adverse Drug Reactions Bulletin - Vol. 16, No. 2 (May 1997)

14) Ramanujam TR - "Fluoroquinolones - A Review" (2001) http://www.mcsindia.org/doctors/Epharma/january.asp

15) Petition to Require a Warning on All Fluoroquinolone Antibiotics (HRG Publication #1399) http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=6595

16) Information on Adverse Reactions to Drugs No.128, October 1994

17) FDA Medical Bulletin - Vol. 26, No.3 (October 1996)

18) 27th Meeting of the Drug Evaluation Sub-Committee, Ministry of Health, Colombo (November 1996)

19) Shakibaei M, de Souza P, van Sickle D, Stahlmann R - "Biochemical changes in Achilles tendon from juvenile dogs after treatment with ciprofloxacin or feeding a magnesium-deficient diet" Arch Toxicol 75(6):369-74 (2001)

20) Clinical Toxicology Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1997)

21) Herrlin K, Segerdahl M, Gustafsson LL, Kalso E - "Methadone, ciprofloxacin, and adverse drug reactions" Lancet 356(9247):2069-70 (2000)

22) Ellis RJ, Mayo MS, Bodensteiner DM - "Ciprofloxacin-warfarin coagulopathy: a case series" Am J Hematol 63(1):28-31 (2000)

23) Guzman A, Garcia C, Demestre I - "Subchronic toxicity of the new quinolone antibacterial agent irloxacin in beagle dogs" Arzneimittelforschung 50(5):485-94 (2000)

24) Kraft K - "Über die Synthese einiger aromatischer Fluorverbindungen" Knoll Research, Chem Ber. 84(2):150-156 (1951) (describes manufacturing processes of numerous organic fluorides, after it was shown that all organic fluoride compounds displayed stronger anti-thyroid activity than the mere "fluoride ion")

25) Kraft K, Dengel F - "Über die Synthese einiger aromatischer Fluorverbindungen, II. Mitteilung" Chem Ber 85(6):577-582 (1952) (more reports on organic fluoride investigations..."in regards to their characteristics in lowering BMR as well as anti-bacterial activity")

26) Zutavern EP, Kraft K - "Verfahren zur Herstellung von organischen Salzen der Fluorwasserstoffsäure" German Patent No. 855118, granted Dec. 5, 1950 (Knoll AG) (Kraft patent on the same organic fluoride compounds used previously in the treatment of hyperthyroidism, now patented as anti-caries agents!)

27) Eichler O, Kraft K - "Verfahren zur Herstellung einer alkalischen, seifenfreien, reagibles Fluor neben Calciumcarbonat enthaltenden Zahnpasta" German Patent No. 971375, granted Aug. 28, 1951 (Knoll AG) (patent describing the use of ethanol-amino-hydrofluorides in toothpaste...)

28) Pineau T, Fernandez-Salguero P, Lee SS, McPhail T, Ward JM, Gonzalez FJ - "Neonatal lethality associated with respiratory distress in mice lacking cytochrome P450 1A2" Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 92(11):5134-8 (1995)

29) Cipro Monograph http://www.healthsquare.com/pdrfg/pd/monos/cipro.htm

30) Coronado VG, Edwards JR, Culver DH, Gaynes RP - "Ciprofloxacin resistance among nosocomial Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus in the United States. National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance (NNIS) System" Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 16(2):71-5 (1995)

31) Smith KE, Besser JM, Hedberg CW, Leano FT, Bender JB, Wicklund JH, Johnson BP, Moore KA, Osterholm MT - "Quinolone-resistant Campylobacter jejuni infections in Minnesota, 1992-1998" N Engl J Med 340(20):1525-32(1999)

32) CDC Special Report : "Emerging Mechanisms of Fluoroquinolone Resistance" David C. Hooper Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

33) Kurtz CI, Fitzpatrick R - "Anionic polymers as toxin binders and antibacterial agents" US Patent 6,290,946, GelTex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (2000)

34) Orlando Sentinel, October 20, 2001

35) Bayer Balks at Banning Poultry Antibiotic - FDA, citing resistance, seeks removal" By Adam Marcus HealthScout Reporter, Dec. 1, 2000

36) Chignell CF - "Mechanisms of chemically induced photosensitivity" Crisp Data Base National Institutes Of Health, CRISP/99/ES50046-20 (1998).

37) Photoreceptor/fluoride - 50+ References

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?form=4&db=m&term=photoreceptor&fluoride

-------- human rights

10,000 refugees stuck at Pakistan border

Washington Times
October 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/nobyline-20011021123434.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Some 10,000 Afghani refugees have massed at a border valley known as Khojak Pass unable to enter Pakistan because of lack of proper papers, U.N. and Pakistani officials said.

Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, said that on Saturday a U.N. team visited Chaman at the mouth of Khojak Pass and were told by Pakistani authorities that some 5,000 people had entered Pakistan while thousands of others were turned away.

"We were told that by the authorities that 5,000 people, reportedly individuals holding valid travel documents and other identification, had been allowed to cross into Pakistan," Kessler said. "Many more people were visible in the distance on the edge of the Afghanistan side of no man's land."

Kessler added, "They were not being allowed to cross, as they apparently lacked the appropriate documentation."

The pass has become a major hub for Afghanis fleeing Kandahar, a stronghold of the ruling Taliban militia that has come under heavy U.S. attacks. U.S. Special Forces staged attacks on a Taliban command post near Kandahar and on an airstrip in the area as well, Pentagon officials in Washington said.

Refugees who had fled the Kandahar area said that the city was virtually deserted after two weeks of U.S. airstrikes ahead of the ground operation, the first publicly acknowledged presence of U.S. ground forces in the country.

"People crossing at the border described Kandahar as empty and reported that fuel was no longer available," Kessler said. "People claimed that some of their family members had been killed in the airstrikes, and people also said they were starving."

Kessler said UNHCR would be moving relief supplies into the area, where U.N. officials are struggling to ready refugee camps.

Smaller numbers of Afghanis were continuing to cross into Pakistan through northern border areas around the city of Peshawar, Kessler said.

"The new arrivals have described difficult conditions inside Afghanistan, where the population has lived on the edge for years," Kessler said. "Now, many people have been pushed over the edge with the increasing intensity of airstrikes during the night and into the day."

U.N. officials say up to 6 million people inside Afghanistan were at risk of starving before the current crisis. U.S.-led forces on Oct. 7 opened a military campaign against targets in Afghanistan as a result of the Sept. 11 hijackings and subsequent attacks on New York and Washington in which some 6,000 people died.

U.N. officials say up to 1.5 million more Afghanis may flee the country as fighting continues and winter weather moves in.

--------

A war ... by men

THE HINDU, Sunday
October 21, 2001
by KALPANA SHARMA
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/13210618.htm

BY the time this appears in print, that pile of rubble that is Afghanistan might have been pulverised into a finer mound of rubble by the relentless shower of American and British bombs. In a war in which there can be no winners, and many losers, pause for a minute and ask yourself - what will be the future of those faceless women you occasionally see on your television screen? If and when this war ends, who will speak for the women of Afghanistan?

In all the hours of footage on Afghanistan, there is little about women. Playing the leading roles in the current theatre of war within Afghanistan are men - regardless of whether they are Taliban or Northern Alliance. And on the other side, the Bush and Blair Brigade also consists mostly of men.

