------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
A pivotal meeting for Russia, US
Bush agrees to deep cuts in U.S. nuclear arsenal
Bush, Putin Want Fewer Nukes
Text From Bush News Conference
Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism
Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuke Arms
Interviewer Calls bin Laden Aggressively 'Changed Man'
Can Bush and Putin Control Russia's Arsenal?
Protesters Fail to Prevent Franco-German Nuclear Shipment
Controversial nuclear convoy sets off for Germany
Germany prepares for demos on nuclear convoy route
Banish the bomb
U.S. Says Aid to Pakistan Won't Include F-16 Fighters
Japan, US to Review Japan War Plan
Accident Shuts Down Japan Plant
Missile Shield Program Still Costly
Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials
A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium
Bush Promises Warheads Reduction
Nuclear Arms History Numbers

MILITARY
Between the two extremes
Caught in lethal crossfire
Northern Alliance enters Kabul as Taliban flee
'Up to 500 executed' after the fall of Mazar
Taliban deserts Kabul, rebels move into capital
Executions of P.O.W.'s Cast Doubts on Alliance
Peace plan would aid rival tribes
Gun Foes Use Terror Issue in a Push for Stricter Laws
Anthrax vaccine manufacturer faces FDA, veterans' scrutiny
Rapid Diagnosis Helps Anthrax Victims
Myanmar Reassigns 10 Senior Generals
Rebel attacks hinder Plan Colombia
ANF seizes 131 heroin-filled capsules
Death of a Child: How Israel's Army Responds
US to provide Nepal 10 copters to fight terrorism
Armed forces capable of meeting any threat, says Musharraf
In Pakistan, It's Jihad 101
Gains by Northern Alliance Mean Losses by Pakistan
UN Pressured to Unite Afghan Groups
Blair: U.N. presence needed in Afghanistan
Opposition invites U.N. to help with new government
U.N. envoy calls for transitional government
Musharraf seeks Muslim U.N. force
Bush Orders : Terror Trials by Military
Terrorist trials to be by military commission
USS Stennis headed for Persian Gulf

ENERGY AND OTHER
Bush wants emergency petroleum stockpile filled
Administration waves flag for oil
Many of world's lakes face death, expert warns
Full-Body Scans Promise to Identify Disease Before Symptoms Occur
WTO to foster China-Taiwan ties

POLICE / PRISONERS
U.S. SENATOR THOMAS DASCHLE
Justice Dept. wants to interview 5,000 foreign men
Embattled Illinois Sheriff Resigns
Experts Divided on New Antiterror Policy
Lessons From Sept. 11
Four convicted in 1986 Berlin disco bombing

ACTIVISTS
Loving his neighbor via protest
Trading Up in Qatar
Antitrade activists face tough sell
Hundreds protest disputed German nuclear waste shipment
The Coming Apocalypse
Justice and development, not war is answer
Token hunger strike against factory's privatisation



-------- NUCLEAR

A pivotal meeting for Russia, US

November 13, 2001

By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1113/p1s3-usgn.html

WASHINGTON - The direct telephone line between the Kremlin and the White House was installed to head off Armageddon, but after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was used for a less ominous purpose.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called to say his country was suspending military movements to avoid confusion. "We are standing down. We want to help," is what Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, recalls Mr. Putin telling her boss. To Ms. Rice, it was "a crystallizing moment for the end of the cold war."

Yet, as significant as the moment may have been for US-Russia relations, the legacy of seeing the other as the enemy cannot be overcome so easily. Experts in both countries say the old foes are not so far ahead of where they were a decade ago, after the Soviet Union collapsed. They say it will take a long process to forge ties of trust.

As a summit meeting begins today that will take Putin to the White House and to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, a chasm lies between the hope for better ties and the reality of tough issues to settle.

Some analysts such as Rice - herself a US-Russian-relations expert - are heralding the dawn of a new era of peaceful, mutually beneficial, and "normal" relations. "There's never been a time when US-Russian interests have been so aligned as right now," says Robert Strauss, a former US ambassador to Moscow.

But for others, "normal" is not a word that is likely to apply for years to come. "The direction [of relations] is promising, but Russia is not our ally," says Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor with a new book entitled, "Russia's Unfinished Revolution." "If you look at the list of potential areas of conflict" - missile defense, NATO, Iran, Iraq, the US presence in central Asia - "you see some very serious issues that have yet to be resolved," he says.

The relationship is not normal, says Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, because "we're still in the mode of thinking about Russia through the security prism." As long as the relationship is dominated by such issues as nuclear proliferation and missile defense, "we're still at the point of mopping up residual issues of the cold war."

To be sure, a shift from traditional security positions and issues is accelerating in the wake of Sept. 11. For example, the benefits Russia might reap from a cooperative role in the war on terrorism have prompted Putin to stand down from old positions on NATO expansion. Determined to see potential benefit rather than a threat in heightened US interest in central Asia, Putin will spend a day in Houston meeting with business leaders as a step toward developing Russia's energy potential.

Part of the skepticism toward the current euphoria over US-Russia relations is born of a feeling that "we've been here before." That sentiment is especially keen in Russia.

"We effectively lost a decade in our efforts to join Western civilization," says Alexander Konovalov, director of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow. "We had a romantic idea about the process we had embarked on, and when our society ran into difficulties, we became quickly disillusioned."

Western "behavior" wasn't what Russians anticipated, either. Just two years ago, NATO's military campaign in Kosovo - part of Yugoslavia, a Russian ally - shocked Russian communists and liberals alike.

"Russian democrats had always argued NATO was incapable of aggression because it was controlled by 16 parliaments," Mr. Konovalov says. "That was a dark time for our relations with the West."

Despite former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's pleading that Russia just wanted to be "a normal European country," it simply wasn't ready for any significant steps in that direction, analysts say.

A decade ago, Russia was facing three key challenges at once: a rethinking of the Soviet state, the conundrum of economic reform, and a redefinition of Russia's place in the world - all while America was embarking on a gilded decade of unrivaled economic and political power.

Add to that "a whole series of perceived slights" against Russia, according to Ms. Hill - including NATO expansion into former Soviet territory and NATO's move into the Balkans - and the roadblocks to improved relations were simply too high.

But today, the situation is very different. Russia's economic revival may still be in its infancy, but over the past two years, Putin has jump-started stalled reforms, and the economy is now growing notably. Madison Avenue couldn't have done better turning around the country's '90s image of a lawless, corrupt, robber-baron state than Putin, a former KGB recruiting officer.

In the meantime, the US has fallen into a recession and is engaged in a war that challenges its old concept of security. "In the '90s, the US was in a dream world, while Russia was living a nightmare," says Clifford Gaddy, a specialist in the Russian economy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Post Sept. 11, it's something of the reverse."

Perhaps the biggest shift that augurs well for progress in relations is that, as Hill says, "The US now needs Russia in a way it didn't before."

If Putin is so willing to work with the US in the war on terrorism, experts say it is because he considers this war the best hope of corralling what he saw as the superpower's most dangerous tendency: to think it is invincible, and that it can act alone in the post-cold-war world.

"For Putin, the post-Sept.-11 world offers an opportunity to shift the US away from the illusion that it is leading a unipolar world," says Mr. Gaddy. That helps explain why Russia resists the Bush administration's idea of nuclear-arsenal reduction by "handshake" rather than by formal treaty.

For the Russian leader, says Hill, this is the moment to "enmesh the US in a broader multilateral framework."

• Fred Weir contributed to this report from Moscow.

---

Bush agrees to deep cuts in U.S. nuclear arsenal

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-13-bush-putin.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Tuesday the United States will reduce its arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads by two-thirds or more over the next decade - to between 1,700 and 2,200.

The resulting force will be "fully consistent with American security," he said after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush said he and Putin retain differing viewpoints on the American plans to develop a missile defense shield, and "we will continue dialogue and discussion" on the subject.

At a joint White House news conference, Bush also said he would work to "end the application" of Cold War-era legislation that restricted trade.

The president said he and Putin also had agreed to support a United Nations call for a "broadly based and multiethnic" government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban.

Wednesday

Putin stops in Houston for a meeting with former President Bush and a speech at Rice University to business leaders. The Bushes welcome Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, to Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, where they have a chuck-wagon picnic dinner and remain overnight.

Thursday

The presidents meet in private at the Bush ranch. Putin visits a Crawford school and addresses the news media at the nearby Waco, Texas, airport on departure for New York, where he tours the ruins of the World Trade Center and takes questions on a National Public Radio call-in show. The Bushes remain in Crawford for a long weekend.

"Russia and America share the same threat and share the same resolve" to battle terrorism, he said. "We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever" they exist.

Emerging from more than three hours of talks, Bush said the discussions with Putin herald "a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope."

Putin, who spoke after Bush, echoed his remarks.

"We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War," Putin said.

Putin said his government would try to respond in kind to Bush's pledge to reduce nuclear arsenals.

The United States currently has roughly 7,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads. Russia has an estimated 5,800.

Putin also reaffirmed that Russia and the United States continue to disagree about the missile defense shield.

Bush came to office pledging to develop a shield, even if it meant scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union.

In deference to Putin's assistance in the war against terrorism, though, the administration recently announced a delay in some missile defense tests, saying it wanted to avoid bumping up against the treaty's prohibitions.

Bush's comment about trade restrictions referred to the 1974 Jackson-Vanik legislation. Designed to lift emigration curbs on Jews and other minorities, it forced the Soviet Union to permit mass departures in order to qualify for trade privileges.

"Russia is fundamentally a different place," Bush said.

Because of progress on Jewish migration, he said "my administration will work with Congress to end the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia."

Bush said he and Putin had spent considerable time discussing the situation in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban abandoned the capital city of Kabul overnight.

Bush said the withdrawal signaled that "we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al-Qa'eda to justice and at the same time deal with the government that's been harboring them."

Bush made clear he hasn't changed his views on the ABM Treaty, Putin's concerns notwithstanding. "I'm convinced the treaty is outdated and we have to move beyond it," he said.

He added he expects the two sides will continue their discussions on the topic.

He and Putin are scheduled to meet again Wednesday and again Thursday at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Bush said he had adopted a new approach on arms control, one based on trust that does not require "endless hours of arms control discussions."

"I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand. But if you need to write it down on a piece of paper I'll be glad to do that. We don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry in a significant way."

The two presidents lunched in the mansion's Blue Room and then addressed reporters in the East Room from two brand-new lecterns specially designed for Bush and built by hand by the White House Communications Agency.

Bush said repeatedly that the Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan have pledged they would not occupy Kabul, the capital.

Asked whether Northern Alliance leaders should be treated favorably because of their presence in the city, Bush said, "there is no preferential place at the bargaining table. All people will be treated the same."

------

Bush, Putin Want Fewer Nukes

By Sonya Ross
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 5:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23562-2001Nov13?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday that they should reach a consensus on reducing their nuclear arsenals. They just couldn't agree on whether to write it down.

Putin made clear that Russia wants its arms reduction agreements in treaty form. Bush, envisioning tedious negotiations, said he would prefer something more along the lines of a gentlemen's agreement.

"A new relationship based upon trust and cooperation is one that doesn't need endless hours of arms control discussions," Bush said. "My attitude is, 'Here's what we can live with, and so I've announced the level that we'll stick by.' ... I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that."

The two leaders admitted after their first White House meeting that neither of them have budged on the idea of abandoning a 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty that undergirds U.S.-Russian arms agreements. Although Bush offered numbers for shrinking the U.S. stockpile by two-thirds - to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads - Putin wants written proposals, with a system of checks and balances.

Neither would budge on that position.

"For the Russian part, (we) are prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," Putin said.

Bush replied, "Let me say this: We don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry in a significant way."

Ironically, the Russian president's posture was in line with that of President Reagan, who injected the notion of "trust but verify" in negotiating weapons reductions with the Soviet Union.

Bush administration officials said last week that while they were skeptical of many U.S.-Soviet accords, they favored retaining verification provisions from the 1991 START treaty that Bush's father reached with Russia.

Arms control observers said the younger Bush's disdain for arms paperwork was alarming, especially since he is seeking deals that would endure long past his and Putin's terms in office.

Without a treaty, it would be difficult to make those agreements stick, said former U.S. arms negotiator Spurgeon Keeny, longtime head of the Arms Control Association and now a senior fellow with the National Academy of Sciences.

"What's the schedule on who goes first, who does what?" Keeny said. "If it's going to be some kind of gentlemen's agreement, that may be better than nothing but it's far short of establishing a foundation for long-range decision making."

Peter Scoblic, editor of Arms Control Today magazine, said achieving a written agreement does not necessarily have to be as tedious as Bush thinks. Since much of the diplomacy was done under START I and II, a new pact would simply be a matter of political will, he said.

"They (Bush and Putin) can do that and do it relatively quickly," Scoblic said. "What we get out of that is a mechanism to watch the Russians as they reduce the arsenals."

---

Text From Bush News Conference

The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 3:56 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22835-2001Nov13?language=printer

Text of Tuesday's White House news conference with President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks Inc.

BUSH: It's a great honor for me to welcome President Vladimir Putin to the White House, and to welcome his wife as well.

This is a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope. The United States and Russia are in the midst of the transformation of a relationship that will yield peace and progress. We're transforming our relationship from one of hostility and suspicion to one based on cooperation and trust that will enhance opportunities for peace and progress for our citizens and for people all around the world.

The challenge of terrorism makes our close cooperation on all issues even more urgent. Russia and America share the same threat and the same resolve. We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever they exist.

Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Today we agreed that Russian and American experts will work together to share information and expertise to counter the threat from bioterrorism. We agreed that it is urgent that we improve the physical protection and accounting of nuclear materials and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking.

And we will strengthen our efforts to cut off every possible source of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons materials and expertise.

Today, we also agreed to work more closely to combat organized crime and drug trafficking, a leading source of terrorist financing. Both nations are committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan once hostilities there have ceased and the Taliban are no longer in control. We support the U.N.'s efforts to fashion a post-Taliban government that is broadly based and multiethnic. The new government must export neither terror not drugs, and it must respect fundamental human rights.

As Russia and the United States work more closely to meet new 21st century threats, we're also working hard to put the threats of the 20th century behind us once and for all, and we can report great progress.

The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities. I have informed President Putin that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade, a level fully consistent with American security.

Russia and the United States have also had vast discussions about our defensive capabilities, the ability to defend ourselves as we head into the 21st century.

We have different points of view about the ABM Treaty. And we will continue dialogue and discussions about the ABM Treaty, so that we may be able to develop a new strategic framework that enables both of us to meet the true threats of the 21st century as partners and friends, not as adversaries.

