------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Pentagon doubts nuclear claims
Scientists Say They Met bin Laden
Rumsfeld Says U.S. Bombed Suspected Weapons Sites
Russia shrugs off nuclear ban to seal deal with India
Rice Plays Down Chance of Immediate ABM Accord
Missile Defense on Russia, US Agenda
Missile Defense Strikes Back
Pak nukes not ready to be fired: president
Pakistan's nukes in 'safe hands'
Pakistan Moves Nuclear Weapons
Putin Sees Chance for Accord on ABM Pact
Russia Says Test Ban Impasse Could Bring Crisis
Russia, EU, Annan Press Test Ban Case
U.S. Boycotts U.N. Conference
USS Aviators Act As Choreographers
Nuclear Neighbors Generating Alarm
Group mulls leaving some wastes
U.S., Russia Likely To Agree on Arms

MILITARY
A War in the Planning for Four Years
Pressure builds on U.S. to begin a ground war
130-plus civilians killed: report
Afghan Opposition Does Not Rule Out Entering Kabul
Opposition Anxious to Move on Kabul
'Holy War, Inc.
Russian mafia selling arms to Taliban
Ridge sees anthrax threat subsiding
Trace amounts of anthrax found in senators' offices
Al Qaeda Sites Point to Tests of Chemicals
Russia's Germ Warfare Secrets
British ground troops helping Afghan rebels
Britain Confirms Its Troops Are in Afghanistan
Colombian Lawmaker Flees Raid
War May be Costing $500M - $1B a Month
U.S. Welcoming Allies' Troops
Sailors on Enterprise Return to a Different Homeland

ENERGY AND OTHER
Protect sensitive documents
Self-serving secrecy
'Citizen witnesses' look death in the eye
160 Nations Agree to Warming Pact

POLICE / PRISONERS
Symbolic change not enough
Police commissioner sees a changed New York
Story of C.I.A. and Peru's Former Spy Chief May Soon Be Told
Has someone been sitting on the FBI?
Running Terrorism as a Business
World leaders: War on terrorism must be global
In Bush's Words: Nations Must Resist 'Decisively and Collectively'

ACTIVISTS
Anti-Koodankulam Struggle Launched!
Chelsea protests anti-war procession
Anti-Nuke Activists Protest Shipment




-------- NUCLEAR

Pentagon doubts nuclear claims

news.com.au
From AFP in Washington
11nov01

THE Pentagon doubts Islamist militant leader Osama bin Laden has nuclear weapons.

"We do take seriously what he has said in past about trying to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons," Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Lapan said.

"We don't have any credible information that he has obtained nuclear weapons."

Bin Laden, the chief US suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, told the Dawn, a Pakistani daily, in an interview published today that he had nuclear and chemical weapons and was prepared to use them against the US if the US used chemical or nuclear weapons against him.

------

Scientists Say They Met bin Laden

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Pakistan-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Two retired nuclear scientists who were recently arrested and questioned have acknowledged that they met terror suspect Osama bin Laden at least twice this year, Pakistani investigators said Sunday.

Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid left their senior positions at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission about two years ago and established a relief organization in Afghanistan.

The men said they met bin Laden at least twice during visits to Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar in connection with the construction of a flour mill, according to a Pakistani official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mehmood heads Tameer-e-Ummah, or the Nation Building, a private group involved in rehabilitating war-ravaged Afghanistan. Majid also worked for the aid group.

The scientists were arrested Oct. 23 and questioned about their work in Afghanistan. They were released after a few days in detention, only to be arrested again a couple of days later.

They were questioned by both Pakistani and U.S. investigators, the Pakistani official said.

Neither man has been charged with any offense, and Pakistani officials said there was nothing to suggest that the men passed on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan.

In a newspaper interview published Saturday, bin Laden claimed he had acquired nuclear and chemical weapons and would unleash them if the United States used such weapons against him.

U.S. officials have said that bin Laden has attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction but that they have no information to suggest he has been successful.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until the Sept. 11 terror attacks, supported Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement. The Taliban have harbored bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, suspected in the attacks on New York and Washington.

But Pakistan insists it has not leaked nuclear information or material, and that its nuclear weapons remain well protected.

``Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status,'' President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday at the United Nations in New York. ``Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and are in safe hands.''

Musharraf is a key partner in the U.S.-led military campaign to root out bin Laden and al-Qaida and defeat the Taliban.

------

AIR CAMPAIGN
Rumsfeld Says U.S. Bombed Suspected Weapons Sites

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Military.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Osama bin Laden likely has some chemical or biological weapons, and U.S. forces have bombed some sites in Afghanistan that could have been involved in producing them, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.

Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials said they doubt bin Laden's al-Qaida network has a nuclear weapon, as bin Laden told a Pakistani journalist in a recent interview.

``I think it's unlikely that they have a nuclear weapon, but on the other hand, with the determination they have, they may very well,'' Rumsfeld said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''

The defense secretary and other officials said they were worried, however, that al-Qaida network could have weapons of mass destruction that possibly include radiological weapons -- mixtures of conventional explosives and nuclear material designed to spread radiation without a nuclear detonation.

``We have every intelligence operation practically in the world on the problem of al-Qaida and the Taliban and their weapons of mass destruction at this point,'' the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said on ABC's ``This Week.''

The United States has identified several sites in Afghanistan where al-Qaida may have been producing weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld said. Some of them have been bombed, some of have not and others have not been found, he said.

``If we had good information on a chemical or biological development area, we would do something about it,'' Rumsfeld said on CBS. ``It is not an easy thing to do. We have every desire in the world to prevent the terrorists from using these capabilities.''

Getting information that a site may be producing weapons of mass destruction ``faces you with a situation, are you best taking it out or are you best learning more about it,'' Rumsfeld said earlier on ``Fox News Sunday.''

The New York Times reported Sunday that the United States had identified three possible chemical or biological weapons sites in Afghanistan used by al-Qaida, and had avoided bombing them.

President Bush has said the anti-Taliban northern alliance should not take over the Afghan capital of Kabul, preferring to wait for a broad-based, post-Taliban government can be formed. Rumsfeld said that was important to encourage anti-Taliban resistance by some tribes of the Taliban's Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan's south.

The northern alliance is largely made up of Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, not Afghanistan's main Pashtun ethnic group.

``We need them to oppose the Taliban, so they will have a voice in post-Taliban business,'' Rumsfeld said.

An official with the northern alliance said Sunday that ``it would be ideal'' if a broad coalition of all ethnic groups could come together before Kabul is taken. Abdullah, the opposition's foreign minister, said the alliance already includes some Pashtun forces.

The United States has had difficulty recruiting anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan's south. The Taliban captured and executed opposition Pashtun figure Abdul Haq last month, for example.

Besides, Rumsfeld said, ``Kabul is not the military prize of prizes.'' The Taliban's capital is in the southern city of Kandahar, and Kabul has been so devastated by two decades of war that its 1 million people will need immediate humanitarian aid when the city changes hands, Rumsfeld said.

``The real prize of prizes is the Taliban leadership and the al-Qaida leadership and the al-Qaida fighting forces and the Taliban fighting forces,'' Rumsfeld said. ``And they are not, for the most part, in Kabul.''

Anti-Taliban forces have control of the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, but are facing pockets of resistance from Taliban and al-Qaida forces, as well as foreign Taliban supporters, Rumsfeld said. The city's main airport is not yet completely secured by the northern alliance, he said.

Taliban convoys are streaming out of the city and are being attacked by the U.S. from the air and by the northern alliance from the ground, Rumsfeld said. More than 200 Taliban fighters were killed in the fighting around Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.

The northern alliance also is ``putting pressure'' on the cities of Herat in the northwest and Taloqan in the northeast, Rumsfeld said. Northern alliance forces said Sunday they had captured Taloqan, their former headquarters; the Taliban denied that claim.

Rumsfeld and Rice echoed comments by Bush, who has said he believes al-Qaida would use any chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons it has.

``They are not worried about loss of life,'' Rumsfeld said.

He said that even if al-Qaida has biological or chemical agents, it may lack the expertise to use them.

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Qaida has access to crude chemical weapons such as chlorine and phosgene poison gases, but not more complex weapons such as sarin.

-------- india

Russia shrugs off nuclear ban to seal deal with India

Asia Times
November 10, 2001
By Ranjit Devraj
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

NEW DELHI - By this week finalizing a deal that was conceived 13 years ago to help India design and build two large nuclear power reactors, Russia has broken an international boycott on the transfer of nuclear equipment imposed as punishment when New Delhi first exploded a nuclear device almost 30 years ago. Concluded in Moscow during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's November 4-7 visit, the deal facilitates the construction of two reactors for a US$3 billion power station at Kudankulam village on the coast of southern Tamil Nadu, expected to generate , 2000 MW of power.

Under the deal, Russia will design the plant and supply 90 percent of the equipment and materials. Construction of Kudankulam-1 is scheduled to start within months, with the reactor going online in December 2007. Kudankulam-2 is due to begin operating in 2008. The plant will consist of two standard high-pressure VVER 1,000 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors that will produce 1,000 MW of power per unit. The uranium used in the reactors will be 4.2 to 4.3 percent enriched and will be supplied by, and returned to, Russia after it is burned.

While the international boycott slowed down India's ambitious nuclear program, it by no means halted it, either for the production of power or for defense, as demonstrated by a second round of tests in May 1998.

India is not a signatory to the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not accept "full-scope" inspections of its nuclear facilities by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), established in 1975, of which Russia is a member, prohibits the export of nuclear technology to countries which do not accept full-scope safeguards.

Indeed, soon after the administration of President George W Bush took over `1earlier this year, it demanded that Russia stop supplying nuclear fuel to reactors at the Tarapore power plant near Mumbai, although the plant observes full IAEA safeguards and was in fact originally installed by the US power giant General Electric in 1969.

The US stopped supplies of nuclear fuel for the reactors after 1974, but India kept the reactors running by sourcing fuel from France and China, as well as from Russia which kept up supply even after the 1998 nuclear tests. According to the Indian Express newspaper, Russia supplied 58 tonnes of low enriched uranium for Tarapore this year. The paper described it as "rare evidence that Moscow is prepared to defy Washington when it comes to its own strategic and business interests and its special relationship with New Delhi".

Leading anti-nuclear and environmental groups such as Greenpeace International have charged the Indian government with maintaining close links between its nuclear energy and its nuclear weapons program. "It was technology acquired by India, ostensibly to generate nuclear electricity, that was used in the 1974 nuclear weapons test and subsequent tests in 1998," says Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner Ben Pearson.

When the US passed its non-proliferation act in 1978, specifying that nuclear reactors cannot be exported to countries that do not observe full-scope safeguards, it was guided by Congressional findings that US technology may have contributed to India's 1974 nuclear tests.

Russia appears unconcerned by charges that India's nuclear power and weapon programs are linked. Last October, Russian President Vladmir Putin even visited the Bhabha Atomic Research Center near Mumbai, which played a key role in "weaponization". And some years back, the then head of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom, Yevgeny Adamov, said Russia's motivation for proceeding with the nuclear energy pact with India was "because we need the money, we need the work ... we will not be pressured to reject such commercial projects because we must earn our keep".

The conclusion of the Kudankulam deal this week has not so far evoked any reaction from Washington, and the Hindu newspaper's analyst C Raja Mohan has speculated that it might even serve as a cue for Washington to review its policy on non-cooperation with India in the civilian nuclear energy sector.

Since the US favors designating nuclear power as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol, it could end up losing out to Russia in partnering India's stated goal of stepping up nuclear power generation capacity to 20,000 MW by the year 2020 from the present 2,280 MW.

The Kudankulam project is being implemented under an Inter-Governmental Agreement signed between India and the Russian Federation, represented by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Atomstroyexport. Russia will extend by way of credit 54 percent of total expenditure of the project at 4 percent interest repayable in 14 equal installments, one year after the commissioning of the plant.

The NPCIL will manage the project. It is a wholly-owned government enterprise under the administrative control of the Department of Atomic Energy. It undertakes the design, construction, operation and maintenance of the country's atomic power stations for generation of electricity.

Atomstroyexport was born in 1998 as the legal successor of Atomenergoexport and Zarubezhatomenergostroy, a specialized foreign trade export-import association and an industrial association, respectively, that had previously given technical assistance to other countries in the development of their atomic energy programs, both in the era of the former Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. It is also developing projects in China and Iran.

The project was the brainchild in 1988 of then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Since then, Russia has been urged to finalize the pact. But a section of officials at India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) strongly opposed it. And the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union delayed the project. It was not clear then whether the project would be taken up by Ukraine or the Russian Federation. Initially, the designers of the project were Ukranians. Later, the Russian Federation took up the project.

Some officials of the DAE argued that a nuclear energy pact would serve only to benefit the Russian nuclear industry. "Nuclear power generation in India has not succeeded because it requires stable grids. The existing grids in the country cannot handle the output of a 1000 MW unit from Kudankulam. So there is no logic in going ahead with the deal," one senior DAE official was quoted as saying. Opponents also said that the Kudankulam project would harm India's autonomous nuclear program, breaking the country's control of the nuclear fuel cycle and creating unnecessary dependency. Another reason for the delay was pressure from the US, with senior officials, including former president Bill Clinton, publicly saying that the move was "not good news".

India's total electricity generation capacity last year was estimated at 454 billion kilowatt-hours. Of this, 79 percent is conventional thermal; 18 percent hydroelectric and only 2 percent nuclear. India's nuclear power program currently has 14 operating reactors, including two boiling water reactors (BWR) and 12 pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWR). Nuclear power units in India operated at an average capacity factor (plant load factor) of 79 percent during the first half of the financial year 2001-2002.

While India has steadfastly refused to accept international safeguards for its indigenously-built nuclear facilities, it accepts full-scope controls for facilities built with foreign collaboration. Opposition to the building of the Kudankulam power station is now largely confined to local activists who have been organizing demonstrations against the project in the coastal village. According to the activists, the project has all the makings of another Chernobyl (the Soviet Union accident of 1986) and is being pushed through without making environmental, seismological or epidemiological assessments in a heavily populated, poverty-stricken area of the country.

However, located 25 kilometers northeast of Kanyakumai, Kudankulam is considered by the government to be the safest place to set up such a nuclear project, as the region falls in seismic zone 2, where there are no active faults in the vicinity, nor any major lakes or dams to cause induced seismic activity. And being right on the coast of the Gulf of Mannar, surrounded by the Indian Ocean on one side and the Bay of Bengal on the other, the site has a plenty of sea water for condenser cooling and dilution of effluents. The area is also not subject to severe cyclonic storms or tidal waves.

Further, all land for the plant has been acquired, and site investigation, including hydrological surveys and micro-seismic studies, have been completed, says the NPCIL.

-------- missile defense

Rice Plays Down Chance of Immediate ABM Accord

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice played down prospects Sunday for a framework agreement to settle a dispute over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty when President Bush meets Russian President Vladimir Putin this week.

Bush and Putin, headed into their fourth series of meetings since June, will talk this week in Washington and at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

U.S. officials have said the two could reach an agreement on unilateral reductions in nuclear missile stockpiles, which could in turn lead to progress on the big irritant in U.S.-Russian relations -- Bush's demand that the 1972 ABM Treaty be scrapped to allow U.S. testing of a missile defense system.

Asked on the ABC program ``This Week'' if Bush and Putin could reach a framework agreement on the ABM treaty at the meetings, Rice said: ``I would not look for any particular agreement at any particular time.''

The United States hopes an agreement on missile cuts will help persuade Russia to go along with scrapping the ABM treaty, which forbids missile defense testing and is considered by Bush to be a Cold War relic.

Washington wants to proceed with testing but the Pentagon on Oct. 25 announced it was postponing tests it had planned in October and November to avoid violating the ABM treaty while it tries to strike a deal with Moscow

Putin has said Russia's position on the ABM treaty was flexible but cutting a deal with the United States would require tough talks.

With the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States serving to bring the two leaders closer together, Rice said the United States and Russian had made progress on a ``very different kind of relationship'' and the summit would focus on counterterrorism as well as the nuclear issue.

``The president's been very clear that our purpose here is to change the nature of the relationship with the Russians. That includes changing the nature of the nuclear relationship,'' she said on ``This Week.''

``They will undoubtedly discuss the importance of strategic offensive force reductions which the president, all the way back in the campaign, said needed to be made because we have numbers that are too high for current deterrent trends.

``We will also talk with the Russians about how to move beyond the ABM treaty. But we're not looking to any specific agreement at any specific time.''

---

Missile Defense on Russia, US Agenda

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Russia-Bushs-Goals.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, President Bush hopes he can overcome Russian objections to his missile defense plans with promises of new cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

What the two presidents can accomplish the next day at Bush's Texas ranch -- over a chuck-wagon picnic with crooning cowboys -- is less tangible, but perhaps more important to Bush's war on terrorism and his broader agenda for U.S.-Russia relations.

As national security adviser Condoleezza Rice put it, Bush and Putin are steadily building ``a relationship that is very, very good, and also normal,'' where issues can be addressed without the high-stakes negotiations that were the hallmark of the Soviet era.

On Bush's wish list for his three days with Putin are several issues, both long-range and immediate, that could benefit from the personal friendship and trust that Bush hopes to cultivate in a mix of formal White House talks and down-home hospitality at his 1,600-acre ranch in central Texas:

--Unflinching Russian support in the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida terrorist network and its allies in Afghanistan's ruling Taliban.

Putin has called the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks a common enemy and vowed to help the United States ``fight this evil.''

Putin said in a weekend interview that Russia has supplied the United States with air corridors and ``very valuable intelligence information,'' as well as ``tens of millions dollars worth of military-technical assistance'' to Afghan opposition forces fighting the Taliban.

Andrew Kuchins, Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned that ``if the United States wanted to take the military efforts outside Afghanistan, especially Iraq or Iran, our nascent partnership with Russia is going to get pretty complicated pretty fast.'' There are also signs that a U.S.-Russia squabble over the political configuration of any post-Taliban Afghanistan could be in the offing.

--A deal to begin reducing warheads on each side.

Bush will present to Putin the results of a nuclear strategy review by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and announce plans to send two-thirds of America's stockpiled nuclear warheads to the scrap heap.

The idea is that, if the American arsenal fell below 2,000 -- to roughly match the 1,500 that would be left in Russia's stockpile under Putin's cost-savings plans -- then the Russians might rest easy that any American missile shield is not meant as a weapon against Russia. Each side currently has about 6,000 warheads.

--Further softening of Russian opposition to U.S. missile defense.

Whether it happens this week or further down the road, experts monitoring U.S.-Russia talks expect Bush and Putin to arrive at some sort of accomodation on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. One approach could be to interpret the treaty to permit testing of a system to protect the United States and its allies from missiles launched by Iraq, North Korea or other rogue states. Such an agreement would forestall for years the question of what to do with the treaty when it bumps up against actual deployment of a U.S. missile shield.

On the other hand, a senior White House official said Sunday that Bush is expected to announce his nuclear reduction target Tuesday but that it's possible he and Putin will not reach agreement on the ABM. One real possibility, the official said, is that Bush and Putin agree to disagree on the treaty -- meaning Bush would give notice that the U.S. is pulling out of the treaty, the official said, and Putin would indicate that the move would not damage U.S.-Russian relations.

Putin said in the interview that he was very optimistic a compromise could be found.

``We know the president's view that strategic offensive weapons can and must be reduced. This is a compromise in the right direction,'' Putin said.

Bush will forge ahead with or without agreement.

--Tight control over the nuclear and other weapons material lying around Russia, some 40,000 tons of chemical weapons and enough plutonium and uranium for an estimated tens of thousands of nuclear bombs.

``If even a minuscule fraction of Russia's nuclear weaponry, material or expertise leaked out of the country, it would be a bonanza for state or terrorist organizations that might do us harm,'' said Karl F. Inderfuth, President Clinton's assistant secretary of State for South Asian affairs.

--A change of heart on stricter weapons sanctions against Iraq.

Russia, which has billions of dollars at stake in Iraq's oil industry, is the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to oppose a Bush administration plan for making international sanctions against Iraq less onerous for Iraqi civilians and more effective in blocking imports that could be used by Iraq's military. Rice said America will not back off. ``The United States does not intend to let the Iraqis threaten their own people, threaten their neighbors, or threaten our interests,'' she said.

This summit was carefully designed to encourage dialogue between two world powers and warmth between two men.

Bush, Putin and their respective national security teams meet at the White House on Tuesday morning. The presidents then, over lunch with senior advisers, address economic and business issues before participating in a joint press conference.

Wednesday and Thursday offer private time at Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch, where Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, will bunk in a guest house adjacent to the Bushes' home. Laura Bush has meticulously planned a colorful dinner for Wednesday night: a chuck wagon on the lawn; cowboys cooking beef tenderloin and pecan pie; and a Texas swing band singing western songs like ``Drifting Along with the Tumbling Tumbleweeds.''

Mrs. Bush said she and her husband aim to build a strong relationship with the Putins -- ``especially now, when our friendship with so many countries, our alliance with so many countries in our fight against terrorism is so important.''

---

Missile Defense Strikes Back

November 11, 2001
By JEFF STEIN
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/books/review/11STEINT.html?searchpv=nytToday

The case for a trillion-dollar missile defense system would seem to have collapsed on Sept. 11. In the time it took for suicide bombers to fly into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, it seemed instantly clear that even the most sophisticated antimissile missile system would have been worthless against hijacked domestic passenger jets. Or pretending for a moment that a missile shield could be made to work -- at any cost -- how would it cope with anthrax?

Questions of nuclear strategy would seem laughably passe now -- if they weren't so serious. But with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan very much in play, and Iran and Iraq engaged in their own arms race, readers who've been emptying bookstores in search of instant wisdom on low-tech terrorism and early Islam would be wise to pick up ''Hit to Kill'' and ''The Unfinished Twentieth Century,'' thoughtful but very different books that, taken together, tell how we got into this nuclear mess and how we might get out of it.