Both sides speak the language of war. But what of the men, women and children who are the recipients of an endless spiral of violence? People who had no role in the events of September 11. And for whom there is little in the foreseeable future that presages peace.

On the BBC, ``Panorama'' had some chilling reminders of life under the Taliban - shots of women being beaten with a cane by a Taliban moral policeman because their ankles and wrists were showing from under the voluminous burqas, and of a woman being publicly executed. Even worse were the hauntingly beautiful faces of the children maimed by previous wars, by the estimated 10 million landmines that cover 725 sq. km. of the country. What a ghastly irony that the first civilian casualties were the four UnitedNations workers who were clearing these mines.

For several years before the current crisis enveloped all of us, an appeal on the fate of women in Afghanistan has been circulated by e-mail. It would turn up with great regularity; its contents told us what we had already heard about the terrible depredations that women in Afghanistan had to bear under the Taliban.

One of the groups spearheading the struggle for women's rights in that country is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). At this present juncture, when we see darkened screens and flickering lights to indicate that a country is being pounded virtually out of existence, it is instructive to visit the RAWA website (www.rawa.org).

The women behind this organisation launched their fight for women's rights long before the Taliban appeared on the horizon. Founded in 1977, RAWA campaigned for these rights even as their country was convulsed with violent struggles between different groups ending in the Soviet occupation in December 1979. This did not stop these brave women.

Even when a number of them were arrested and their leader, Meena, was murdered, allegedly by KGB agents in Pakistan in 1987, they persisted. RAWA worked with women in Afghanistan as well as the millions in the refugee camps across the border in Pakistan. They ran schools, created jobs for women, ran a hospital and counselled their traumatised and displaced sisters.

The advent of the Taliban brought in a whole new dimension to their struggle. They could not operate freely in Afghanistan any more as women were forced to wear the burqa and banned from most jobs. But despite this they found ways to continue to work amongst Afghan women.

Their website has a slide show that is not meant for the faint-hearted. It gives you an unedited view of life as it was in Afghanistan. But the important point that RAWA makes is that those opposing Taliban are not much better in their attitude towards women. Nor do they respect human rights.

While RAWA has emphasised its commitment to democracy and secularism, they point out that none of the groups fighting to displace the Taliban have any commitment to these values. In other words, the chances that women might be better off if the Taliban is replaced with another group is not at all a given in Afghanistan.

The 20 years of conflict that have preceded the current war have already taken a huge toll on the health - both physical and mental - of Afghan women living in the country and in refugee camps outside. According to a 1998 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 280, August 5, 1998), women and children form three quarters of the refugee population which numbered 2.7 million in 1996.

In addition, an estimated 1.2 million were internally displaced (that is they were refugees in Afghanistan) at the end of 1996. In other words, close to four million Afghans were refugees inside or outside their country in 1996.

The study surveyed 160 women, of whom half lived in Kabul and the other half in Pakistani refugee camps. It opens up a small window into the lives of these women. The majority of the women said that their mental and physical health had deteriorated during the two years they had lived in Kabul after the Taliban took over. A high 42 per cent were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, 97 per cent suffered from depression and 86 per cent exhibited anxiety symptoms.

More than half these women were employed before the Taliban took over on September 26, 1996. After that, only one-third held on to their jobs. In the pre-Taliban days, 70 per cent of the teachers in Kabul, 50 per cent of the civil servants and 40 per cent of the physicians were women.

All this changed almost overnight with the Taliban's ban on women working outside their homes. The loss of income had a direct impact on health and nutrition levels in many families.

Worse still, in September 1997 the government stopped women's access to health services in Kabul. Only one ``poorly equipped clinic'' was available to women. Following the intervention of the Red Cross, around 20 per cent of the beds in hospitals were kept for women. The study found that a large number of women refugees streaming into Pakistan mentioned the absence of medical care as one of the important reasons for leaving their country.

It is important that we know such facts. It is essential that we understand the conditions in which the majority of women lived. But it is also crucial that we realise that the future for the most vulnerable and abused in Afghan society, the women, is not at all guaranteed by a rain of bombs, by political machinations that bring about a change of government, or by painting Islam as being anti-women.

Afghan women were part of a Muslim society where they had rights. They were deprived of their democratic rights when the Soviets took over. They were deprived of their rights as women when the Taliban took over. Will they get their rights as human beings some day in the future?

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Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27748-2001Oct20.html

FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans.

More than 150 people rounded up by law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the attacks remain in custody, but attention has focused on four suspects held in New York who the FBI believes are withholding valuable information.

FBI agents have offered the suspects the prospect of lighter sentences, money, jobs, and a new identity and life in the United States for them and their family members, but they have not succeeded in getting information from them, according to law enforcement sources.

"We're into this thing for 35 days and nobody is talking," a senior FBI official said, adding that "frustration has begun to appear."

Said one experienced FBI agent involved in the investigation: "We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. . . . Usually there is some incentive, some angle to play, what you can do for them. But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure . . . where we won't have a choice, and we are probably getting there."

Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture.

Under U.S. law, interrogators in criminal cases can lie to suspects, but information obtained by physical pressure, inhumane treatment or torture cannot be used in a trial. In addition, the government interrogators who used such tactics could be sued by the victim or charged with battery by the government.

The four key suspects, held in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, are Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Moroccan detained in August initially in Minnesota after he sought lessons on how to fly commercial jetliners but not how to take off or land them; Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, Indians traveling with false passports who were detained the day after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks with box cutters, hair dye and $5,000 in cash; and Nabil Almarabh, a former Boston cabdriver with alleged links to al Qaeda.

Questioning of "the two with the box cutters and others have left us wondering what's the next phase," the FBI official said.

One former senior FBI official with a background in counterterrorism said recently, "You can't torture, you can't give drugs now, and there is logic, reason and humanity to back that." But, he added, "you could reach a point where they allow us to apply drugs to a guy. . . . But I don't think this country would ever permit torture, or beatings."

He said there was a difference in employing a "truth serum," such as sodium pentothal, "to try to get critical information when facing disaster, and beating a guy till he is senseless."

"If there is another major attack on U.S. soil, the American public could let it happen," he said. "Drugs might taint a prosecution, but it might be worth it."

Even some people who are firm supporters of civil liberties understand the pressures that are developing.

David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who obtained the release of Middle Eastern clients after they had been detained for years based on secret information, said that in the current crisis, "the use of force to extract information could happen" in cases where investigators believe suspects have information on an upcoming attack.

"If there is a ticking bomb, it is not an easy issue, it's tough," he said.

Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel during the Clinton administration, wrote recently that the Supreme Court distinguished terrorism cases from cases where lesser threats are involved. He noted that five justices in a recent deportation case recognized that the "genuine danger" represented by terrorism requires "heightened deference to the judgments of the political branches with respect to matters of national security."

Former attorney general Richard L. Thornburgh said, "We put emphasis on due process and sometimes it strangles us."

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, he said, "legally admissible evidence in court may not be the be-all and end-all." The country may compare the current search for information to brutal tactics in wartime used to gather intelligence overseas and even by U.S. troops from prisoners during military actions. Extradition of Moussaoui to France or Morocco is a possibility, one law enforcement official said. The French security services were quick to leak to journalists in Paris that they had warned the CIA and FBI in early September, before the attacks, that Moussaoui was associated with al Qaeda and had pilot training.