The spirit of partnership that now runs through our relationship is allowing the United States and Russia to form common approaches to important regional issues. In the Middle East, we agree that all parties must take practical actions to ease tensions so that peace talks can resume. We urge the parties to move without delay to implement the Tenet work plan and the Mitchell report recommendations.

In Europe, we share a vision of a European Atlantic community whole, free and at peace, one that includes all of Europe's democracies and where the independence and sovereignty of all nations are respected.

Russia should be a part of this Europe. We will work together with NATO and NATO members to build new avenues of cooperation and consultation between Russia and NATO.

NATO members and Russia are increasingly allied against terrorism, regional instability and other threats of our age. And NATO must reflect this alliance. We are encouraged by President Putin's commitment to a political dialogue in Chechnya.

Russia has also made important strides on immigration and the protection of religious and ethnic minorities, including Russia's Jewish community. On these issues, Russia is a fundamentally different place than it was during the Soviet era. President Putin told me that these gains for freedom will be protected and expanded. Our foreign ministers have sealed this understanding in an exchange of letters.

Because of this progress, my administration will work with Congress to end the application of the Jackson-Vanik amendment to Russia. Russia has set out to strengthen free market institutions and the rule of law. On this basis, our economic relationship is developing quickly, and we will look for further ways to expand it.

A strong, independent media is a vital part of a new Russia. We have agreed to launch a dialogue on media entrepreneurship so that American and Russian media representatives can meet and make practical recommendations to both our governments in order to advance our goal of a free media and free exchange of ideas.

Russia and the United States will continue to face complex and difficult issues, yet we have made great progress in a very short period of time.

Today, because we are working together, both our countries and the world are more secure and safe.

I want to thank President Putin for the spirit of our meetings. Together, we're making history as we make progress.

Laura and I are looking forward to welcoming the Putins to our ranch in Crawford, Texas.

I can't wait to show you my state and where I live. In the meantime, I hope you have a fine stay here in Washington, D.C., and it's my honor to welcome you to the White House, sir, and welcome you to the podium.

PUTIN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't know whether I would have an opportunity to address such a representative audience of the press and media.

I would like to begin anyway with a thanks to the president of the United States not only for his kind invitation to visit the United States and Washington, but also for his very informal initiation of our negotiations earlier today.

Myself and my colleagues are very pleased to be here at this historic building, the White House.

And President Bush deemed it appropriate not only to tour me - to guide me through the premises of this house where he lives. We saw almost every picture hanging on the walls of this great building. It's not only very interesting, it also changes for the better the quality of our relationship.

I would like to once again thank the president and the American people, and I would like to express our condolences in connection with the recent plane crash in the United States. As they say in Russia, tragedy does not come alone; tragedies always come in many numbers. I am confident that the American people would face this tragedy very bravely.

I would like to inform you that the Washington part of our negotiations is being completed, and our discussions proved very constructive, interesting and useful and will continue at Crawford. But the preliminary results we evaluate as extremely positive. This is our fourth meeting with President Bush in the last few months.

I believe this is a vivid demonstration of the dynamic nature of the Russian-American relations. We have come to understand each other better, and our positions are becoming closer on the key issues of bilateral and international relations. We are prepared now to seek solutions in all areas of our joint abilities. We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War and to develop a new - entirely new partnership for the long term. Of course, we discussed in detail the subject matter of the fight against terrorism.

The tragic developments of September 11 demonstrated vividly the need for a joint effort to counter this global threat. We consider this threat as a global threat, indeed, and the terrorists and those who help them should know that the justice is inescapable, and it will reach them wherever they try to hide.

Also, post-crisis political settlement in Afghanistan was discussed. The most important thing for today is to return peace and the life in order to Afghanistan, so that no threat originates from Afghanistan to the international stability. Of course, we do not intend to force upon the Afghan people the solutions. It is for them to resolve those issues with the active participation of the United Nations.

We discussed in detail our dialogue related to strategic offensive and defensive weapons. Here, we managed to achieve certain progress. First of all, it has to do with the prospects of reaching a reliable and verifiable agreement on further reductions of the U.S. and the Russians' weapons. Here, I must say, we appreciate very much the decision by the president to reduce strategic offensive weapons to the limits indicated by him, and we, for our part, will try to respond in kind.

On the issues of missile defense, the position of Russia remains unchanged, and we agreed to continue dialogue and consultations on this.

I believe that it's too early now to draw the line on the discussions of these issues. And we will have an opportunity to continue the work on this, one of the very difficult issues, at the Crawford ranch.

We also exchanged on a number of topical issues of international importance - the Balkans, Iraq - and we reiterated in a joint statement the resolve of the United States and Russia to facilitate settlement in the Middle East and the early resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

We also discussed seriously the development of relations between Russia and NATO, including taking into account a change in the international situation. We consider that there are opportunities for an entirely new mechanism, joint decision making and coordinated action in the area of security and stability.

We considered in detail a number of economic cooperation issues. The Russian-American dialogue on this area has become recently more constructive and more tangible. Such major investment projects as Sakhalin I and Caspian pipeline consortium are gaining momentum. Successful cooperation in the aerospace, mining, chemistry, car building and other industries.

Direct contacts are expanding between entrepreneurs of the two countries, including within the Russian-American business dialogue. It is with satisfaction that we note a certain progress in issues related to Russia's accession to the WTO, in recognizing Russia as a market economy country. And we felt a great degree of understanding that such issues should be resolved; I mean, dealing with the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, not de facto, but in legal terms.

And in this context, our foreign minister and the secretary of state, Messrs. Ivanov and Powell, exchanged letters reiterating the resolve of Russia and the United States to observe human rights and religious freedoms.

Of course, the capabilities embedded in the bilateral relationship have not been fully implemented - indeed, we have quite a lot of things to do, but we are confident that the success is by and large predetermined by our resolve to cooperate energetically and constructively.

That, I'm confident, would benefit both countries and is reflected also in our visit to this country today.

Thank you.

Q: Mr. President, the northern alliance forces took over Kabul, and there are reports of executions of POWs and other violent reprisals. Can the alliance be trusted to form a broad-based government? If not, what should happen next to stabilize Afghanistan, and what role, if any, should U.S. troops play in that political phase?

BUSH: First of all, we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al-Qaida to justice and, at the same time, deal with the government that's been harboring them.

President Putin and I spent a lot of time talking about the northern alliance and their relationship to Kabul, as well as Mazar-e-Sharif and other cities that have now been liberated from the Taliban.

I made it very clear to him that we will continue to work with the northern alliance to make sure they recognize that in order for there to be a stable Afghanistan, which is one of our objectives, after the Taliban leaves, that the country be a good neighbor and that they must recognize that a future government must include representatives from all of Afghanistan.

We listened very carefully to the comments coming out of the northern alliance today. And they made it very clear they had no intention of occupying Kabul. That's what they said.

I have seen reports, of which you refer to, and I also saw a report that said, on their way out of town, the Taliban was wreaking havoc on the citizenry of Kabul. And if that be the case - I haven't had it verified one way or the other - but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. After all, the Taliban has been wreaking havoc on the entire country for over a decade. This has been one of the most repressive regimes in the history of mankind.

But we will continue to work with the northern alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people that they're liberating.

And I also saw reports - and I think President Putin mentioned this today as well - that in some of the northern cities there was a great, joyous - a wonderful, joyous occasion, as the citizens were free, free from repression, free from a dictatorial government. But we're both mindful and particularly mindful of the need for us to work with our northern alliance friends to treat people with respect.

PUTIN: All our reactions were aimed at liberating the northern part of Afghanistan, the capital of Afghanistan, liberate it from the Taliban regime. And any military action is accompanied not only by the military resistance, but also an information resistance.

What we are witnessing right now exactly - we tend to forget now the destruction of the cultural heritage of humankind. We tend to forget now the atrocities by Taliban, and we are talking less than usual of the Taliban harboring international terrorism.

The information that the northern alliance are shooting the prisoners of war was launched a few days ago. The northern alliance were not in Kabul a few days ago. They were liberating northern parts of the country. And for those who do not know, I will tell, the northern part of the country is inhabited by the ethnic groups represented in the northern alliance. I mean Uzbeks and Tajiks.

----

Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism

Steven Chapman
November 13, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011113-1310867.htm

"He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns ... Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression." -- John Hersey, "Hiroshima."

Does that passage horrify you? Me, too. But not everyone feels the same way. Osama bin Laden might read it as a lovely vision of New York or Washington after he has acquired and detonated an atomic bomb.

This scenario is not just a theoretical possibility. It is something that could actually happen in the next few years if we don't take every measure possible to prevent it.

Airline security is vital; combating bioterrorism is important; winning the war in Afghanistan is critical. But success in those areas will be cold comfort if the day comes when tens of thousands of Americans are consumed in a mushroom cloud. Preventing nuclear terrorism therefore ought to be the single highest priority of our government. Even today, it's not clear that it is.

Last week, President Bush said that al Qaeda is trying to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear arms. That merely echoes bin Laden, who says he has a "religious duty" to do so and has hinted he may have nuclear weapons already. If his goal is to slaughter and terrorize Americans, as he has said, he couldn't find a better way.

Americans have yet to fully grasp the depth and urgency of the peril we face. Maybe that's because, during the Cold War, we grew accustomed to the fact that we could all die in a nuclear war. But that danger was remote, because we had an answer: nuclear deterrence. Deterrence, unfortunately, looks useless against our new foes -- who would not leave a return address on the bomb, and who might be willing to commit suicide for their gruesome cause.

To even contemplate the risk of this sort of attack is to invite panic or despair. We can be sure there are hundreds of terrorists around the world scheming to get a doomsday device, and we know there are far too many ways they might get it.

One source is Russia, which has thousands of warheads, including some that may not be as secure as we would like. Russia also has some 500 tons of enriched uranium lying around that could be used to make bombs. A few years ago, one Russian official said dozens of small "suitcase bombs" could not be accounted for.

Russia also has thousands of pounds of fissile material, which may or may not be under ironclad control. If they could smuggle out 50 or 100 pounds of the stuff, terrorists might be able to build a bomb. Once terrorists have such a weapon, it would be almost impossible to keep them from sneaking it into the United States and setting it off.

Given all these realities, the situation may look hopeless. It isn't -- quite. The good news is that if bin Laden had the bomb, he would have used it already. Those suitcase nukes may never have escaped control. Even if terrorists were able to get one, it's very unlikely they would have the codes and other expertise to detonate it.

Nor is it a simple task to convert fissile material into a weapon. MIT nuclear physicist Theodore Postol says the project would require so much in the way of machinery, materials, technical support and funding that no terrorist group would be likely to manage it -- at least not without the active help of some government, such as Iraq. But any government that collaborated in a plan to detonate an atomic bomb on American soil would be sealing its own doom, and Saddam Hussein has shown no interest in martyrdom.

So the immediate risk is low. But a slight chance of an Earth-shattering catastrophe is too much to accept.

During World War II, we moved heaven and Earth in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb before Adolf Hitler could -- because we knew our survival hung in the balance. Today, we have to embrace a similar commitment to averting nuclear terrorism.

The questions we need to ask ourselves and our leaders, every day, are these: Are we doing everything humanly possible to prevent a nuclear holocaust on our soil? And if we are not, and if we fail, how will we ever live with ourselves?

----

Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuke Arms

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nuclear weapons stockpiles are due to be slashed at summit talks President Bush is holding with Russian President Vladimir Putin, both leaders having concluded they have far too many deadly warheads in the post-Cold War era.

If any suspense remained before Putin called at the White House it was whether the cutbacks would be mandated in an agreement between the two leaders or be declared by them without a formal accord of the type Bush's advisers scorn as products of outdated bureaucratic haggling of a now-distant era.

The summit talks Tuesday in Washington and Wednesday, and Thursday at Bush's Texas ranch, are more likely to be marked by atmospherics designed to inform the world that the United States and Russia no longer are adversaries.

Bush told Russian reporters on Monday that he and Putin were on the verge of forging a relationship that ``will outlive our presidencies.''

He said he would respond to Russia's quest for stronger links to Western institutions by asking NATO, which has absorbed former Soviet republics and crept up to Russia's doorstep, to ``go beyond the current relationship'' with Moscow.

NATO is a military alliance that was formed to confront the Soviet Union. Its expansion eastward was -- and may still be -- a sore point to Russians. But unable to stop NATO's growth, any more than it can stop Bush's anti-missile shield project, Russia has been given limited access to NATO deliberations.

Meanwhile, the potential enemy of an alliance that survives and even grows stronger after the end of the Cold War has never been identified.

The president suggested in his interview with the Russian reporters that he still had differences with Putin over the U.S. missile defense program. Planned U.S. tests will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a bedrock of arms control, so Bush will junk it if Putin does not go along with stretching the treaty's terms.

Having little choice, Putin has signaled he is ready to agree to a formula that will allow the United States to go ahead with the tests, which White House officials say are more vital than ever with the intensification of a terrorism threat.

``The ABM treaty is outdated because it will prevent the United States from researching and developing weapons systems that will really reflect the true threats of the 21st century,'' Bush told the Russian reporters in the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office. ``The big threat for us and for the Russians is not each other, but somebody developing weapons of mass destruction.''

Bush said one thing is certain: He will announce his numerical goals for reducing U.S. nuclear stockpiles.

``I'll have a number that I will share with him, and it's going to be substantially lower than today's weaponry, and I presume he'll have a number he'll share with me. The point is, what we don't need is the endless hours of arms control discussions,'' Bush said. ``It's a new day when two new leaders step forward and say this is best for stability in the world.''

Russia, no longer able to afford a Cold War nuclear stockpile, has proposed new limits on U.S. and Russian stockpiles of not more than 2,000 long-range warheads for each country, down from a current total of about 6,000 each.

Bush advisers said the president has considered a range of 1,750 to 2,250 warheads apiece. A senior U.S. official said last week Bush's range had dipped below 2,000. Other senior officials said he proposed straddling 2,000 as a ceiling.

The United States has 10,500 nuclear weapons, Russia has 20,000, as well as more than 900 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material that the two leaders want to keep secure and out of the hands of terrorists and hostile nations.

However, the Bush administration's current budget calls for reducing the funds under the Nunn-Lugar program designed to help Russia rid itself of discarded weapons and to safeguard dangerous material.

---

Interviewer Calls bin Laden Aggressively 'Changed Man'

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13STAN.html?searchpv=nytToday

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 12 -- "At that time, his beard was black and he was soft-spoken," Hamid Mir said, sitting on the front lawn of his house here. "This time, his beard was white and he was hard-hitting and aggressive."