The single most important proponent of missile defenses, in any event, thinks the case for perfecting rockets to knock out incoming missiles is still strong. ''Envision a world in which a terrorist thug and/or a host nation might have the ability to develop -- to deliver a weapon of mass destruction via rocket,'' President Bush urged last month. ''At the very least it should be in our nation's advantage to determine whether we can shoot it down.''

''Whether,'' of course, is still the big question, as Bradley Graham ably shows in ''Hit to Kill.'' No one said it would be easy, but after the billions of dollars spent since 1962 trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, critics have earned the right to raise questions. Missile defense, of course, is not just rocket science, as Graham, a tenacious military and foreign affairs reporter for The Washington Post , recounts with resolute evenhandedness; it has far-reaching military, diplomatic and economic ripples as well. But what's astonishing in his tale is how much the quest for a missile shield remains, as Bill Clinton put it, ''a matter of theology, not evidence'' for its mostly Republican proponents.

Graham aptly starts his story where many disciples first get Star Wars religion, in the darkened command center of the North American Aerospace Defense complex inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. On a global radar screen, visiting officials get to see a glowing dot rising in the Far East -- a simulated North Korean missile launch. As the warhead floats toward the United States, most people naturally ask how it'll be stopped. When they learn there's no way, they leave shaken. That was the show that hooked the presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980. George W. Bush got the fever from Reagan back then, he told Graham in an interview last summer. ''I don't think I'd really focused on missile defense until Ronald Reagan brought up Star Wars.''

Graham pushes the story through seemingly every study, commission and political fight from the mid-1980's through the Clinton administration, which had about as much enthusiasm for missile defense as it did welfare reform. In the end, Clinton kept the program alive because he calculated that letting it die would be politically dangerous, which is saying a lot for a $60 billion idea.

Graham finds some lovable rogues to blow needed air into his story, like Gen. Larry Welch of the Air Force, a missile proponent who battled political pressures that created a ''rush to failure'' in the tests, and Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, who served as chairman of a hardheaded 1995 commission that destroyed the C.I.A.'s mushy reports on enemy missile threats. Then there are the missile scientists themselves, who often seem only grown-up versions of the rocket-shooting boys in the movie ''October Sky.'' It's easy to feel their pain when yet another test goes awry.

But Graham gives too little voice to crusty skeptics like Gen. Charles Krulak of the Marines and Gen. Hugh Shelton of the Army, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who winced at the billions thrown at Star Wars at the expense of better equipping and training ordinary troops. ''Do you really think North Korea would send a missile?'' Krulak barks. ''We'd vaporize them. They would never get a missile off.'' How refreshing: a hawk's argument for missile-defense doves.

But even if a shield were perfected -- a subject that is part of the backdrop to the three-day meeting between Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia scheduled for this week -- Moscow and Washington may well cling to just enough missiles to guarantee ''mutually assured destruction,'' which could destroy all life itself.

That prospect chills Jonathan Schell, who became sort of a poet laureate of the nuclear freeze movement in the late 1970's and 80's, offering eloquent arguments about the psychology of weapons and the inevitablity of their use when they are in hand, whether in a Vietnamese hamlet or a high-tech bunker in Cheyenne Mountain. Terror ''became the lingua franca of 20th-century politics,'' he writes, from poison gas in the trenches of 1914-18 to the wholesale bombing of cities in World War II to nuclear doctrine now.

It wasn't supposed to be this way after the giddy days of Gorbachev and Reagan, when the whiff of disarmament was in the air. But, Schell writes, the ''startling fact is that nuclear arms control is faring worse in a world without the Soviet Union than it did in the last days of the cold war.''

In the context of current events, ''Hit to Kill'' already seems like distant history, a maddening chronicle of Washington fiddling while South Asia burns. One need not entirely agree with Schell that ''if in the early 1990's the existing nuclear powers had committed themselves to the elimination of nuclear weapons and had by 1998 traveled some of the distance to that goal, it is hard to believe that South Asia would be engaged in a nuclear arms race today.'' But his somber plea for the major nuclear powers to adopt an abolitionist agenda before the minor nuclear players do us all in, written well before Sept. 11 shattered our false sense of security, comes freighted with a poignant urgency.

Jeff Stein is the author, with Khidhir Hamza, of ''Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda.''

---- pakistan

Pak nukes not ready to be fired: president

The News International
Sunday November 11, 2001
By our correspondent
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>

NEW YORK: President Pervez Musharraf has revealed that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not ready to be fired, they are not mated, they are geographically apart and they are not in a condition in which a button has to be pressed to fire them.

In an interview with Ted Koppel of ABC Television in New York, the president said on a confidence rating of 100, he would place their safety at 90. " I would certainly give it over 90. I am very sure of it, although I know there are apprehensions around the world. But I'm extremely sure ofnothing of the sort. They are in very secure hands."

Asked about the warnings he gave about the consequences throughout the Muslim world if, indeed, the bombing campaign in Afghanistan continues throughout Ramadan, President Musharraf said: "I can't be very positive about it, but I said that it will have negative effects in the Muslim world. Now, I don't think it's going to be such that to take it over-seriously, but it will have a negative effect."

General Musharraf said he would like to talk to President Bush on the issue of terrorism in general, and the operation in Afghanistan in particular, and - in all its perspectives - the military and political and rehabilitation perspective. "And then I would like to very surely get involved in our national interests - Pakistan's national interests, domestic interests. And that is the area of focus that I would like to really keep.

Q: Economic, political, military, vis-a-vis India, all of those things?

A: Economic is the base. Q: Where do things stand at the moment in terms of the restructuring of Pakistan's debt?

A: We have got a lot of promises, but the substance has yet to come.

Q: And the lifting of the embargo, the lifting of the sanctions?

A: Embargoes and sanctions have been lifted. But on the lifting of sanctions, also, I would like to talk to the president, that the waiver has been given to the president, and I would suggest to him that this arrangement should be long-term.

Q: Any particular message that you would like to convey to the Americanpeople now that you are here, in what is really - you know, six months ago you would not have been welcomed with the same open arms that you're greeted with today. Is there anything you would like to convey to the American public?

A: Well, I would like to convey to them that I come to United States with a resolve and with a conviction to fight terrorism with them all around the world.

Speaking about the demonstrations in Pakistan, President Musharraf said they were very small all over the country. "And this is one of the most remote areas near Darashmahan (ph) that some students from an extremist madrassa, being run by one of the extremist religious parties, they came out. Otherwise, in the rest of the country, there were hardly any sizable demonstrations.

Q: How nervous were you about leaving? I mean, sometimes, as they say, when the cat's away, the mice will play. Are you concerned about some of your opponents taking advantage of your absence?

A: If I was concerned, I wouldn't be out. It's too serious an issue. I wouldn't have come out at all. I wasn't concerned. I know everything is all right. The military is behind me, and political situation is absolutely all right (inaudible).

Q: I was told - and I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but you would - that, in anticipation of being out of the country, you took particular precautions with regard to your nuclear installations and your nuclear weapons. Is that true?

A: No, I didn't take any particular precautions. The precautions are in place. We have very strong custodial controls, and a command and control system which is very effective. I didn't issue any special orders as such.

--------

Pakistan's nukes in 'safe hands'

From AFP at the United Nations
11nov01
http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3228869%255E15574,00.html

PAKISTAN'S nuclear arsenal is in "safe hands", President Pervez Musharraf said, rejecting concern that its weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists or radical Islamic groups.

"Our strategic assets are very well guarded and in very safe hands," Musharraf said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he also expressed concern about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

He said Pakistan had instituted an elaborate nuclear command and control mechanism "for iron-clad custodial controls to ensure the safety and security of all our assets".

Concern over the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has mounted, particularly in the West, since Islamabad pledged to support the US war in Afghanistan targeting terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

Pakistani officials have repeatedly insisted the country's nuclear arsenal is safe, despite observers' concerns about political instability and a rise of radical Islam in the country.

Musharraf's speech in the high-profile venue of the United Nations appeared designed to quell those fears, even though many analysts have already argued that Islamabad's arsenal is secure.

Before his meeting with President George W. Bush later today, Musharraf also expressed concern about civilian casualties in the US-led war in Afghanistan.

"The operation against terrorists in Afghanistan continues with no immediate end in sight," he said.

"Sadly enough the civilian casualties in this action are getting projected more as an open war against the already poor, suffering and innocent people in Afghanistan."

"The world in general and Pakistan in particular mourns the loss of those innocent lives and sympathises with the bereaved," Musharraf said, adding that the world must launch a massive relief effort for Afghan refugees.

But he fell short of previous statements in which he had called for a halt of US bombing of Afghanistan during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, which this year begins November 17.

Musharraf assured delegates Pakistan was a responsible nuclear state.

"Pakistan is also deeply conscious of the nuclear dimension of the security environment of our region, the danger it poses and the responsibility it places on nuclear weapons states -- particularly the two nuclear states in South Asia."

He argued Pakistan was not interested in a nuclear arms race and noted arch-rival India upped the stakes in the region when it first resumed nuclear weapons tests in 1998, prompting Islamabad to follow suit.

"Pakistan is opposed to an arms race in South Asia, be it nuclear or conventional. We will maintain deterrence at the minimum level."

In a speech in which he swiped at India over the disputed region of Kashmir, Musharraf nevertheless said Pakistan was ready to open talks with its neighbour on reducing tensions.

"We are ready to discuss how Pakistan and India can create a stable South Asian security mechanism through a peaceful resolution of disputes, preservation of nuclear and conventional balance, confidence building measures and non-use of force prescribed by the UN charter," he said.

-------

Pakistan Moves Nuclear Weapons
Musharraf Says Arsenal Is Now Secure

By Molly Moore and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9038-2001Nov10?language=printer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10 -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of the country's nuclear arsenal to at least six secret new locations and has reorganized military oversight of the nuclear forces in the weeks since Pakistan joined the U.S. campaign against terrorism, according to senior officials here.

Pakistan's military began relocating critical nuclear weapons components within two days of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, fearful of possible strikes against the country's nuclear facilities, military officials said. Another reason for the movement, officials added, was to remove them from air bases and corridors that might be used by the United States in an attack on Afghanistan.

Musharraf also created a new Strategic Planning Division within the nuclear program, headed by a three-star general to oversee operations. This decision, not previously disclosed, was part of the shuffle of top military and intelligence leaders just hours before the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began on Oct. 7. The shake-up was designed to sideline officers considered too sympathetic to the Taliban or other extremist religious factions, officials said.

Musharraf's actions were part of an effort to tighten security around Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in the face of widespread concerns that nuclear devices or fissile material could be vulnerable to attack or theft.

In addition, the changes were intended to help keep control of the nuclear program out of the hands of religious hard-liners in the military if Musharraf is assassinated or ousted from office, officials said.

"Nukes everywhere are susceptible to hijacking," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physics professor at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University and one of the few vocal anti-nuclear activists in Pakistan. "There are special dangers here."

Although Pakistan's nuclear program remains one of the world's most secretive, the country is believed to have the materials to assemble between 30 and 40 warheads and has test-fired intermediate-range missiles that potentially could be used to launch them, according to intelligence reports and nuclear experts.

Pakistan and India, both nuclear powers, have fought three conventional wars, two of them over the contentious Kashmir border region. Both Pakistan and India tested underground nuclear devices in 1998, and the two countries are viewed by many security experts as the globe's most worrisome nuclear flashpoint. An escalation of attacks across the Kashmir border just over two years ago underscored the dangers between the distrustful neighbors.

Pakistani fears of an Indian attack on its nuclear sites were so great in the summer of 1999, after Pakistani-supported guerrillas invaded Indian territory, that military officers here secretly contacted Taliban officials about the possibility of moving some nuclear assets west to neighboring Afghanistan for safekeeping, according to a recently retired Pakistani general officer familiar with the talks.

"The option was actively discussed with the Taliban after some indications emerged that India may open hostilities at the eastern border," the official said. "The Taliban accepted the requests with open arms."

The official also said the talks were "exploratory" and that no nuclear-related assets were placed in Afghanistan. At the time, Pakistan's military and intelligence services had close relations with the Taliban, providing training, weapons and other support.

Concerned that the 1999 flare-up could lead to full-scale war between India and Pakistan, President Bill Clinton intervened, inviting Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister at the time, to the White House for a July 4 meeting.

Musharraf, who ousted Pakistan's civilian government in a nonviolent coup six months later, now controls the nuclear weapons program more by virtue of his position as army chief of staff than his title as president. Pakistan's nuclear program has always been under the control of the military, which has often hidden the most basic details of the program from civilian leaders.

Since agreeing to assist the United States in the military and anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, Musharraf has remained solidly in control of Pakistan and its military. Speaking today before the U.N. General Assembly, he sought to reassure the world that his country's nuclear arsenal was secure.

"Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status," Musharraf said. "Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and in safe hands."

But some military leaders and political analysts have expressed concern about whether his grip will weaken if the conflict in Afghanistan continues. Pakistan in the past 25 years has endured two military coups, four dismissed governments and an attempted coupagainst the top civilian and military leadership.

After the 1998 tests, Pakistan's civilian prime minister, Sharif, had promised to set up a national command authority over the nuclear arsenal, but his efforts stalled over over what role the army would allow civilian authorities to play, Pakistani officials said.

With Musharraf's coup and military control over the country in 1999, the question of civilian control became moot. In February 2000, Musharraf established the National Command Authority over the nuclear program.

Last month he further tightened oversight, creating the new division to handle the daily operations and control of the nuclear program, officials said.

Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who answers directly to Musharraf, is now directing the operational security of the country's nuclear sites and weapons. Military officials said he has increased the number of troops and antiaircraft batteries guarding sensitive locations, and has supervised the relocation of nuclear devices and potential delivery vehicles, such as missiles and aircraft.

Reports by the CIA and other sources say Pakistan stores its nuclear weapons devices and missiles separately. However, military officials here said that in emergency conditions, such as those of the past two months, equipment is repositioned to allow for rapid assembly. Pakistani officials said that in general the repositioning represented a dispersal of the materials, but details could not be learned.

Pakistani officials have dismissed recent reports of alleged U.S. contingency plans to seize Pakistan's nuclear devices in the event that Musharraf is overthrown or assassinated by religious extremists. "It would be an unmitigated disaster," said Mushahid Hussain, a ranking official in the Sharif government at the time of Pakistan's nuclear tests. "You would be talking about waging war on Pakistan," he said, adding that if the United States had sufficient intelligence to locate Pakistan's nuclear sites, "we wouldn't have built the bomb."

Still, for many Pakistanis, U.S. officials and international observers, one of the greatest concerns for the country's nuclear weapons program is the potential that extremist Islamic elements could either gain control of the nuclear weapons or materials, or share knowledge about them with hostile organizations or regimes.

"Both India and Pakistan have their own fundamentalists," Abdul Qadir Khan, the now-retired founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, said in an interview earlier this year. "This is a serious matter, and we don't want to take any chances that they could fall into the wrong hands."

Six years ago a group of Pakistani army officers, described at the time as holding "fanatic Islamic views," was arrested for plotting to overthrow then-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as well as the army chief of staff, Gen. Abdul Waheed. Waheed had angered extremist elements in the military when he fired the chief of Pakistan's intelligence service for providing covert military support to Muslim rebels in about a dozen countries.

Musharraf has likewise attempted to purge the military and intelligence services of officers he considers overly sympathetic to the Taliban and other extremist religious groups. He fired the country's top intelligence chief and reassigned other key officials two hours before the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan.

Another sign of anxiety over the nuclear program was the unusual arrest last month of three Pakistani nuclear scientists, including one of the country's most decorated nuclear experts.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who held key appointments in each of Pakistan's three most important nuclear facilities in a career that spanned nearly three decades and earned him the country's second-highest civilian award, remains under investigation by Pakistan's military intelligence services for alleged meetings with Taliban officials and Arab nationals during three visits to Kandahar, the birthplace and spiritual capital of the Taliban, according to an official familiar with the probe.

"The basic fact that Mahmood came in contact with some Arabs -- close to both [Taliban leader] Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden -- is enough to keep him under investigation," the official said.

Pakistani officials said that throughout his interrogation by senior military intelligence officials, Mahmood insisted that his contacts with Taliban ministers and two Arab nationals in Kandahar were related to the work of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau [Islamic Reconstruction], a relief agency he helped establish last year for building roads and other construction projects in Afghanistan.

The two other nuclear scientists who were arrested reportedly worked for the same charitable organization. One has been cleared of suspicion, while the other remains under investigation, officials said.

A Pakistani government official said last week that all three men had been cleared of any wrongdoing, but officials involved in the investigation said it is continuing.

"We would love to believe all . . . [Mahmood] says, but some questions like the satellite phone calls that he had received from Afghanistan in August this year are yet to be answered to our satisfaction," the official said. "It would still be premature to claim that Mahmood discussed his nuclear expertise with his foreign friends."

Under questioning, Mahmood indicated that he became disillusioned with the Pakistani government when the Inter-Services Intelligence agency recommended his transfer from the sensitive position of the director of plutonium production at the Khushab atomic reactor to a desk job in the spring of 1999, according to the official.

Senior Pakistani officials reportedly were concerned that Mahmood had been vocally advocating extensive production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium enrichment to help equip other Islamic nations with nuclear arsenals.

"Intelligence agencies had strongly recommended that it would be dangerous to allow Mahmood to hold a crucial appointment at the country's plutonium production facility," said a senior civilian official involved in Pakistan's nuclear program.

A family friend, who asked that his name not be used, said Mahmood felt betrayed by the government he had served for 28 years. The friend said that in a recent conversation, Mahmood told him that his knowledge about Pakistan's nuclear program was a state secret, but not his expertise on enriching uranium and producing weapons-grade plutonium.

Mahmood did not hide his personal views, which he articulated in numerous public speeches in the past several months, according to several associates.

Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Correspondent Pamela Constable and researcher Yesim Forsythe also contributed to this report.

------ russia

Putin Sees Chance for Accord on ABM Pact
Russian Suggests Parts Of Treaty Could Change

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9496-2001Nov10?language=printer

MOSCOW, Nov. 10 -- President Vladimir Putin, sounding an optimistic note on the eve of his first summit with President Bush in the United States, said there has been "movement toward a compromise" linking significant cuts in the two countries' nuclear arsenals with changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Without specifying the terms of an agreement, Putin indicated he was prepared to change certain aspects of the treaty to allow the Bush administration to proceed with testing for a missile defense system. But he said the United States has yet to present him with specific proposals.

Even so, he said, "I'm very optimistic." Linking arms cuts to a modified ABM Treaty, he added, "is the correct approach."

Looking ahead toward a strategic arms deal that seemed a remote possibility only a few months ago, Putin said he had not changed his view of the ABM Treaty as a "cornerstone of international security." But, he added, Russia has also come "to recognize the justified concerns of the United States."

One day before flying to Washington for the summit, Putin commented on the treaty during a wide-ranging interview at the Kremlin with The Washington Post and 10 other U.S. news organizations. For more than two hours, Putin also discussed such topics as the lessons of the failed Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the risk of Russia's overdependence on oil revenue. But he repeatedly returned to his central theme since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States -- that it is time for Russia to end its isolation from the West and become a "full-fledged member of the international community."

Putin denied that he expects "transient benefits" or concessions from the United States in exchange for Russia's cooperation. He again strongly backed the U.S.-led strikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, adding, "Terrorism must be eradicated, expunged, eliminated, and not just in Afghanistan but throughout the world."

Putin outlined several goals of his shift toward the West, including a relationship with NATO that would give Russia the chance to participate in the alliance's decision-making process. The current Russian relationship with NATO, he said, is based on an outdated joint permanent council, set up in 1997, that should be replaced.

"Today that body is insufficient to improve the quality of our relationship," Putin said, insisting that from now on Russia could promise to be "effective and energetic" in assisting NATO only if given a say in decisions before they were made. Russia is prepared to reconsider its previous opposition to NATO expansion to include the three former Soviet Baltic states, he added, but only if that, too, is linked to a significant improvement in Russia's relationship with NATO.

The key, he said, is "to look beyond the old Cold War cliches and adopt a new world outlook."

Even as he turns toward the West, Putin refused to renounce Russia's extensive dealings with several countries that the United States has condemned for seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, including North Korea and Iraq.

As for the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, Putin touted the "very valuable intelligence information" that Russia has contributed, along with "tens of millions of dollars" in weapons he said Russia has supplied to the Northern Alliance fighting the Taliban.

Referring to the Northern Alliance's capture of the key northern city of Mazar-e Sharif on Friday, Putin said, "The situation in Afghanistan has been developing as we expected. The Northern Alliance has launched the operations it was planning, and is now effectively taking the entire northern part of Afghanistan under control."

Commenting on accused terrorist Osama bin Laden's reported statement that he has weapons of mass destruction, Putin struck a cautious note. "I don't think we should exaggerate the existing danger. . . . At the same time it would be a mistake to understate the scope of the risk," he said, citing what he said were bin Laden's close ties to radical groups in Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons.

Putin also categorically denied that terrorists could obtain nuclear weapons originating in Russia or the former Soviet Union. "It's unlikely that the terrorists in Afghanistan have weapons of mass destruction," he said. "In any case, they can't be of Soviet or Russian origin, I'm absolutely sure of that."

Putin also argued that Russia's war against Islamic rebels in the breakaway republic of Chechnya is an important front in the war against international terrorism. He claimed that if the Russians were not fighting there, more radical Islamic "mercenaries" would head to Afghanistan to fight the Americans. Putin said more than 500 such "mercenaries" had been killed in Chechnya and that his intelligence data indicated that between 500 and 700 "Islamic terrorists" are fighting in the region.

Putin is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Monday. He plans to meet with Bush there at at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex.

-------- treaties

Russia Says Test Ban Impasse Could Bring Crisis

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-un-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, challenging U.S. objections, on Sunday warned of ``dangerous trends toward disrupting'' a global treaty banning nuclear tests and said this could lead to a crisis and the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons.

In strongly-worded statements to a U.N. conference that the Americans boycotted, Russian officials dismissed U.S. concerns that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would undermine the safety of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and they offered to develop new verification measures that go beyond treaty requirements.