The leak has irritated U.S. investigators in part because "it was so limited," one FBI official said. "Maybe we should give him [Moussaoui] to them," he said, noting that French security has a reputation for rough interrogations.

The threat of extradition to a country with harsh practices does not always work.

In 1997, Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh, a Saudi citizen arrested in Canada and transferred to the United States under the promise that he would tell about the bombing of the Khobar Towers military barracks in Saudi Arabia, refused to cooperate in the investigation when he got here.

The FBI threatened to have al-Sayegh sent back to Saudi Arabia, where he could have faced beheading, thinking it would get him to talk. "He called their bluff and went back, was not executed and is in jail," a government official said.

Robert M. Blitzer, former chief of the FBI counterterrorism section, said offers of reduced sentences worked to get testimony in the cases of Ahmed Ressam, caught bringing explosives into the country for millennium attacks that never took place, and Ali Mohammed, the former U.S. Army Green Beret who pleaded guilty in the 1998 embassy bombings and provided valuable information about al Qaeda.

The two former al Qaeda members who testified publicly in the 1998 bombing trials were resettled with their families in the United States under the witness protection program and given either money or loans to restart their lives.

Torture "goes against every grain in my body," Blitzer said. "Chances are you are going to get the wrong person and risk damage or killing them." In the end, he said, there has to be another way.

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THE BUREAU
Focus of F.B.I. Is Seen Shifting to Terrorism

New York Times
October 21, 2001
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/national/21BURE.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - The Bush administration is discussing proposals that would lead to the most fundamental reorganization of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its history, shifting its focus to counterterrorism and away from crime fighting, senior officials said.

Under the new thinking, they said, the agency would give up responsibility for some of the duties on which it built its legendary "G-man" reputation, like bank robbery, drug trafficking and some violent crime investigations.

"As counterterrorism becomes the No. 1 priority of the F.B.I., it has become obvious that other types of investigations will have to be de-emphasized at the bureau or turned over to other agencies," said a senior administration official, one of several interviewed in recent days who have been involved in the discussions.

Some officials say the restructuring has already begun, even before any formal plans have been proposed, propelled by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, when thousands of bureau agents across the country were ordered to put aside other investigations to focus exclusively on counterterrorism.

Since Sept. 11, senior officials said, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, have agreed that the emphasis on counterterrorism will be permanent, and that other major changes are inevitable. They have said repeatedly in recent days that the bureau's 28,000 employees will have one overriding responsibility: to prevent further terrorist attacks against Americans.

Officials emphasized that no formal restructuring plan exists, and that any structural change in the bureau's mission might require Congressional approval.

But the trauma of Sept. 11 appears to give this proposal a far better chance of success than many of the other ideas that repeatedly arise in Washington to remake complicated or failing bureaucracies, like the perennial plans to restructure the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The attorney general and bureau director strongly support the change, law enforcement officials said. And because of the investigation of the terrorist attacks, some of the ideas are already being put into place - a de facto restructuring.

In addition, even before Sept. 11, members of Congress in both parties were calling for significant change at the bureau. Since the attacks, they have praised Mr. Ashcroft for his insistence that the bureau concentrate on preventing terrorist acts.

"That's exactly what he ought to be doing," said Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican of Arizona who is a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees. "What's important now is to track down and prevent more terrorism."

For generations, career advancement at the bureau has depended on the sort of basic gumshoe investigations that would now be turned over to other federal agencies or even to local police departments. For that reason, the change is already facing opposition from the rank and file at the bureau, one of the government's most tradition-bound agencies.

Until now, agents who worked in the "other side" of the bureau - in the classified world of counterterrorism and counterintelligence units - seldom gained the same renown or promotions as their counterparts in the criminal division. Frequently, the bureau's counterintelligence agents complained that their biggest successes were necessarily cloaked in secrecy.

Their problems were compounded by management changes in recent years that granted flexibility to supervisors in the bureau's 56 national field offices to set their own priorities, a system that in some places resulted in a downgrading of counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.

But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, senior administration officials say, counterterrorism and counterintelligence must be the bureau's principal responsibilities.

As a result, they added, the bureau will need to give up responsibility - permanently - for many types of more routine criminal investigations. The bureau has already directed agents to stop responding to nonviolent bank robberies, so-called note jobs.

Administration officials said that under a reorganization, many types of narcotics investigations that had previously been handled by the bureau would very likely be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would take over some firearms and bombing cases previously handled by the bureau.

The F.B.I., they said, may jettison some of the jurisdiction that J. Edgar Hoover and his successors had won for the bureau, which is known in Washington for its aggressiveness in trying to expand its turf and budget, a strategy that Congress has willingly supported with bigger and bigger budgets and more personnel.

Some recently acquired powers may be among the first to be relinquished, like the bureau's responsibility for investigations of child pornography, carjackings and fathers who have not paid child support. In the future, the agency could also give up investigations of health care and military-procurement fraud, duties that could be handed over to the offices of inspectors general at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Pentagon. Another senior official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that "12 months from now, the F.B.I. is not going to be the organization it was on Sept. 10."

"Its responsibilities and priorities are all going to change," he added. "Any area where there is a duplicative effort with some other part of the government has a strong chance of being broken off from the bureau's responsibility."

No one in the administration is suggesting that the bureau will be sidelined in the government's effort to combat major crime. But law enforcement officials said that narrowing the bureau's focus would make the agency more effective in responding to crimes that it is uniquely qualified to address, like complex white-collar fraud, organized crime and political corruption.

A major restructuring of the bureau has been under discussion since the early days of the Bush administration. The administration inherited an agency battered by criticism in Congress over missteps that seemed rooted in managerial failures.

Supporters of the F.B.I. in Congress complained of mismanagement after the bureau's erratic investigation of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist; the unmasking of an F.B.I. agent, Robert P. Hanssen, as a Russian spy; and the belated discovery of investigative documents in the Oklahoma City bombing case that forced Mr. Ashcroft to delay the execution of Timothy J. McVeigh.

In a speech to bureau employees last summer, Mr. Ashcroft said the Hanssen case and the handling of the McVeigh documents were "injuring the public trust" and signaled that he would keep a close watch on the agency. He started several internal inquiries and brought in a private consulting firm to conduct a management review of the F.B.I., which is still under way.

He persuaded a skeptical White House to accept his choice, Mr. Mueller, as the bureau's new director. Mr. Mueller had earned a fearsome reputation from previous jobs for shaking up government agencies, notably the United States attorney's office in San Francisco, where he forced out most of the senior managers. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller, senior aides said, were determined to end decades of hostility and turf battles between the Justice Department and the F.B.I.

Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, officials said, Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller had no choice but to restructure the bureau, at least temporarily.

Thousands of agents were told to abandon their more routine criminal investigations and to focus entirely on terrorism, especially on pursuing leads that might prevent another terrorist attack. A senior Justice Department official said that although there had been no bureauwide notice to those agents of their future duties, "many of them won't be going back to their old jobs."