The bearded man in question was Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Mir, a 36-year-old Pakistani newspaperman, had interviewed a couple of days earlier, becoming the first journalist known to have met Mr. bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Blindfolded and bundled in a blanket, Mr. Mir, who had met with Mr. bin Laden before, was placed at night in the back seat of a jeep that bounded out of Kabul, the Afghan capital, and rolled on for five hours. The next morning, finally without a blindfold, he opened his eyes to find himself inside a small mud house with cheap carpets on the dirt floor and walls. The sound of antiaircraft guns filled the air, which was markedly colder than Kabul's and which suggested that Mr. Mir had been driven north, toward the front line.

Then, Mr. Mir said, Mr. bin Laden walked in. In the next two hours, as Mr. bin Laden sipped tea and munched on olives and bread, the reporter got his big scoop: Mr. bin Laden claimed to possess nuclear arms but would use them only -- and here he or his interpreter chose a strangely formal term -- as a "deterrent."

"He was a changed man," said Mr. Mir, who had spent five days with Mr. bin Laden in the past and who had obtained his cooperation on a biography in progress.

Mr. bin Laden had been relaxed during the previous visits. Now he was talking in a loud tone and gesticulating, Mr. Mir said.

His relationship with his men and with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian- born doctor who is believed to be the second in command in Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's network, appeared to have changed as well.

"Before I didn't see too many people around him," Mr. Mir said. "This time, the people around him were treating him like their spiritual leader. Previously I noticed that Dr. Zawahiri was dominating, but this time Osama bin Laden was dominating.

"Previously, it was difficult for him to understand English," he added. "This time I noticed he can understand English, he can read English."

As in the previous interviews, Dr. Zawahiri was the interpreter, using English, the language he and Mr. Mir had in common. This time, while the Saudi-born Mr. bin Laden answered in Arabic, he sometimes corrected Dr. Zawahiri's English translation, Mr. Mir said.

Mr. bin Laden had also been impressed by the coverage of protests in the West against the American bombing of Afghanistan, Mr. Mir said, and appeared to believe that antiwar sentiments could be used to his advantage.

"He said, `I admit there are many good and innocent people living in the West,' " Mr. Mir said, and suggested they should oppose the American policy, as with the Vietnam War.

While Mr. bin Laden answered all of Mr. Mir's questions in the past, he was now much more cautious.

"This time, I told him my questions and he checked off those he would not answer," Mr. Mir recalled.

When Mr. Mir slipped in an unapproved question -- whether, for instance, Mr. bin Laden would ever ally himself with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq -- Mr. bin Laden simply turned off the tape recorder.

With the answers he did get, Mr. Mir was returned to Islamabad. His scoop -- and photos of him sitting next to Mr. bin Laden, separated only by a Kalashnikov -- appeared on Saturday in Dawn, the most respected English-language daily in Pakistan, and in Ausaf, an Urdu daily of which Mr. Mir is editor and which has been sympathetic to Pakistan's Islamic parties and to the Taliban.

Some hours after publication, journalists from all over the world were knocking on Mr. Mir's door. Mr. Mir may see himself as an honorable muckraker fighting for the little guy against Pakistan's corrupt politicians and military rulers, the Islamabad elite may look down on him as a Geraldo Rivera-like populist, but he is not the kind of reporter who is content to let his articles do all the talking.

A German television reporter suggested that the fact that Mr. bin Laden seemed in the interview to justify the attacks on Sept. 11 amounted to a confession that he was behind them.

"So you must appreciate my art of interview," Mr. Mir responded. "I trapped him. As a journalist it's my success that an experienced journalist like you is of the view that he has confessed. So you must give credit to me, not to the Americans."

For the record, according to Mr. Mir, Mr. bin Laden denied being involved in the attacks but said they were justified.

It was through Mr. Mir's connections with the Taliban that he was able to interview Mr. bin Laden for the first time, in March 1997. An escorted journey through the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan led him to a small artificial cave. Before he met Mr. bin Laden, he was thoroughly searched.

During the first meeting, Mr. bin Laden played the generous host, serving a roasted sheep and Pepsi. But in a clear effort to make his reach clear, he recited the journalist's bank account and identity card numbers, as well as his relatives' phone numbers.

That meeting left Mr. Mir unimpressed. But by the next year, Mr. Mir said, Mr. bin Laden had seized on the issue of forcing American forces out of Saudi Arabia, and his messages began resonating.

He wrote poems that inspired his followers, Mr. Mir said. They were typically addressed to his soldiers and concerned the Palestinians. Mr. Mir paraphrased one poem this way: "The poor children and the poor women of Palestine, they are crying, they are calling for your help -- where are you?"

Still, Mr. Mir remains skeptical. "Osama bin Laden's real strength is bad American policies," he said, adding that Mr. bin Laden was exploiting the United States' support for unpopular regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

"On one side, the Americans are the champions of democracy and human rights," Mr. Mir said. "On the other side, they are fighting against Osama bin Laden with the help of military dictators and kings who don't believe in democracy or human rights.

"Osama bin Laden is not a hero because of his ideas. He is a hero by default."

------

Can Bush and Putin Control Russia's Arsenal?

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER J. DODD and CHUCK HAGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/opinion/13DODD.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON -- The events of Sept. 11 shattered any illusion that America is secure from foreign attack. As horrible as that day was, future attacks could be far more deadly. If terrorists had used a nuclear weapon in lower Manhattan, hundreds of thousands might have died.

President Bush has noted the potential threat we face if Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups obtain weapons of mass destruction. These groups are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, he told European leaders last week. If they obtain them, they will be a threat "to every nation and eventually to civilization itself."

The primary sources for these materials of destruction are weapons plants and reactors in the former Soviet Union, where thousands of tons of weapons-grade uranium, plutonium, chemicals and pathogens are stored at hundreds of sites. Some of these sites lack fences, alarms or qualified security guards. Systems to account for fissile material are rudimentary or nonexistent.

Several times in the last decade, individuals or groups have attempted to steal and then sell nuclear, chemical or biological materials from sites in Russia. We know this because we have captured them. But how many incidents have happened that we don't know about? It would only take a softball-sized lump of highly enriched uranium, or a baseball-sized lump of plutonium, along with materials readily available on the commercial market, to put together a nuclear device that could fit in an S.U.V.Terrorists are also working to perfect the delivery of deadly chemical and biological agents on a broad scale.

As President Bush meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia this week, he should discuss devising effective ways to ensure that weapons and materials of mass destruction in and around Russia remain safe, accounted for and secure.

In 1991, Congress approved legislation that provided money to Russia and other former Soviet states to help them dismantle their nuclear arsenals and create safe storage for weapons-grade nuclear material. Under the program, named for former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, more than 5,600 warheads have been deactivated since 1992. The United States has spent more than $2 billion to aid Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the destruction of their weapons, and has helped Russia safely dispose of thousands of tons of nuclear weapons and materials. Despite this effort, most Russian nuclear material is inadequately secured.

Meanwhile, the United States government has hired or helped place thousands of former weapons scientists from the Soviet Union to work in university labs, hospitals and power plants. Many more, however, remain out of work or underemployed. They are thus susceptible to selling their expertise to terrorist groups or rogue states.

Despite the success of these programs, we need a better plan to reduce the threat of these weapons -- one that takes into account the new realities of the world after Sept. 11.

First, we need a clear mechanism for leadership and accountability. Coordination between the dozens of federal departments, agencies and bureaus responsible for scores of nonproliferation programs must be improved. Funding for these programs must be drastically increased -- and not just by the United States. America's allies, and international organizations like the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, should also do their part.

Russia's partnership is vital to the success of this effort. The nonproliferation of nuclear materials -- as well as chemical and biological agents -- must become a cornerstone of Russian-American relations. Preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands is a goal we both share. Russian cooperation in neutralizing Iraq's program for weapons of mass destruction should be part of any new security arrangement between Washington and Moscow.

On Sept. 11, the unthinkable happened. Worse could be yet to come, especially if terrorists acquire and use nuclear weapons. The only real defense is an effective, long-term strategy that prevents the spread of dangerous chemical, biological and nuclear materials. The United States cannot do this alone. We need President Putin's help -- and he needs ours.

Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

-------- europe

Protesters Fail to Prevent Franco-German Nuclear Shipment

November 13, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-13-03.html

GORLEBEN, Germany, A shipment of nuclear waste has been returned from the French reprocessing plant at La Hague to a nuclear dump at Gorleben. The consignment is only the second permitted by the German radiation authority (BfS) since transboundary shipments were resumed in March following a three year break.

The first shipment of nuclear waste from France to Germany since 1998 ended on March 30 after a three day trip marked by large scale protests. Some 20,000 police were employed to guard the rail and road transfer of six armoured containers, which demonstrators nevertheless managed to delay by chaining themselves to railway tracks.

This time, around 5,000 anti-nuclear campaigners, farmers and residents were held at bay by police, who outnumbered them three to one and managed to prevent any delays.

Police surround anti-transport demonstrators on the railway tracks (Photo by Fred Dott courtesy Greenpeace Germany)

The only hold-up during the two-day journey was caused when the locomotive pulling the 67 metric tons of vitrified waste in six Castor containers broke down and carriages had to be hitched up to another engine.

Vitrified nuclear waste has been incorporated into a stable, environmentally safe glass that can be placed in a long term geologic repository.

The German government maintains that Gorleben is a safe repository for reprocessed nuclear waste, but Greenpeace campaigners called the German power industry's nuclear waste disposal policy "scandalous and reckless."

The radioactive waste was being transported 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across Europe only to be left in "a potato store for an indeterminate period," Greenpeace said.

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}

-------- france

PARIS - Controversial nuclear convoy sets off for Germany

Reuters,
13/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13268

A controversial convoy of nuclear waste was expected to unleash demonstrations along its route to Germany set off from France on the weekend, Greenpeace said.

The shipment by rail of six containers of German waste left Valongnes station close to the reprocessing plant at La Hague, on France's northwestern coast, at 1830 GMT on Sunday, the environmental group told Reuters.

"This transport...represents a scandalous risk for the populations along the route," said Frederic Marillier, responsible for nuclear issues at Greenpeace.

The shipment has already attracted demonstrators to Gorleben, northern Germany, where it is eventually to be stored, and Greenpeace said more demonstrations were expected in the suburbs of the French border city of Strasbourg.

The convoy comprises two diesel engines followed by two wagons of security officers, the six nuclear waste containers, a police wagon and another engine, Greenpeace said.

German police, who have mobilised 15,000 officers to protect the shipment, said aircraft would be banned from flying low over the route to free airspace for their own helicopters.

"It has nothing to do in this case with terrorist attacks," a police spokeswoman said, when asked if the move was a response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, which led to security at German nuclear sites being increased.

PROTESTERS BLOCK ROADS

In Germany, farmers accompanied by some 2,000 protesters used more than 200 tractors on Sunday to block roads around Dannenberg, where the containers are due on Tuesday or Wednesday to be transferred to lorries for the final 20 km (12 miles) of their journey.

"We want to show that we are not prepared to take this sitting down, but we know that once again we will not be able to stop the containers," said farmers spokesman Hans-Werner Zachow.

On Saturday some 5,000 people in Lueneburg and another 800 in Karlsruhe marched in protest at the plans, while about 20 Greenpeace activists spent the night of Saturday to Sunday at Valognes railway station.

Security forces had to dislodge two protesters who had climbed onto the railway signals, Greenpeace said, while police said they had found a large concrete slab on the tracks, similar to ones used by demonstrators in past protests to delay trains.

Police used heat-seeking cameras on Saturday night to check along the rail route for protesters, a Reuters photographer reported. Two weeks ago a fire in trailers under an iron bridge which lies along the route caused damage worth an estimated one million marks ($455,000).

Nuclear power remains a controversial issue in Germany, despite legislation adopted last month to phase out its use over the next two decades. The shipment will be only the second of its type this year from France. The last was in May.

-------- germany

Germany prepares for demos on nuclear convoy route

Reuters,
13/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13269/story.htm

BERLIN - Germany braced on the weekend for four days of demonstrations as it prepared to receive a controversial nuclear waste shipment from France.

Police, who have mobilised 15,000 officers to protect the shipment, said aircraft would be banned from flying low over the route to free airspace for their own helicopters.

"It has nothing to do in this case with terrorist attacks," a police spokeswoman said, when asked if the move was a response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, which led to security at German nuclear sites being increased.

The shipment by rail of six containers of German waste is not due to leave a reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, until late on Sunday but has already attracted demonstrators to Gorleben, northern Germany, where it is eventually to be stored.

Farmers used around 30 tractors on Sunday to block a road near Dannenberg, where the containers are due on Tuesday or Wednesday to be transferred to lorries for the final 20 km (12 miles) of their journey.

On Saturday some 5,000 people in Lueneburg and another 800 in Karlsruhe marched in protest at the plans, while Greenpeace activists moved to the Valognes railway station near Cherbourg, France, to await arrival of the containers from La Hague.

Two weeks ago a fire in trailers under an iron bridge which lies along the route caused damage worth an estimated one million marks ($455,000).

Police used heat-seeking cameras on Saturday night to check along the rail route for protesters, a Reuters photographer reported.

Nuclear power remains a controversial issue in Germany, despite legislation adopted last month to phase out its use over the next two decades. The shipment will be only the second of its type this year from France. The last was in May.

-------- india / pakistan

Banish the bomb

News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/oped/o3.htm

The writer is a former broadcaster, commentator, foreign correspondent and a freelance columnist

Two recent statements about Pakistan's nuclear capability or capacity do not bear scrutiny. The first one was made by General Musharraf during a press interview. He stated that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was in safe hands and that it was the cornerstone of the country's defence. The second was by a government spokesman (no doubt emanating from the first source) that Pakistan's nuclear armaments were so secretly stowed that nobody knew where they were and nobody could ever know.

For these statements to be flowing out with such rapidity, there must be a good reason. That reason became obvious when a few days ago President Bush issued a warning that terrorists were likely to get hold of either nuclear devices or obtain the means to make their own nuclear bomb. A suggestion was made that terrorists would or could steal nuclear material. Both General Musharraf and the government spokesman were in fact reassuring President Bush that this country was out of bounds to nuclear thieves.

Now, I shall take up the General's declaration. He as a soldier should know better than the mullahs who day in and day out mouth the same tune that the nuclear bomb is the best defence we have. The general should know that it is the worst possible defence, for defence it is not. The possession of the bomb is the worst possible threat of offence. For a small country to possess one is to do itself the worst possible disservice. First of all it must be reiterated what a nuclear bomb is. In spite of the fact that our generals think that it is an extremely loud bang, they along with the mullahs do nor know that three or four strategically placed bombs on Pakistan will put paid to the country. It will be annihilated. Everything will cease to function.