In one statement, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow has always considered the treaty a ``most important instrument'' in limiting nuclear weapons and preserving strategic stability. He expressed concern the pact has not yet taken effect and urged its quick ratification by the United States and others.

In another statement, senior Russian official Igor Sergeyev said: ``There are dangerous trends toward disrupting (the treaty). This may result in a crisis of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime and an uncontained spread of the nuclear weapons.''

He did not mention the United States directly in this regard. Washington signed the pact, but it has not ratified it and the Bush administration, which refused to even send a representative to the conference, has said it had no plans to do so.

The aim of the conference is to review progress toward ratification of the CTBT, which would ban all nuclear blasts, whether in the atmosphere, in space or underground.

The pact was opened for signature in 1996. Since then 161 states have signed it and 85 of those ratified it.

Still, the treaty has not yet entered into force because it needs ratification by 44 states deemed nuclear arms-capable.

To date, 31 of those 44 countries including avowed nuclear powers France, Russia and Britain have signed and ratified the pact. So 13 more must ratify before it can take hold.

In that group, India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the treaty while the United States, China and eight others have signed but not ratified.

In his written statement distributed by the Russian mission to the U.N., Putin reaffirmed Russia's intention to stand by its nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation commitments and said this is why it ratified the CTBT promptly.

``We are convinced that both the early entry into force of the treaty and making it universal in nature meet the interests of the world community,'' he said.

CTBT skeptics say it is impossible to assure the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons without tests.

But Sergeyev said Russia is convinced ``present-day science and technology provide a sufficient set of measures to assure the realiability and safety of nuclear weapons.''

Opponents also say it is difficult if not impossible to verify the pact. Sergeyev said the verification regime being developed under the CTBT is unprecedented and makes it ``absolutely impossible to hide any violation of the treaty,''

Nevertheless, ``we are prepared to suggest, to the United States in the first place, considering the possibility to develop additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty provisions,'' he said.

This could include the exchange of geological data and results of certain experiments, installation of additional sensors and other measures, he added.

---

Russia, EU, Annan Press Test Ban Case

November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-un.html?searchpv=reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia, the European Union and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pleaded on Sunday for nations to ratify a global ban on nuclear testing as U.S. opposition posed a major obstacle to the pact's future.

In strong comments to a U.N. conference that was boycotted by the Americans, Russia challenged U.S. objections and warned that disrupting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty could lead to ''crisis'' and the ``uncontained spread of nuclear weapons.''

Moscow dismissed U.S. concerns the pact would threaten the safety of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and offered to work on new verification measures beyond treaty requirements.

Annan called the treaty, known as CTBT, a ``crucial element'' in the fight to keep nuclear weapons from terrorists -- a key U.S. goal since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

``The longer we delay its entry into force, the greater the risk that nuclear testing will resume -- and that in turn would make nonproliferation much harder to sustain,'' he said.

The United States did not attend the conference, which took place on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly annual meeting and drew many foreign ministers.

President Bush's administration has not formally explained its decision to stay away. The Pentagon, hoping to hasten the treaty's death, pressed for months for the United States to sit out the meeting.

The aim of the conference is to review progress toward ratification of the treaty, which would ban all nuclear blasts, whether in the atmosphere, in space or underground.

The pact was opened for signature in 1996. Since then, 161 states have signed it and 85 of those ratified it. The treaty has not yet entered into force because it needs ratification by 44 specific states deemed nuclear arms-capable.

To date, 31 of those 44 countries, including nuclear powers France, Russia and Britain, have signed and ratified the pact. Of the rest, India, Pakistan and North Korea have neither signed nor ratified the treaty, while the United States, China and eight others have signed but not ratified.

RUSSIA WANTS RATIFICATION

In one Russian statement, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow considered the treaty a ``most important instrument'' in limiting nuclear weapons and preserving strategic stability.

He expressed concern the pact had not yet taken effect and urged its quick ratification by the United States and others.

Putin said Moscow would stand by its nonproliferation commitments and that was why it ratified CTBT promptly.

Another senior Russian official, Igor Sergeyev, said: ''There are dangerous trends toward disrupting (the pact). This may result in a crisis of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime and an uncontained spread of the nuclear weapons.''

Some Bush aides say it is impossible to ensure the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons without testing.

Sergeyev said Russia was convinced computer simulators and other modern technology could satisfy that concern.

Critics also cite a verification problem. Sergeyev said the CTBT regime made it ``impossible'' to hide violations.

Still, ``we are prepared to suggest ... the possibility to develop additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges going far beyond the treaty provisions,'' he said.

That could include exchanges of geological data and results of certain experiments and installation of more sensors.

Sergeyev called it ``quite alarming'' that the test ban treaty challenge occurred at the same time as U.S. attempts to revise the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Reinforcing a common tone, the European Union expressed ''regret'' at the Bush administration's CTBT position and appealed to its American ally to reconsider its position.

Japan voiced ``concern'' the pact was not in force and said it was of ``paramount importance'' that nuclear-capable states continued a voluntary moratorium on tests.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was the first world leader to sign the CTBT. The Senate, then under Republican control, rejected it during the 2000 election.

Even before taking office in January, Bush, a Republican, made clear his CTBT opposition. Aides say he will abide by a 1992 test moratorium put in place by his father, former President George Bush.

Despite the impasse, a structure to monitor and verify CTBT is progressing. Plans call for a global network of 337 monitoring facilities, of which 121 have been constructed and upgraded. Ninety other stations are under construction.

--------

U.S. Boycotts U.N. Conference

New York Times
November 11, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-UN-Nuclear-Tests.html?searchpv=aponline

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A U.N. conference on speeding ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty opened Sunday -- without the United States, which reiterated last week that it did not support the pact.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by 161 nations and ratified by 84 of them, cannot take effect until all 44 countries that possess nuclear weapons or have nuclear power programs have signed or ratified the treaty.

Only 31 such nations, including Britain, France and Russia, have ratified the 1996 accord that bans nuclear tests in any environment. The United States is among 13 non-ratifiers.

Washington had signed the pact five years ago, but the Senate rejected the treaty in 1999. Opponents of the treaty say it is unenforceable.

The United States forced a vote last week in the U.N. Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the test ban accord.

At that session, the United States was the only nation to vote against the accord, while India and Pakistan -- both new nuclear nations that have not yet signed the treaty -- joined Russia, China, Britain and France in voted in its favor.

The United States was invited to attend Sunday's conference as an observer but decided not to go, State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said.

``The purpose of the conference is to promote ratifications of the treaty, and the administration has made clear that it has no plans to ask the Senate to reconsider its 1999 vote on this issue,'' she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the three-day conference Sunday by urging nations who haven't ratified to approve the pact. In a pointed allusion to the United States, Annan said some nations withholding ratification ``are states which themselves worked hard to conclude the treaty.''

``Now it is within their power to bring it into force,'' Annan said. ``I implore them to do so.''

Annan also stressed that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks show more than ever that the treaty is needed.

``Those events should have made it clear to everyone that we cannot afford further proliferation of nuclear weapons,'' he said.

Vice-Minister Miguel Marin Bosch of Mexico stressed the need to end the ``qualitative'' arms race. ``If you can't test, you can't improve, and if you can't improve, that means you can stop the nuclear arms race,'' he said.

The American boycott reveals ``U.S. contempt for its allies just one day after President Bush said he wanted the world to work together to stop terrorists getting these deadly weapons,'' Rebecca Johnson of the Institute for Disarmament and Diplomacy said.

India and Pakistan, which have nuclear weapons, and North Korea, which has an advanced nuclear program, have not signed the treaty, either.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer urged all three to sign and ratify it, and called on the United States and China to help move the treaty forward by doing the same.

Igor Sergeev, assistant to Russian President Vladimir Putin on strategic stability, called the pact's early entry into force ``the imperative of the time.''

He said Russia was prepared to suggest to the United States the possibility of developing additional verification measures for nuclear test ranges.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

USS Aviators Act As Choreographers

November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Ships.html?searchpv=aponline

ABOARD THE USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (AP) -- Minutes after takeoff, the jet fighter pilot radios that he's having problems with the hydraulic system that controls his landing gear and is heading back to his aircraft carrier.

On board, the sailors on the flight deck spring into action.

``Clear the deck. Man all stations,'' the air boss, Capt. Gay Galloway, instructs the men on flight deck.

The ``shooters,'' clad in distinctive yellow shirts, fling aircraft into the sky using the carrier's catapult system and make sure the pilots land safely on their return.

Despite a dozen phone calls in the space of a few minutes from senior officers inquiring about the jet, Galloway, a 43-year-old from Virginia Beach, Va., works calmly on the flight bridge that serves as the ship's control tower.

In the end, the pilot manage to land using backup hydraulics.

``We've got days when things run smoothly. Then, there are days when they don't,'' Galloway said Saturday, chuckling, a mug of fresh coffee in his hands.

For landing, known as recovery, the air boss and his deputy, the mini-boss, choreograph the planes so that the deck is free of aircraft as soon as possible. Shooters watch to make sure the jet's tailhook has caught one of the four thick cables stretched across the deck.

One mistake, one wrong signal, one malfunction can send the pilot and a $70 million aircraft into the sea.

``Everybody's pretty much equally responsible on the flight deck,'' said shooter Lt. Bill Schlemmer, 32, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. ``We just happen to be the last persons looking at the plane to make sure it's going to go flying. We have the final say whether it's going to go or not.''

Fully armed U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats, Marine F/A-18C Hornets, S-3B Viking tankers and the support surveillance planes taxi onto the four catapult launch pads with their wings, normally swept back to save space, fully extended.

The yellow shirts guide the pilots to position the aircraft. Before takeoff, they check that the flaps are working and that pilots are ready before the green-shirted ``hookup'' man runs forward, kneels beside the nose wheel and hooks the catapult to the aircraft.

Soon after, pilots turn on two 20,000-pound engines at full throttle and signal the shooter to push the button that sets the catapult in motion.

The pressure of the steam from the ship's two nuclear reactors hurls the plane 300 feet forward at a speed of 150 mph in two seconds.

Sometimes, if a launch is aborted, the shooter will walk in front of the jet while its engines are still at full power and signal the pilot to turn them off.

``We get in front of the airplane and the pilots know they are not going to get fired. They feel safe seeing us in front knowing they actually are not going to be launched inadvertently,'' said another shooter, Lt. Cmdr. Pat Cavanagh, 34, of Cleveland.

Schlemmer said he doesn't have time to think about the danger of walking in front of a roaring jet.

``You just want to do it soon as possible to get the pilot comfortable so that he isn't going to go flying,'' he said.

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

Nuclear Neighbors Generating Alarm
Some Residents Fear Area Plants Might Be Terrorist Targets

By Fredrick Kunkle and Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8853-2001Nov10?language=printer

The night the sirens went off at the North Anna nuclear power plant near Mineral, Va., Peggy Hairfield's eyes snapped open.

Her husband started awake, too. Lying there in bed, a few miles downwind of the nuclear plant, she tamped down panic and wondered: Is this the big one? A meltdown? An accidental release of deadly radiation?

The couple held hands. They tuned the clock radio to an emergency broadcasting network to see whether they should evacuate their home about 90 miles southwest of Washington.

But it was only a false alarm. Unable to find a babysitter, a dispatcher in the Louisa County sheriff's office had brought a child to work who accidentally triggered the sirens.

The next day, life returned to normal, and for 3 1/2 years, the nuke next door became an afterthought -- until Sept. 11. Now the worries have started all over.

"You think about it while you're lying there. You think: Am I going to wake up tomorrow? Or am I going to lie here and die? Then you try not to think about it till next time," said Hairfield, a clerk in Mineral's Town Office.

At least the sirens worked. Last week, even as nuclear plant operators and government officials were on high alert, two-thirds of the sirens around the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, about 55 miles from the District in Southern Maryland, failed during a test.

"I didn't hear one of them," Dale Maxwell said as he gassed up his car in nearby Lusby.

Neither did anyone else in Calvert County, including people who live closest to the plant. Of 72 sirens within 10 miles, all 49 in Calvert remained silent during the test at noon Monday. A computer glitch was blamed.

Nuclear power plants have been generating more than electricity since the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed, soon after hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some officials initially feared that a fourth plane could be bearing down on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pa. On Oct. 17, officials closed two nearby airports and scrambled fighter jets in response to a terrorist threat against TMI that was later deemed to be not credible.

Around TMI, scene in 1979 of the nation's worst nuclear power accident, that was enough for some residents to clamor for potassium iodide tablets, which block the body's absorption of radioactive iodine.

Lancaster County's Emergency Management Agency, which has stored enough tablets for emergency crews, has been referring callers to private labs.

"Some of the general public are concerned," said Randy Gockley, Lancaster County's emergency management coordinator. "The vast majority of people feel comfortable with the plants."

Maryland has one nuclear plant. Virginia has two, in Louisa and Surry counties, in central Virginia and Southside, respectively. Folks who live near them wonder what would happen if their nuclear neighbors became the next target.

Just last week, Rita Steele's 16-year-old grandson offered to build her an underground fallout shelter.

"Before, he would have never thought about it," said Steele, 50, who owns a bric-a-brac shop in Mineral. "Now, it even affects the kids, because they hear so much about it. It's scary."

Arms folded over a T-shirt that says, "Wherever I go, God goes with me," Steele said she has not given a lot of thought to what she would do, except get in a car and drive. She worries that radiation would spread too fast anyway.

"I'd probably try to get my nine dogs into the car. We probably wouldn't make it," she said.

Her neighbors are suddenly paying attention to calendars mailed out by the company that owns the North Anna plant that include detailed instructions on what to do in a crisis. The calendar lists evacuation centers, school evacuation procedures, escape routes and placards that residents can prop in their windows to show that they have exited their homes or need assistance to leave.

The calendar goes out to people in five counties surrounding the plant.

"I've been reading that, too, and this is the first year I've ever paid attention," said Pat Martin, who runs the Country Roads Cafe in Mineral.

For many, though, worry is an acceptable trade-off for facilities that provide more jobs than any other local business and pay at least 20 percent of the county's taxes. Others are simply fatalistic.

"If it blows up, it blows up," said Joseph Boggs Sr., whose home sits about a half-mile across Lake Anna from the plant.

One of the first to build on Lake Anna about 30 years ago, he's used to the low whine of the turbines coming across the glassy water like the hum of an air conditioner.

Boggs, who owns the Lake Anna Marina, said he also likes the way the lights from the plant play across the water at night.

"It's beautiful," he said.

There are 103 commercial nuclear power plants operating in 31 states. The day of the attacks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission urged all to go to Level III, its highest level of security.

The NRC also reassured the public that nuclear power plants are built to withstand extreme events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. But in a Sept. 21 news release, the agency also acknowledged that it had not contemplated attacks by airliners as big as the Boeing 767s that slammed into the twin towers.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Oct. 30 banned private aircraft below 18,000 feet and within 10 nautical miles of nuclear power plants. That order expired at midnight Tuesday.

In Virginia, Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) directed the National Guard and the state police to defend the state's nuclear plants. The Marine Resources Commission and the Game and Inland Fisheries Department are guarding waterways around the plants.

The North Anna plant, on the shore of man-made Lake Anna, has a capacity of 1,842 megawatts -- enough electricity to light a city the size of Albuquerque. The Surry nuclear power plant, with a 1,625-megawatt capacity, is on the James River across from historic Jamestown. Both are operated by Richmond-based Dominion Virginia Power, a division of Dominion Resources Inc. That company serves more than 2 million customers in Virginia and North Carolina.

Dominion intensified security before the NRC asked, said spokesman Richard Zuercher. Officials have conducted additional background checks on some employees. Media visits were banned. Public tours ceased.

But the plants -- ringed by razor wire, concrete barriers to thwart truck bombs and armed security guards -- were safe even before Sept. 11, Zuercher said.

The reactors and their cooling systems are below ground and encased in hardened structures, including a three-eighth-inch carbon steel liner. The domes -- whose shape is intended to minimize the impact from an aircraft crash -- are 2 1/2- to 3-foot-thick concrete reinforced with eight layers of steel bars.

Calvert Cliffs, operated by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group's nuclear division, also closed its visitors center, and jets from Patuxent River Naval Air Station have soared overhead on guard. But plant officials declined to say much else.

"We feel not discussing our security measures ourselves is in fact a security measure," plant spokesman Karl Neddenien said.

Neighbors worry about plans to reactivate the Cove Point liquefied natural gas plant, about two miles from Calvert Cliffs. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's go-ahead, announced Oct. 11, has drawn widespread criticism. U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D) has urged the commission to rethink the notion of allowing foreign tankers to haul the fuel up the Chesapeake Bay past the nuclear power plant. On Friday, the agency agreed to reconsider its approval in light of national security concerns.

"The closeness of the two facilities is a concern," said resident Leonard Addiss. "If one goes, the other goes with it."

-------- washington

Group mulls leaving some wastes

Hanford News
Sun, Nov 11, 2001
By John Stang
Herald staff writer
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1111.html

A proposal to leave behind some of Hanford's most dangerous wastes after cleanup is complete was met last week with a mix of skepticism, curiosity and sense of urgency.

The idea is to speed up cleanup of Hanford's tank farms by not glassifying some of the highly radioactive wastes buried in underground tanks.

The Hanford Advisory Board tank waste committee discussed details of the concept with state and Department of Energy officials in Richland last week.

A few days earlier, Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection, floated some preliminary pieces of the plan by the entire HAB.

The idea calls for Hanford to go ahead with the first-phase of the waste glassification complex, which is scheduled to begin construction late in 2002, start turning wastes into glass in 2007 and finish treating 10 percent of Hanford's tanks wastes by 2018.

Construction of the bigger second-phase plants for the remaining 53 million gallons of wastes are expected to begin around 2010 and at a cost billions of dollars more, with the final price tag still far from certain.

No one in Hanford's universe, including Boston, expects the federal government to agree to pay for the second phase as it's currently envisioned.

That has led DOE's experts to wonder if some -- mostly solid -- wastes could be left in the tanks and still have the tank farms declared safe under the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup.

Under the plan, the glassification facility would be scaled back and some tank wastes neutralized by cheaper chemical methods or by mixing them with some type of concrete. It's not clear when DOE will make a formal proposal to the state on this idea, said Steve Wiegman, a senior technical advisor at DOE's Office of River Protection.

But in the meantime, federal officials need to know whether state approval is possible for any of the cheaper alternatives.

That's because changes in dealing with the second-phase wastes will affect construction of the plant's first phase, said Al Conklin, the state health department's radioactive emissions manager.

Hanford's current round of brainstorming has leaned toward not ever building the larger glassification plants several years from now, but instead expanding the first-phase plants.

However, if DOE chooses that route, the state health and ecology departments need to approve the permits and designs for the bigger, more complicated concept before construction begins, Conklins said.

HAB members thought DOE's overall concept should be explored, but with a healthy dose of skepticism..

"Some creative thinking is required," said board member Pam Brown, representing Richland.

Vice chairman Ken Bracken, representing Kennewick, said: "I've not heard (Boston) yet say he would accomplish this outside of (federal and state) regulations.

Dealing with the tank wastes on time and finding money to do it is like walking a tightrope, Bracken said. "And people are sawing it at both ends." But Roger Stanley, the state's Tri-Party Agreement negotiator, said DOE needs to prove its idea poses no additional risks to the region before the state would consider it.

Suzanne Dahl, the ecology department's tank waste disposal project manager, expressed skepticism. "In order to clean up the site, we're going to leave some wastes in the tanks? That's counterintuitive."

-------- us nuc politics

U.S., Russia Likely To Agree on Arms
Summit Could Lead to Historic Cuts

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9493-2001Nov10.html

The United States and Russia are working to establish an unprecedented arms control agreement that calls for deep but unequal reductions in strategic nuclear weapons over the next decade but avoids complicated new treaties like those that were the hallmark of the Cold War, according to senior Bush administration officials.

The reductions in strategic warheads would be verified by on-site inspection systems already in effect under the 1972 START I treaty, officials said.

The two countries are expected to reach an understanding at this week's U.S. summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin under which Russia would not object to unlimited U.S. testing for a missile defense system. At the same time, the United States would not seek to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty until it decided to deploy the system, which could be years away.

But Washington and Moscow are also moving on a parallel track that could lead to historic cuts in nuclear weapons to levels not seen since the 1960s, reducing both arsenals by two-thirds and below the ceilings envisioned by the 1993 START II agreement.

"This is not going to be a classic Cold War situation," a senior U.S. official said.

The strategic framework with Moscow that Bush has said he will seek would cover not only offensive and defensive strategic weapons, but also increased cooperation in the military, proliferation and counterterrorism fields, according to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

U.S. officials said the two countries will also make a push to develop a joint early-warning center outside Moscow to guard against a strategic nuclear missile or bomber attack and a joint radar satellite development program called RAMOS. The Bush administration is also talking to the Russians about cooperation in nuclear nonproliferation, a senior official said.

The Russians have suggested a new program under which Russian technicians would participate in the dismantling of American intercontinental ballistic missiles, in much the same way as Americans are working at taking down Russian missile systems.

"Those discussions are ongoing, and I think they are quite promising for the future," the senior official said. "The whole notion is one of cooperation, not of confrontation."

The administration is hoping to win an agreement at the summit -- which begins in Washington on Tuesday and then moves to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. -- under which each country would set its own goal for a level of offensive nuclear warheads to be reached by the end of this decade. The United States would go down to between 1,750 and 2,250 warheads from more than 6,000. Russia would drop to between 1,000 and 1,500 from more than 6,000.

Putin and other Russian officials who have had talks with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, most recently in Moscow, have put forward lower figures, in part because Russia's economic situation has made it difficult to build missiles and keep existing ones operational.

The United States, on the other hand, is prepared to cut its strategic arsenal below START II levels of 3,000 to 3,500 warheads, officials said. Pentagon experts have argued that the United States should not go much lower than 2,000 warheads, however, to ensure it can cover targets required to protect North America and U.S. allies in Europe.

For that reason, the senior official said, "ultimately, I do see a range, and it's possible that there will be two different ranges, a range for the United States and a range for Russia."