-------- spying

Kill order against bin Laden OK'd

Washington Times
October 21, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/nobyline-2001102193911.htm

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 (UPI) -- The Central Intelligence Agency was given wide latitude, including presidential authorization to kill, in its hunt for Osama bin Laden, it was reported Sunday as military operations against the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan entered a third week.

The Washington Post, citing senior government officials, reported that President Bush last month signed orders calling for the destruction of bin Laden and his al Qaida network.

Washington officials have said that bin Laden is the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 hijackings and attacks on New York and Washington in which some 6,000 people were killed. Bin Laden is also suspected of having planned other terrorist acts against U.S. interests, including the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.

In light of the Post report, a Taliban official issued a statement, reported by the British Broadcasting Corp. that said that bin Laden was "living in complete safety."

Also Sunday, in a final statement from the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shanghai, China, leaders from 21 major economic powers in the region issued a statement condemning the Sept. 11 attacks. There was no mention of the U.S.-led action on the Taliban in deference to Muslim majorities in Indonesia and Malaysia.

"We condemn in the strongest terms the attack as an affront to peace, prosperity and the security of all people, of all faiths of every nation," Chinese President Jiang Zemin declared at the end of the two-day summit.

"In view of the gravity of the terrorist attack on the United States, we went out of our way to discuss the issue of counter-terrorism in the course of our meeting."

During the APEC gathering, Bush received support from China and Russia for military operations in Afghanistan.

"I want to emphasize in particular the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States tell us that terrorism has become an international public problem," the Chinese president said. "We are fighting a battle against international terrorism."

On Oct. 7, the United States opened the military phase of its anti-terrorism campaign with sustained air attacks on targets in Afghanistan, most of which is controlled by the Taliban. Because the group refused to hand over bin Laden, the United States included it in its campaign and bombing had continued across the country for 15 days. CNN reported, however, that the pace of bombing had eased somewhat Sunday.

Over the weekend, the first confirmed action involving U.S. ground troops occurred, with American forces attacking an airfield and the complex used by Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. While the Taliban claimed to have killed at least 20 U.S. soldiers, the Pentagon denied that any of its ground forces had been killed. However, two U.S. personnel were killed in a helicopter crash across the border in Pakistan.

Taliban officials reportedly planned to issue additional weaponry -- including heavy machine guns and rocket launchers -- in response to the presence of U.S. ground forces. The Taliban also said that 78 civilians were killed in air raids against Herat and Kabul over the last three days, although the deaths could not be independently confirmed.

Last month Bush allotted an additional $1 billion to the CIA's campaign against terrorism, most of which was expected to be used in covert missions, the Post said. The wide-ranging order issued by Bush was meant to exploit a weakness that had been recently discovered in the bin Laden organization.

A senior official told the Post: "The gloves are off. The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-Sept. 11 are now under way."

On a more general scene, the United States and United Nations were said to be deadlocked over who should control Afghanistan should the Taliban be removed. United Press International reported that the United States would like to see a "Green Helmet" peacekeeping force -- using the color of Islam rather than the blue helmets traditionally used by U.N. peacekeepers. According to a senior U.N. diplomat, the United Nations would like to see a security force drawn from various Afghan forces.

U.N. Special Envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, who met with Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday, was quoted as saying: "The Afghan people themselves must decide on a government to replace the current one. It is important that the Afghan people have ownership of any structures to govern their country."

While the Taliban controlled much of the country, the group is not recognized by any country other than Pakistan as the legitimate government in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance, which has been fighting the Taliban, is generally recognized as the rightful ruler but is not considered truly representative of the many ethnicities present in Afghanistan.

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CIA Told to Do 'Whatever Necessary' to Kill Bin Laden
Agency and Military Collaborating at 'Unprecedented' Level;
Cheney Says War Against Terror 'May Never End'

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27452-2001Oct20.html

President Bush last month signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake its most sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947, explicitly calling for the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his worldwide al Qaeda network, according to senior government officials.

The president also added more than $1 billion to the agency's war on terrorism, most of it for the new covert action. The operation will include what officials said is "unprecedented" coordination between the CIA and commando and other military units. Officials said that the president, operating through his "war cabinet," has pledged to dispatch military units to take advantage of the CIA's latest and best intelligence.

Bush's order, called an intelligence "finding," instructs the agency to attack bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure, senior government officials said. U.S. intelligence has identified new and important specific weaknesses in the bin Laden organization that are not publicly known, and these vulnerabilities will be the focus of the lethal covert action, sources said.

"The gloves are off," one senior official said. "The president has given the agency the green light to do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkable pre-September 11 are now underway."

The CIA's covert action is a key part of the president's offensive against terrorism, but the agency is also playing a critical role in the defense against future terrorist attacks.

For example, each day a CIA document called the "Threat Matrix," which has the highest security classification ("Top Secret/Codeword"), lands on the desks of the top national security and intelligence officials in the Bush administration. It presents the freshest and most sensitive raw intelligence on dozens of threatened bombings, hijackings or poisonings. Only threats deemed to have some credibility are included in the document.

One day last week, the Threat Matrix contained 100 threats to U.S. facilities in the United States and around the world -- shopping complexes, specific cities, places where thousands gather, embassies. Though nearly all the listed threats have passed without incident and 99 percent turned out to be groundless, dozens more take their place in the matrix each day.

It was the matrix that generated the national alert of impending terrorist action issued by the FBI on Oct. 11. The goal of the matrix is simple: Look for patterns and specific details that might prevent another Sept. 11.

"I don't think there has been such risk to the country since the Cuban missile crisis," a senior official said.

During an interview in his West Wing office Friday morning, Vice President Cheney spoke of the new war on terrorism as much more problematic and protracted than the Persian Gulf War of 1991, when Cheney served as secretary of defense to Bush's father.

The vice president bluntly said: "It is different than the Gulf War was, in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime." Pushing the Envelope

In issuing the finding that targets bin Laden, the president has said he wants the CIA to undertake high-risk operations. He has stated to his advisers that he is willing to risk failure in the pursuit of ultimate victory, even if the results are some embarrassing public setbacks in individual operations. The overall military and covert plan is intended to be massive and decisive, officials said.

"If you are going to push the envelope some things will go wrong, and [President Bush] sees that and understands risk-taking," one senior official said.

In the interview, Cheney said, "I think it's fair to say you can't predict a straight line to victory. You know, there'll be good days and bad days along the way."

The new determination among Bush officials to go after bin Laden and his network is informed by their pained knowledge that U.S. intelligence last spring obtained high quality video of bin Laden himself but were unable to act on it.

The video showed bin Laden with his distinctive beard and white robes surrounded by a large entourage at one of his known locations in Afghanistan. But neither the CIA nor the U.S. military had the means to shoot a missile or another weapon at him while he was being photographed.

Since then, the CIA-operated Predator unmanned drone with high-resolution cameras has been equipped with Hellfire antitank missiles that can be fired at targets of opportunity. The technology was not operational at the time bin Laden was caught on video. The weapons capability, which was revealed last week in the New Yorker magazine, was developed specifically to attack bin Laden, the officials said.

In addition, with the U.S. military heavily deployed in some nations around Afghanistan, commando and other units are now available to move quickly on bin Laden or his key associates as intelligence becomes available.

U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies recently received an important break in the effort to track down terrorist leaders overseas, according to officials.