If Mangla and Tarbela dams are breeched billions of gallons of radioactive water will sweep down the country. Thereafter there will be nothing to eat for those who may have survived extinction. They would have hardly any water to drink. In fact they would wish that they had died with the first blast. And if our valiant soldiers think that they will be sitting pretty in their bunkers, safe and alive, then they had better start studying the after effects of a bomb explosion. They too would wish that they were dead if they survived at all.

All this will happen or can happen, by over touting the bomb. The attacker who could be the one with enormous depth which this country does not have, in order to avoid being hit by a nuke would pre-emptively lodge the first two or three strategic bombs. That would make it impossible for Pakistan to retaliate. If on the other hand Pakistan did not have the blessed bomb, then the opponent may not want to use his bomb. There would appear to be no need. The best defence for Pakistan is to renounce the bomb altogether, as indeed it is for the whole world. I shall revert to this later.

For the second spokesman of the government to declare that nobody knows where Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is stored or located is poppycock. It is an axiom that for a secret to be maintained, only one person must be in possession of it. The moment a second person knows the chances of a leak increase. With a secret like the nuclear arsenals, hundreds of persons are in the know. Those whose business it is to find out will find out. After all when the first nuclear bomb was being developed in the 1940s, it was the topmost secret of the world. It was code named Project Manhattan. Despite all efforts to maintain this secret, the Germans knew and they were racing to come out with a bomb before the Americans could. The Germans lost the race and consequently the war.

Now when President Bush says that terrorists can steal the bomb or the enriched uranium or plutonium to make it, he may not have been hinting at Pakistan but the latter felt bound to assert that Pakistan's nukes were safe. The greatest source for obtaining either the bomb or the material to make it is either Russia or the US itself. They between themselves have 98% the material or bombs. It is no longer unthinkable that somebody should smuggle a nuke into New York and blow it up. After the demolition of the twin towers of the WTO, NY, nothing is too outlandish and unthinkable. A bomb can be smuggled into New York in a container. Thousands of containers are landed in that city. It is impossible for anyone to check the contents of every container before despatch or after receipt.

The remedy therefore is for all nuke possessing nations to dispose of their bombs and their bomb making material. For this purpose both Russia and the US are well suited to lead and work toward arriving at a treaty or protocol to ban the nuke. After all after World War I, poison gas was banned by a Geneva Convention. To this day that agreement has held. And poison gas was not half as horrific as a nuke.

Tony Blair, the super salesman who is going around frantically trying to sell refrigerators to Eskimos, as it were, could employ his considerable talent in the pursuit of the abolition of the bomb. After all, in the weeks since Sept 11, Mr Blair has paid visits to Berlin, Paris, New York, Washington, Brussels, Moscow, Islamabad, Delhi, Riyadh, Amman and Tel Aviv. And now he is off to Washington on the Concorde. Never in the days of yore did a British Prime Minister ever leave his proverbial imperial throne, except at the time of Munich in 1939 when Mr Chamberlain went to meet Hitler. Now the monarch sits in Washington. Once the bomb is banned altogether and disposed off by everyone, that will be the time to breathe easily and relax.

------

U.S. Says Aid to Pakistan Won't Include F-16 Fighters

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13JETS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 -- The Bush administration has rejected Pakistan's request to release a fleet of F-16 jet fighters that it bought in the 1980's, American officials said today, adding that the United States wanted to avoid destabilizing relations in South Asia.

In an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said transferring the fighters would be an important symbolic gesture of American gratitude for his nation's strong support in the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan purchased 28 F-16's in the 1980's, but their delivery was blocked when Congress cut off all aid and military sales in 1990, citing Pakistan's secret development of nuclear weapons.

President Bush announced on Saturday that the United States was providing an aid package worth more than $1 billion to Pakistan in exchange for its war support, but the F-16's were conspicuously absent from the deal.

Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the matter with General Musharraf in meetings in New York but decided against making the fighters a part of renewed ties with Pakistan.

"They would like to have the planes," Secretary Powell said in an interview today, "but at the moment we are restarting our military-to- military relationship in a more serious way, and the planes are not an issue that we expect to be discussing in the very near future."

The Clinton administration settled the longstanding dispute over the planes by sending Pakistan cash and commodities worth more than $500 million, officials said today.

Despite the settlement, General Musharraf said Pakistan still wanted the planes, advanced fighter- bombers, as a visible sign that the United States was restoring Pakistan to the status of a genuine ally.

"I did take up this case, frankly, not because that much of it was significant from defense point of view," General Musharraf said on Sunday. "It has its significance, certainly, but not as much as I should have highlighted it. It's more for public perceptions in Pakistan."

Having his public request turned down flat was an embarrassing setback that he said would be "received negatively" in Pakistan.

Administration officials did not rule out releasing the fighters in the future, holding back an important carrot in Washington's evolving relationship with the general.

"We're at the very beginnings of resuming military-to-military contacts with Pakistan," an administration official said, "and right now we're looking at more modest requests, like providing spare parts and assisting their border security with helicopters."

Indeed, much of the calculus appeared to hinge on the United States balancing its diplomatic and military relations with Pakistan and India, Pakistan's neighbor and longtime rival. Both countries are nuclear powers.

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the United States has tried to patch up its relations with General Musharraf, who took power in a coup two years ago. Pakistan, the most prominent Islamic ally in the war in Afghanistan, has allowed American search-and-rescue aircraft and Special Operations forces to operate from several of its bases.

At the same time, the United States has improved its relations with India, and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld praised the improved ties on a recent visit there.

Transferring the F-16's now could upset that delicate balance, especially because the fighters are a combat aircraft that is capable of dropping nuclear weapons. "Any transfer of advanced weapons would get everyone all riled up," a State Department official said.

Lee Feinstein, a State Department official in the Clinton administration who worked on South Asia policy, said: "The United States has a new role in South Asia, and that is as a kind of guarantor of stability for Pakistan. At the same time, it wants to deepen relationship with India. The trick will be whether officials in all three capitals can can accommodate this."

There are other constraints to releasing the fighters, officials said.

In September, Mr. Bush lifted economic sanctions against Pakistan and India that were imposed after both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998. But Pakistan's Defense Ministry remains under American sanctions for buying M-11 missiles from China in the early 1990's.

Mr. Bush waived some of those missile-related sanctions in September to allow Pakistan's military to help in the war in Afghanistan, but the full restrictions do not expire until November of next year, a State Department official said.

-------- japan

Japan, US to Review Japan War Plan

NOVEMBER 13, 20:45 EST
AP
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=japan

TOKYO - Japanese and U.S. defense officials were slated to meet Wednesday in Tokyo to review plans for Japan's military commitment to the war against terrorism under a new law permitting non-combat assistance.

Japan is reportedly set to contribute about 1,500 sailors, airmen and other military personnel, who will be restricted to operations outside of the war zone. They will carry supplies by sea and air and participate in search-in-rescue missions, domestic news media said Wednesday.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet is expected to endorse the plan on Friday. Last week his administration approved the dispatch of three Japanese warships to the Indian Ocean to scout sea lanes and gather other information for military officials planning the operation.

A second naval contingent consisting of an additional three or four vessels could leave as early as next week, the media reports said.

Ordering its military to provide support for forces engaged in combat is a first for Japan since the end of World War II. During the Gulf War ten years ago, Tokyo sent minesweepers to the Gulf after the fighting was over.

Tight constraints are placed on Japan's military by its nation's pacifist constitution, which rejects the use of force to resolve international disputes and reflects its bitter experience during World War II.

----

Accident Shuts Down Japan Plant

Associated Press
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Neutrino-Accident.html

TOKYO (AP) -- A massive underground facility where researchers proved that subatomic particles spawned by the sun and stars have mass was damaged in an accident and shut down, officials said Tuesday.

The Super-Kamiokande, the world's largest neutrino detector, is built in an abandoned copper mine about 170 miles west of Tokyo.

Workers had just completed repairs to some damaged light detectors on Monday when the ground shook and they heard explosions, said project spokesman Yoji Totsuka, a Tokyo University professor.

The facility is a huge cylinder, 129 feet in diameter and 135 feet high, containing 12.5 million gallons of water. The tank is lined with more than 11,000 photomultipler tubes that detect the specific wavelength of light produced when neutrinos react with water.

As the chamber was being refilled with water, explosions shook the facility, destroyed a large number of the light-detecting tubes, Totsuka said. Initial estimates were that up to half of the tubes were destroyed.

``This is a serious accident,'' said Totsuka. ``The facility is not serviceable at all.''

A research team is looking into what caused the accident, but their investigation was expected to take some time, Totsuka said. A water pressure failure was one possibility.

Totsuka could not say how soon the facility would be repaired.

``We're determined to rebuild the detectors,'' he said.

Researchers at the facility, which is run by Tokyo University, discovered in 1998 that neutrinos have mass. Earlier this year, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada announced additional research that supports the findings at Super-K.

It is estimated that 400 billion neutrinos pass through the Earth every second without striking a thing. Physicists believe the particles play a key role in how matter reacts and the universe works.

-------- missile defense

Missile Shield Program Still Costly

By Tom Raum
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 4:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23069-2001Nov13?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- The fate of President Bush's missile defense plan may depend more on money and science than on any deal with Russia.

As Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin head for Bush's ranch in central Texas to continue their summit talks, the proposed U.S. missile shield remains their biggest source of dispute.

Even if they can reach an agreement, money and science shortcomings threaten to keep the program stalled for years.

The technology to fulfill former President Reagan's 1980s vision of being able to blast enemy missiles out of the sky - often likened to hitting bullets with other bullets - remains unsure.

Congress, caught between a distressed economy and multibillion-dollar demands for the war on terrorism, is showing second thoughts about forking over what its analysts say could amount to $60 billion over the next 15 years.

Just last week, in fact, a House Appropriations subcommittee recommended the cancellation of an expensive infrared satellite radar system that the Pentagon considers an integral part of the missile defense plan.

Even within the Bush administration, divisions persist between hard-liners who want to ditch the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty - which prohibits national missile defenses - and moderates who would like it rewritten or replaced with a new arms-control pact.

Bush wants the pact scrapped. Putin contends it is a cornerstone of strategic stability and should remain in place.

"The position of Russia remains unchanged," Putin said Tuesday at a news conference with Bush at the White House.

Still, Putin signaled flexibility, saying he and Bush would "continue dialogue and consultations" on the subject at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The Bush administration wants to move to the next phase of building a limited national missile defense: construction next spring at Fort Greely, Alaska - near Fairbanks - of five silos for interceptor missiles and a command-and-control testing center.

U.S. officials believe that Putin is ready to agree to allow testing and construction of the Alaska site to proceed, but would oppose any move toward deployment.

The ABM treaty does permit some testing on missile defense systems.

The worst terrorist attack on American soil came not from a warhead on a missile - but from hijacked passenger airliners.

Missile-defense critics say that reinforces their position that money spent on missile defense is wasted. But defenders argued that the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland, regardless of the source of the attack.

Kurt Campbell, of the private Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it's too early to say whether the terror attacks will build - or lessen - support for missile defense.

"More likely are significant budget problems. We don't have the money to do everything right now," he said.

Critics suggest missile-defense construction will fuel a new arms race while providing dubious protection for Americans. They claim the Fort Greely project is mainly designed to fulfill a Bush campaign pledge to deploy a rudimentary system before the end of his first term.

"The science has not been shown to be feasible," said Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In fact, Young suggested that the program's well-documented problems may have helped persuade Putin that a missile-defense system is not a near-term threat to Russia.

The Pentagon has had mixed results so far on four interceptor tests over the Pacific, with two failures and two successes since 1999. The most recent success came in July. A fifth test that had been scheduled for October was postponed because of mechanical difficulties.

The administration is weighing various options, all scaled-back versions of Reagan's original concept of a space-based missile shield, derided by Democrats as "Star Wars."

Since Reagan's proposals for a Strategic Defense Initiative, the Pentagon has spent about $80 billion on various missile-defense programs.

But even proponents agree deployment of an effective system remains years away, perhaps 2007 at the earliest.

Despite the costs and the obstacles, missile-defense backer Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, says the consequences of not building such a system could be huge.

"We saw two buildings taken down. Imagine if that had been all of Manhattan," Weldon said. "If one missile, either deliberately or accidentally, hits one of our major cities, in that context, the cost is not an issue. It's a defense we do not now have."

EDITOR'S NOTE - Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.

-------- russia

Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials
Report Coincides With Bin Laden's Claim to Have Weapons

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18679-2001Nov12?language=printer

A senior Russian official has reported a major incident involving the attempted theft of nuclear materials in the past two years, raising fresh fears about the security of the former superpower's aging nuclear arsenal.

The incident, revealed in a report by the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, coincides with claims by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden that he has acquired weapons of mass destruction and would be willing to use them as a last resort. While U.S. officials are skeptical that bin Laden has acquired a real nuclear weapon, they believe he might have acquired radiological materials that could be scattered into the atmosphere with the help of a conventional bomb.

A White House official said he had no information to support claims in the Pakistani media that bin Laden had met with retired Pakistani nuclear scientists who have shown sympathy for his fundamentalist Islamic views. Earlier, a well-placed Pakistani official told The Washington Post that one of the architects of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, had acknowledged holding meetings on humanitarian matters with bin Laden associates in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

The report of a serious attempt to compromise Russian nuclear security surfaced at a conference this month in Vienna hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency that was convened to discuss the possibility of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. Western experts at the conference were taken aback when Yuri Volodin, head of the safety department at the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, reported a previously undisclosed security violation of the "highest possible consequence" sometime during the past two years.

Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear expert who worked at the Clinton White House, said Volodin refused to provide further details about the nature of the violation. Bunn said he assumed that the materials had been recovered, as otherwise the Russians would probably not have drawn attention to the incident in a public forum. Volodin could not be contacted for immediate comment.

There have been dozens of attempts by smugglers and terrorists to gain access to Russia's vast nuclear arsenal in the 10 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but no leakage of sufficient quantities of highly fissile materials to build a nuclear weapon has been confirmed. Thefts of low-grade radiological material have been more frequent.

While U.S. officials say there is no doubt that bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has attempted to acquire nuclear and biological weapons, there is considerable debate over whether he has been successful. That is why considerable attention has been focused on the activities of Mahmood and other Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been questioned repeatedly by the Pakistani police over the past two weeks.

According to Pakistani officials, Mahmood and his associate, Abdul Majid, told police that they went to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, as part of their work for the Islamic relief organization Ummah Tamer-e-Nau. They said they helped construct a flour mill near the city, and denied passing on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan.

Mahmood's area of expertise is the production of plutonium, the highly fissile material used in some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. He was transferred to a desk job in the spring of 1999 after publicly advocating increases in the production of plutonium to help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He has also spoken out strongly in support of the radical Taliban movement, which he has described as a "movement of Islamic renaissance."