But what will distinguish this arrangement from previous agreements, the official added, "is that the level of animosity and the basis of the arsenals will have changed. So you don't need the reams of treaties and the months of negotiations."

Rice illustrated the new, more informal approach last week by describing a possible summit scene. Bush will "share with President Putin the results of the nuclear review that he initiated," she said. Then, she continued, Putin "will also share with President Bush what they are thinking about in terms of their offensive forces."

"Neither president is going to be looking at one for one and category for category," the senior official said. "But the intention is to get an agreement at some point, at Crawford, and if not Crawford beyond Crawford, to move down mutually, and to commit to lower deployed strategic nuclear force levels in the future."

The Bush administration's dislike for the Cold War era's complicated arms control arrangements has been a hallmark of its discussions with Moscow over the past year.

One precedent could be the 1991 decision by President George Bush, who, without prior agreement with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, unilaterally withdrew almost all tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and Asia, downloaded Minuteman II ICBMs before required by treaty, and halted development of two new strategic nuclear systems.

The current Bush administration wants to work with Moscow, the senior official said, "in a way that does not get bound up by the arms control bureaucracies on either side, or on both sides . . . which delight in tying up the progress in reductions, in favor of the production of reams of paper."

A senior official said the administration is envisioning "a constant schedule of consultations, verification, transparency, monitoring . . . anything that is needed to demystify the process."


-------- MILITARY

A War in the Planning for Four Years

by Michael Ruppert
From The Wilderness Publications
11 November 2001
http://www.copvcia.com
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP111B.html

Centre for Research on Globalisation http://globalresearch.ca/

Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CFR Put War Plans in a 1997 Book - It is "A Blueprint for World Dictatorship," Says a Former German Defense and NATO Official Who Warned of Global Domination in 1984, in an Exclusive Interview With FTW

Summary

"THE GRAND CHESSBOARD - American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives," Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997.

These are the very first words in the book, "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power." - p. xiii. Eurasia is all of the territory east of Germany and Poland, stretching all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean. It includes the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent. The key to controlling Eurasia, says Brzezinski, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian republics is Uzbekistan. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Uzbekistan was forcefully mentioned by President George W. Bush in his address to a joint session of Congress just days after the attacks of September 11 as the very first place that the U.S. military would be deployed.

As FTW has documented in previous stories, major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. There is now evidence that what the world is witnessing is a cold and calculated war plan - at least four years in the making - and that, from reading Brzezinski's own words about Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center attacks were just the trigger needed to set the final conquest in motion.

FTW, November 7, 2001, 1200 PST - There's a quote often attributed to Allen Dulles after it was noted that the final 1964 report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK contained dramatic inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies, in effect, disproved the Commission's own final conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on November 22, 1963. Dulles, a career spy, Wall Street lawyer, the CIA director whom JFK had fired after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco - and the Warren Commission member who took charge of the investigation and final report - is reported to have said, "The American people don't read."

Some Americans do read. So do Europeans and Asians and Africans and Latin Americans. World events since the attacks of September 11, 2001 have not only been predicted, but also planned, orchestrated and - as their architects would like to believe - controlled. The current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor is it a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and former Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power. As a means of intimidation for the unenlightened reader who happens upon this frightening plan - the plan of the CFR - Brzezinski offers the alternative of a world in chaos unless the U.S. controls the planet by whatever means are necessary and likely to succeed.

This position is corroborated by Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D. a former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner. On November 6, he told FTW, "The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, The Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bliderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens."

Brzezinski's own words - laid against the current official line that the United States is waging a war to end terrorism - are self-incriminating. In an ongoing series of articles, FTW has consistently established that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the World Trade Center attacks and chose not to stop them because it needed to secure public approval for a war that is now in progress. It is a war, as described by Vice President Dick Cheney, "that may not end in our lifetimes." What that means is that it will not end until all armed groups, anywhere in the world, which possess the political, economic or military ability to resist the imposition of this dictatorship, have been destroyed.

These are the "terrorists" the U.S. now fights in Afghanistan and plans to soon fight all over the globe.

Before exposing Brzezinski (and those he represents) with his own words, or hearing more from Dr. Koeppl, it is worthwhile to take a look at Brzezinski's background.

According to his resume Brzezinski, holding a 1953 Ph.D. from Harvard, lists the following achievements:

Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) Trustee and founder of the Trilateral Commission International advisor of several major US/Global corporations Associate of Henry Kissinger Under Ronald Reagan - member of NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy Under Ronald Reagan - member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Past member, Board of Directors, The Council on Foreign Relations 1988 - Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.

Brzezinski is also a past attendee and presenter at several conferences of the Bliderberger group - a non-partisan affiliation of the wealthiest and most powerful families and corporations on the planet.

The Grand Chessboard

Brzezinski sets the tone for his strategy by describing Russia and China as the two most important countries - almost but not quite superpowers - whose interests that might threaten the U.S. in Central Asia. Of the two, Brzezinski considers Russia to be the more serious threat. Both nations border Central Asia. In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential "lesser" nations that must be managed by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan).

He also notes, quite clearly (p. 53) that any nation that might become predominant in Central Asia would directly threaten the current U.S. control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf. In reading the book it becomes clear why the U.S. had a direct motive for the looting of some $300 billion in Russian assets during the 1990s, destabilizing Russia's currency (1998) and ensuring that a weakened Russia would have to look westward to Europe for economic and political survival, rather than southward to Central Asia. A dependent Russia would lack the military, economic and political clout to exert influence in the region and this weakening of Russia would explain why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been such a willing ally of U.S. efforts to date. (See FTW Vol. IV, No. 1 - March 31, 2001)

An examination of selected quotes from "The Grand Chessboard," in the context of current events reveals the darker agenda behind military operations that were planned long before September 11th, 2001.

"...The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power... (p. xiii)

"... But in the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book. (p. xiv)

"The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. (p.30)

"America's withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival - would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy." (p. 30)

"In that context, how America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)

Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them;... second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above... (p. 40)

"...To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)

"Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)

"Uzbekistan - with its much more ethnically homogeneous population of approximately 25 million and its leaders emphasizing the country's historic glories - has become increasingly assertive in affirming the region's new postcolonial status." (p.95)

"Thus, even the ethnically vulnerable Kazakhstan joined the other Central Asian states in abandoning the Cyrillic alphabet and replacing it with Latin script as adapted earlier by Turkey. In effect, by the mid-1990s a bloc, quietly led by Ukraine and comprising Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and sometimes also Kazakhstan, Georgia and Moldova, had informally emerged to obstruct Russian efforts to use the CIS as the tool for political integration." (p.114)

"...Hence, support for the new post-Soviet states - for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire - has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option. Among these states. Three are geopolitically especially important: Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine." (p. 121) "Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." (p. 121)

Referring to an area he calls the "Eurasian Balkans" and a 1997 map in which he has circled the exact location of the current conflict - describing it as the central region of pending conflict for world dominance - Brzezinski writes: "Moreover, they [the Central Asian Republics] are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (p.124) [Emphasis added]

The world's energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." (p.125)

"Kazakhstan is the shield and Uzbekistan is the soul for the region's diverse national awakenings." (p.130)

"Uzbekistan is, in fact, the prime candidate for regional leadership in Central Asia." (p.130) "Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan's truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country's people. (p.132)

"In fact, an Islamic revival - already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia - is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian - and hence infidel - control." (p. 133).

"For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan - and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan - and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)

"Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia's entire southern frontier." (p.141) [This would explain why Putin would welcome U.S. military presence to stabilize the region.]

"Turkmenistan... has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea..." (p.145)

"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (p148)

"China's growing economic presence in the region and its political stake in the area's independence are also congruent with America's interests." (p.149)

"America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe's central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and to America's historical legacy." (p.194)

"...the Eurasian Balkans - threatens to become a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry." (p.195)

"Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally." (p.194)

"With warning signs on the horizon across Europe and Asia, any successful American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design." (p.197)

"That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America's primacy..." (p. 198)

"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198)

"In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last." (p.209)

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211) [Emphasis added]

The Horror - And Comments From Someone Who Worked With Brzezinski

Brzezinski's book is sublimely arrogant. While singing the praises of the IMF and the World Bank, which have economically terrorized nations on every continent, and while totally ignoring the worldwide terrorist actions of the U.S. government that have led to genocide; cluster bombings of civilian populations from Kosovo, to Laos, to Iraq, to Afghanistan; the development and battlefield use of both biological and chemical agents such as Sarin gas; and the financial rape of entire cultures it would leave the reader believing that such actions are for the good of mankind.

While seconded from the German defense ministry to NATO in the late 1970s, Dr. Johannes Koeppl - mentioned at the top of this article - traveled to Washington on more than one occasion. He also met with Brzezinski in the White House on more than one occasion. His other Washington contacts included Steve Larabee from the CFR, John J. McCloy, former CIA Director, economist Milton Friedman, and officials from Carter's Office of Management and Budget. He is the first person I have ever interviewed who has made a direct presentation at a Bliderberger conference and he has also made numerous presentations to sub-groups of the Trilateral Commission. That was before he spoke out against them.

His fall from grace was rapid after he realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. "In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power.

"All we have now are pseudo-democracies."

Koeppl recalls meeting U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald in Nuremburg in the early 80s. McDonald, who was then contemplating a run for the Presidency, was a severe critic of these elites. He was killed in the Russian shootdown of Korean Air flight 007 in 1985. Koeppl believes that it might have been an assassination. Over the years many writers have made these allegations about 007 and the fact that someone with Koeppl's credentials believes that an entire plane full of passengers would be destroyed to eliminate one man offers a chilling opinion of the value placed on human life by the powers that be.

In 1983, Koeppl warned, through Op-Ed pieces published in NEWSWEEK and elsewhere, that Brzezinski and the CFR were part of an effort to impose a global dictatorship. His fall from grace was swift. "It was a criminal society that I was dealing with. It was not possible to publish anymore in the so-called respected publications. My 30 year career in politics ended.

"The people of the western world have been trained to be good consumers; to focus on money, sports cars, beauty, consumer goods. They have not been trained to look for character in people. Therefore what we need is education for politicians, a form of training that instills in them a higher sense of ethics than service to money. There is no training now for world leaders. This is a shame because of the responsibility that leaders hold to benefit all mankind rather than to blindly pursue destructive paths.

"We also need education for citizens to be more efficient in their democracies, in addition to education for politicians that will create a new network of elites based upon character and social intelligence."

Koeppl, who wrote his 1989 doctoral thesis on NATO management, also authored a 1989 book - largely ignored because of its controversial revelations - entitled "The Most Important Secrets in the World." He maintains a German language web site at www.antaris.com and he can be reached by email at jbk@antaris.com.

As to the present conflict Koeppl expressed the gravest concerns, "This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don't know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance."

--------

Pressure builds on U.S. to begin a ground war

USA Today
11/11/2001
By Andrea Stone and Kirk Spitzer, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/acovfri.htm

WASHINGTON - Just one month into the U.S. war in Afghanistan, military experts increasingly are coming to the same conclusion: Airstrikes and commandos won't be enough to rout the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network. American ground forces will be needed to finish the job.

Those calling for a massive deployment of Army soldiers and Marines differ over how many are required. But a common scenario calls for up to 100,000 troops who would move into Afghanistan by spring or summer to control major cities, set up bases and hunt down the enemy.

The Pentagon, which so far has relied on aerial bombings and a few hundred special operations forces, hasn't ruled out a ground war. "We will not take off of the table the possible use of ground forces," Gen. Tommy Franks, the U.S. Central Command chief who is directing the Afghanistan campaign, said Thursday. "We want to keep all the options open." He said the war is going according to plan and urged the public and critics to remain patient.

Privately, senior war planners say they are reluctant to commit large numbers of troops, in part because a mass deployment of soldiers and supplies to a landlocked, mountainous country would be a logistics nightmare. They estimate it could take at least 6 months to deploy 100,000 troops.

For now, U.S. military leaders say they believe that relentless air attacks, commando raids and pressure from Afghan opposition groups will be sufficient to topple the Taliban and destroy al-Qa'eda.

But the strategy has put the Bush administration in a bind. Abroad, the bombing campaign has already triggered protests and calls for a cease-fire, especially in Muslim nations.

At home, a growing chorus of critics - military and foreign policy analysts, members of Congress and conservatives - says the administration's plan isn't working. The Taliban has proved more resilient than expected. Few of its fighters have defected, and those who remain are believed to be hiding in residences, mosques, schools, hospitals and other civilian areas that U.S. war planners are reluctant to bomb.

Meanwhile, fighters from the opposition Northern Alliance say they are advancing on the key Taliban city of Mazar-e Sharif in the north. Even so, the rebels have yet to seize control of any strategic cities or towns despite weeks of support from U.S. warplanes and more recent help from special operations forces. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos have mounted only two raids.

And the Pentagon doesn't seem to be mobilizing for Plan B: a massive ground invasion.

"If the expectations were for a long war, they haven't prepared for one," complains Ivo Daalder, who served on President Clinton's National Security Council. "The lesson of Vietnam was, if you don't really know what you're doing, don't do it. They don't appear to have learned the lesson."

Nor, Pentagon critics say, has the Pentagon learned the lesson from a more recent conflict: The biggest ground force since Vietnam was needed to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War.

"To have any success in Afghanistan ... you need conventional forces to secure territory," says retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston, who commanded U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993 and was chief of staff to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a member of the Armed Services Committee and one of the most vocal critics of the Pentagon's strategy, says victory will "take a very big effort (by a) large number of troops." Meanwhile, conservative activists accuse the administration of waging a timid war. Sending ground troops into Afghanistan carries the risk of battlefield deaths. But polls show most Americans are willing to accept significant casualties to punish those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. "This is a war. And in a war there will be casualties," Franks said.

The Soviets lost 15,000 soldiers during their failed 10-year war in Afghanistan. Pentagon planners say U.S. troops won't get sucked into a prolonged conflict. If they do, President Bush's sky-high approval ratings might tumble by the time of the 2004 election.

Military analysts' estimates of how many troops might be required range from 8,000 to 300,000. Missions range from securing one or two Afghan bases to taking control of major cities to occupying regions of the country.

"Clearly, we would have to take and secure bases ... (but) it's a daunting task," Johnston says.

For starters, Afghanistan's lack of seaports and its mountainous terrain pose a major challenge for sending in troops, weapons and supplies. Neighboring Pakistan would be the logical staging ground. But the Pakistani government, worried about unrest among Islamic extremists at home, might block a full-blown U.S. military buildup on its soil.

Tajikistan, Afghanistan's neighbor to the north, has offered the United States the use of three massive air bases built by the Soviet Union. They are in poor condition, however. And an airlift of men and materiel would take a long time, even under the best of conditions.

Logistics nightmare

If a major U.S. ground operation is to take place in the spring, the Bush administration would have to give the go-ahead soon to get troops and equipment into place.

Conditions in Afghanistan are, perhaps, as bad as they can get. Even in the Persian Gulf, where clear weather, good roads and modern seaports and airfields presented near-ideal conditions, it took 6 months to deploy about 500,000 ground troops.

Afghanistan lacks modern air bases. The nearest seaport is 700 miles away in Pakistan. Because ships carry most supplies and gear, Pakistan is crucial to any buildup, says retired rear admiral Jim Davidson, a specialist in military logistics.

The bases that Tajikistan is letting U.S. forces use are close to the Afghan border, but they might not be suitable for launching ground attacks. The bases are located high in the mountains, hundreds of miles from Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan. U.S. troops would have to negotiate treacherous roads and high passes just to reach the battlefields north of Kabul. Many of those roads would be closed in winter and prone to ambush when the weather clears.

Pakistan, which is closer to the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar and endowed with better airfields, roads and access to the sea, would make a better staging ground for a major offensive.

But anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan creates other problems for the Pentagon, which got a preview last month of the risks it faces in staging troops there. Marine helicopters trying to recover a downed Black Hawk helicopter were fired on by unknown assailants during a refueling stop in Pakistan. The Pentagon says the Marines didn't suffer any casualties but had to temporarily abort the mission.

The 101st Airborne Division, which could be one of the first ground units called up, presents a snapshot of the challenges facing Pentagon planners.

The division includes about 20,000 soldiers, 280 helicopters, 60 heavy artillery pieces and more than 500 Humvees, trucks and other vehicles. It would require thousands of tons of food, fuel, ammunition, water, medical supplies, tents, cots, winter-weather gear and other accoutrements of war.

Most of the soldiers would be flown in on chartered civilian aircraft that can hold no more than 225 passengers each. That's a minimum of 89 flights.

But much, if not most, of the weaponry would have to come in by military cargo plane. The Air Force has only 250 long-range transports in its fleet. The biggest can carry no more than one helicopter or two pieces of heavy equipment per flight.

Transporting the 101st's equipment by air would require hundreds of flights over several months. That's just one division.

5 tons per soldier

Supplying the troops once they are on the ground is another huge challenge. During the Gulf War, logistics specialists moved 5 tons of equipment and supplies for every soldier. Eighty percent came by sea. About 4,000 private trucks and drivers were hired to haul the equipment from ports in eastern Saudi Arabia to desert bases.

For now, there are few signs that a major deployment is in the works. Pentagon officials say they will supply the Northern Alliance rebels with ammunition, food and cold-weather fighting gear this winter. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says U.S. forces will keep fighting through the winter.

Most analysts expect little progress as winter sets in, however. Any major offensive, most agree, will have to wait until spring.

Avoiding a quagmire

Not everyone agrees a major buildup is necessary - or wise. Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, predicts the Pentagon will expand the air campaign with attack helicopters and large-scale raids in support of opposition forces. That would require up to 8,000 troops. Any more than that would be "a last resort and a bad one," he says.

Cordesman says the best way to avoid getting bogged down in Afghanistan as Soviet troops did in the 1980s is to limit American ground forces and make sure the outcome of the war is "one shaped by Muslim Afghans and not an invading 'Christian' power."

Cordesman says that no matter how many U.S. troops are deployed, "messy sieges" around Kabul and Kandahar are likely, although "the risk of an endless stalemate or apparent defeat is much worse."

That could happen even if U.S. and rebel forces capture Afghanistan's cities, he warns. The Taliban could retreat into the mountains to wage an endless guerrilla war, much like that faced by American troops in Vietnam a generation ago. "Even major U.S. ground forces cannot ensure that it is really over when it is over," Cordesman says.

As many as 300,000 troops would be needed if planners are "trying to do a conventional invasion," says former NATO commander Wesley Clark, who commanded troops in Kosovo. Clark's advice: Limit U.S. involvement to 40,000 troops, spearheaded by a heavy armored division and supplemented by a light infantry unit such as the 10th Mountain Division. An army that size could topple the Taliban with the help of British, Turkish and other forces.

Mackubin Owens, a former Marine who teaches strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., says two light infantry divisions totaling about 40,000 troops should be sent to shore up the Northern Alliance but not to fight inside Afghanistan's cities. He'd give the job to the 10th Mountain, which already has troops in Uzbekistan, and the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii.

Owens would reserve the fast-deploying 82nd Airborne Division and the heavier 101st "in case we have to use them in a second phase against Iraq."

Johnston says the goal should be to maintain a 2-to-1 advantage over the Taliban, who were thought to have 45,000 fighters before the air campaign began.

But as the buildup in Afghanistan grows, he adds, more troops will be needed just to protect bases and supply lines of those actually battling the Taliban.

'Long, drawn-out'

Johnston also warns that a ground war in a mountainous country studded with millions of land mines and inhabited by people with ever-changing political loyalties is a huge challenge: "We'll stab here, there. It is simply going to be a long, drawn-out campaign."

Retired general Ted Atkeson, a former senior Army intelligence officer, says one division of up to 20,000 troops might suffice. "You could go in and take Kabul or Kandahar or Mazar-e Sharif. You could interdict the main roads," says Atkeson, now senior fellow at the Association of the U.S. Army's Institute of Land Warfare. "If you tried to go much beyond that, you are in terrain where you have much less room to maneuver. Then you've got ambushes and attacks, and that could go on for a long time."

Other military experts argue that it doesn't matter how many troops will be needed, how hard it will be to get them into Afghanistan or how long they will have to fight - so long as the United States prevails against the terrorists.

Despite all the hurdles and risks, "we need to win this war," says former Pentagon official Richard Perle, an outside adviser to President Bush on military matters.

"We need to destroy the Taliban regime, and we need to do it sooner rather than later," Perle says. "If the only way it can be done is by ground troops, than I would very much favor it. We cannot protect the American public by losing the first engagement."

Contributing: Jonathan Weisman

-------- afghanistan

130-plus civilians killed: report

From AFP
11nov01
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,3227938%255E401,00.html

MORE than 130 Afghan civilians were killed in three villages near the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar after intense US bombing raids, the Afghan Islamic Press has reported.

It said the final civilian death toll from the attacks in the three villages could exceed 300, with 133 bodies already recovered from one community called Shah Aga.

The Pakistan-based news agency said Shah Aga was one of two villages in Khakrez district, about 70km north-west of Kandahar, which were completely destroyed in three nights of heavy air attacks.

The third village was not identified.

----

Afghan Opposition Does Not Rule Out Entering Kabul

November 11, 2001
By Rosalind Russell
http://news1.iwon.com/article/id/164879%7Ctop%7C11-11-2001::02:45%7Creuters.html

JABAL-US-SARAJ (Reuters) - Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance said Sunday it would prefer not to enter Kabul until agreement was reached on a post-Taliban government, but might enter the capital if there was a political vacuum.

President Bush said Saturday opposition forces were not being encouraged to take Kabul. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said the opposition should not move into the city until the structure of a new government was agreed.

But Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said the opposition would not rule out entering the city.

"We would also prefer to achieve a broad political agreement between all groups before moving into Kabul. But we do not commit ourselves to this if there is a political vacuum in Kabul," Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told Reuters by satellite phone from northern Afghanistan.

"But we would first consult the international community."

Many leaders of the opposition are loathed in Kabul because of their internecine battles for power in the early 1990s that subjected the capital to almost daily rocket attacks and killed about 50,000 residents.