The FBI and CIA have been given limited access in the last several weeks to a top bin Laden lieutenant who was arrested after Sept. 11 and is being held in a foreign country. The person, whose various aliases include "Abu Ahmed," is "a significant player," in the words of one senior Bush official. Ahmed was arrested with five other members of al Qaeda. He is believed by several senior officials to be the highest-ranking member of al Qaeda ever held for systematic interrogation.

Though Ahmed has not given information about future terrorist operations, he has provided some details about the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port, when 17 sailors were killed. One source said he also has information about the planned terrorist attacks in the United States that were disrupted before the millennium celebrations in December 1999. The New Normalcy

When specific facilities or locations are threatened, as they have been repeatedly in the last month, the FBI informs local law enforcement authorities or foreign intelligence services that are supposed to increase security and take protective measures.

The Threat Matrix lists where the intelligence comes from -- intercepted communications, walk-in sources, e-mails, friendly foreign intelligence services, telephone threats, and FBI or CIA human sources.

The public is not informed except when the threat is considered highly credible or specific, as it was on Oct. 11 when the FBI issued its nationwide alert.

In the interview, Cheney said that deciding when to go public and when to withhold threat information is one of the most difficult tasks the administration faces.

"You have to avoid falling into the trap of letting it be a cover-your-ass exercise," Cheney said. "If you scare the hell out of people too often, and nothing happens, that can also create problems. Then when you do finally get a valid threat and warn people and they don't pay attention, that's equally damaging."

He also noted, "If you create panic, the terrorist wins without ever doing anything. So these are tough calls."

Making details from the Threat Matrix public could result in chaos, several officials said. Literally hundreds of places, institutions and cities from across the country have been on the list.

"It could destroy the livelihood of all those organizations and places without a bomb being thrown or a spore of anthrax being released," another senior Bush official said. The official was asked what would happen if there was a major terrorist incident and many were killed at one of the facilities or places on the Threat Matrix and no public warning had been issued.

"Then they would have our heads," the official said.

Intelligence and law enforcement agencies attempt to run every threat to ground to see if it is genuine, officials said. The results at times have been unexpected. In early October, a woman called authorities to say it was her patriotic duty to report that her husband, who is from the Middle East, was planning an attack with eight or nine friends on Chicago's Sears Tower.

The woman sounded credible and her allegations were reported in the Threat Matrix. The FBI then detained her husband and friends. On the next Threat Matrix the CIA reported that the FBI might have broken up an al Qaeda cell.

Upon further investigation, the FBI learned that the woman was furious with her husband, who had a second wife. Her allegations had no merit, but the bureau discovered that some of the people were involved in an arranged-marriage scheme.

"Instead of terrorism," one official said, "we found an angry wife."

Another senior official said, "There can be a problem in a marriage and it results in, you know, an allegation that shows up in the Threat Matrix."

During the interview in his West Wing office, Cheney, with a large map of Afghanistan on an easel near his desk, spoke of life post-Sept. 11.

"The way I think of it is, it's a new normalcy," he said. "We're going to have to take steps, and are taking steps, that'll become a permanent part of the way we live. In terms of security, in terms of the way we deal with travel and airlines, all of those measures that we end up having to adopt in order to sort of harden the target, make it tougher for the terrorists to get at us. And I think those will become permanent features in our kind of way of life." New War, Old Problems

Though the new intelligence war presents the CIA with an opportunity to excel, several officials noted that the campaign is also fraught with risk.

The agency is being assigned a monumental task for which it is not fully equipped or trained, said one CIA veteran who knows the agency from many perspectives. Human, on-the-ground sources are scarce in the region and in the Muslim world in general. Since the end of the Cold War more than a decade ago, the Directorate of Operations (DO), which runs covert activity, has been out of the business of funding and managing major lethal covert action.

The CIA has a history of bungling such operations going back to the 1950s and 1960s, most notably when the agency unsuccessfully plotted to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In one of the celebrated anti-Castro plots, a CIA agent code-named AM/LASH planned to use Blackleaf-40, a high-grade poison, with a ballpoint-hypodermic needle on the Cuban leader. The device was delivered on Nov. 22, 1963, and a later CIA inspector general's report noted it was likely "at the very moment President Kennedy was shot."

Though no connections were ever established between the Castro plots and the Kennedy assassination, the CIA's reputation was severely tarnished.

The covert war in Nicaragua in the 1980s was another source of negative publicity, as the CIA mined harbors without adequate notification to Congress and published a 90-page guerrilla-warfare manual on the "selective use of violence" against targets such as judges, police and state security officials. It became known as the "assassination manual."

William J. Casey, President Ronald Reagan's CIA director from 1981 to early 1987, was mired in the disastrous outcome of the "off-the-books" operations of the Iran-contra scandal. That scandal involved secret arms sales to Iran and the illegal diversion of profits from those sales to the contra rebels supported by the CIA in Nicaragua.

Reagan and Casey had trouble when they sought to punish covertly the terrorists responsible for the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine compound in Lebanon, which killed 241 American servicemen in the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans before Sept. 11. Casey worked personally and secretly with Saudi Arabia to plan the assassination of Muslim leader Sheikh Fadlallah, the head of the Party of God or Hezbollah, who was connected to the Marine bombing. The method of retaliation was a massive car bomb that was exploded 50 yards from Fadlallah's residence in Beirut, killing 80 people and wounding 200 in 1985. But Fadlallah escaped without injury.

Since the Ford administration, all presidents have signed an executive order banning the CIA or any other U.S. government agency from involvement in political assassination. Generally speaking, lawyers for the White House and the CIA have said that the ban does not apply to wartime when the military is striking the enemy's command and control or leadership targets.

The United States can also legally invoke the right of self-defense as justification for striking terrorists or their leaders planning attacks on the United States.

Bush's new presidential finding differs from past findings against the terrorists in a number of significant ways. First, it puts more military muscle behind the clandestine effort to crush al Qaeda. Second, it is far better funded. Third, senior officials said, it has the highest possible priority and will involve better coordination within the entire national security structure: the White House, the president's national security adviser, the CIA, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the departments of State, Defense and Justice.

On Friday, Cheney said the country had a sense of confidence in Bush's team, which includes an experienced trio of advisers -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Cheney himself. CIA Director George J. Tenet has developed an unusually close relationship with the new president, becoming a regular during Camp David weekends and briefing the chief executive most days.

"There's a lot of tough decisions that are involved here, and some of them very close calls," Cheney said. "But if I had to go out and design a team of people . . . this is it."

The vice president added that the war on bin Laden and terrorists in general is going to be particularly difficult.

"They have nothing to defend," he said. "You know, for 50 years we deterred the Soviets by threatening the utter destruction of the Soviet Union. What does bin Laden value?

"There's no piece of real estate. It's not like a state or a country. The notion of deterrence doesn't really apply here. There's no treaty to be negotiated, there's no arms control agreement that's going to guarantee our safety and security. The only way you can deal with them is to destroy them." 'Smoke Them Out'

Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush publicly declared the intentions of his administration with the statement that bin Laden was "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

In those remarks at the Pentagon, he said that the new enemy, bin Laden and other terrorists, liked "to hide and burrow in" and conceal themselves in caves. He first mentioned "a different type of war" that would "require a new thought process."