Some Western experts suspect that the Kandahar flour mill could be a cover for some kind of biological or chemical weapons program, which could involve milling bacteriological agents to fine powders. It is more difficult to imagine it being used as a screen for a nuclear program.

Correspondent Molly Moore in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

----

A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium

New York Times
November 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/opinion/L13MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

To the Editor:
Re "An Easy Bargain With Russia" (Op-Ed, Nov. 10):

Burton Richter proposes that President Bush agree to the demand by President Vladimir V. Putin for lower strategic bomb inventories. But the proposal doesn't address what becomes of the thousands of nuclear warheads retired by each side.

The United States-Russian agreement to turn plutonium "pits" of these warheads into fuel for nuclear power plants is wrongheaded when operatives of Al Qaeda are looking for atom bomb materials.

Lax nuclear security in Russia would be aggravated by transporting tons of weapons-grade plutonium thousands of miles from pit-conversion plant to fuel-fabrication plant to nuclear power plants.

Presidents Bush and Putin should instead agree to abandon Russia's insistence on using plutonium as fuel in return for American financial incentives to dispose of it directly as waste.

PAUL L. LEVENTHAL Pres., Nuclear Control Institute Washington, Nov. 10, 2001

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

Bush Promises Warheads Reduction

By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 6:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23601-2001Nov13?language=printer

WASHINGON -- President Bush pledged Tuesday to slash the United States' nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to as few as 1,700 warheads, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said he might "respond in kind." The leaders failed to agree on Bush's missile shield plans.

In private talks and then in an East Room news conference, the leaders opened a three-day visit that will focus on the budding U.S.-Russian alliance against terrorism and nagging differences over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

"The position of Russia remains unchanged," Putin said of his government's objection to scrapping the treaty that bars national missile defenses.

The talks move Wednesday to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where U.S. officials held out hopes for accord on the missile shield issue. Both leaders indicated their relationship had buried vestiges of the Cold War.

"Together, we're making history as we make progress," Bush said. "We're transforming our relationship from one of hostility and suspicion to one based on cooperation and trust."

In his fourth meeting with the U.S. president, Putin urged his own citizens to stop looking at American relations "from the old standpoint, distrust and the enmity." On the question of allowing U.S. forces to use Central Asia as a base into Afghanistan, the Russian president said: "We have nothing to be afraid of."

Finding plenty of common ground, the leaders urged Afghanistan's U.S.-backed opposition fighters to use restraint while liberating the nation's capital of Kabul, and called for a broad-based, mutiethnic post-Taliban government. They brushed aside reports northern alliance forces were executing prisoners of war.

In a blizzard of paper, the pair formalized a series of agreements to combat bioterrorism, bolster the Russian economy, battle money laundering that finances terrorism and strengthen Russia's ties to NATO - the 19-member military alliance formed to counter Moscow in the Cold War.

It was the issue of weapons that underscored their greatest agreement and disagreement.

Bush, who promised in the presidential campaign to significantly reduce U.S. nuclear stockpiles regardless of whether Russia reciprocated, announced his intention to slash the nation's long-range nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 weapons over the next decade.

The United States currently has about 7,000 nuclear warheads. Russia has about 5,800, but can't afford to keep them.

Bush called his proposal "fully consistent with American security."

Putin replied: "We appreciate very much the decision by the president to reduce strategic offensive weapons to the limits indicated by him and we, for our part, will try to respond in kind."

U.S. officials said they were not disappointed that Putin failed to produce a specific level for Russian cuts. They noted that Putin has pushed to reduce both nations' stockpiles to 1,500.

There were small signs of discord

Putin said he wanted the nuclear targets in writing, "including the issues of verification and control." The U.S. president said it was enough that he had "looked the man in the eye and shook his hand." But Bush said he would be willing put the agreement in writing.

On the ABM treaty, Bush hopes to persuade Putin to allow the United States to proceed with research and development of a missile shield without declaring the work a violation of the 1972 pact. In exchange, Bush promised Putin in their meeting to keep Russia informed of the tests.

U.S. officials said the proposal would give both men what they want: Bush could begin developing a missile shield and Putin could tell his public that he kept the ABM intact. Putin said he was open to discussing the issue with Bush in Crawford.

"I believe that it's too early to draw the line on the discussions," said Putin, who had a full schedule in Washington and Houston before joining Bush at the ranch late Wednesday. He was leaving Crawford on Thursday afternoon.

Bush told Putin last month in China that he was prepared to announce as early as January that the United States was pulling out of the ABM. The warning was designed to force Putin into a decision. The pledge Tuesday to unilaterally reduce U.S. nuclear arms is viewed as an incentive for Putin to compromise on the ABM.

Bush is being pressured by fellow Republicans to scrap the treaty. "The United States cannot deploy missile defenses unless and until it fully extricates itself" from the ABM, said a letter to Bush from GOP Senate leaders.

Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested there will not be an agreement on the ABM anytime soon. "You got the public statement that you're going to have to live with for a while," he said as Bush prepared to leave for his trip to Texas.

Several U.S. officials said an ABM agreement in Crawford was possible, though not likely.

In deference to Putin's assistance in the war against terrorism, the administration recently announced a delay in some missile defense tests, saying it wanted to avoid bumping up against the treaty's prohibitions.

----

Nuclear Arms History Numbers

Tue, Nov 13
By The Associated Press
http://news.excite.com/printstory/news/ap/011113/19/nuke-history-numbers

The number of strategic, or intercontinental, nuclear arms held by the United States and Russia:

Present, as of July 31, 2001

-U.S.: 7,013, supposed to be 6,000 by year's end.
-Russia: 5,858.

Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) III

-1997: Plans discussed by President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
-Status: Unsigned.
-Limit on warheads: 2,000-2,500 by the end of 2007.

START II

-1993: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II.
-Status: Ratified by both countries.
-Limit on warheads: 3,000-3,500.

START I

-1991: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev sign START I.
-Status: Ratified by both countries.
-Limit on warheads: 6,000.

September 1990

-U.S.: 10,563
-Russia: 10,271

Sources: Arms Control Association, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.


-------- MILITARY

Between the two extremes

News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/oped/o4.htm

The writer is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi moonisahmar@hotmail.com

Engulfed between the devil and the deep blue sea, the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are facing a critical situation since September 11 this year. The US led war against terrorism launched by conducting unabated bombing over Afghanistan and the hard position taken by the Taliban regime on responding to the American demand of handing over Osama Bin Laden and destroying the Al-Qaeda network prove how rigid and intransigent the two parties have become in dealing with a crisis which could have been managed through negotiations and diplomacy.

History will not forgive those individuals and states who in order to protect their vested interests sacrificed the lives of innocent people of Afghanistan and the United States. Along with the people of Afghanistan, the people of Pakistan have also become a victim of the politics of expediency and opportunism. Between the two extremes one doesn't see any hope for sanity because imprudence has prevailed over rationality. Is there a way out to halt President Bush's first war of 21st century? Why the American administration and the Taliban regime didn't utilise the option of seeking a peaceful solution to the problem and how their extreme positions have played havoc to the innocent people of Afghanistan? How the politics of extremism pursued by the two sides could be replaced with moderation and sanity?

So far, American air strikes, have failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, dismantle his Al-Qaeda network and dislodge the Taliban regime from power. Similarly, the Taliban and their Arab supporters inside Afghanistan have acted in an unreasonable manner causing unprecedented hardship to the people of that country. Extremist positions taken by the United States and the Taliban are because of two main reasons. First, the feeling in both the parties that they can win. Americans have a superiority complex that their qualitative and quantitative edge over Taliban will sooner or later result into their victory and dislodge extremist Muslims from power in Kabul. Whereas, the Taliban, along with Osama Bin Laden and other Muslim fighters in Afghanistan have a conviction that they possess the power of faith and can win in an asymmetrical war with America. For Taliban or Osama Bin Laden, the US edge over technology and resources cannot defeat them because they are fighting for a religious cause. Therefore, when both parties feel that they can win the outcome is bound to be more devastation. Similar situation had occurred during the Gulf War when both Iraq and the US-led coalition believed that they can win and the result was the outbreak of hostilities, the liberation of Kuwait and the defeat of Iraq. Second, egocentric approach followed by the Taliban and the United States also resulted into rejection of negotiations and the hardening of extremism from both sides. Neither President Bush nor the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was ready to follow a moderate approach because both believed that their pride was at stake. In case of Washington, its pride had suffered massively because of September 11 events but America, despite the loss of its pride wanted to show to the world that it can go to any extent for demonstrating and reasserting its power. Whereas, for Taliban, it was the question of their survival because accepting the American conditions would have given a deathblow to the order, which they had established in the last six years.

Predictably, the outcome of the extremist positions taken by the United States and the Taliban led to the outbreak of first war of 21st century with far reaching implications, particularly in Pakistan. The question for Taliban is now not to engage the United States in a combat type war because they don't have the means to utilise that option. But for Washington, its stakes are such that it cannot yield or compromise. It has gone to an extent that its withdrawal from the war will cause tremendous embarrassment. Taliban, have nothing to lose but they are firm to defend their position till the end. Hence the outcome is standoff in the Afghan war because neither party is willing to follow a rational approach.

Before the US-Taliban war further destabilises Central, West and South Asia in particular and the world in general, it is time the politics of extremism followed by America and the Taliban regime is replaced with moderation and sanity. Since it is a war between the two unequal rivals, the side, which is more, educated and resourceful needs to take the initiative and resolve the issue. What can one expect from the Taliban and their political ideologue Osama Bin Laden in view of their orthodox and irrational behaviour on matters, which are of a critical nature. They lack wisdom and are living in a world, which is far from the reality. But, the United States, which is the most educated, advanced and sophisticated country of the world should not follow an approach which lacks prudence and magnanimity. What is required in a given situation is rethinking in the West, particularly in the United States regarding their policies, which they are pursuing to win a war against terrorism.

Three important steps may be taken by the international community to formulate a rational and proactive approach on dealing with the issue of Osama Bin Laden, his Al-Qaeda network and the regime of Taliban. First, the UN Security Council needs to intervene by deploying a massive peacekeeping force so as to create conditions for a broad-based government in Kabul. So far, Security Council is inactive in dealing with the Afghan crisis and the deployment of peace-keeping troops, along with a package including disarming armed groups, rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, encouraging the return of Afghan Diaspora, involving weaker sections of Afghan society in the process of peace and the formation of an interim government which should ensure protection of rights of all groups of Afghan society, including women and minorities. Second, in order to make sure that terrorist groups don't use Afghanistan as a safe heaven for their notorious activities, the UN Security Council with the cooperation of various regional organisations like ECO, OSCE and EU should establish institutions in that country aiming to prevent extremist or terrorist elements from gaining any influence. Third, the Security Council needs to make sure that the people of Afghanistan who have suffered as a result of 23 years of instability, wars and violence get a break and are allowed to live a peaceful live. For that purpose, all outside interference in the affairs of Afghanistan needs to be seriously prevented by the Security Council with the support and cooperation of neighbours of that country. Most importantly, the UN should launch different programs for the social, educational, and economic uplift of Afghan people so that an environment of hope for a better future could be created. Hopefully, if normalcy returns to Afghanistan and the majority of people of that country are given an access to modern education, health, employment and other necessities of life, extremist and terrorist elements will cease to exist in that country because they only thrive when people are uneducated and receptive to their calls.

Extremist policies either pursued by Washington or the Taliban regime will only result into further bloodshed and violence. It will be like a war without winners because even if the United States succeeds in dislodging Taliban from power, the threat of terrorism will not cease to exist. The cycle of the Afghan tragedy has much to do with the neglect expressed by those powers who had armed and trained the Mujahideen groups against the Soviet forces but left the Afghan people in lurch after Moscow's military withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989. The crisis in Afghanistan no doubt gives an opportunity to address issues, which contributed to the making of Afghan tragedy. Otherwise, the alternate scenario is an endless process of violence and destruction and the international community will again be responsible for that situation.

-------- afghanistan

Caught in lethal crossfire
Gazette's war reporter tells how he survived Taliban ambush

Montreal Gazette
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id={94F48700-AFD2-4E54-AFB4-2C05AB74D119}

"If you cover (a war) from the trenches, you have to keep in your mind that things might happen to you. If you're not prepared to face those risks, you don't cover war."

Gazette reporter Levon Sevunts uttered those words late yesterday through a satellite link on the far side of the world after riding for four hours with the body of a French journalist killed in the crossfire of a fight between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in northeastern Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Sevunts and a group of foreign journalists clambered aboard an armoured personnel carrier to tour Taliban trenches reportedly cleared by the latest round of fighting. But when they got there, they were greeted by a barrage of fire from Taliban gunners waiting for them in the dark.

As the APC veered around wildly, Sevunts, 32 years old and a veteran of what was then the Soviet army, felt his military training take hold and, unlike the colleagues who either jumped off or fell from the moving vehicle, held on for dear life, preferring to keep a layer of armour between himself and the gunfire and land mines that might be buried in the unfamiliar ground below.

Hours later, Sevunts learned three of his colleagues had been found dead in Taliban trenches, at least two of them stripped of their belongings. The dead were Johanne Sutton, 34, and Pierre Billaud, 31, French radio correspondents, and Volker Handloik, 40, a writer for the German magazine Stern.

What appears here is Sevunts's account of the day that for him transformed the war from something to be observed into something to be survived.

------

Northern Alliance enters Kabul as Taliban flee

James Meek on the Shomali Plain, Luke Harding in Islamabad and Ewen MacAskill
Tuesday November 13, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,592617,00.html

The Northern Alliance began entering Kabul at dawn this morning after the Taliban's forces appeared to abandon the city overnight. Trucks loaded with heavily armed alliance soldiers were seen moving unop posed into the city. Little gunfire was reported.

The Northern Alliance said the soldiers were in fact advance units of its police force. However, one jubilant fighter was heard to cry out: "We have taken Kabul."

"We have taken key government buildings," another fighter said. "We are chasing the Taliban to the west."

From the rooftop of the Intercontinental Hotel on a hill overlooking the city, columns of Taliban vehicles could be seen heading south early today.

The movements appeared to confirm that the Taliban were moving all their forces back for a final defence of their stronghold in Kandahar.

There was sporadic small arms fire from hills overlooking the city but the streets were empty of the Taliban sol diers who had been there hours earlier.

Before the final push Northern Alliance spokesman Bismillah Khan said: "We are at the gate of Kabul." The US had pressed for the alliance to stay out of Kabul to allow time for a coalition government including members of the southern-based Pashtun tribe to be formed.

While some Taliban fled be fore the city was abandoned, others had mounted a rearguard action and engaged the alliance in heavy fighting on the Shomali plain about 25 miles north of the capital.