The fundamentalist Taliban were welcomed as bringers of peace when they swept into Kabul and threw out the mujahideen in 1996.

Ready for a possible assault, hundreds of opposition troops, backed by tanks and artillery, have been deployed at Bagram airport some 30 km (20 miles) north of Kabul, to try to take nearby Taliban positions that have made the airport unuseable.

The United States has been supporting the Northern Alliance with daily air strikes against the Taliban, but does not want opposition forces to move into the capital at this stage.

"We will encourage our friends to head south ... but not into the city of Kabul itself. And we believe we can accomplish our military missions by that strategy," President Bush said Saturday.

DISRUST OF OPPOSITION

Washington wants to see the formation of a broad-based government representing all Afghanistan's ethnic groups before allowing opposition forces to enter the city.

But Abdullah said the Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front, had strong support in Kabul and said the United States was relying on "misinformation from Pakistan."

"The Americans are not in the complete picture. General Powell's reasoning that the people in Kabul do not like the United Front is not true," he said.

"Thousands of people in Kabul have been arrested for opposing the Taliban which is run by Pakistanis, Arabs and terrorists."

But residents of Kabul are clearly nervous.

Watching the opposition takeover of the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif Friday evening, many said they feared it would signal fresh bloodletting and misery.

"Mazar's capture by the opposition and their treatment of people there will be an example of their policy. Any wrongdoing, looting, killing and destruction will have a long-term negative impact on the future unity of Afghans," one shopkeeper said.

"If it leads to stability and ends bloodshed, then it is a good move. The U.S. and the opposition must guarantee the lives and property of Mazar's people. They must make sure that there is no harm and revenge against the various tribes living there."

The United States is bombing the Taliban to punish it for harbouring Osama bin Laden, who it suspects of masterminding the September 11 hijack attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that killed some 4,600 people.

----

Opposition Anxious to Move on Kabul

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Kabul.html?searchpv=aponline

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Although opposition leaders are anxious to move on the Afghan capital of Kabul after apparently scoring large gains in the north, the alliance faces a tough battle with Taliban forces as well as strong political opposition from the United States and Pakistan.

The Taliban are believed to hold more than a 2-to-1 edge in ground troops along the Kabul front, meaning it would be nearly impossible for the northern alliance to take the city without the kind of strong U.S. bombing that paved the way for the opposition to seize Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday.

But the United States and Pakistan want to slow things down, fearing that an early attack on the capital will complicate efforts to prepare a broad-based government to replace the Taliban.

At stake are U.S. ties with Pakistan, America's key ally in the fight against global terrorism. The United States wants to ensure that Pakistan does not end up with an even more chaotic state or a hostile government on its borders.

Strained relations between the Americans, the Pakistanis and the opposition could distract attention from the primary goal of apprehending Osama bin Laden and destroying his al-Qaida terrorist network.

``We will encourage our friends to head south ... but not into the city of Kabul itself,'' President Bush said Saturday at a joint news conference with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Bush's statement was not only a warning to the northern alliance but also a sign to Pakistan that the United States would be sensitive to its interests during the difficult process of rebuilding Afghanistan once the Taliban are ousted.

However, the speed of the apparent Taliban collapse in the north since the opposition seized Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday may set in motion events that are beyond U.S. control.

``We don't have enough forces on the ground to stand in their way,'' U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on ``Fox News Sunday. ``I mean, they're going to make the decision.''

Still, it seems unlikely the alliance could launch a successful attack on Kabul without massive U.S. air support. About 15,000 Taliban and al-Qaida defenders are believed facing only about 6,000 northern alliance troops along the Kabul front.

And in Kabul, anti-Taliban forces would encounter a hostile population, unlike their reception in much of the north where the population is largely Tajik and Uzbek -- the same groups that dominate the alliance. The Taliban are mostly from the dominant Pashtun group, which also lives in Pakistan.

Kabul's people, including non-Pashtuns, have bitter memories of the bloody, chaotic infighting that destroyed their city during the four years when groups that now make up the northern alliance ruled the capital.

Saeed Abbas is an ethnic Tajik who lost part of his leg to a land mine during those turbulent years.

``I was not a soldier,'' he added. ``I was just going from one part of the city to the another and this happened.'' Abbas picked up one of two steel crutches and said: ``We will need more of these.''

Northern alliance figures insist there will be no repeat of the factional fighting if they take power this time.

The potential for strains also stems from the fact that the major players -- the United States, Pakistan and the northern alliance -- have different interests.

Bush launched airstrikes against Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his alleged role in the September terrorist attacks that killed some 4,500 people in the United States.

However, the northern alliance's main goal is to topple the Taliban and seize power -- which means it must take Kabul. Pakistan's goal is to make sure the next government is not hostile. That means a government where Pashtuns play a major role.

Installing a northern alliance-dominated government could fuel anger in Pakistan -- a country with nuclear weapons and a large Muslim fundamentalist movement within its borders.

Northern alliance officials resent Pakistan's role as chief patron of the Taliban until the September terrorist attacks. Last week, a northern alliance commander, Bismillah Khan, told his fighters they were defending their country ``against the evil triangle of Pakistan, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.''

The weakness of the American and Pakistani strategy, however, is the absence of an alternative government apart from the northern alliance.

For years, anti-Taliban groups have explored several formulas, including having the 87-year-old former king, Mohammed Zaher Shah, convene a grand council of all Afghans to form a new administration.

However, the process has gone nowhere, in large part because of a lack of credible political figures from the country's Pashtun community willing to break with the Taliban.

Several influential Pashtuns were prepared to work for an alternate government until the bombing campaign galvanized Pashtun support around the Taliban.

Former guerrilla leader Abdul Haq, one of the key Pashtun figures in the process, was captured inside Afghanistan and hanged by the Taliban last month. Another Pashtun leader, Hamid Karazai, had to be spirited to safety by U.S. helicopters when the Taliban were closing in on him.

--

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Kathy Gannon has covered Afghanistan for The Associated Press since 1988. AP correspondent Steven Gutkin also contributed to this report from Jabal Saraj, Afghanistan.

-------

'Holy War, Inc.:
Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden'
by Peter L. Bergen
Press. 283 pp. $26

Reviewed by Jeff Stein
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page BW01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52138-2001Nov7.html

This is the only book you need to read about Osama bin Laden, at least for now. Peter Bergen, a British-raised producer for CNN and ABC television news, has done the world a favor by writing a work that is at once lively, literate and authoritative -- equal parts journalism, history and even whimsical travelogue, from the London salons of welfare-supported, turbaned blowhards to the sand-whipped redoubts of the jihad in Yemen, Cairo and, of course, Afghanistan. Some Holy War.

Imagine, if you will, that Hitler had been booted out of Germany and taken his closest psychopaths into unhappy exile. In Bergen's telling, Holy War, Inc. is a global network of mostly professional Arab malcontents bent on overthrowing the corrupt regimes of the Middle East and taking their peoples back to an idealized version of the 7th century. (The future disposition of the technology they use to get their message across -- cell phones, bank transfers, credit cards, fax machines, Apple Powerbooks, video cameras and satellite dishes, not to mention passenger jets -- remains to be worked out.)

But what, as many Americans have wondered since the bloody events of Sept. 11, does this have to do with us? The roundabout answer is that American money and power stand behind, or at least tolerate, the abuses of Islamic regimes from Algiers to Islamabad. But the main point of irritation for bin Laden seems to be the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, "the land of the two holy places" (Mecca and Medina), where the family fortune was acquired through contracts with the monarchy that bin Laden so despises. Before launching jihad at home, however, the future terrorist mastermind first had to earn his stripes against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. This is also where Bergen started, in 1983, making a documentary on Afghan refugees fleeing the Russian invasion. He returned a decade later, following the trail of the first World Trade Center bombers to bin Laden's cave. By the time he went back again, bin Laden had issued his first fatwa saying it was the duty of all good Muslims to kill Americans. Bergen was curious.

"When you go looking for Osama bin Laden, you don't find him, he finds you," Bergen observes, fittingly enough, at the book's outset. "It was March 1997 when the phone rang."

I won't spoil the reader's pleasure of accompanying Bergen on his tour through the vicissitudes of tumultuous Pakistan and war-bitten Afghanistan to meet bin Laden in his well-guarded and well-hidden lair. Suffice it to say that Bergen is out to understand the bearded ghost behind Holy War, Inc: How could this wraithlike, shy, to-the-mansion-born Saudi billionaire morph into a spelunking cult figure among Muslims who, according to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, "resent everything" happening to them around the world, from Israel to Chechnya to Bosnia and Kosovo to Kashmir? Throw in Hollywood, too, says Musharraf: "It is a long list of complaints that has generated a strong persecution complex [among Muslims]. He is a hero figure on the pedestal of Muslim extremism."

Upwards of 25,000 Arabs answered the call of the Afghan jihad during 1980-89, most subsidized by some $20 million a month in Saudi funds that were funneled to bin Laden by the head of Saudi intelligence. Bergen notes the irony of royal millions going to support bin Laden, calling it "part of a continuing larger pattern of Saudi funding of militant Islamist organizations, known as riyalpolitik, which is supposed to shore up Saudi legitimacy, but actually undermines it, because it funds the very groups most opposed to the Saudi regime."

Speaking of blowback -- the mot du jour for unintended consequences -- Bergen takes a swipe at CIA conspiracy mongers. "While the charges that the CIA was responsible for the rise of the Afghan Arabs might make good copy," he writes, "they don't make good history. The truth is more complicated, tinged with varying shades of gray." For starters, most of the Arabs flocked to Afghanistan on their own to die for Allah, a development that the Afghans themselves found unrelievedly and self-righteously obnoxious. "Whenever we had a problem with them we just shot them," an Afghan told one of Bergen's colleagues. "They thought they were kings."

The war drew terrorists from all over the Arab world, including key members of the Egyptian Jihad group involved in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, such as the rotund, bespeckled Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahir, now constantly at bin Laden's side. The blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, now doing time in a U.S. federal penitentiary for plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel and other New York landmarks, showed up there, too. So did Mohammed Odeh, a Jordanian who engineered the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya.

"Having lost his deeply religious father while he was still a child, bin Laden would, throughout his life, be influenced by religiously radical older men," Bergen writes. The first of these were professors of Islamic studies at Jeddah's King Abdul-Aziz University. One was a founder of the global jihad movement, the other the brother of a man who'd written the movement's key text. "It's as if Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman's brother had taught him about capitalism," Bergen writes.

It wasn't long after graduating in 1981 that bin Laden began uttering anti-American oaths and urging boycotts of U.S. goods. Then, in 1983, he keenly observed the effect of a 1983 suicide truck bomb that killed 241 Marines in Beirut: Even "cowboy" Ronald Reagan pulled up stakes and ran.

But the real magic of the Afghan jihad was how it fired the radical Arab imagination, Bergen says. It was "an intoxicating moral victory: a superpower had been defeated in the name of Allah." Considering this, and the swift U.S. retreat from Lebanon, Arabs began to think past the Palestinian struggle to a larger canvas: Islamism the world over. Why get bogged down fighting Israel in Gaza when you can carry the war to America itself -- hit the puppeteer, not the puppets?

Back from Afghanistan and having enhanced his hero status with far-flung highway and agricultural projects in desperately poor Sudan, bin Laden embarked on his first experiment to torture the United States. He dispatched operatives to Somalia to help kill American Rangers and drag their corpses through the streets of Mogadishu. Dazed, the Clinton administration quickly retreated.

In response to the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, Clinton ordered ineffectual cruise missile strikes on bin Laden's putative outposts in Afghanistan and Sudan. (The latter strike in particular only fueled anti-American sentiments in the region by destroying Sudan's largest pharmaceutical factory.) Two years later, the bombing of the USS Cole in the election season went entirely unanswered, despite Clinton's secret order for the CIA to assassinate bin Laden.

Then came Sept. 11, a demonstration that Holy War, Inc. was tuned up for a knockout blow. "Bin Laden is not some Ay-rab who woke up one morning in a bad mood, his turban all in a twist, only to decide America was THE ENEMY," Bergen writes with heat. "He has reasons for hating the United States, and if we understand those reasons, we will have a glimmer of insight into what provoked the terrible events of September 11."

Those reasons do not include "Madonna's midriff, or the drug and alcohol culture of the West, or its tolerance for homosexuals," Bergen opines, contradicting the president of Pakistan, another Muslim leader anxious about offending the true believers in his country. "[Bin Laden] leaves that kind of material to . . . Jerry Falwell." Or Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor whose "seductive" theory of an apocalyptic "clash of [Christian and Muslim] civilizations" is all the rage these days, Bergen says, but wrong.

"What [bin Laden] condemns the United States for is simple: Its policies in the Middle East," Bergen insists. "These are . . . the continued U.S. military presence in Arabia; U.S. support for Israel; its continued bombing of Iraq; and its support for regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that bin Laden regards as apostates from Islam."

Everything is negotiable in time, but not when there are some 4,600 dead, a smoldering hole where the World Trade Center used to be, a side of the Pentagon obliterated and an anthrax threat at our throats and noses. It's somewhat -- but only somewhat -- comforting to be reminded that, for every crazed Islamic terrorist, there are millions upon millions of other Muslims who just want to get along. Eventually, Bergen thinks, Holy War, Inc. will be pounded into isolation and smothered in its Afghan crib.

"One can only hope," he says, "that will pave the way for a more moderate Afghanistan but also for a new era of reconciliation between the great civilizations of the West and the Muslim world. As the great Jewish prophet -- recognized by Muslims and Christians alike -- observed two thousand years ago: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."

All others go to hell.

Jeff Stein is coauthor, with Khidhir Hamza, of "Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda."

-------- arms sales

Russian mafia selling arms to Taliban

November 11, 2001
By Julian West
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011111-68849128.htm

ISLAMABAD - The Taliban has been restocking its arsenal over the past two years, in direct contravention of U.N. sanctions, according to evidence made available this week.

An intelligence source in Pakistan said the Russian mafia had made the shipments, brokered by Afghan middlemen, one of whom is a Taliban commander who also used the deals to ship out heroin.

The fresh evidence comes after revelations that arms had been smuggled recently to the Taliban by Pakistani businessmen and a religious trust based in Pakistan.

A State Department spokesman said it was "unlikely the shipments were significant enough to affect our efforts to defeat the Taliban." It now appears, however, that the Taliban may have a far larger arsenal than expected and that allied ground troops can expect to face significant fire power.

A fax message sent at the end of June describes a meeting between the Russian mafia and Afghan middlemen in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, a month earlier.

The detailed, one-page letter, which was sent to one of the Afghans, begins by referring to the meeting and asks the recipient not to ask questions about transportation over the telephone or by fax "as it is very sensitive - the route has to be completely secret."

It then proposes two possible routes for the "items," which will be listed in the flight manifests as "fish from Tanzania." The first route proposed is via Tanzania and the United Arab Emirates to Uzbekistan; the second is from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, to Turkmenistan.

Both routes, the fax says, will overfly Afghanistan at night, and the aircraft "will land at whatever airport in Afghanistan your friends want on the reason that the plane has an engine problem."

The fax then discusses the type of aircraft to be used - Ilyushin 76s; their cargo space and capacity - 55 tons and 18 square yards of floor space; and the discretion of the pilots. "The pilots are from Armenia and are used to this kind of transport and keep their mouth [sic] shut," it says.

Finally, the message dismisses the dangers of possible detection by U.S. satellites by pointing out that the aircraft will be entered as commercial flights: "We don't care about the satellites. Satellites can only watch the planes but not shoot it [sic] down."

The cost of transportation is listed as $35,000 to $50,000 per shipment, plus a bonus to the pilots "for the risk."

The writer also asks if the recipient has a good relationship with the government of Turkmenistan, because this relationship could help to provide a secondary overland route, but he notes, in his opinion, "direct delivery to an airport in Afghanistan is the best and more security [sic]."

Intelligence sources in Pakistan said that they did not know exactly who had sent the fax, but it appeared to be from the Russian mafia and was clearly part of a longtime arrangement.

They also said that the fax had been detected during an investigation into heroin trafficking from Afghanistan and that one of the men involved in the arms deal was a Taliban commander known to be involved in drug dealing.

The intelligence officials believe the Taliban paid for the shipments, but the commander involved in brokering the deal was making money on the side by using the aircraft to ship heroin out of Afghanistan, once the arms cargo had been unloaded.

They said that the Taliban was buying mainly up-to-date small arms, such as Kalashnikovs, automatic rifle and tank ammunition, disposable rocket launchers and Russian AGS-17 machine gun ammunition, which is accurate at temperatures of 60 degrees below zero and therefore particularly suitable for the harsh Afghan winters.

"This had definitely been going on for some time. It was not a one-off deal," said one intelligence source. "These brokers had established a network of powerful Russian mafia dealers, and they had an ongoing relationship with them."

-------- biological weapons

Ridge sees anthrax threat subsiding

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/09/ridge-anthrax.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge voiced optimism Friday that the nation's anthrax threat was subsiding, and hospital officials approved the release of two postal workers treated for the inhalation form of the disease. More than a month after the first diagnosis of the sickness, Ridge told reporters the FBI was "still no closer to identifying specifically the origin of the anthrax or the perpetrators." The bioterrorism attack, launched by mail, has killed four people and sickened more than a dozen.

No new cases have been reported for more than a week, though. And Ridge, asked at a White House news conference whether the initial threat had been shut down, expressed hope that was the case. "We're prayerful, we're hopeful. We hope this is the last we ever" have to deal with the issue, he said.

At the same time, Ridge said, "I can't give you that 100 percent guarantee."

Officials in Washington said a postal worked hospitalized last month was released during the day following treatment for a form of the disease once viewed as a virtual death sentence. The man's identify has not been disclosed, but he works at the central mail processing facility in the nation's capital that is known to have handled at least one anthrax-tainted letter.

A second employee at the same facility, Leroy Richmond, remained hospitalized in fair condition.

A third victim of the disease, a State Department mail-handler, was cleared for release from a separate hospital during the day, according to Richard Boucher, the agency's spokesman.

The anthrax attack presented an unprecedented challenge to public health officials, and administration officials have hailed their effort as responsible for saving lives and containing the spread of a rarely seen disease.

About 32,000 people have been prescribed antibiotics to guard against anthrax since the first letter attack, but only 5,000 really needed to take the pills, health officials said.

Medical authorities at the Centers for Disease Control also sought to prevent unwarranted calamity over anthrax, suggesting in new guidelines that finding traces of the germ stuck to surfaces does not warrant closing buildings or prescribing antibiotics.

Cipro, the main drug prescribed, can cause some severe side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration plans the unprecedented step of contacting all 32,000 antibiotic recipients to better count side effects - and ensure that no one has a relapse after ending their medication.

President Bush, on a visit to the CDC in Atlanta, spoke about the threat of anthrax, but also expressed reservations about vaccinating all Americans against smallpox. The disease has been eradicated but some scientists have warned it could return in an act of bioterrorism. He noted that the vaccine occasionally has fatal side effects.

"I would be deeply concerned about a vaccination program that would cause people to lose their lives," said Bush, who has asked Congress for a half billion dollars to stockpile the vaccine.

Bush thanked scientists who are working around the clock to deal with the anthrax cases that have killed four people and sickened 13 others. He said the researchers were "part of a vast army trying to fight off terrorism in America."

"I firmly believe ... we've saved a lot of lives," he said.

In the most stunning picture yet of how far anthrax has reached, the CDC disclosed that 32,000 Americans have taken antibiotics for at least several days while scientists raced to tell who was truly exposed to the germs. Of them, 5,000 were found at risk for anthrax infection and told to take antibiotics for a full 60 days.

In addition, 300 post offices and other buildings have been tested for anthrax, the CDC said. Most heavily contaminated are the Hart Senate Office Building, where an anthrax-tainted letter to Majority Leader Tom Daschle was opened, and Washington's Brentwood central post office, which processed that letter. Officials say the majority of other buildings have had no or very little contamination.

"We will never remove every spore" in a building cleanup, Dr. James Baker Jr., a University of Michigan bioterror expert, told Congress. As for Hart, "you will not sterilize that building no matter what you do."

In Washington, Postmaster General John Potter said the Postal Service needs $5 billion to deal with the fear and uncertainty caused by letters tainted with anthrax.

The funds "should be considered costs of homeland security," Potter told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

The terrorist attacks have cost the Postal Service $3 billion to $4 billion, he said, citing damage to facilities, medical treatment, environmental testing and the purchase of new equipment.

Additionally, the service asked for $2 billion to offset the deficit it said would result from the attacks. That's in addition to the $1.35 billion deficit it already had anticipated.

---

Trace amounts of anthrax found in senators' offices

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/10/anthrax-capitol-hill.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Trace amounts of anthrax were discovered in the offices of three more senators and another House member in congressional buildings where it had earlier been found. The health threat was deemed minimal. "We have always been concerned about mail that has been contaminated by other mail," Dr. John Eisold, the Capitol physician, said Saturday at a news conference outside the Capitol. But he said the trace amounts found "are not a public health risk; they are not an inhalational risk; they are not a cutaneous risk."

Anthrax was found in several spots in the Hart Senate office building, where a letter containing anthrax was opened Oct. 15 in the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Spores were found in the offices of Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho; Bob Graham, D-Fla.; and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

It was also found in the sixth floor offices of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., in the Longworth House office building. It appears that teams that closed an adjacent office where anthrax had been discovered accidentally brought the spores back into Cummings' office, said Lt. Dan Nichols of the Capitol Police.

Craig said he was told about the contamination by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman on Friday night.

"It came as shock to all of us," Craig said Saturday in an interview. "They're using the term 'cross-contamination' because of the slight amount that was found there. It might have been a stack in our office that was in same mail cart as the Daschle letter."

Craig said that while he has not been tested and is not taking antibiotics, those precautions have been offered to his staff and five or six of them are taking Cipro. He said that if anyone on his staff was going to get sick, they probably already would have shown symptoms.

Feinstein said "the medical risk is virtually zero." She said her staff has not reported any medical problems that can be associated with anthrax.