Two days later, Sept. 19, Bush made his first public mention of "covert activities," noting that some foreign governments would be "comfortable" supporting such action.

He added a broad outline of the goal: "Clearly, one of our focuses is to get people out of their caves, smoke them out and get them moving and get them. That's about as plainly as I can put it."

Bush sounded this theme again during his nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, when he spoke of "covert activities, secret even in success." In public remarks to CIA employees at the agency's headquarters in Langley a week later, the president dropped more hints: "You see, the enemy is sometimes hard to find; they like to hide. They think they can hide, but we know better."

Officials said that the covert activities approved by the president include a wide range of traditional CIA operations, such as close cooperation with friendly foreign intelligence services and covert and overt assistance to the Afghan rebels fighting to overthrow the Taliban leadership that harbors bin Laden.

The CIA has studied bin Laden and his al Qaeda network for years. A special unit or "Bin Laden station," created in 1996, works round the clock at headquarters.

When Cheney gave a speech Thursday night in New York City, he noticed a sea change. As his motorcade went through Manhattan, people stopped their cars, got out and applauded.

During his short speech before the 56th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, he was interrupted by applause 15 times.

On Friday morning, while sitting in his comfortable, well-lit West Wing office, he said with a smile, "There wasn't a dove in the room."

Researcher Jeff Himmelman contributed to this report.

-------- terrorism

INTELLIGENCE
Eavesdropping, U.S. Allies See New Terror Attack

New York Times
October 21, 2001
By RAYMOND BONNER with JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/21/international/21INTE.html

LONDON, Oct. 20 - More than a month after the September terror attacks, the United States and its close allies are still intercepting communications among Osama bin Laden's associates and are convinced more attacks are coming, intelligence officials in several countries say.

While American officials have been warning of another attack, the foreign intelligence officials stress that they base their analysis and conclusions on what their own agencies have gathered and not on intelligence they are getting from the United States.

In interviews over the past week, intelligence officials in six countries in the Middle East and Europe said they were unsure where to expect the attacks or whether they would be with explosives or with chemical or biological weapons. But they said their intercepts and other tools convinced them that a second and possibly a third wave of attacks were planned.

There is no evidence yet linking the recent anthrax-tainted letters to Osama bin Laden, said intelligence officials from two European countries that have been working closely with the United States. But if the letters are Mr. bin Laden's work, they are likely only the beginning of more attacks, they said.

Still, arrests in the United States and the disruption of suspected terrorist plots abroad may have bought some time in the battle against terrorism, American officials said.

Since Sept. 11, foreign intelligence services have arrested and interrogated hundreds of suspects, and they claim to have disrupted at least four separate plans to attack American and allied institutions in France, Belgium, Jordan and Turkey.

Interpreting intercepted communications, which are cryptic and in code, and sorting through all the rumors present a formidable challenge. One intercept before the Sept. 11 attack was, according to two senior intelligence officials, the first early warning of the assault and it set off a scramble by American and other intelligence agencies.

In that call, Mr. bin Laden advised his wife in Syria to come back to Afghanistan. That message, which was intercepted by the intelligence services of more than one country, was passed on to the United States, officials from three countries said.

"The question mark was when and where, mainly where because we assumed it would be soon," a senior intelligence official said. The United States and allied governments began looking hard at possible targets outside the United States, in the Persian Gulf, in Europe "and in other corners of the world," he said.

Now the United States and its allies find themselves in a similar quandary. They know something is coming but not when or where.

In the past, officials noted, there had been many months between attacks - two years between the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa and the attack on the destroyer Cole last year in Yemen, for example.

But this time the follow-up attacks are likely to come much sooner because Mr. bin Laden had probably set them in motion before Sept. 11, the officials add. They said that they were confident Mr. bin Laden had anticipated the United States would respond with a war, and that he was ready with counterattacks.

Intelligence agencies in Europe and the Middle East say they continue to monitor some communications between bin Laden associates despite the fact that they are aware of the intercepts.

On the day of the attack, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, revealed that conversations among bin Laden followers had been intercepted. He was relying on evidence he had received at a White House briefing, which in turn was passing on what it had learned from the German government.

The divergent views on the nature of future attacks can be explained in part because there is no central repository of intelligence information from which all countries can draw. Most countries pass what they get to Washington, but American intelligence agencies do not reciprocate as fully. Allied governments share their intelligence with each other even less.

An Israeli expert said that based on the intelligence he had seen, both before and since Sept. 11, he expected that Mr. bin Laden would now turn to chemical and biological weapons, and that American interests in Western Europe were the likely targets.

"We have some basic signs that the people of bin Laden have been interested in chemical and biological materials," he said.

He said investigators were looking into reports that a couple of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attacks had sought training in Europe to fly crop-dusting planes.

The officials agreed that further attacks against the United States had been planned by Mr. bin Laden before Sept. 11.

"The aims and behavior of Osama bin Laden, and the expectations of his followers and supporters, is that he will answer the attacks on Afghanistan and the Taliban," said one European official.

The roundups of terror suspects in the United States and Europe apparently have not completely interrupted Mr. bin Laden's ability to launch further attacks against the United States.

"When Osama bin Laden launches the next attack, we'll find the next surprise," the Israeli expert said.


-------- activists

Farrakhan condemns U.S. war

October 21, 2001
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011021-60684404.htm

NEW YORK - Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan yesterday condemned the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan, saying Washington had not proven its case against terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Speaking to a gathering of religious leaders, Mr. Farrakhan said the U.S. government hadn't revealed the evidence to the Taliban, sharing it only with allies.

"You show your friend [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] the evidence, but not the people you're about to bomb?" he said.

U.S. and British officials have said that revealing the details of the evidence would compromise allied war aims.

Mr. Farrakhan keynoted a conference organized by the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, a group organized by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church. The conference included a hundred ministers from several religious denominations, and political figures, including former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Indonesian President Abudurrahman Wahid and the former presidents and prime ministers of Guyana, Guatemala, Barbados, Seychelles, Nepal and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Most of them applauded often during Mr. Farrakhan's 100-minute speech and gave him a standing ovation afterward. The theme of the conference was an examination of the roots of global violence and how to deal with it.

Mr. Quayle, who had left the gathering by the time Mr. Farrakhan spoke, had earlier angrily rejected suggestions that U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and the Middle East had provoked terrorist attacks.

"This is the time to be morally clear," Mr. Quayle said. "Nothing justifies terrorism."

Mr. Farrakhan, the leader of the nation's largest Muslim group, said the pursuit of bin Laden and his terrorist group was a campaign against Islam. He said he also condemns the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, which killed 5,000 Americans.

"It was so horrific to me that for the first 48 hours I could not speak," he said.

Mr. Farrakhan said, without citing his evidence, that 1.5 million Iraqis had died under sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Persian Gulf war "while we are crying over 5,000."

In his remarks, Rev. Moon, who spoke before Mr. Farrakhan's denunciation of U.S. war aims, called on world leaders to repudiate national self-interests and hatreds, and urged religious leaders to cooperate and seek reconciliation. "If religions demonstrate love for each other, cooperate with each other, and serve each other, putting the higher ideal of peace ahead of particular doctrines, rituals and cultural backgrounds, the world will change dramatically."