Taliban soldiers and their allies - Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and others - were rushed up to block the alliance's advance along the New Road into Kabul. The Taliban ringed the city with tanks.

In four days, the Northern Alliance has expanded its share of territory from 10% of Afghanistan to more than 40%. The country is now effectively partitioned, with the alliance in control of the north and the Taliban dug in in the south.

The alliance troops encountered little resistance as they emerged from their positions at Bagram, north of Kabul, and marched across no man's land.

Observers said US and British soldiers advanced with Afghan opposition fighters and called in air strikes against Taliban positions. Alliance soldiers at Bagram airport had eased past the Taliban's first trenches by yesterday afternoon. By last night they stopped their offensive, possibly because of the scale of the Taliban rearguard action.

The alliance claimed the halt was for political reasons. Its foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said opposition forces had no intention of entering the city. "We should evaluate the situation," he said.

The UN, caught by surprise by the speed of events, had said it was to speed up its preparations for an interim government in Kabul. A meeting of Afghan groups was being planned, possibly in Europe.

----

'Up to 500 executed' after the fall of Mazar

FROM STEPHEN FARRELL IN ISLAMABAD,
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13 2001
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001390012-2001393887,00.html

SUMMARY executions, abductions and looting have followed the capture of Mazar-i Sharif by Northern Alliance forces, the United Nations said yesterday.

As Red Cross staff buried the victims of the battle for the city, unconfirmed reports emerged of a massacre of Taleban and Pakistanis in a school in the northern capital. UN officials said that it was unclear how many had died or how many such incidents had occurred, but Peter Bouchaert, of Human Rights Watch, said that early reports suggested that up to 500 people had died and 2,000 Taleban had been taken captive.

The World Food Programme (WFP) spoke of "freelance gunmen" fighting in the streets of the city, with civilians being kidnapped and 89 tons of oil, sugar and high-energy biscuits stolen.

The WFP said that in the chaos on the ground, a food convoy en route to Bamiyan had been hit by American airstrikes, with two of the trucks destroyed by shrapnel. It added, however, that the advance by anti-Taleban forces had allowed aid supply routes to reopen.

"Eight per cent of the food is damaged and unusable and two of the trucks have been destroyed," an official said.

Unicef said that Northern Alliance forces had seized ten aid trucks that had been taking carrying water supply equipment in Mazar. Chulho Hyun, a spokesman, said it was concerned for the safety of the trucks' Pashtun drivers. He added that armed men had burst into Unicef's offices soon after the fall of the city and seized computer equipment, furniture and radios.

Retreating Taleban forces also stole all Unicef's vehicles as they fled from Mazar to Pul-i Khumri, and the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said that 24 of its 26 vehicles had been looted last week, just before the Taleban fled.

Others, however, said that the situation appeared to be calm in towns and provinces that had fallen to the Alliance.Peter Bulling, of the Swedish Committee, said that local staff had reported Taloqan and Pul-i-Khumri to be relatively quiet.

"There have not been any revenge attacks. We were very much afraid that the Pashtun population would be attacked, but so far so good," he said.

-------

Taliban deserts Kabul, rebels move into capital

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/attacks.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Ignoring appeals to stay out of the capital, Afghan opposition fighters rolled into Kabul on Tuesday after Taliban troops fled. Residents, freed of the Islamic militia's restrictions, celebrated by blaring music from radios and shaving their beards. Under heavy international pressure to share power, the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said all Afghan factions - except the Taliban - were invited to Kabul to negotiate a new government. The alliance also asked the United Nations to send teams to help the peace process, he said.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, outlined for the Security Council on Tuesday a plan for a two-year transitional government run by Afghans and backed by a multinational security force.

Abdullah said most alliance troops had stayed on the edge of the capital and that a smaller force had entered only to keep the peace and prevent lawlessness after Taliban fighters slipped out of the city under cover of night.

But there were concerns over reprisals by alliance fighters. Heavily armed troops roamed the city, hunting Taliban stragglers and their Arab allies from Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda movement. At least 11 Pakistanis and Arabs fighting for the Taliban were slain.

The United Nations reported that alliance fighters executed 100 Taliban in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif after capturing the city Friday. Abdullah denied the report.

In Washington, President Bush said the United States would "work with the Northern Alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people they are liberating."

Bush, speaking at a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said alliance leaders must "recognize that a future government must include a representative from all of Afghanistan."

Bush, who had urged the alliance to stay out of Kabul until a broad-based government is formed, said that since entering the city, alliance leaders had "made it very clear they had no intention of occupying Kabul."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a U.N. presence in Kabul to be established "as soon as possible" in the Afghan capital. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the United Nations should send in a peacekeeping force made up of Muslim countries to prevent bloodshed, saying Pakistan and Turkey could contribute.

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hardline Islamic Taliban movement that has ruled Afghanistan since 1996 was collapsing in disarray. Field commanders were fleeing without contact with the leadership, and some were switching sides, the official said.

The official said an armed force of Pashtuns - the ethnic group that has made up the backbone of the Taliban - were moving against the Taliban near the southern city of Kandahar, the militia's birthplace and headquarters. The official would not elaborate.

At least 200 Taliban fighters mutinied in Kandahar, and fighting broke out by the city's airport, a Taliban official, Mullah Najibullah, said at the Pakistani border at Chaman.

The Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, made a radio address denouncing deserters and urging his followers to fight, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.

"This is my order: that you should obey your commander," Omar said, according to the agency. Deserters "would be like a hen and die in some ditch." The agency quoted him as saying he was in Kandahar, though that could not be independently verified.

There were signs the Taliban were abandoning cities in the south, possibly to wage a guerrilla war from the mountains. A Kandahar resident contacted by telephone said many Taliban appeared to have left the city, except for uniformed militia police.

U.S. airstrikes continued Tuesday, with warplanes targeting caves thought to be hiding places for al-Qa'eda figures, another U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

As the Taliban retreated from Kabul, they took eight foreign aid workers, including two Americans, accused of spreading Christianity in Muslim Afghanistan, guards at the prison where they were held told The Associated Press. The workers were reportedly taken to Kandahar.

As the sun rose over the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul residents celebrated the end of Taliban rule over the city. They shouted out congratulations, honked car horns and rang bells on their bicycles. Men shaved off beards - mandated by the Taliban - and the sounds of music returned after having been banned by the Islamic militia.

Alliance Interior Minister Yunis Qanoni said 3,000 security troops were deployed in the city to maintain order and guard the offices of international agencies. Some offices, including those of the Red Cross and the embassy of Pakistan, have been looted.

Abdullah defended the alliance move into Kabul, saying that after the Taliban left, armed "irresponsible people" caused disturbances. "There was no option for us but to send our security forces into Kabul," he said.

The opposition alliance is largely made up of ethnic minorities, particularly Tajiks and Uzbeks, and is burdened with a past of factional fighting that killed some 50,000 people in Kabul when they last held the city, from 1992 to 1996.

Abdullah said there was a "popular uprising" at the eastern city of Jalalabad. There was no independent confirmation. Taliban guards Tuesday also abandoned the Torkham border station along the Pakistani frontier.

U.S. intelligence believes that Taliban forces are also abandoning Kunduz, their last stronghold in northern Afghanistan, a U.S. official said.

U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker, speaking in Islamabad, reported that 100 Taliban hiding in a school in Mazar-e-Sharif were executed on Saturday and said the opposition was still carrying out "punitive action" there.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said its workers helped bury hundreds of dead in Mazar-e-Sharif. It was unclear how many were civilians and how many Taliban fighters.

"According to reports, in Mazar there is a lot of pillaging as well as civilian kidnappings, armed men out of control and fighting in the streets," said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program.

Monday night, columns of Taliban vehicles could be seen fleeing Kabul and heading south in an exodus that lasted until sunrise. The Taliban were thought to be heading to Maidan Shahr, a town about 25 miles to the south.

After the alliance moved in, its fighters roamed Kabul in taxis, trucks and cars, seeking out Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and others who had come to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. Fighters set up roadblocks on streets where foreigners associated with al-Qa'eda had been living.

The international Red Cross picked up 11 bodies of Arabs and Pakistanis. The bodies of five who were killed in a shootout early Tuesday lay in a public park for hours, witnesses said.

Earlier in the day, the bodies of two dead Arabs were on the street near a U.N. guest house. Close to the bodies were rocket launchers and a rifle.

Three captured Taliban fighters, one with blood on his forehead, were seen bound together, being led uphill on a narrow city road and into a building.

On the Shomali Plain on the road to Kabul, a large crowd stood around three dead Taliban fighters.

The alliance's special security troops drove into the capital in cars festooned with pictures of their late commander Ahmed Shah Massood, who was killed in September in a suicide bombing.

Abdullah said the deposed president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, would return to Kabul "when necessary."

The U.N. envoy, Brahimi, called for a meeting as soon as possible.

------

Executions of P.O.W.'s Cast Doubts on Alliance

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html

QALA-I-NASRO, Afghanistan, Nov. 12 -- Near an abandoned Taliban bunker, Northern Alliance soldiers dragged a wounded Taliban soldier out of a ditch today. As the terrified man begged for his life, the alliance soldiers pulled him to his feet.

They searched him and emptied his pockets. Then, one soldier fired two bursts from his rifle into the man's chest. A second soldier beat the lifeless body with his rifle butt. A third repeatedly smashed a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher into the man's head.

The killing occurred minutes after Northern Alliance soldiers, advancing toward Kabul, surged deep into Taliban territory. They chose to celebrate with executions.

Ten yards away lay the body of a younger man who alliance soldiers said was a Pakistani. He was on his side with his arms extended. In the side of his head was a bullet hole.

Two hundred yards away, the soldiers who had minutes earlier shot the older man searched the possessions of a motionless Taliban soldier on the ground. After emptying the man's pockets, a soldier fired a burst from his rifle into the man. The soldiers moved on quickly, showing no emotion. A few minutes later, someone laid an unused mortar round across the man's throat.

A fourth body a mile away had a bullet wound in the side of the head. The Taliban soldier, flat on his back, had his hands up, as if he had been surprised or surrendering when shot.

Looting was widespread. Alliance soldiers, who have received extensive backing from the United States, plundered Taliban bodies and bunkers, stealing shoes, bags of sugar, flashlights and anything else that they could find. "I got 700,000 afghani!" a soldier who was leaving an abandoned Taliban bunker shouted, flashing a wad of bills worth $20. "I got 700,000!"

The killings here suggested that alliance soldiers might prove difficult to control as their victories build.

The looting and executions were an ugly ending to what began as a well-executed tank and infantry assault. Alliance forces broached Taliban lines near the Bagram Air Base and Khalazai on the western edge of the line.

Taliban lines broke after a two-hour bombardment and an hourlong tank and infantry attack. The alliance reported few casualties, with one soldier killed and eight wounded near Bagram.

Alliance soldiers reacted to the corpses in different ways. Nearly all stopped and gazed at the dead. Some searched for valuables. One, in a more dignified gesture, placed a cloth over a corpse.

Attitudes on looting varied. One soldier bragged about his take, showing off a bag of sugar and a pair of sneakers that he had found in a bunker. Another showed off the identification card of a Pakistani, Ahmad Bakhtiar, 22.

Some told other soldiers about their take, particularly when it involved weapons. Others were more discreet. At one point, an officer screamed at his soldiers to stop and rejoin the fight. "Let's go!" he shouted. "Let's go!" Carrying sacks of loot, the soldiers followed.

Taliban soldiers appeared to have left their posts quickly. In one compound, the freshly cooked head of a goat sat on a piece of wood waiting to be carved.

At other sites, bags of clothing and transistor radios were left. The defenses appeared crude but formidable, with a six-foot-deep trench along the front line and machine-gun nests and mortar positions behind it. The Taliban soldiers lived in simple mud huts and cooked food in large vats over open fires.

Three Afghan refugees who left Kabul on Sunday and arrived in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday said they were met at three separate highway checkpoints east of Kabul by tense Taliban soldiers. They described the Taliban they saw as disorganized, rattled, cowed by passengers who refused to be searched, and hungry for news from the capital. "They were terribly nervous," said Muhammad Azim, a pediatrician who fled Kabul with his family.

Why the Taliban lines broke so quickly was unclear. American planes carried out their heaviest bombing before the attack in the afternoon. Six B-52's conducted broad-scale bombardment while fighter-bombers hit individual targets.

As Taliban forces fled later in the day, American jets bombed their vehicles. Low morale after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north may have been a factor in the hasty retreat, alliance officers said. Some defections were also reported.

The American raids appeared to have destroyed enough Taliban tanks and artillery to swing the battle in favor of the alliance.

Alliance tactics were simple. Two groups of assault troops, called Zarbati, attacked with tanks across plains in Bagram, in the center of the line, and in Khalazai, on the western edge. The units were created by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the alliance commander who was assassinated in early September, to give his force more offensive punch.

In Bagram, the Taliban fired scores of mortars at the armored vehicles, but appeared to lack the tanks and heavy weapons to destroy them. The tanks, backed by infantry, attacked along asphalt roads that cannot be mined.

Officers on nearby roofs coordinated tank, artillery and infantry units in the attack. At 3:05, a voice shouted over the radio: "We're past the house! We're past the house!"

That was a signal that alliance forces had broached Taliban lines.

An armored personnel carrier rushed to the line to help out arrived at a chaotic scene. Alliance soldiers shouted at one another as shells and bullets whizzed overhead, and the troops struggled to find pockets of resistance.

Twelve Taliban soldiers were seen running across a field. A soldier fired his machine gun.

Slowly, order was restored, and pockets of resistance were identified and attacked by tanks.

As night fell, alliance officials said a large group of Taliban soldiers, many of them Arab and Pakistani volunteers, had been surrounded on the northern part of the Shamali Plain. Alliance forces on the western side of the plain advanced 10 miles south, to Qara Bagh, which is 15 miles north of Kabul.

Alliance forces that were attacking from the center of the line advanced six miles, to Poluborikau, which is 25 miles from Kabul.

Throughout the night, rockets and artillery from the two sides intermittently fired on each other. Alliance commanders said they would continue advancing toward Kabul in the morning.

The commander of 300 soldiers in the special Zarbati units, "Captain Habib," who took part in the attack, seemed unconcerned when told of the killings. "The soldiers must have been very angry," he said, and he shrugged.

------

Peace plan would aid rival tribes

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 13, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011113-5357624.htm

The Bush administration plans to maintain peace in a postwar Afghanistan by promising aid to rival tribes and closely monitoring defecting Taliban soldiers to ensure they are changing sides permanently, officials said yesterday.