Feinstein spokesman, Jim Hock, said everyone in Feinstein's office has had nasal swab tests for exposure to anthrax, and the results so far have been negative.

Graham's spokesman, Paul Anderson, said a minute amount of anthrax was found in the area where the staff sorts mail. He said all of Graham's staff tested negative for anthrax exposure in the days after the Daschle letter was discovered.

The Daschle letter led to the shutdown of all six major House and Senate office buildings, as well as the House side of the Capitol, for testing that revealed evidence of the bacteria in several other locations in the complex.

Other spots in the Hart building where isolated spores were found - a freight elevator and a staircase - were cleaned last week with an anti-bacterial foam.

Senate leaders had hoped to decontaminate the building with chlorine dioxide gas and reopen it on Nov. 13. But experts questioned the effectiveness of that plan and expressed concerns about whether the gas would work uniformly in the nine-story building.

It is now uncertain when all 50 senators who work there - half the Senate - can reoccupy their offices.

---

CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Al Qaeda Sites Point to Tests of Chemicals

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/international/11TERR.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - The United States has identified sites in Afghanistan that are suspected of involvement in Osama bin Laden's efforts to acquire and produce chemical and biological weapons, but none have been bombed since the military campaign began, according to American military and intelligence officials.

The American bombing has spared the sites even though American intelligence officials believe that Al Qaeda may already have produced cyanide gas at one of them, a crude chemical weapons research laboratory in Derunta, a small village near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

American officials say the intelligence reports showing the possible production of small quantities of cyanide gas provide the strongest indication they have received of Al Qaeda's success in its efforts to develop chemical weapons.

Cyanide gas can be used to kill small numbers of people, but it is not easily deployed on a large scale, officials say. The intelligence reports indicating cyanide gas production bolster the United States intelligence community's overall assessment that Al Qaeda is eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction but so far has only developed crude capabilities, several officials said.

In addition to the Derunta chemical weapons site, American intelligence and military officials say a fertilizer plant in Mazar-i- Sharif, which the Northern Alliance captured on Friday, had been under the control of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

American officials say the fertilizer plant is near a compound that has been used by Osama bin Laden and his organization, and intelligence analysts suspected that Al Qaeda had been interested in the plant because its equipment can be used to produce either biological or chemical weapons.

The fertilizer plant "is high on everybody's list" of sites suspected of involvement in Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts, a United States military official said. It is not clear whether the Northern Alliance offensive has taken the plant out of Taliban and Al Qaeda control.

An anthrax-vaccine site in Kabul has also raised concerns among intelligence analysts. The International Committee of the Red Cross had been believed to be operating the plant, which was established to produce vaccine for livestock in Afghanistan to protect them from anthrax.

But American intelligence officials now say they do not believe the Red Cross controls the site, and Red Cross officials acknowledge that while it has provided funds for the plant, it is being operated by the Taliban's Ministry of Agriculture.

A senior State Department official said that American experts had told him it would be difficult for Al Qaeda to use the anthrax-vaccine plant to produce anthrax weapons, and Red Cross officials have said the material produced in the laboratory is harmless. But American officials say they still believe that it is important to deny Al Qaeda operatives access to such a laboratory and any equipment it might contain.

Senior officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency refused to say why the suspect sites have not been bombed one month into the American military campaign. White House officials declined to comment when asked if the decision not to bomb the sites represented a high-level decision by the administration.

But the strategy seems at odds with President Bush's statements last week about the threat posed by Al Qaeda's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In a speech on Tuesday, the president warned that Al Qaeda was "seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," and said that if the group acquired such weapons it would represent "a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself."

Despite the president's statements, the decision not to strike the suspect sites appears to result from a deep sense of caution among senior government officials about the quality of the intelligence collected about the sites, as well as the possible unintended political and diplomatic consequences of attacks on dual-use facilities.

Collecting intelligence about facilities of this sort is an inexact science at best; intelligence officials and policy makers have learned from past mistakes to be wary when using such information. After the terrorist bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, which officials believed was connected to Al Qaeda.

But the United States was heavily criticized after it became clear that the evidence linking the plant to Al Qaeda was weak, and that the C.I.A. had been unaware that the plant's ownership had changed well before the cruise missile attack.

The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war in 1999 also haunts the C.I.A.; analysts mistakenly believed that the building was the headquarters of a Serbian government agency involved in weapons proliferation. During the Persian Gulf war, United States officials engaged in strenuous debates over what to do about sites in Iraq that were suspected of involvement in Saddam Hussein's secret program to develop weapons of mass destruction. There was concern about the accuracy of the intelligence, and also about whether bombing raids would release dangerous chemicals or biological weapons into the atmosphere. After the war, American officials realized that in many cases their information had been incorrect and they had bombed the wrong sites, while many of the real weapons facilities had gone unscathed.

One official said the Bush administration was worried that complaints might be made charging that the United States was destroying the public health and agricultural sites of Afghanistan. The official added that such dual-use targets - which could be employed to make fertilizer and vaccines, or chemical weapons and anthrax - were being deliberately avoided for that reason.

Still, Al Qaeda has shown an eagerness to use whatever weapons it can obtain against American targets in its terrorist operations, and that makes its efforts to acquire chemical and biological weapons particularly worrisome to United States intelligence officials.

The official intelligence assessment is that Al Qaeda has a "crude chemical - and possibly biological - capability," a Pentagon official said recently. In addition to the small quantities of cyanide gas that it may have produced, the terrorist group may also have experimented with other crude poisons such as chlorine and phosgene.

United States officials said that intelligence reports of possible cyanide gas production at the Derunta site have been received for at least a year, and suggest an intense effort by Al Qaeda to experiment with virtually any poison it can obtain. The officials added, however, that they have no evidence that any other countries, including Iraq, have aided Al Qaeda's efforts to obtain such poisons.

In addition, they stress that they do not have definitive evidence that Al Qaeda has actually produced the cyanide gas at Derunta. One senior official said that the belief that Al Qaeda may have produced cyanide gas is based in part on intelligence reports showing that the terrorist group has obtained instruction manuals on how to produce such poisons.

Intelligence officials also stress that cyanide gas would be very difficult to turn into an effective large- scale terrorist weapon, since it is hard to transport and would dissipate rapidly in a large open space. And intelligence officials say they do not believe that Al Qaeda has yet found a way to make weapons from the poison.

"They do have some primitive capabilities, but the problem is weaponizing," a senior official said. "All of the evidence is that they have not been able to do that."

Meanwhile, a senior Bush administration official said that there had been concerns about reports of suspicious activity at the fertilizer plant in Mazar-i-Sharif for some time. The plant may have been spared in anticipation of a Northern Alliance takeover of the town, an administration official said.

The anthrax vaccine plant in Kabul has received more attention since the United States military campaign began, in part because of concerns over whether Al Qaeda is behind the anthrax letters in the United States. American intelligence officials say they have no evidence linking Al Qaeda and the anthrax letters.

But the alarm over the use of anthrax as a weapon has heightened American concerns over the presence of the laboratory in Kabul. In fact, American national security officials say they were taken by surprise when they learned after Sept. 11 that the Red Cross had provided funds to refurbish the plant in 1997, after the Taliban had come to power.

---

Russia's Germ Warfare Secrets

November 11, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/opinion/11SUN2.html?searchpv=nytToday

A top Russian scientist issued a little-noticed warning last week that impoverished experts from Russia's former biological weapons programs may be up for sale to any terrorist organization willing to pay the price. As the United States mobilizes to develop defenses against bioterrorism, it urgently needs reliable intelligence on just what has happened to the people and materials that gave the Soviet Union the most frightening arsenal of biological weapons ever developed. A more vigorous effort to bring Russian expertise, weapons formulas and biological materials under better control should be on the agenda this week when President Bush meets with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

The scale and variety of the Soviet program were stunning. In a cynical betrayal of international trust, Moscow took the signing of a biological weapons convention in 1972 as the signal to start a clandestine crash program to expand its biological weaponry, not abandon such weapons as required. At its peak, in the late 1980's, the program involved a vast complex of production plants and research facilities, employed some 60,000 scientists and technicians, and produced thousands of tons of anthrax and hundreds of tons of smallpox and plague, among some 50 biological agents that were studied as weapons. Soviet scientists also worked out ways to make some germ weapons impervious to antibiotics and did genetic engineering experiments that suggested a desire to combine Ebola and smallpox to make an especially fearsome weapon.

Then, in a 1992 change of course, Russia announced that it was terminating its germ-warfare program and dismantling its production lines. Western experts were subsequently allowed in to inspect several of the sites. But no one knows for sure whether or not some of the lethal stocks were stolen and smuggled out of the country or whether some of the unemployed scientists and technicians have sold their services to rogue nations or even terrorist groups. There are credible if anecdotal reports of Russian scientists going to Iran, Iraq and North Korea. There are also concerns that Russian military scientists may still be conducting secret research on biological weapons. The Kremlin has refused to let outsiders visit some of the former military sites.

The United States badly needs more information on the whereabouts of key scientists, engineers and materials from the former Soviet biological weapons complex. That could help determine what biological dangers may be loose in the world and thus what threats require the most urgent attention in homeland defenses. Moscow could surely help obtain such information from individuals who worked at the former weapons sites.

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin genuinely want to contain biological terrorism, it should be possible to craft a deal. For his part, Mr. Bush could expand a program that already awards grants for civilian research to scientists who worked in the Soviet chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. The goal is to prevent the drain of weapons talent from Russia to rogue nations or terrorist groups. Mr. Putin needs to open his last remaining biological warfare facilities to inspection and help determine whether any experts and materials have already escaped.

--- britain

British ground troops helping Afghan rebels

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/11/britishtroops.htm

LONDON (AP) - British ground troops are inside Afghanistan providing assistance to Northern Alliance fighters, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said Sunday, confirming the presence of British forces in the country for the first time. "I can certainly confirm that there are members of Britain's armed forces on the ground in northern Afghanistan liaising with the Northern Alliance providing advice and assistance," Hoon told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. The Ministry of Defense would not give details about the troops or say how many were in Afghanistan.

Last month Britain announced that 600 special forces troops would be available for operations in Afghanistan. The plans called for 200 Royal Marine commandos operating from two assault ships in the region, with 400 men from the same unit on standby in Britain.

The commandos are trained to mount raids, operate behind enemy lines and fight in mountainous and arctic territory, and Hoon suggested last month that plans called for sporadic strikes by small, elite units.

Earlier Sunday, Hoon said the use of allied ground troops was an important part of the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

Hoon said the Northern Alliance - which has captured the city of Mazar-e-Sharif claims to have made other major advances in the north - "have played their part, and they are continuing to play their part.

"Bombing is another part, the use of coalition forces on the ground is a further part," Hoon told the BBC's "Breakfast with Frost" program.

He also said he believed Osama bin Laden possessed material that could contributing to a nuclear weapon. U.S. and British officials say bin Laden has sought to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

"We are certainly aware that he has some material that could contribute to a nuclear weapon," Hoon said. "We are not convinced at this stage that he is capable of producing a nuclear bomb."

---

Britain Confirms Its Troops Are in Afghanistan

November 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-britain-troops.html?searchpv=reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - British troops are on the ground in northern Afghanistan advising the opposition Northern Alliance, British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said Sunday.

``I can certainly confirm that there are members of Britain's armed forces on the ground in northern Afghanistan,'' he told BBC radio, for the first time confirming weeks of speculation.

Hoon also appeared to back away from remarks quoted in a Sunday newspaper that he was happy for the Northern Alliance to take Kabul -- a stance that would put London at odds with Washington -- saying instead Britain wanted the Alliance to ''march toward Kabul.''

He declined to say how many British soldiers were on the ground in northern Afghanistan. A spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said they were ``advising and liaising with'' the Northern Alliance.

Britain last month sent a contingent of 200 Royal Marines to a troop carrier in the Arabian Sea, and put hundreds more back home in a state of instant readiness.

There has been widespread speculation that members of the elite special forces the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service -- experts in lengthy covert operations -- have been in Afghanistan acting as target spotters for bombers.

American special forces have mounted raids in the south of the country, but were reported to have encountered stiff opposition from Taliban forces.

The United States has been bombing Afghanistan for more than a month in a bid to oust the country's Taliban rulers who are believed to be sheltering Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who Washington holds responsible for the September 11 attacks against Washington and New York.

KABUL NEXT?

Opposition forces in Afghanistan said they were driving the Taliban back on two fronts Sunday and might try to take the capital, Kabul, despite international pressure to stay out.

Hoon was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying he would be ''quite happy to see the Northern Alliance steam across northern Afghanistan and take Kabul.'' But he later sounded more cautious.

``We want them to march toward Kabul, to take ground to deny the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden space in Afghanistan. That has always been the strategy, to put pressure on the regime and Osama bin Laden. The Northern Alliance are an important part of that pressure,'' Hoon told BBC television.

Blair's spokesman said the U.S.-led coalition -- not the Northern Alliance -- were setting the terms of the conflict.

``The Northern Alliance have a part to play in our military strategy but it is a strategy which we are dictating the pace of, which we are controlling,'' he told reporters.

``There is an absolute recognition that the Northern Alliance would be unable to form a government in Afghanistan on its own,'' he added. The United States has made it clear that it does not want the Northern Alliance to take control of the country.

Hoon dismissed reported claims by bin Laden that he had a nuclear bomb and was prepared to use it, but said bin Laden had managed to get hold of nuclear material.

``We are certainly aware that he has some material that could contribute to a nuclear weapon. We are not convinced at this stage that he is capable of producing a nuclear bomb,'' Hoon told the BBC.

``But certainly we have to be very careful. This is a thoroughly dangerous man. He is a man who has no scruples, no morality, no reservations about killing civilians to achieve his perverted ends,'' he added.

-------- colombia

Colombian Lawmaker Flees Raid

WORLD In Brief
Associated Press
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A44
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9515-2001Nov10?language=printer

BOGOTA -- Leftist rebels fired gunshots and hurled grenades at a lawmaker's house in southern Colombia, killing two people.

Luis Almario, a Popular Party representative, escaped unharmed from the attack in Caqueta province and left for Bogota, Caqueta Police Sgt. Luis Lozano said.

Police said more than a dozen rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, besieged the lawmaker's house in the provincial capital, Florencia, shortly after midnight. The guerrillas killed a security guard and a student who was passing by before police repelled the assault, Lozano said.

Colombian lawmakers are increasingly being targeted by armed groups fighting a worsening 37-year-old civil war that has killed thousands of people.

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

War May be Costing $500M - $1B a Month

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-War-Cost.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. helicopter lost in Afghanistan a week ago cost up to twice as much as the government spends yearly on scenic byways. Each cruise missile is worth several American homes.

The total expense of the Afghan war may be nearly as hard to find as people hiding in Afghan caves. By one estimate, the military assault is costing $500 million to $1 billion a month -- and above the $1 billion in promised U.S. economic assistance to Pakistan, and debt relief for the country.'

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a private research group that closely examines the cost of war, offered that monthly figure. Precision is impossible without knowing more about how many bombs are being dropped and what is happening with U.S. forces on the ground, among other variables.

Still, parts of the war are adding up: the estimated $5,000 an hour to fly a Navy FA-18 fighter-bomber, the $25,600 cost of one of the frequently used Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs, the top-of-the-line Tomahawk cruise missiles.

As for a running total, ``It's very much ballpark,'' said Steven M. Kosiak, the center's director of budget studies. Some other analysts have projected higher costs.

Stretched over a year, the price of the war could be $12 billion, half of what the federal government spends on medical research.

By comparison, the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 cost the United States about $3 billion.

The 1991 Persian Gulf War cost America an estimated $61 billion, but all but about $7 billion was reimbursed by allies. By some accounting methods, the United States may have even made a profit.

Munitions at the disposal of U.S. forces in the Afghan war vary wildly in price.

From the bargain basement: the 500-pound M-117, dropped from a heavy bomber, for a mere $300 apiece.

At the high end: Tomahawk cruise missiles costing $600,000 to $1 million each, many times more than the $147,100 median price of an American home.

U.S. officials said 50 Tomahawks alone were launched in the opening assault, some from British forces, making an expensive debut. Dependence on cruise missiles has lessened since then.

Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen said it takes time to calculate costs above those normally associated with having forces abroad in peacetime.

``The Department of Defense will be collecting those figures but at this point, a month into the conflict, we don't have them,'' she said.

On the home front, a study has taken a stab at the costs of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and all their fallout -- an expense likely to dwarf the costs of the Afghan war.

Peter Navarro, an economist at the University of California in Irvine, calculated $100 billion in costs so far, nearly half from lost productivity, sales, advertising dollars and airline revenue in the immediate aftermath. That is apart from stock market losses.

Long-term costs are so speculative and dependent on government policy that Navarro did not add them up.

But his calculations do include ``terrorist tax'' items costing billions to make flying safer. They include $20 to $40 an hour for the time each person wastes by going to the airport 90 minutes earlier.

``The stakes here are simply breathtaking,'' Navarro wrote in the report for the Milken Institute.

To assess the cost of the fighting overseas, budget analysts at least have the experience of past wars to draw from.

Kosiak came to his projection in two ways: one using costs of strike missions over Kosovo and Iraq and applying them to the current conflict, the other by adding up everything known about the Afghan campaign.

Altogether, he calculated that the first 25 days cost $400 million to $800 million.

Munitions used on the Taliban include 15,000-pound BLU-82 ``daisy-cutter'' bombs, costing $27,000 each. The bunker-busting GBU-37 costs $231,000 apiece, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

America lost a Pave Low helicopter -- valued at $40 million, about double last year's budget for National Scenic Byways projects -- in bad weather in Afghanistan, and an $11 million Black Hawk chopper in Pakistan.

--

A sampling from private researchers of price tags and estimates concerning the Afghan war and terrorist attacks:

War:
--JDAM bomb: $25,600
--Tomahawk cruise missile: $600,000-$1 million
--MK-82 ``dumb'' bomb: $600-$1,400
--BLU-82 ``daisy-cutter'' bomb: $27,000
--GBU-37 bunker-busting bomb: $231,000
--Black Hawk helicopter of type lost in Pakistan: $11 million
--Pave Low helicopter of type lost in Afghanistan: $40 million
--Hourly cost of flying Navy FA-18 fighter-bomber: $5,000
--Estimated war cost per month: $500 million-$1 billion

Attack Aftermath:
--Property damage: $10-$13 billion
--Lost economic output: $47 billion
--Projected airline security: up to $41 billion
--Economic stimulus package:
$100 billion in legislation passed by Republican-controlled House,
$66.4 billion in Senate plan favored by Democrats.

--------

U.S. Welcoming Allies' Troops
Despite Pentagon's Concerns, Taliban War Is Multi-Country

By Alan Sipress and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A38
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9119-2001Nov10?language=printer

After initially balking, the Bush administration last week began accepting new contributions of troops for the Afghan campaign from European and other allies to ensure these countries remain vested in the war as it stretches on.

The emerging consensus comes after some administration officials, particularly in the Pentagon, resisted the participation of many traditional allies. They argued this could hamstring war planning by requiring multiple capitals to sign off on military operations, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources.

Some U.S. defense officials remain wary of revisiting the experience of the 1999 Kosovo conflict, when commanders felt handcuffed because bombing targets had to be approved by NATO allies.

But with the campaign looking to continue for months, the administration has largely accepted a view initially centered in the State Department that the war should not be seen in European and other allied countries as solely an American affair. Diplomats have warned that European public opinion, which remains largely supportive, could turn against the military campaign if Europeans do not have a personal stake in the effort.

"From the beginning, the emphasis at the State Department has been on coalition-building. That has overcome doubts about 'war by committee' on the other side of the river," said a European diplomat, referring to the Pentagon.

The change in U.S. attitude translated last week into European troop contributions. The Dutch government said Friday it would pony up 1,200 troops to the effort. Earlier in the week, Germany approved sending 3,900 troops, and Italy agreed to dispatch 2,700.

President Jacques Chirac said France is considering expanding its contingent, which includes 2,000 servicemen on three naval vessels and air crews that participate in surveillance. Also providing forces are Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Turkey and Japan.

When the campaign was launched a month ago, Britain was the only other country to join in combat operations. It has contributed 4,200 troops and fired its own cruise missiles at targets in Afghanistan.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, NATO for the first time invoked the article in its charter that deems an attack on one alliance member to be an attack on all. This provides for forces from member countries to come to the United States' defense.

Since then, allied governments have made clear to Washington, including in conversations with President Bush, that they would contribute whatever military forces and equipment were needed. These countries already have liaison officers at the Tampa headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, where deployment discussions are ongoing.

"All the countries that have made [troop] offers are pressing us to take them up on the offers," said a senior administration official.

U.S. officials waited to take up these foreign offers partly because time was needed to assess what forces would be required for the campaign and eventual peacekeeping efforts once the Taliban government is ousted.

"In some cases, we've told allies, 'We want your forces now.' In other cases, we've said, 'Those forces are interesting. We don't need them right now. But we'll probably need them later, so don't go away,' " said a senior U.S. defense official.

It remains unclear what role some of the newly committed troops will play. Most are not expected to participate in the war's core combat activities: airstrikes and commando operations.

But U.S. officials and foreign diplomats said the primary reason that foreign troops were not tapped earlier was that the Bush administration had to resolve its internal debate over the virtues of coalition-building.

"There are people, particularly in the Pentagon, but perhaps elsewhere, who believe maybe we don't need a lot of that," said a diplomat from a second European country. "Even if you don't need it militarily, there are good political reasons to have a coalition not just on paper but a coalition that is operational."

An envoy from a third country said European leaders were pleased that the State Department had prevailed over those in the military "who wanted to have it all for themselves."

Though the senior U.S. defense official acknowledged that the Pentagon and State Department had different views, he minimized the ultimate significance.

"Eventually, we moved to the State Department, and they moved towards us, and we've kind of coalesced around a view that this wasn't Desert Storm," he said, referring to the broad military coalition arranged by the United States to confront Iraq. He added, "On the other hand, there is political value."