Mr. Quayle, who served as vice president under President George H.W. Bush, said that fear, unlike anthrax, is contagious. He urged the religious figures to preach messages of tolerance. Mr. Quayle also blamed Hollywood for giving foreigners a distorted picture of the United States.

"Have you ever seen a movie that made the military look good? That looked favorably upon religion? That showed the cohesiveness of the family? No - and why not?" he asked. "If you were a person who had never been to America, you'd see a different country than it actually is."

Mr. Wahid, a Muslim cleric who served as president of Indonesia from Oct. 1999 until July 2001, said he supported the American military attacks, which are unpopular with Indonesians, but warned against "hegemony".

"What the United States is doing is honorable, but it is important to remember the multilateral framework," Mr. Wahid said. In an interview, he said that Washington "needs to listen to other people, and they need to listen to the United States."

The former presidents and prime ministers of several Latin and Caribbean nations said that it was important to look at what they call the root causes of terrorism - poverty, poor education and an absence of hope.

"We all hoped that the end of the Cold War, peace would have had a chance to break out," said Lloyd E. Sandiford, former prime minister of Barbados. "But efforts to increase development, and relieve poverty and other social blights are again delayed."

---

RALLY AND MARCH AGAINST WAR, TERROR, RACISM, AND POVERTY

Hartford CT
Sun, 21 Oct 2001
From: Marita McComiskey <mccomisk@uconnvm.uconn.edu>

We are calling for a march and rally against the growing war on Thursday October 25 in Harford CT. We invite all those interested in creating a world free from terror, racism, poverty and war to demonstrate our unity and vision for a better world by convening at 4:30 PM at the Bushnell Park Carousel.

As daily bombing raids continue to wreak havoc in Afghanistan, and as Arab Americans continue to face persecution at home, we find that we have no choice but to act. We act because we cannot sit idly by as our country destroys more innocent lives in our name. We act because we cannot watch in silence while our sisters and brothers are threatened, dehumanized, and attacked under the guise of "national unity". We act because cannot continue with our normal routine as our elected leadership commits massive resources towards what looks increasingly like another bloody quagmire with uncertain goals and tremendous human costs. We act because we stand in solidarity with the tremendous outpouring of anti-imperialist protest that has swept the world in recent weeks. We act because we submit to the leadership of those who MUST act because their lives are at stake. We act.

And finally, we act because we reject all forms of terrorism. We deplore the terrorism promoted by Islamic fundamentalists just as we condemn the terrorism practiced by Western "democracies". We observe that even as the United States government calls for "an end to terrorism", it continues to kill hundreds of Iraqi children every day through economic sanctions. We realize that terror is still terror whether it is from death from starvation, fear of enslavement by corporations or fear of bombs or airplanes falling. We believe that the fear and desperation that grows from poverty and oppression is crucial to any understanding of violence throughout the world. We know that until we can come to terms with the violence of our economic, military and foreign policies, we will continue to foster the conditions that make this kind of terrorism possible. If we want to stop terrorism, we must stop terrorizing.

We will bring our demands to US Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) whose reputation as a "moral leader" flies in the face of his unflinching support for the military attacks on the people of Afghanistan. We will urge him to assert his "moral leadership" by breaking immediately with the Bush Agenda and coming out as a strong advocate against this war.

On October 25 in Hartford, we will say: * NO to the military attacks * NO to the creation of a police state at home * NO to the global economic conditions that foster terrorism * YES a world organized around principles of democracy, equity and solidarity

This action is organized by the Connecticut Anti-War Coalition

----

It's Simple. It's Not So Simple

By Cynthia Peters
Znet Commentary
Oct 21,2001

Now is the time to be talking to people. Communicating, sharing information, listening -- they are the core of social change, of changing minds, of exchanging rationalizations and cynicism for vision and empowerment.

It's simple, really. A terrible crime is being committed in our name. Millions of dollars worth of bombs are raining down on an already decimated country. Beyond the military terror and destruction, the terror of starvation almost surely awaits millions of Afghans unless the bombing stops and a full-scale aid program gets food in place for the winter. This is a calculated crime against humanity that differs from September 11th only in scale; that is: it is many times larger.

That the U.S. is taking part in the killing of innocent people is not new. What's new is that people are paying attention. Before September 11th, I tried talking to people about the 500,000 Iraqi children dead thanks to the U.S. economic embargo. And people's eyes glazed over. But during these last few weeks, as I've staffed an information table on the main street that runs through my town, I've noticed something else during my conversations with people about the war in Afghanistan, the certainty of mass starvation unless our current trajectory in that country is reversed, the principles of international law, the idea that escalating violence is exactly that and not a form of justice, and the importance of the rule of law over the muscle of vigilantism.

What I've noticed is that the glaze is gone.

People's eyes are opened to the world in a way they weren't before. People are bringing questioning minds to the problem of terrorism and the U.S. role in the Middle East and elsewhere. People are filled with grief, awed by the courage of the rescuers, stunned by what it means to turn a commercial jetliner full of innocent people into a living, breathing bomb. People are curious -- and I mean that -- about exactly how the U.S. has abused its power around the globe, and they are reflecting on the consequences of that abuse.

Many conversations are not that hard. Sometimes, just listening to the words pouring out of someone's mouth helps him or her listen to those words, too, for the first time. Sometimes re-phrasing what you hear, without necessarily making a speech complete with historical facts and figures, is enough to put a crack in the confident parroting of the war defense. Sometimes, just being out on the street with "Justice Not War" flyers is enough to reach the cynic who already understands the misuse of U.S. power but believes there's no point in contesting it.

But not every conversation is so easy. I don't feel good about having some guy towering over me, jabbing the air with his finger, spitting out his passionate belief that, yes, we should kill as many Afghans as possible. It's not just that it's personally threatening, or that it's ethically in line with Osama bin Laden. It's also that it's painful to come face to face with this particular kind of human being.

Heartless retaliation is not limited to this war- mongering type. Consider the educated guy in the corporate suit who speaks in soft tones and has a pained expression on his face as he shrugs off the possibility of millions of starving Afghans with, "Well, we have to get Osama bin Laden somehow, don't we?"

Rather than scream my disbelief back at him, I try calmly repeating his own logic back to him. "So you think it's okay to put millions of Afghans at risk of starvation in order to possibly catch one man?" Then I try to let the pause be. I try not to fill up the silence with more words. I try to let him hear what he's saying. But this is hard to do. I feel a sort of a panic rising up. He is a thinking person, yet he articulated his accord with an obscene and murderous set of policies. I hold down the panic. He backs off a little from his argument. The interaction ends.

Unlike protesters in many countries, I don't risk getting killed or imprisoned when I put up my card table on Centre Street. I'm not worried about getting hurt, and I have a thick enough skin to deal with the hecklers. But dissent has its challenges, such as having reasonable conversations with privileged people who have access to power and knowledge, but who nonetheless are aligning themselves with points of view that will almost surely result in mass murder.

This is where it becomes not-so-simple. I don't like talking to people like that man in the suit. They make me sick.

But talking is what we absolutely need to be doing right now. It is the only way to prevent mass murder. In a one-superpower world, the citizens of the superpower are the only force that can control the superpower. It's up to us.