While the opposition Northern Alliance controls Mazar-e-Sharif and while the capital, Kabul, seems certain to fall in the coming weeks, administration officials warn that the tough phase for the U.S. military still lies ahead.

Special-operations troops and the CIA must locate and eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of hard-core members of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network to meet President Bush's operational goals, they said.

"I think it is important that al Qaeda and Taliban be taken out of Kabul, and every inch of that country," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Fox News Channel.

Officials said it would make no sense to stop military action once the radical Taliban militia loses power. They would simply reorganize and mount an insurgency against what Washington hopes will be a broad-based coalition government.

To keep the peace, the administration plans to avoid the kind of tribal warfare in the 1990s that led to the Taliban's rise to power five years ago.

The United States will attempt to keep the peace among the southern Pashtun tribes nominally loyal to the Taliban and among the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups who make up the Northern Alliance. The unifier: cold hard cash.

One official said the peacemaking could be as simple as the CIA delivering cash payments to various warlords, plus promises to rebuild infrastructure and supply large amounts of food.

"Make it in their interests to cooperate," this official said.

Said Mr. Rumsfeld: "The country has a history of a lot of conflict, a lot of fighting among the tribes. On the other hand, at some point, there is exhaustion."

One official said the administration expects committed Taliban soldiers to keep fighting, perhaps in a last stand in their stronghold of Kandahar in southeast Afghanistan. Those Taliban members who do defect will need to go through some type of vetting procedure to ensure they do not try to destabilize a new government.

"You see in the defections Taliban militia who come from different Pashtun elements or clans," the official said. "These are the ones you want to try to buy off."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell predicted this week that some of the southern Pashtun tribes that had supported the Taliban's harsh rule will break away.

"I think they might start deciding that there's a better life to be had by separating themselves from the Taliban and trying to help the Afghan people, rather than keep this repressive, evil regime in place that supports Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

With Afghanistan controlled by the opposition this winter, the United States will focus on killing Taliban soldiers and al Qaeda members. The methods promise to be fierce and shadowy, some involving special- operations troops, others conducted by the CIA.

"Once the Taliban comes down, you can use special operations forces, in conjunction with elements of the Northern Alliance, to hunt down al Qaeda and the senior leadership of al Qaeda," said an official.

Mr. Rumsfeld has said it will take ground action, as well as the ongoing air campaign, to rid the country of terrorists. He predicts the operation will take months, but not years.

The Pentagon estimates that with the Taliban there are about 5,000 Arab fighters provided by and paid for by bin Laden. "If the Afghan Arabs are as ferocious as they say, then we might have a dogfight on our hands," the official said.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said that in his opinion, once the United States kills Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, bin Laden, and his key aides -- Ayman al Zawahiri and Mohamed Atef -- the al Qaeda organization will fall into disarray.

"We only have four people we need to get," he said. "We get these guys, the network in Afghanistan falls apart. Al Qaeda crumbles a lot faster than most people think. The other people will attempt to do things, but they're not as sophisticated. [Atef is] very bright. He doesn't make mistakes. He's directly, personally involved in most everything that has happened."

Still, a Pentagon official said bin Laden has built al Qaeda over the past decade into a worldwide network able to function without him.

"They build these organizations so when they knock off the head, they don't fall," he said. "We only know about certain figures there. There are others."

-------- arms sales

Gun Foes Use Terror Issue in a Push for Stricter Laws

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/national/13GUNS.html

Gun-control organizations have seized on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to argue that any crackdown on terrorism should include tightening gun laws, particularly the so- called loophole that allows many people to buy weapons at gun shows without background checks.

Although efforts to close the loophole have failed in Congress, the gun- control groups are hoping to try again by recasting the issue as one of homeland defense. They point to several weapons-related arrests of noncitizens, some with links to terrorist groups, as examples of the urgency of changing the law.

On Sept. 10, for example, a jury in Detroit convicted Ali Boumelhem, a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah, on charges of conspiring to smuggle guns and ammunition to Lebanon. The F.B.I. had observed Mr. Boumelhem buying weapons at gun shows in Michigan.

Last year, a man accused of being a member of the Irish Republican Army, Conor Claxton, testified in federal court in Fort Lauderdale that he had gone to South Florida to buy guns at gun shows to smuggle to Northern Ireland.

And on Oct. 30, Muhammad Navid Asrar, a Pakistani, pleaded guilty in Texas to immigration charges and to illegal possession of ammunition. The authorities said that in the last seven years, Mr. Asrar, an illegal immigrant, had bought several weapons at gun shows, including a Sten submachine gun, a Ruger Mini- 14 rifle, two pistols and a hunting rifle.

Mr. Asrar said he resold the weapons at gun shows, but a federal grand jury is investigating whether he may be linked to Al Qaeda terrorists, said Daniel Bueno, the police chief of Alice, Tex., where Mr. Asrar owned a convenience store and gasoline station that carried little merchandise. Mr. Asrar has also aroused the authorities' suspicion when he asked his employees to take pictures of tall buildings and mail letters for him from Pennsylvania back to Texas.

Matthew Bennett, the director of public affairs for Americans for Gun Safety, said his group had begun a campaign to get out the message that because "terrorists are getting guns at gun shows, it is time for Congress to act on this issue."

The campaign, Mr. Bennett said, will include advertising in publications that members of Congress read, like Roll Call; working with state gun-safety groups to get voters to call their senators and representatives; and mailings of material intended to persuade local politicians to push for state laws closing the gun-show loophole.

"Now that we know for certain that terrorists have bought guns at gun shows," said John Cowan, president of Americans for Gun Safety, "basic political sense will tell you Congress needs to act in a bipartisan way to close that dangerous loophole. This could signal a historic shift in the gun debate."

Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, formerly known as Handgun Control, offered a similar argument.

"You would think," Mr. Barnes said, "the Congress would have rushed to address this issue in the aftermath of Sept. 11, with terrorists having such easy access to guns in the United States."

But James Baker, the chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, called the gun-control groups' effort "a fairly crass attempt to bootstrap their agenda on the tragedy of Sept. 11."

The terrorists, Mr. Baker said, commandeered the planes they crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "with box cutters, and I don't see anyone talking about closing down True Value hardware stores."

The gun-show loophole exists because federal law, which requires background checks for anyone buying a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer, even at a gun show, does not require a check for someone who buys a gun from a private seller at a gun show. Buyers can acquire guns in those transactions without questions or the need to show identification.

Efforts to change the law have failed in Congress, partly because of concerns by gun-rights advocates that background checks delay transactions. They can take as long as three days, and weekend gun shows last only two. Many supporters of the right to own guns object to any restrictions on ownership.

Senator John McCain, who introduced a bill earlier this year to close the loophole, said in a telephone interview that after Congress returned from its Christmas recess, he expected to push again for passage of his bill, perhaps as part of some homeland defense legislation.

"I believe the terrorists are exploiting a loophole in our laws so they don't have to have a background check," Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican, said. "It is hard to understand why we don't change this, but the N.R.A. remains extremely powerful."

Mr. Baker, the rifle association lobbyist, said these cases showed that "the system works," because the three men with terrorist links who bought guns at gun shows were eventually arrested, even if they were not detected by a background check.

-------- biological weapons

Anthrax vaccine manufacturer faces FDA, veterans' scrutiny

November 13, 2001
AP
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011113-68255890.htm

LANSING, Mich. -- The only American manufacturer of an anthrax vaccine is preparing for an inspection to decide whether it can be used, but opponents are trying to call attention to what they say are its potential dangers.

About 40 demonstrators protested the military's anthrax vaccination program Sunday during rallies at BioPort Corp. and Michigan's Capitol in Lansing.

They say the vaccine could be connected to complaints of chronic fatigue, bone and joint pain, memory loss and other problems, and that the military has not done enough to investigate the vaccine's long-term effects or whether it can be given safely with other vaccines.

"Something is wrong with the vaccine. You don't have to be a scientist to figure it out," said Steve Robinson, a Persian Gulf war veteran who now works for the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans advocacy group.

He said testimony before Congress has proved that many questions about the vaccine are unanswered.

The vaccine hasn't been distributed since 1998 because BioPort has failed to win approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In the past, the FDA has said BioPort was not ensuring that its labs were sterile and properly ventilated. The FDA is scheduled to inspect BioPort again in mid-December, company spokeswoman Kim Brennen Root said yesterday.

If the FDA approves distribution, the government has said, the vaccine likely will go to troops and others at risk for anthrax exposure, including law enforcement and postal workers.

Protesters say BioPort and the Pentagon are ignoring signs of illness in some of the 500,000 troops who have been vaccinated. But Dr. Tom Waytes, Bioport's medical director, said 18 studies indicate the vaccine is safe.

Dr. Waytes said an independent panel of civilian physicians has reviewed each of the 1,623 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccine.

The panel has found no pattern suggesting the vaccine causes more adverse reactions than any other vaccine, he said.

He also said hospital records show that troops who have been vaccinated are as healthy in the long term as people who haven't been vaccinated.

Miss Root said yesterday that it would be at least mid-December before the vaccine could be administered. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson had said on Oct. 23 that BioPort could be providing vaccines to the military by Thanksgiving.

Miss Root said BioPort will start a new production cycle later this month. FDA officials will monitor that cycle when they visit in mid-December.

The Pentagon originally wanted to vaccinate 2.4 million troops with BioPort's vaccine, but the vaccination program is on hold because BioPort hasn't been allowed to distribute it without FDA approval.

-------

Rapid Diagnosis Helps Anthrax Victims

November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Anthrax-Medical-Reports.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Doctors who recognized the recent cases of inhaled anthrax and treated them aggressively with antibiotics have shown the disease is treatable and not a sure death sentence, experts say.

An analysis of the cases, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows that if doctors speedily give patients a constellation of antibiotics, along with aggressively treating symptoms such as the accumulation of fluid in the chest, there is a high rate of survival. The cases appeared in four eastern U.S. cities in the past few weeks.

``The fact that six of these patients have survived gives hope that the published mortality rates of 86 to 97 percent for inhalational anthrax may not be accurate in the year 2001,'' Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, both of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said in a JAMA editorial last week.

The rate of survival -- 60 percent for the recent inhalational cases -- could well improve for future infections because doctors across the country now are so aware of anthrax and its symptoms.

``The signs and symptoms of inhalational anthrax are way up on the radar screen of virtually all health care providers now,'' Fauci, the NIAID director, said in an interview.

Prior to Oct. 4, when a Florida man was hospitalized with the first recognized U.S. case of inhaled anthrax since 1976, the disease was relatively unknown to most American doctors. In medical terminology, inhaled anthrax was not high on the ``index of suspicion'' in making a diagnosis.

With the intense publicity given the anthrax-by-mail crisis and the publication in journals of specific medical details of the 10 cases, inhaled anthrax has become an infection that doctors will probably consider.

If doctors are practicing in an area where there already is anthrax illness, the possibility of the disease would be at or near the top of the ``index of suspicion'' for workers who match an existing pattern of infection, said Fauci. In the current pattern, postal, media and Capitol Hill workers were the most likely to be infected with anthrax.

Fauci said the 10 cases also have added important new details about inhaled anthrax infection -- symptoms previously unrecognized but which doctors may now consider.

``If you read the textbooks, the disease is not exactly what we are finding,'' he said.

Doctors have found that patients with inhaled anthrax may not show a raging fever, for instance. Most of the 10 inhaled anthrax patients had normal or only slightly elevated temperatures early in their illnesses.

Abdominal pain, a symptom not previously recognized for the disease, may also be common among inhaled anthrax patients. Irregular heartbeats ``disproportionate to the degree of fever'' were also reported, Fauci and Lane said.

Doctors also found abnormalities on chest X-rays and CT scans. Most common was an increased density in the area between the two lungs.

``Based on these observations, primary care clinicians should be encouraged to obtain chest radiographs and consider chest CT scanning to aid in the diagnostic workup of patients in whom inhalational anthrax is a diagnostic consideration,'' they said.

-------- burma / myanmar

Myanmar Reassigns 10 Senior Generals

Associated Press
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Myanmar-Generals.html

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- In the most significant shake-up of Myanmar's military regime in four years, 10 powerful regional army commanders are to be reassigned to the capital, a senior officer said Tuesday.

All will be promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and take positions in the Ministry of Defense, a senior military officer, who did not want to be named, told The Associated Press.

While the commanders are likely to gain privileges, some observers said they would lose power and autonomy, which would reassert the authority of the regime's top three generals.

A former military officer, who also requested anonymity, said the move was a clear indication that the ministry was ``expanding and consolidating its strength.''

The reassignments, which have not been officially announced, follow the unexpected dismissals last week of seven top officials including the junta's fourth-ranking general Lt. Gen. Win Myint and deputy prime minister Lt. Gen. Tin Hla, who was also minister for military affairs.

Also fired were two aging deputy prime ministers; three other ministers were ``permitted to retire.''

The government has given no reasons for the changes.

It is the biggest shake-up of the regime since November 1997, when the original junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, was dissolved and renamed the State Peace and Development Council, with younger officials drafted to replace entrenched and corrupt military leaders.

Myanmar's 12 regional commanders are all members of the elite 16-member council, but the body is dominated by its three top generals -- junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe, army chief Gen. Maung Aye and military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt. However, in their areas of control in the provinces, the regional commanders are very powerful.

The Cabinet of ministers is appointed separately and is much less influential.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been ruled by its military since 1962. It has faced international condemnation for alleged human rights abuses and refusing to honor the 1990 landslide election victory of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently under house detention in Yangon.

It was not yet clear if the 10 regional commander positions had been filled, or whether the incumbents would retain their positions in the council. Only two of the current regional military commanders will remain in their posts.

-------- drug war

Rebel attacks hinder Plan Colombia

By Jared Kotler
ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 13, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011113-10934993.htm

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia - An aid worker in a U.S.-funded program to eradicate drug crops in Colombia is kidnapped by guerrillas, accused of spying for the military, and executed.

A colleague is abducted and forced to play Russian roulette while being interrogated. Another, a 60-year-old agronomist, is kidnapped and tied to a tree.

Attacks on development workers are the latest snag to emerge in Washington's $1.3 billion anti-drugs initiative in Colombia, which produces most of the world's cocaine.

Plan Colombia began last December when U.S. crop-dusters sprayed a blanket of herbicide on coca plantations in southern Colombia's Putumayo state, ground zero for the war on drugs. The planes left in February to spray elsewhere and are expected back soon.

In the interim, aid deliveries were supposed to have begun to tens of thousands of peasants who agreed to eradicate their plantations of coca - the main ingredient in cocaine.

But most farmers have not received any aid, so many have nursed their fumigated fields back into acres of robust coca bushes. And now, danger for aid workers threatens to paralyze a U.S.-funded alternative development program, just as it was finally getting started.