Since the beginning of the Bush administration, some U.S. officials have been pressing the United States to refrain from adopting a more unilateralist world view. The attacks against New York and the Pentagon have prompted U.S. officials to seek out broad international cooperation on financial and diplomatic initiatives to combat terrorism. But European allies in particular have asked that this extend to military operations.

Another European envoy, expressing a widespread belief in the diplomatic community, said that skeptics in the Bush administration increasingly understand they cannot keep Europeans on board unless allied governments are seen as participating in the war. Though surveys show that European public opinion still backs the Afghan campaign, the overwhelming solidarity with the United States recorded in the days after Sept. 11 has started to slip.

"If we want European support to be rock solid as it is now, we have to have these guys on the ground so the public feels really engaged," he said.

A senior Bush administration official said, however, that the concern is not so much with ordinary Europeans, who have been anxious to join the battle against terrorism, as it is with their governments.

----

Sailors on Enterprise Return to a Different Homeland

By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8921-2001Nov10.html

NORFOLK, Nov. 10 -- Petty Officer 1st Class Shawn McMahon, who arrived home today after nearly seven months at sea, can legitimately claim to have witnessed the first military mobilization in America's war on terrorism.

First, he watched the events of Sept. 11 unfold live on the "Today" show on a TV set in the galley of the USS Enterprise, where he is personal cook to the carrier's commander, Capt. James A. Winnefeld Jr. That morning, as terror hit a world away, McMahon was making desserts for a morning meeting.

Alarmed by what he saw on television, McMahon rushed from the galley to alert senior officers. In the hallway, the captain ran past him on his way to meet with Rear Adm. John G. Morgan.

McMahon will always remember what happened next: He felt the Enterprise move under his feet. "You could just feel the ship turning around," he said.

Steaming home after its Mediterranean and Persian Gulf tour, the Enterprise, the Navy's first nuclear-powered carrier, was suddenly headed to war.

In the weeks since, the approximately 80 planes based on the 1,123-foot-long carrier, the Navy's longest, flew hundreds of sorties -- as many as 80 a day -- as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. The F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets also dropped nearly 830,000 pounds of munitions.

Their homecoming put off by two weeks, McMahon and his 5,000 shipmates finally docked at Norfolk Naval Station today, an arrival all the sweeter for the delay, relatives said. The crew received a greeting befitting wartime heroes and combat veterans.

In the cheering crowd of thousands were some of the 90 babies born while their fathers were at sea.

The infants and their mothers waited in a warmed tent and were allowed to greet the fathers first.

"I'm nervous about this," said Dana Hall, waiting with her baby, Chase, for Michael Israel, a cargo mover on the Enterprise. "I'm used to doing things on my own. I'm used to doing things my own way. . . . But I just can't wait to see his face."

Families began gathering at the naval station before 6 a.m., huddled under blankets with their welcome home signs. "Single -- Just Picking Up My Uncle," read one. "Welcome Home Daddy, We Missed You," read another.

As the Enterprise lumbered into view about 9 a.m., the gathering crowed surged forward.

"I can see the tip! I can see the tip!" shouted Jennifer Griffith, here to meet her boyfriend.

The carrier emerged from behind an oil tanker and ever so slowly turned toward the pier. To ecstatic cheers from onshore, tiny sailors at the rail came into focus.

Spouses and parents scanned the faces, looking for sons, husbands, wives and daughters.

Since the Enterprise set sail in April, McMahon's son started kindergarten; James Rittman's son said his first words -- "dog" and "train"; and Travis Pease's sister and mother launched a business, a travel Web site.

In short, life has gone on, said Lisa Montana, whose husband, Carmine, is a nuclear machinist's mate on the 40-year-old ship.

Relatives and friends kept in touch with their loved ones via e-mail and the occasional telephone call -- until the Enterprise went into combat and communication was limited. Even then, there were almost daily e-mails from Winnefeld, the commander: We are fine, we are busy, we are doing our duty, Montana recalled.

In this digital Navy, e-mail has helped enormously, said families who have been through several long deployments.

New mothers uploaded pictures of their infants for faraway fathers to see.

Even after Sept. 11, when families rarely heard from their loved ones, they could continue to e-mail them, halfway around the world, and be confident that the sailors were receiving the messages.

The hardest part for Chris Kendzora was not knowing where her son, Michael, was Sept. 11 and what he was thinking and feeling. "Was he as scared as we were for him?" she wondered.

Family members said today they knew the moment the hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center that the Enterprise would not be home Oct. 25 as planned.

"It was the worst feeling in the world . . . a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach," said Marcie Stohlman, who drove 24 hours from Nebraska with her husband, Cliff, to greet their son, Tim, 19.

Patrick Backer, an aerographer's mate on the Enterprise, said he took the Sept. 11 attacks personally. A Manhattan native, he used to be able to see the twin towers from his apartment. Now he is eager to get back and see the altered landscape for himself.

Backer, who became a father for the second time while at sea, said he looks forward to telling his grandchildren about this war: "I'll tell them I did my part. The twin towers went down, and I did my part."


-------- OTHER

Protect sensitive documents

USA Today
11/11/2001
By Alberto R. Gonzales
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-12-ncoppf.htm

President Bush's recent executive order establishes sensible procedures for making public the records of former presidents. The order fulfills the president's statutory obligation to implement the Presidential Records Act, as well as his obligations under a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that held that former presidents continue to have the right to assert privileges over their records even after their term has ended.

Neither Bush nor Congress has the power or authority to ignore that Supreme Court ruling. Bush's order, therefore, allows a former president to assert privileges to protect sensitive documents, such as records that could impact national security.

It is clear that virtually all criticism of Bush's order is actually criticism of the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the rights of former presidents to assert privileges over their records.

The Presidential Records Act fails to establish a procedure for former presidents to assert their constitutionally guaranteed privilege. President Bush's order provides such procedures and sets a reasonable time frame for review of records and assertion of privileges.

Importantly, the executive order does not expand or encourage the assertion of any privilege available to the former president.

Under Bush's order, a large portion of presidential records - for example, those not covered by privilege - will be released no later than 12 years after a president's term is over, as established by the Presidential Records Act.

In addition, history has proved that most former presidents release the vast majority of even their privileged documents.

Before the Presidential Records Act took effect in 1981, former presidents were under no legal obligation to disclose any records. But those who visit the libraries of Presidents Kennedy, Ford or Carter know the valuable array of historical materials that are available. Bush's executive order preserves this rich tradition.

Alberto R. Gonzales is counsel to President Bush.

---

Self-serving secrecy

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-12-nceditf.htm

In wartime, there is little more vital to government than its ability to work in secret. Secrecy can save lives, both at home and on the battlefield.

But when that need is used as an excuse to avoid political embarrassment - as President Bush did recently in thwarting the release of old presidential records - public trust is lost.

Hiding behind a bogus claim of expanding openness, Bush issued new rules that will greatly complicate the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law intended to ensure the release of administration records 12 years after a president leaves office - in this case, those of the Reagan administration.

Under the law, Reagan documents were due for public release this year. Instead, Bush chose to stack the deck against disclosure, abolishing rules the Reagan administration itself wrote and replacing them with new roadblocks that:

Allow a designated representative of a dead or incapacitated president the right to assert executive privilege in the president's name.

Strip the Archivist of the United States' right to overrule former presidents' executive-privilege claims.

Triple the time former presidents have to review document requests to 90 days and give the current president an indefinite period to review those decisions.

Both Bush and his staff pretend they're increasing access to the documents.

In introducing the rules, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that under existing law and procedures a former president has the right to withhold any documents for any reason. "But thanks to the executive order more information will be forthcoming," he said.

That's true only if you pretend that the 1978 law isn't already in effect, implemented through Reagan's executive order.

Administration opponents and critics of government secrecy believe Bush may be attempting to shield members of his administration who also served under Reagan, including Colin Powell and Gale Norton, from embarrassing revelations.

Whatever the motive, Bush's move is part of a larger administration pattern of obstructing the public's right to know how government works. For months Bush has fought congressional efforts to reveal the role of industry lobbyists in writing his energy plan. Bush's attorney general wrote a memo last month promising to back government agencies in court when they exploit legal loopholes to fight Freedom of Information Act requests.

Today the Bush administration enjoys broad public support. Each time the administration abuses secrecy as a convenient dodge rather than a last resort, it puts that support at risk.

-------- death penalty

'Citizen witnesses' look death in the eye

By Maria Sanminiatelli
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011111-42337072.htm

RICHMOND - A prosecutor, a bartender, a data analyst, a social services employee, several police officers and some students.

It's a group with little in common except for one thing: All have volunteered to be "citizen witnesses" for executions in Virginia.

"It's not something you can anticipate," said Rush Wickes, a Virginia Tech graduate student who attended the state's two executions this year. "Some people go time and time again, and it becomes a nonevent in their lives. Others are horrified and traumatized."

Virginia is one of 16 states that requires that a certain number of civilians be invited to attend executions to ensure they are carried out in a dignified and humane manner, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Under Virginia law, the six citizen witnesses must have no connection to the case, fill out a simple application form and undergo a background check. Convicted felons, for instance, are not eligible.

Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said there usually are about 25 to 30 first-timers from around the state from whom to choose. Only when time or place constraints are a problem do corrections officials call on former witnesses to serve again.

Danny Allen is an extreme example. The vice president of a paint and decorating company in Emporia has volunteered to witness more than a dozen executions. He declined to comment for this story.

Mr. Traylor said the state never wants for volunteers.

Reasons vary.

"Quite honestly, I think some are just curious, and some do it for civic responsibility, and some might be at odds on whether there should be executions," Mr. Traylor said.

Department officials do not consider or even track volunteers' opinions about the death penalty. "It doesn't matter," Mr. Traylor said. "The code just says six citizens, that's all."

Gregory B. Turpin, 37, a prosecutor in Virginia Beach, was a witness at the March execution of Thomas Wayne Akers, who beat a Roanoke man to death with a baseball bat in 1998.

For Mr. Turpin, the decision to attend an execution was related to his job, even though his office didn't ask him to do it and he went on his own time. He has yet to prosecute a capital case but knows he is likely to do so in the future.

"If I'm going to argue for this punishment, I think I owe it to myself to see what it is I might be arguing for," he said.

Mr. Turpin, who supports the death penalty, said he was taken aback by how smoothly it all went.

"It was so matter-of-fact, so rehearsed, so sterile that I was kind of surprised by it," he said. "It just went clip, clip, clip through the thing."

J. Brian Cassell, 36, a clinical data analyst at the Medical College of Virginia's Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, is staunchly opposed to the death penalty and regularly protests at executions. His beliefs led him to witness one.

"They execute people in the name of the citizens, and I wanted to see what is being done in my name," said Mr. Cassell, who also went to Akers' execution.

Mr. Cassell, who is a social psychologist by training, also is thinking of doing a study on the families of victims who attend executions in the hopes of achieving a sense of closure.

When Christopher Beck was executed in October for murdering his cousin and two other persons in their Arlington home in 1995, Mr. Cassell attended a vigil outside the walls of Virginia's death chamber in Jarratt. He said he won't witness another execution.

Mr. Wickes, 24, is a vocal supporter of the death penalty who works for Virginians United Against Crime, a support group for crime victims and their relatives. He also attended Akers' execution and was a witness again at Beck's execution.

"I've written editorials [about the death penalty] and have debated in favor of it," he said. "And I felt it would have bolstered my position to say, 'OK, I have gone through it.'"

He argued that executions are therapeutic for the victims' families. "There's a feeling of relief that things have been brought to a close - a painful chapter in people's lives has come to a close," he said.

-------- environment

160 Nations Agree to Warming Pact

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5721-2001Nov10.html

With the United States on the sidelines, negotiators for more than 160 countries, including Great Britain, Japan and Russia, reached agreement late last night on a groundbreaking climate control treaty setting mandatory targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

European environmental leaders, who were outraged when President Bush disavowed the Kyoto global warming treaty in March, vowed to forge ahead without the United States and work out final details in Morocco this week. But the talks nearly collapsed and negotiators had to satisfy the last-minute demands of Japanese, Russians and Australians for more flexibility in the rules and other economic advantages in order to close the deal.

"The global package is adopted," European Union spokesman Vincent Georis told reporters after 18 hours of talks that stretched into this morning, Morocco time. Officials said they expected the remaining countries to approve the details of the treaty.

The treaty would require about 40 industrialized countries to reduce worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The governing bodies of at least 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions must formally ratify the pact before it takes effect.

"This is the only international global warming treaty that begins the world on a downward trend of carbon dioxide emissions," said Jennifer L. Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund climate change campaign, who was in Morocco for the talks. "It sends a strong signal to the shrinking ranks of doubters in politics and business to tackle global warming."

The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, would be exempt from the treaty. Yesterday, the Department of Energy reported that heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions increased by 3.1 percent in the United States last year - the biggest increase since the mid-1990s. Carbon dioxide emissions, the chief cause of global warming, were nearly 14 percent higher than in 1990, according to the department's Energy Information Administration.

The Bush administration opposes the treaty, saying it would harm the U.S. economy while exempting developing countries, including India and China, from mandatory emissions targets. Instead, the White House has advocated spending more for scientific research, incentives for developing new technology to reduce emissions and other voluntary or market-based incentives.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and other officials said last summer that the administration would likely present fresh proposals for revising the global warming treaty during the meeting in Morocco. But the administration has set aside its Cabinet-level review of alternatives to the Kyoto protocol in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, the head of the U.S. delegation, arrived at the conference with no new offers and largely stayed in the background while the talks proceeded haltingly.

Global warming remains a potent political issue in Europe and Japan. Many scientists who have taken part in U.N.-sanctioned climate change research have concluded that the buildup of heat-trapping chemicals in the atmosphere may cause temperatures to rise by 6 degrees to 12 degrees Fahrenheit this century. That increase is likely to provoke more violent storms, the melting of the polar ice caps and rising sea levels that could inundate small islands and many coastal areas.

While the Senate went on record in 1997 opposing the essential features of the Kyoto protocol, some prominent Republicans and Democrats have urged Bush to find a way to make the pact acceptable.

"How long can the administration turn its back on issues the rest of the world cares about - from global warming to trade in small arms - and expect broad support on issues like the war on terrorism?" said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust.

However, Glenn F. Kelly, executive director of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry-backed group that opposes the treaty, said, "From what we see so far, once again the parties have done nothing to address fundamental concerns expressed by the United States for years."

The final agreement came after government environmental ministers - eager to complete negotiations - hurried in and out of small conference rooms in Marrakesh, arguing over what they called about a half-dozen "crunch" issues.

According to environmental groups and others monitoring the talks, the final disputes centered on how a set of proposed market-based mechanisms would function to mitigate the treaty's impact on the economies of the countries taking part.

The treaty's mandatory emissions cuts would most heavily penalize highly industrialized countries that use large quantities of coal and other fossil fuels to operate industrial sites and power plants.

The mechanisms were designed to help those countries meet their targets by allowing them to purchase carbon credits on an international financial market from countries with relatively small greenhouse gas emissions, or by reducing their quota by expanding forests and farmlands that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Some members of the European Union have long been skeptical of these mechanisms, arguing that they make it too easy for some major polluters to meet their goals.

The negotiators appeared to have made significant headway on Wednesday when all sides agreed on an enforcement mechanism that would penalize countries that failed to meet their goals by raising their emission reduction targets by 1.3 percent.

However, there was a major dispute over eligibility requirements for countries participating in credit trading. Officials last night did not immediately explain how they had resolved these differences.

The treaty framework was first negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 but was subject to further detailed negotiations on how it would be enforced before it could be formally submitted to the legislatures of the participating countries for formal ratification.

During a session last summer in Bonn, the European Union, Japan, Russia and other principal participants agreed on almost every element of the accord but left some issues unresolved until the Marrakesh talks.

-------- police / prisoners

Symbolic change not enough

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-12-edtwof2.htm

Two months into the war on terrorism, the battles are reaching into America's boardrooms, claiming executive casualties and proving that fixing a problem takes more than simply fixing blame.

Witness the ousting Friday of Frank Argenbright, founder of Argenbright Security - the company that has become the symbol of everything that's wrong with airport security. Last month's casualty was Red Cross president Bernadine Healy. She resigned in part because of unspecified disagreements with her board over the use of a half-billion in donations made after Sept. 11.

Though the institutions couldn't be more different, both found themselves targets of rising criticism after the terrorist attacks, and both chose the same tactic to signal change. Whether it will work, though, is questionable. The organizations' problems extend beyond the executive suite.

At Argenbright Security and the Red Cross, change is surely needed.

Argenbright, the nation's largest provider of security screeners, has a long history of failures, suggesting deep institutional weaknesses. They were suddenly thrust into public view by the hijackings.

For starters, Argenbright was fined more than $1 million last year for hiring convicted felons as screeners at the Philadelphia airport and for failing to do background checks on others. Last month, prosecutors accused the company of continuing its shoddy hiring practices.

This month, a man slipped past an Argenbright checkpoint at Chicago's O'Hare Airport with a duffel bag of seven knives, a stun gun and a can of pepper spray. Two screeners were fired, apparently not because they let the man through, but because a video camera caught them stealing two pocketknives that had been confiscated from the man.

Troubles for the Red Cross have been shorter-lived but more shocking because of the charity's trusted reputation. After collecting more than $500 million in donations for a special fund to help terror-attack victims, the Red Cross appears intent on diverting a big amount to unrelated purposes, such as building a future blood supply.

Now the Red Cross has begun to destroy thousands of pints of blood given by donors who were encouraged to rush to blood banks after Sept. 11, according to The Washington Post.

The Red Cross' actions threaten to sour the public, which has shown unprecedented generosity, on future giving. Yet, other than promising a "top-to-bottom review" of its decisions, the Red Cross has not relented from its questionable stance.

Changing chiefs can often be the best first step to improvement. But quick fixes are rare in large organizations, and in the case of Argenbright, there's no reason to wait. Congress is considering switching to government security guards and should do so.

The Red Cross, of course, is a vital institution. But its interim CEO, Harold Decker, faces a challenge in regaining the public's trust. His board of directors was involved in the post-Sept. 11 blunders.

Whether the changes add up to substance or symbolism remains to be seen.

---

Police commissioner sees a changed New York

USA Today
11/11/2001
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/12/kerik.htm

NEW YORK - As the worst terrorist attack in history unfolded around him, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik looked up at the inferno of the World Trade Center and saw trapped office workers jumping to their deaths.

He had no command post, no phones, no radio contact with thousands of police and rescue workers responding to the devastation on Sept. 11.

"There was absolutely nothing you could do," he says. As he watched hundreds of people die, that was the one moment that Kerik says he felt "helpless."

Since the chaos of that morning, when he ran through the streets with Mayor Rudy Giuliani looking for a safe place with a working phone, the police commissioner has been in the spotlight almost as often as the mayor. It is Kerik, 46, who has been at Giuliani's shoulder seemingly non-stop since Sept. 11.

He is responsible for public safety in a city that remains at "Omega" status, the highest level of security. It is his police force leading the spot checks of cars and trucks entering the city and the armed patrols at airports.

He says New Yorkers must learn to live this way forever.

"They're going to have to undergo certain spot checks and security checks at tunnels, bridges, airports, that in the past they've never had to do. This stuff, realistically, isn't going to go away. If you got off an airplane at JFK (Airport) before Sept. 11 and saw somebody standing there with a machine gun, you'd have a heart attack," he says. "Those days have changed."

Kerik also supported the federal anti-terrorism bill that expanded law enforcement's powers to wiretap terrorism suspects and to hold foreign nationals in custody without charging them.

The extraordinary increase in security is taking place in a city where civil liberties are fiercely guarded and perceived encroachments on public rights - whether through surveillance cameras in city parks in order to catch drug deals or closing off the steps of City Hall to ad-hoc speechmaking - spark loud protest.

Tactics such as stop-and-frisk searches and incidents such as the police torture of Abner Louima had led to hostile relations between the police and minority communities.

Kerik says critics have been silent since Sept. 11, when many New Yorkers began thanking cops instead of reviling them.

"Ever ride through the (Greenwich) Village and see anybody complimenting a cop? I lived in the Village for 3 or 4 years when I became a cop, and people despised me." Now, "they've got signs (thanking police) and they're giving you juice and water and flags. A lot of these cops are now being inspired by these people who once were criticizing them. It's really creating a bigger and stronger bond in the community."

The police response to Sept. 11 also will provide a counterpoint when the next brutality charge comes up, Kerik says. "This is something that people can fall back on and say ... all cops aren't like that, because I remember when this thing happened, and that's what they're really about."

Kerik said Friday that he is declining an offer from Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg to stay on as police commissioner after Giuliani leaves office Jan. 1. Kerik has not said where he plans to go next. He and Giuliani have been close since he served as Giuliani's police bodyguard during the 1993 mayoral campaign. As if to mark his decision to leave the police, Kerik's autobiography appears in bookstores Tuesday.

The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice covers his life as a high school dropout, undercover narcotics cop, jail warden, police commissioner. It also describes Kerik's search for his mother, and his discovery that she was an alcoholic and prostitute who abandoned him when he was a toddler. In a sad irony, the police commissioner learned that her murder in 1964 had never been solved or even investigated.

Kerik finished writing the book at 1:30 a.m. Sept. 11, less than 8 hours before the terrorist attacks.

Like everyone in Lower Manhattan that day, Kerik had moments of fear, both for himself and for the country. As the second tower fell, he and Giuliani and their aides took refuge in a building just one block from the Trade Center.

"I wasn't sure if the building was going to come down on top of us or we were going to smother to death, because you couldn't breath, the smoke was so thick. For a minute or so I thought, now we're really, really in trouble. But when you get like that ... you push harder. And when you push harder, you work your way out of it."

In a quickly added chapter to his book, Kerik says he and the others forced their way into a locked firehouse to use as a command center.

Shortly afterward, Giuliani was on the phone with an assistant to President Bush, who told them that the Pentagon had been hit by a third hijacked plane and the White House had been evacuated.

"For that split second, I thought, 'Wow. What the hell is going on?'"