Talking has the added benefit of being the only antidote to the sick feeling. For all the corporate suits, there are many more thoughtful people who pause, look me in the eye, nod their agreement that violence begets violence, say things like, "Thank you for being out here." "I realize I've never quite thought about it that way." "Do you have more information?" "Can I come to your meeting?" "Will you speak at my church?" "Where can I learn more?"

Many people I've met in the last few weeks don't need to hear my analysis. They already know. And they have a lot to teach if we listen. The Vietnam vet challenges me on how we should pressure our government when it is corporations that seem to have so much control. The firefighter tells me that all he hears at work is that the killing should stop. The Haitian man wonders how international legal channels could be made more independent and less influenced by the United States. The three women carrying bibles talk for a long time, first with me and then amongst themselves. The teenager starts off protesting that her parents would disagree with me, but winds up voicing her own views.

Late one night, someone calls from a nearby town. He has our flyer inviting people to a neighborhood anti- war meeting, and he's shocked that I risked putting my name and number out publicly. I get the feeling he's calling partly to see if I'm real, thus making him a little bit less alone. He and his small group are planning on marching the next day in a community-based parade featuring marching bands and civic organizations. They will carry a banner that says, "Our Cry of Grief is not a Cry for War." He is nervous but inspired to hear what we have accomplished so far in our town. The next day, they participate in the parade. "At least a few people cheered on each block," they reported to me later. There are plans now for cross- town pot lucks and meetings.

It strikes me as pathetic, sometimes, how few we are, how far we have to go, how many steps forward, backward and sideways we will have to take. Someone suggested that I give a short talk at the next meeting of her neighborhood crime watch group. But at the last minute, the group, which has put tremendous collective energy into debating the relative merits of stop signs vs. stop lights, relations with police, and all the minutia of orchestrating their security in the three-block radius of their homes, decides that hearing about the war is not relevant. I'm allowed to leave my flyers, but whatever I have to say just "isn't our business," says one participant.

On the one hand, this experience is simply frustrating -- something to be absorbed, learned from, tried again someday perhaps. On the other hand, this experience is not-so-simply rather alarming -- a stark reminder that people will mobilize tremendous resources for immediate concerns, but withhold those resources when it comes to contesting a major human rights catastrophe in the making.

It's not hard to grasp the potentially genocidal consequences of current U.S. policy. But it is a bit harder to integrate that understanding into your daily life, and let it affect your actions. How will this knowledge change you? What will it make you question about how you spend your time, what you do with your money, whether you are doing everything in your power to reduce the horror. Maybe before, when you sheltered yourself from this knowledge, you never wondered if it was okay to spend time watching the Yankees' game. Now you are wondering.

And you are looking around at the peace activists and realizing that working in coalition with people to stop a major atrocity can mean aligning yourself with people you don't agree with -- or even who you find personally threatening. Some of the people fighting this war might be the same ones that, in another forum, would be your boss, deny you a living wage, ensure more privileges for the already privileged. Some of your fellow peace activists would be horrified by your sexuality, find you perverse, or wish you out of existence. They may have never learned to listen to women or take people of color seriously. You survey the growing legions of peace activists and wonder if they're the same people who are gentrifying your neighborhood, planting tulips in the park but letting affordable housing go down the drain, never showing up to protest police violence or the gutting of welfare. Working with these people can be alienating, disheartening, downright soul-killing.

Should you do it anyway?

To answer that question, keep in mind that there are ways to ease this necessary work of talking and listening, putting ourselves face- to-face with brutal, merciless or just plain petty thinking, and risking fragile coalitions.

1. Pick the community you can work best in. There is a growing peace movement, but if that is not your political "home," then work elsewhere -- in your neighborhood, your union, your place of worship, your community organization. Don't stop doing the political work you were doing before, but do look for new connections. Now is the time.

2. We should appropriately acknowledge the frustration and alarm that will be part and parcel of organizing work, but we should also be careful not to overstate it. No matter how alarmed we might be by people's denial, people's rejection of a moral stance, people's downright selfishness, nothing compares to the alarm of those at the receiving end of U.S. bombs and U.S. orchestrated starvation. Keep your frustration in perspective.

3. Join others for solidarity, support, shared inspiration, venting opportunities, perspective, and retreat from the challenges. Know that organizing is painstaking work, and you need to create conditions that will allow you to do it for a long time.

4. Know when to walk away. You don't have to talk to everyone. Don't waste time and energy engaging with the person who is going ballistic, but use your energy instead for the many sensible people that have their hearts in the right place but who lack information or support for entertaining alternative points of view.

5. Don't judge every interaction. It may feel like you failed to reach someone, but people's growing consciousness doesn't follow a linear path. They may ignore you, but later privately read the literature you hand out, and this may affect how they read the newspaper the next day. Each step is exactly that, and with others adding their efforts, each step matters more.

6. Finally, pick the work you can do most effectively. If a two-hour tabling stint on your main street leaves you feeling drained, despairing or frightened, then do something else. Write an emergency grant to help pay for all the leaflets and posters. Volunteer to manage the data base for your organization. Set up the web site, collate the articles, moderate the list serve, host the house parties, bring food to the meetings, design the banners, or take part in any of the numerous background activities that are essential to movement building.

Sound simple? It is and it isn't. Each of us, individually, has a responsibility to figure out how we can negotiate the organizing challenges and moral imperatives of the current crisis. Together, our job is to knit our individual abilities into a mass movement that pressures our government to back off from its bloodletting. The not- so-simple problem with this mandate is that it won't be easy. The simple fact, however, is that we must do it anyway.

From Z Magazine/Z Net.

----

Peace Coalition Calls for Cross Canada Day of Action Against War and Corporate Globalization

For Immediate Release
October 22, 2001

The September Eleventh Peace Coalition has called on groups across the country to join a cross Canada day of non-violent action for Global Peace and Justice Saturday November 17th, 2001.

Actions will call on the Canadian government to withdraw Canadian Forces from military action and to asses WTO, IMF and World Bank agreements and policies based on peace and economic development.

The coalition announced that already events are being planned in towns and cities across the country. "Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto are among the more high profile cities that will have non-violent actions against war and corporate globalization," said Peter Coombes, National Organizer of End the Arms Race, and Co-chair of the September 11 Peace Coalition.

The November 17th call for a cross Canada day of action for Global Peace and Justice coincides with the recently announced meetings of the G-20 Finance Ministerial meetings to be held in Ottawa on the same day.

"The Government must use the upcoming meetings of the G20, IMF, and World Bank in Ottawa to asses current agreements and policies of institutions such as the WTO, IMF, and World Bank against Canadian values of promoting peace, social justice, and security for all people," said Steven Staples of the Council of Canadians.

"The alternative to war is to begin rebuilding the world's infrastructures and to provide the things that working people need, like food, shelter, medical care, education, jobs and justice. Canadians implicitly understand the need for real justice and that's why thousands of people across the country will participate in the November 17th day of Global Peace and Justice," said Deborah Bourque of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, and Co-chair of the September 11 Peace Coalition.

The September Eleventh Peace Coalition, which includes high-profile national peace, labour, students, religious, women, environmental, cultural and community groups formed October 5th to oppose Canada's participation in military retaliation and to speak out against racist attacks resulting from the September 11 terrorists attacks on the United States.

For more information contact: Peter Coombes, End the Arms Race 604-687-3223 Steven Staples, The Council of Canadians 613-233-2773 x235




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