-------- spying

Story of C.I.A. and Peru's Former Spy Chief May Soon Be Told

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By ANTHONY DePALMA
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/international/americas/11PERU.html

The Bush administration may soon disclose secret details of the relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and Peru's powerful former spy chief, Vladimiro L. Montesinos, Peru's president said in an interview yesterday in New York.

President Alejandro Toledo of Peru said he had requested the release of the documents because Mr. Montesinos remained a threat to Peru's fledgling democracy. He accused Mr. Montesinos of using extortion and bribery from his Peruvian jail cell to exert sweeping political influence in Peru. Mr. Montesinos is awaiting trial on charges of money laundering and drug dealing during the decade he was a major adviser and political operative of former President Alberto K. Fujimori.

Mr. Toledo, who took office in July, vowed to continue his efforts to dismantle the network of corruption and violence that he inherited.. "We are stepping on people's toes," said Mr. Toledo, 55. The corrupt activities of which Mr. Montesinos and others are accused generated millions of dollars in secret payments. Although the accounts holding much of that money were frozen when Mr. Montesinos was arrested in June, authorities say he has replenished his accounts by threatening to release damaging information on public officials unless they pay him.

Mr. Toledo said he asked for the documents on Mr. Montesinos and his links to American intelligence soon after he took office. At the recent Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Shanghai, he said President Bush assured him that the documents would be delivered.

--------

Has someone been sitting on the FBI?

6/11/01
BBC Newsnight
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm

This transcript is produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.

GREG PALAST: The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their connections cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism?

UNNAMED MAN: There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our government.

JOE TRENTO, (AUTHOR, "SECRET HISTORY OF THE CIA"): The sad thing is that thousands of Americans had to die needlessly.

PETER ELSNER: How can it be that the former President of the US and the current President of the US have business dealings with characters that need to be investigated?

PALAST: In the eight weeks since the attacks, over 1,000 suspects and potential witnesses have been detained. Yet, just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House.

Their official line is that the Bin Ladens are above suspicion - apart from Osama, the black sheep, who they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush family and the Saudi royal household, whose links with the Bin Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing. But Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of other members of the] Bin Laden family for links to terrorist organisations before and after September 11th.

This document is marked "Secret". Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199 is FBI code for case type. 9 would be murder. 65 would be espionage. 199 means national security. WF indicates Washington field office special agents were investigating ABL - because of it's relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin Laden, president and treasurer of WAMY.

This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia where almost every home displays the Stars and Stripes. On this unremarkable street, at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the former home of Abdullah and another brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of Muslim Youth is in this building, in a little room in the basement at 5613 Leesburg Pike. And here, just a couple blocks down the road at 5913 Leesburg, is where four of the hijackers that attacked New York and Washington are listed as having lived.

The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and when we talked to them, they insisted they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago, Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives. And India claimed that WAMY was funding an organisation linked to bombings in Kashmir. And the Philippines military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for some reason, agents were pulled off the trail.

TRENTO: The FBI wanted to investigate these guys. This is not something that they didn't want to do - they wanted to, they weren't permitted to.

PALAST: The secret file fell into the hands of national security expert, Joe Trento. The Washington spook-tracker has been looking into the FBI's allegations about WAMY.

TRENTO: They've had connections to Osama Bin Laden's people. They've had connections to Muslim cultural and financial aid groups that have terrorist connections. They fit the pattern of groups that the Saudi royal family and Saudi community of princes - the 20,000 princes - have funded who've engaged in terrorist activity.

Now, do I know that WAMY has done anything that's illegal? No, I don't know that. Do I know that as far back as 1996 the FBI was very concerned about this organisation? I do.

PALAST: Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections between the State Department, the CIA and the Saudis. The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.

MICHAEL SPRINGMAN: In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there. I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence.

PALAST: By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director, was in the White House. Springman was shocked to find this wasn't visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA were playing "the Great Game".

SPRINGMAN: What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi connections?

MICHAEL WILDES, ( LAWYER) I would never be surprised with that. They're cut off at the hip sometimes by supervisors or given shots that are being called from Washington at the highest levels.

PALAST: I showed lawyer Michael Wildes our FBI documents. One of the Khobar Towers bombers was represented by Wildes, who thought he had useful intelligence for the US. He also represents a Saudi diplomat who defected to the USA with 14,000 documents which Wildes claims implicates Saudi citizens in financing terrorism and more. Wildes met with FBI men who told him they were not permitted to read all the documents. Nevertheless, he tried to give them to the agents.

WILDES: "Take these with you. We're not going to charge for the copies. Keep them. Do something with them. Get some bad guys with them." They refused.

PALAST: In the hall of mirrors that is the US intelligence community, Wildes, a former US federal attorney, said the FBI field agents wanted the documents, but they were told to "see no evil."

WILDES: You see a difference between the rank-and-file counter-intelligence agents, who are regarded by some as the motor pool of the FBI, who drive following diplomats, and the people who are getting the shots called at the highest level of our government, who have a different agenda - it's unconscionable.

PALAST: State wanted to keep the pro-American Saudi royal family in control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection so long as America was safe. In recent years, CIA operatives had other reasons for not exposing Saudi-backed suspects.

TRENTO: If you recruited somebody who is a member of a terrorist organisation, who happens to make his way here to the US, and even though you're not in touch with that person anymore but you have used him in the past, it would be unseemly if he were arrested by the FBI and word got back that he'd once been on the payroll of the CIA. What we're talking about is blow-back. What we're talking about is embarrassing, career-destroying blow-back for intelligence officials.

PALAST: Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blow-back? The younger Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by Salem Bin Laden's chief US representative. Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has, in just a few years of its founding, become one of Americas biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid advisor. And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the Bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.

ELSNER: You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former President of the US who happens to be the father of the current President of the US. And you have all sorts of questions about where does policy begin and where does good business and good profits for the company, Carlyle, end?

PALAST: I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed. FBI headquarters told us they could not comment on our findings. A spokesman said: "There are lots of things that only the intelligence community knows and that no-one else ought to know.

-------- terrorism

AL QAEDA INC.
Running Terrorism as a Business

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/weekinreview/11VANN.html

WASHINGTON - AT the embassy bombings trial earlier this year, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network looked nothing like the far-reaching and sophisticated terror organization that most Americans have feared and loathed since Sept. 11. Instead, Al Qaeda Inc. resembled a start-up company struggling to adapt to the ever-changing rules of the new economy.

The organization was beset by the usual office politics, ruthless cost-cutting and even corruption by some of its members. It was also revealed that Mr. bin Laden, like the chief executive of any shaky firm, found it difficult to maintain morale and loyalty in the ranks.

One former Al Qaeda member, Jamal Ahmed Al- Fadl, a Sudanese man, testified that he complained bitterly about his $500 monthly salary, which was lower than other members', particularly certain Egyptians who seemed to enjoy preferential treatment.

But Mr. bin Laden reacted to the complaint as any chief executive might. He told Mr. Fadl the Egyptians were paid more because they had more skills than the Sudanese, like the ability to obtain forged passports.

Terrorism can be viewed as a warped mirror image of the new economy. In that financial structure, corporate chieftains manage lean, trimmed-down firms, bringing in consultants and freelancers to perform specific jobs. The specialists work as a team to complete an assignment, then move on to other jobs, often for other companies. The prototypical new economy chief executive can be viewed as a direct descendant of the movie mogul, a man with the power to greenlight projects pitched to him, who has final veto power over content or timing, but often little to do with the project's actual creation. His most important contribution is the money.

So Mr. bin Laden is a terror mogul. His diabolical vision, a mix of Muslim fanatacism and anti-American hatred, inspires members of cells around the world to carry out attacks in Al Qaeda's name. The organizers have re-emerged in plot after plot. Always, Mr. bin Laden is off-stage; it is believed he leaves the selection of targets and timing to lieutenants. His most important contribution, investigators believe, is the money.

And like new economy C.E.O.'s, Mr. bin Laden is constantly searching for ways to cut costs. The Sept. 11 attacks cost an estimated $500,000, the most ever paid for an Al Qaeda terror attack. Mr. bin Laden has his own ways to manage costs; the 19 hijackers believed their reward for the suicide hijackings was a greeting in heaven from scores of black-eyed virgins.

"To me, this is a perfect example of bin Laden agreeing to pay the operatives the opportunity costs for their time, which is exactly what a C.E.O. does," said Jessica E. Stern, a terrorism expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government who is writing a book about Al Qaeda to be published in September 2002. "And he is very tight with money."

Another former Al Qaeda accomplice, L'Houssaine Kherchtou, a Moroccan, testified that he became enraged with Mr. bin Laden after he was refused an emergency transfer of $500 to cover the cost of a Caesarean section for his wife. This angered Mr. Kherchtou so much that he quit.

The two men's disgruntlement about money led them to jump to a competitor. They have cooperated with the American authorities, contributing mightily to the understanding of how Al Qaeda works. And both testified against the four men convicted of conspiring to blow up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Larry C. Johnson, a former deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, compared Al Qaeda to Amway, for it relies on a loose-knit organization of workers to get the job done. "Bin Laden provides the vision," he said. "but basically the members have to go out there and pull their own weight."

There is no hard evidence that Mr. bin Laden chose any past suspected Al Qaeda targets, like the U.S.S. Cole attack in October 2000 or the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. However, Mr. Fadl testified that a photo of the American embassy in Kenya was shown to Mr. bin Laden in 1994 and he pointed at a wall nearby and said it would be a good place for a truck bomb.

At the embassy bombing trial, prosecutors introduced boxes of documents that showed the cell struggled to do its job despite a daily grind of faulty computer software and dead mobile phone batteries.

Wadih El-Hag, a defendant, complained in a letter, "The battery for the mobile phone is almost dead; it cannot be used for more than 15 minutes."

Mr. Johnson and other terrorist experts pointed to such problems and blanched at the idea that Al Qaeda was as organized as even the shakiest start-up. "They are pretty good at developing networks and sleeper cells," Mr. Johnson said. "They are not Keystone Kops incompetents. But at the same time, they are not James Bond-smooth either. If they are James Bond-smooth, Mohamed Atta wouldn't park a plane on the runway at Miami International Airport and just walk away."

Another terrorist expert, Jason Pate, disagreed with the image of Al Qaeda as a new economy firm. Mr. bin Laden resembles a C.E.O. only in his keen awareness of the limits to the group's financial resources, said Mr. Pate, a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in Monterey, Calif. "There are any number of religious fanatics in the world, but it's different if you have several hundred million dollars," he said. "Bin Laden equates money with power, and he is reluctant to give either one up."

THE idea that Al Qaeda ran as a coolly efficient corporation was introduced by Mr. Fadl, the chief witness in the embassy bombings trial. He served for a decade as Mr. bin Laden's paymaster. On the stand, Mr. Fadl, who left the group in 1996, said Mr. bin Laden functioned as C.E.O., and directly beneath him was the Shura Council, a dozen top aides who, Mr. Fadl said, strategized about waging a holy war.

After that, Mr. Fadl explained, the network was divided into a number of committees: a military committee that oversaw training and arms purchases; a finance committee responsible for the organization's businesses. There were also media committees and even a travel department, similar to a corporate travel arm. But there was an important distinction. "They give you a passport," Mr. Fadl said.

Mr. Fadl was so disgruntled about his poor salary that he said he accepted $110,000 in kickbacks from an Al Qaeda international trading company that traded in sugar and palm oil. He had a showdown meeting with Mr. bin Laden, who was said to be furious. Mr. Fadl was convinced that he was going to be killed.

Instead, Mr. bin Laden was calm, even serene, and asked only that Mr. Fadl pay back the money. "In that way," Mr. Pate said, "Mr. bin Laden acts like a chief budget officer."

---

World leaders: War on terrorism must be global

USA Today
11/11/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/10/un-global-terror.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - At a U.N. General Assembly session delayed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, world leaders took to the podium one by one Saturday and declared that the war on terrorism must be a global fight that also addresses root causes ranging from poverty to political repression. The grand General Assembly hall was filled with representatives of countries that have been the targets of terrorism - including Argentina and India - and countries accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism, such as Iran, Iraq and Syria, recently elected to the powerful Security Council.

From countries large and small, rich and poor, there was universal recognition that after Sept. 11 no nation is safe from terrorism, and no nation can fight it alone.

"Terrorism taught us the abiding lesson that we do indeed belong to a global village," said South African President Thabo Mbeki. "None within this village will be safe unless all the villagers act together to secure and guarantee that safety."

Poignantly noting that only a few miles away "thousands still lie in a tomb of rubble" that was once the World Trade Center, President Bush said in a hard-hitting speech that "the time for action has now arrived."

"There is no such thing as a good terrorist," he declared. "We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them."

A U.S.-sponsored resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council on Sept. 28 requires nations to stop financing, supporting, and providing sanctuary to terrorists. Bush offered help to countries that lack the means to enforce laws and protect borders, and he warned governments that continue to support and harbor terrorists that "there is a price to be paid, and it will be paid."

Bush did not single out nations, but aides had said his words were directed at Lebanon, Syria, Iran and other countries whose commitment to the anti-terrorism effort are under scrutiny. He did, however, reaffirm a commitment to a Palestinian state, something Arab countries want to hear. Israeli diplomats were absent Saturday because of the Jewish sabbath.

Bush is among more than 40 world leaders and over 100 foreign ministers addressing the assembly's annual debate, which ends Nov. 16. The General Assembly's yearlong session opened a day late on Sept. 12. The "general debate" was delayed for the first time in the United Nations' 56-year history because of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami condemned the attacks as "brutal and savage," but criticized the Bush administration's military response.

Regrettably, he said, the global expectation that political leaders would "transform strong public sentiment to a logical, just and comprehensive response to terrorism where its root causes could be addressed, has yet to be met."

The emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who also spoke on behalf of the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, said terrorism is "concealed like time-bombs in our midst."

"We are all involved in an unconventional war for which we are not yet prepared," he said.

Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his country's dispute with India over Kashmir must be resolved.

"Unless we go to the root causes, cosmetics will only make matters worse," he said.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned in his opening speech that the war on terrorism must not be allowed to totally dominate the global agenda because poverty, conflict and human rights abuses that existed on Sept. 10 have not gone away.

If anything, the need to promote peace, development and human rights "has taken on new urgency," Annan said. A world that respects diversity and universal values can only be achieved "if we bring real hope to the billions now trapped in poverty, conflict and disease."

Stressing the links between terrorism, crime and drug abuse, Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso called for "a worldwide public awareness campaign to make drug users realize that, even if inadvertently, they are helping finance terrorism."

"If we are to stem the flow of resources to the terrorist networks spreading death and destruction, it is crucial that drug use in our societies be drastically curtailed," he said.

In conference rooms throughout U.N. headquarters Saturday, high-level diplomats held bilateral meetings that will likely be of interest to the United States and its anti-terrorism campaign.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov met privately with his Iraqi counterpart, Naji Sabri. Russia has been a key ally here for Iraq, making it difficult for the United States and Britain to curtail oil smuggling by Saddam Hussein's nation and deliver more humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people.

Musharraf held talks with Iran's Khatami. The two countries both share a border with Afghanistan but have supported different factions within the war-torn country.

------

In Bush's Words: Nations Must Resist 'Decisively and Collectively'

November 11, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/11/international/11PTEX.html?searchpv=nytToday

Following are excerpts from President Bush's speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, as transcribed by the Federal News Service Inc.:

We meet in a hall devoted to peace in a city scarred by violence, in a nation awakened to danger, in a world uniting for a long struggle. Every civilized nation here today is resolved to keep the most basic commitment of civilization. We will defend ourselves and our future against terror and lawless violence. The United Nations was founded in this cause. In the Second World War, we learned there is no isolation from evil. We affirmed that some crimes are so terrible they offend humanity itself. And we resolved that the aggressions and ambitions of the wicked must be opposed early, decisively and collectively before they threaten us all. . . .

The suffering of September the 11th was inflicted on people of many faiths and many nations. All of the victims, including Muslims, were killed with equal indifference and equal satisfaction by the terrorist leaders. The terrorists are violating the tenets of every religion including the one they invoke. . . .

They dare to ask God's blessing as they set out to kill innocent men, women and children. But the God of Isaac and Ishmael would never answer such a prayer. And a murderer is not a martyr. He is just a murderer.

Time is passing. Yet for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.

And the people of my country will remember those who have plotted against us. We are learning their names. We are coming to know their faces. There is no corner of the earth distant or dark enough to protect them. However long it takes, their hour of justice will come.

Every nation has a stake in this cause. As we meet, the terrorists are planning more murder, perhaps in my country or perhaps in yours. They kill because they aspire to dominate. They seek to overthrow governments and destabilize entire regions. . . .

And all the world faces the most horrifying prospect of all. These same terrorists are searching for weapons of mass destruction, the tools to turn their hatred into holocaust. They can be expected to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons the moment they are capable of doing so. No hint of conscience would prevent it. . . .

Some nations want to play their part in the fight against terror but tell us they lack the means to enforce their laws and control their borders. We stand ready to help. Some governments still turn a blind eye to the terrorists, hoping the threat will pass them by. They are mistaken. . . .

For every regime that sponsors terror, there is a price to be paid, and it will be paid. The allies of terror are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable . . .

The United States, supported by many nations, is bringing justice to the terrorists in Afghanistan. We're making progress against military targets, and that is our objective. Unlike the enemy, we seek to minimize, not maximize, the loss of innocent life. I'm proud of the honorable conduct of the American military.

And my country grieves for all the suffering the Taliban have brought upon Afghanistan, including the terrible burden of war. The Afghan people do not deserve their present rulers. . . .

I make this promise to all the victims of that regime: The Taliban's days of harboring terrorists and dealing in heroin and brutalizing women are drawing to a close. And when that regime is gone, the people of Afghanistan will say, with the rest of the world, "Good riddance."

The United States will work closely with the United Nations and development banks to reconstruct Afghanistan after hostilities there have ceased and the Taliban are no longer in control. And the United States will work with the U.N. to support a post-Taliban government that represents all of the Afghan people. . . .

The most basic obligations in this new conflict have already been defined by the United Nations. On September the 28th, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1373. Its requirements are clear: Every United Nations member has a responsibility to crack down on terrorist financing. We must pass all necessary laws in our own countries to allow the confiscation of terrorist assets. We must apply those laws to every financial institution in every nation. . . .


-------- activists

Anti-Koodankulam Struggle Launched!

From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>
Nov, 11, 2001
http://www.saccer.org

More than 70 people belonging to different organizations from all over Tamil Nadu came together in Madurai yesterday and planned a joint struggle against the Koodankulam nuclear power project. The day-long meeting was held at Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer Community Hall in K.K. Nagar. Rev. Y. David with the support of SOCO Trust had made elaborate arrangements for the meeting.

Scientists, community workers, students, trade unionists, women's movements, consumer rights organizations, human rights organizations, writers, thinkers and people from almost all walks of life participated in the meeting and expressed their determined opposition to the plant.

A new coordinating group called "People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy" was created and a committee of 20 members was constituted to lead the struggle. A smaller publication committee was also instituted to publish reading material for the public on Koodankulam. The meeting passed a resolution that criticized the so- called permission granted to the project from New Delhi and urged the people concerned to follow the established procedure for the project.

Several strategies are being planned to carry on the struggle. As the first step, a group of people are going to meet with Ms. Sheela Rani Chunkath, the Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. The group is also going to meet with the TN Chief Minister Mr. O. Panneerselvam and the ruling AIADMK's General Secretary.

At the end of the day-long deliberations, a press meet was held at the Madurai Press Club which several Tamil and English publications covered and reported in exhaustive details.

A compilation of reports and further details would be posted in these pages.

(The above is my own unofficial report! S.P. Udayakumar)

----

Chelsea protests anti-war procession

World Scene,
November 11, 2001 • Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011111-14038.htm

LONDON - Chelsea Clinton interrupted an anti-war demonstration in Oxford, where she is studying, the London Times reported yesterday.

Miss Clinton, along with 15 others, shouted patriotic slogans and unfurled a U.S. flag during a 500-strong meeting of "Oxford Stop the War Coalition" earlier this week.

Miss Clinton was particularly vocal when one of the speakers said that the media had not sufficiently highlighted the effects of the bombings on Afghan civilians, the report said.

---

Anti-Nuke Activists Protest Shipment

New York Times
November 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Germany-Nuclear-Waste.html?searchpv=aponline

DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) -- Anti-nuclear activists staged protests Sunday, blocking the route a shipment of atomic waste will take to a dump in northern Germany.

Decked with banners such as ``Chernobyl on tour,'' about 60 tractors blocked the main street in the town of Dannenberg, the site of a rail terminal from which the waste containers will be transported by road to the dump at Gorleben, long a focus of Germany's anti-nuclear movement.

About 150 tractors staged a series of blockades elsewhere in northern Germany.

The trainload of six containers of waste started its journey at a reprocessing plant in La Hague, France, Sunday evening and was expected to cross the border into Germany Monday.

Authorities imposed restrictions on low-flying aircraft over the last stretch of the route, but police said the measure was routine and not linked to fears of terrorism. Thousands of officers are on duty to help protect the trainload of waste on its journey through Germany.

Still, about 400 protesters carrying placards with the names of nearby villages broke through police lines near Dannenberg and stormed across open fields, hoping to reach a road where the shipment is expected to pass.

Police using horses and dogs pushed them back, and a small group was dragged away from the road. More than 30 people were detained for defying a ban on gatherings within 50 yards of the shipment route.

``It's cat-and-mouse with the police,'' said Jana Teltemann, a 21-year-old student. A court has banned gatherings within 55 yards of the shipment's route.

German power companies and the government agreed this year to phase out nuclear power. But the shutdown will take about 20 years -- too slow for anti-nuclear activists.

Germany sends spent nuclear fuel to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the waste, shipments that protesters maintain are unsafe.

``We can't stop the shipments, but if nobody goes onto the streets, things would just get worse,'' Ursula Nass, a 60-year-old Dannenberg resident, said at a peaceful protest earlier Sunday in the nearby village of Splietau.

Authorities are keen to prevent a repeat of protests that disrupted the last waste transport in March, which environmentalists delayed for 16 hours by chaining themselves to the tracks.

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