Juan Carlos Espinoza, who manages the aid program in Puerto Asis, Putumayo's largest town, suspended field visits by his staff after the attacks by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Security concerns are forcing other aid organizations to avoid rebel-infested areas.

The FARC, which earns huge profits by taxing the cocaine trade, has grown suspicious that the aid workers may be spies for the military or its paramilitary allies, Mr. Espinoza said. Fueling the rebels' paranoia, officials said, is the fact that visits by some aid workers have been followed by military attacks on the same areas.

The problems come as Colombia's government is seeking more support from Washington, where the drug war has taken a back seat to the war on terrorism.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana met with President Bush on Sunday. Last Thursday and Friday, Mr. Pastrana met with U.S. lawmakers and officials including Attorney General John Ashcroft, telling them the drug trade is financing terrorism.

Washington's aerial fumigation of Putumayo, a lush expanse of jungle and hills bordering Ecuador, has bruised its cocaine-fueled economy. Many migrant workers have lost their jobs stripping the shiny green leaves off coca bushes and hauling them to processing labs hidden in the jungle. From farm-supply stores to brothels, many businesses are reeling.

U.S.-trained troops, meanwhile, have destroyed hundreds of the clandestine labs and made it harder for traffickers to slip in and out of Putumayo with cash and cocaine.

But like the hardy coca bush, Colombia's drug business stubbornly hangs on.

U.S. officials believe some 60 percent of farmers whose crops were sprayed during the December-February blitz have replanted. They say many farms must be repeatedly fumigated.

Coca is also sprouting in other parts of the country, and U.S. officials don't expect big reductions in Colombia's coca crop until 2003.

About 38,000 farmers - whose crops represent two-thirds of the coca in Putumayo - have pledged to destroy their plants in return for aid to develop legal businesses such as medicinal herb farms, cattle ranches and fish hatcheries.

The government also promised short-term aid - about $850 worth of seeds, livestock and tools per family. But even that has not arrived.

Private Colombian organizations distributing aid for the government blame delays on bureaucracy and the need to survey every family's needs. The aid groups say they expect to begin deliveries later this month, but admit it could be many months before they reach every family.

There is deep mistrust on both sides. Some Colombian officials doubt the peasants will tear up their crops as promised. Many farmers suspect the government is making empty promises - or doubt that alternative development will succeed in a region with poor soil and few roads.

"Coca is the only thing worth planting here," Wilmar Ospina said while weeding coca bushes behind his house near the Putumayo town of La Hormiga.

When the planes sprayed his field in January, Mr. Ospina quickly pruned the plants before the herbicide seeped in.

On a recent cool morning, he stood amid chest-high coca bushes and smiled. "Today they are prettier than ever," he said.

----

ANF seizes 131 heroin-filled capsules

Briefs
News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/national/n7.htm

ISLAMABAD: The Special Investigation Cell (SIC) of the Anti Narcotics Force, Islamabad has seized 131 heroin filled capsules weighing 1.830 kg at Islamabad airport and arrested one Nigerian and a Ugandan of an international gang. The smugglers were leaving for Karachi by flight PK-301. SIC chief Lt Col Sajid Nawaz had received a confidential information that some smugglers would make an attempt to smuggle the heroin from Islamabad airport to Dubai or Europe. It was confirmed that the smugglers have swallowed the heroin filled capsules. A raid was planned and Nigerian Ejike Plus Nwafor and Ugandan Mathias Kawuma were arrested on the spot. The arrested persons confessed to the presence of capsules filled with heroin in their stomachs. The accused were taken to hospital and after medical treatment, the SIC recovered 131 heroin filled capsules.

-------- israel

Death of a Child: How Israel's Army Responds

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By JOEL GREENBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/middleeast/13ISRA.html

JERUSALEM, Nov. 12 - There is little doubt now about the facts.

Khalil Mughrabi, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy, was resting after a soccer game on July 7 in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, when an Israeli tank fired warning shots to repel nearby protesters. A bullet pierced the boy's head, killing him instantly.

Last week a sheaf of documents from the Israeli Army arrived at the offices of the human rights group B'tselem, containing records of a military inquiry into the incident.

B'tselem had asked the army about the case, and unexpectedly received the military's file of its internal investigation through an unusual - and apparently inadvertent - disclosure. An accompanying letter informed B'tselem that no criminal wrongdoing by soldiers was suspected, and therefore the military police would not investigate.

But the file tells a different story, strongly suggesting culpability by the soldiers. It provides a rare glimpse of how the Israeli Army investigates killings, decides whether to take disciplinary action and formulates public responses.

The case is one of hundreds of fatal shootings by soldiers since the start of the Palestinian uprising more than a year ago. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the violence, which has ranged from stone- throwing demonstrations to gunbattles.

But the military police have begun only 10 investigations into possible illegal gunfire by troops, and only one led to a court-martial.

The army says it fires only in response to mortal threats. Human rights groups say the army has used disproportionate firepower, in many cases killing unarmed protesters and civilians who were not involved in armed clashes.

Military investigations of fatal shootings by soldiers are no longer standard procedure because the army now legally defines the confrontation with the Palestinians as an armed conflict. But a panel led by a former United States Senator, George J. Mitchell, which recommended ways to restart peace talks, has urged Israel to resume the investigations.

In Khalil's case, meticulously documented interviews in the army file show that he was shot several hours after stones and grenades had been thrown at Israeli armored vehicles patrolling a road between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

As one vehicle left the area in the evening, dozens of Palestinian children and adults tried to block a road with debris and barbed wire, drawing warning shots from an Israeli tank, according to the interviews. One shot, fired from a tank-mounted heavy machine gun, evidently struck Khalil, at a soccer field half a mile away.

According to the army file, Col. Einat Ron, the chief military prosecutor, concluded that the warning shots violated army regulations because they were aimed near children and were fired from a long-range heavy weapon. The killing of Khalil and the wounding of two other boys, one seriously, "must dictate a military police investigation," she said.

Despite these findings, Colonel Ron suggested three options: Begin a military police investigation into suspected illegal gunfire, clear the soldiers of wrongdoing on the ground that there had been earlier violence in the area or take disciplinary measures short of a criminal investigation.

In her letter to B'tselem, Colonel Ron followed the second option, exonerating the soldiers. Contradicting her own conclusions, she wrote: "Under the circumstances we did not find that there is suspicion of criminal behavior by soldiers, nor justification for starting a criminal investigation."

Yael Stein, research director at B'tselem, said that the letter amounted to a cover-up.

"This explains why there have been so few criminal investigations," she said. "It indicates that lying is legitimate in the military prosecutor's office in order to protect the troops."

Officers in the army's legal branch rejected the accusation, citing an assessment that such an investigation would not produce enough evidence to gain an indictment.

Although no court-martial will be held, the soldiers responsible for the illegal firing would face disciplinary hearings before a superior officer, the law officers said.

-------- nepal

US to provide Nepal 10 copters to fight terrorism

News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/world/w12.htm

KATHMANDU: The United States will provide Nepal 10 helicopters free of charge to help the government tackle "terrorism," a Nepalese official said. Devendra Raj Kandel, the state minister for home affairs, told ruling party supporters the United States was supplying Nepal with 10 "sophisticated, bullet-proof" helicopters "to establish law and order in the country."

Kandel, speaking Sunday to ruling party supporters in Pokhara, 225 kilometres (140 miles) west of Kathmandu, did not specify the helicopters' model or date of delivery or say where they would be used.

Nepal has been battling a Maoist insurgency since 1996 that has left more than 1,800 people dead. Nepal has supported the US campaign in Afghanistan launched after the September 11 terrorist strikes on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon, offering Washington use of the kingdom's airspace.

"Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the US has been committed to eliminating terrorism from the globe and its promise of supplying us the helicopters is part of that goal," Kandel said.

Two rounds of peace talks between the government and the Maoists have made little headway, although the rebels have said they are willing to "defer" demands that the monarchy be scrapped. The rebels and government reached a ceasefire agreement in July.

-------- pakistan

Armed forces capable of meeting any threat, says Musharraf

News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/national/n3.htm

NEW YORK: President General Pervez Musharraf said here late Sunday that Pakistan military was fully capable of meeting any challenge to the country's sovereignty and integrity. "Pakistan's military is fully capable of meeting any challenges to the sovereignty and integrity of the motherland," the president told a gathering of Pakistani-Americans at a dinner hosted by them in his honour. He said: "Pakistan faces no threat from outside, unfortunately it has threat from within, hence, we need to put our house in order. We unfortunately are our own enemies."

Dwelling upon Pak-India relations, the president said: "Kashmir runs in the blood of every Pakistani. We want a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue, in accordance with the wishes of the Kashmiri people. I went to Agra and we reached agreement on joint declaration, which accepted the centrality of the Kashmir issue to be resolved peacefully. Table and chairs were ready for formal inking of it. But it got scuttled although Indian prime minister and foreign minister had agreed to it. It was rejected supposedly by the Indian cabinet."

For future, he said, Pakistan is trying its best to sit down and find a peaceful resolution of this issue and that the dialogue process resumes. He urged India to restart the dialogue. He hoped that good sense would prevail and negotiations would start again.

He said while Pakistan is lending support to the world community in fighting terrorism, it is unfortunate that India is taking advantage of the situation. "They (Indians) have raised the level of casualties. They have upped propaganda against Pakistan and we hear remarks like 'we will teach a lesson to Pakistan'," he said.

In a lighter vein, President Musharraf said: "Sorry. We are not wearing bangles." On it, the charged audience raised vociferous slogans of 'Pakistan Zindabad' and 'General Musharraf Zindabad.' General Musharraf told the 2,000-strong audience that small extremist minority could not be allowed to hold hostage vast moderate silent majority. He asked the countrymen to rise against those who were out to promote hatred, intolerance and sectarianism.

He told the audience that his government was not insecure as claimed by certain elements, adding: "I will carry on what is in the supreme interest of Pakistan." He said the Pakistanis fully supported the government's decision to join the international coalition against terrorism and added that the propaganda being spread by politico-religious parties was of least consequence as the people were aware and "know what should be our conduct" as a responsible and enlightened citizens.

In Afghanistan, he said: "It is no war going on, it is an action going on." He added Pakistan tried its best to bring moderation in the Taliban's thinking but failed, unfortunately. "We tried to convince that the whole population of Afghanistan should not be made to suffer because of Osama bin Laden, who was demanded to be handed over. The government, the president said, has set definitive directions for revival of national economy and given roadmap for restoration of democracy by October 2002. In this context, he dwelt at length on the measures taken for economic revival, poverty alleviation, bringing good governance and political restructuring.

He said efforts are afoot to make headway in the IT sector and in this behalf the national plans are being enforced, while communication infrastructure is being improved. He also referred to the mega projects of Gomal Zam Dam, Mirani Dam, Gwadar Port, Makran Coastal Highway and Right Bank Outfall Drain. "Completion of irrigation projects will give a filip to cotton production and 600,000 cotton bales would be reaped, besides generating 1.5 million jobs in Pakistan," he added.

About political restructuring, General Musharraf said it has been effected already. "We have devolved the power at grass roots level by making the elected bodies capable of exercising political, administrative and financial authority." The government, he said, has also issued a clear-cut roadmap for return to democracy by October 2002, as per Supreme Court judgment. "We will adhere to this roadmap," he declared.

President Musharraf strongly condemned the wanton terrorist attacks of September 11 in New York and Washington He condoled the demise of a large number of innocent people, including 300 Pakistanis in the terrorist acts. About reprisal attacks on Pakistanis in the wake of September 11 acts, he said he took up the matter with President Bush on Saturday, who has instructed the attorney-general to look into it. Musharraf urged the overseas Pakistanis to send their remittances through banking transaction channels, meaning avoidance of 'Hundi' system.

---

In Pakistan, It's Jihad 101

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/opinion/13FRIE.html

PESHAWAR, Pakistan

You need only spend an afternoon walking through the Storytellers' Bazaar here in Peshawar, a few miles from the Afghan border, to understand that America needs to do its business in Afghanistan -- eliminate Osama bin Laden and his Taliban pro tectors -- as quickly as possible and get out of here. This is not a neighborhood where we should linger. This is not Mr. Rogers's neighborhood.

What makes me say that? I don't know, maybe it was the street vendor who asked me exactly what color Osama bin Laden T-shirt I wanted -- the yellow one with his picture on it or the white one simply extolling him as the hero of the Muslim nation and vowing "Jihad Is Our Mission." (He was doing a brisk business among the locals.) Or maybe it was the wall poster announcing: Call this phone number if you want to join the "Jihad against America." Or maybe it was all the Urdu wall graffiti reading "Honor Is in Jihad" and "The Alliance Between the Hunood [Indians] and Yahood [Jews] Is Unacceptable." Or maybe it was the cold stares and steely eyes that greeted the obvious foreigner. Those eyes did not say "American Express accepted here." They said "Get lost."

Welcome to Peshawar. Oh, and did I mention? This is Pakistan -- these guys are on our side. Fat chance. This whole region of northwest Pakistan is really just an extension of Afghanistan, dominated by the same ethnic Pashtuns that make up the Taliban. This is bin Laden land. This is not a region where America is going to sink any friendly roots. In part it's because the Pashtuns here all, understandably, side with their brothers in Afghanistan; in part it's because they were jilted once before by the Americans -- after the U.S. just dropped Pakistan like a used hanky once the Soviets left Afghanistan. But most important, it's because of the education system here.

On the way into Peshawar I stopped to visit the Darul Uloom Haqqania, the biggest madrasa, or Islamic school, in Pakistan, with 2,800 live-in students -- all studying the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad with the hope of becoming mullahs, or spiritual leaders. I was allowed to sit in on a class with young boys, who sat on the floor, practicing their rote learning of the Koran from holy texts perched on wooden holders. This was the core of their studies. Most will never be exposed to critical thinking or modern subjects.

It was at once impressive and disquieting. It was impressive because the madrasas provide room, board, education and clothing for thousands of Pakistani boys -- who would otherwise be left out on the streets because of the gradual collapse of Pakistan's secular, state education system. In 1978 there were 3,000 madrasas in Pakistan; today there are 39,000. It was disquieting because their almost entirely religious curriculum was designed by the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir, who died in 1707. There was one shelf of science books in the library -- largely from the 1920's.

The air in the Koran class was so thick and stale you could have cut it into blocks and sold it like ice. A sign on the wall said this room was "A gift of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." The teacher asked an 8-year-old boy to chant a Koranic verse for us, which he did with the beauty and elegance of an experienced muezzin. What did it mean? It was a famous verse: "The faithful shall enter paradise and the unbelievers shall be condemned to eternal hellfire."

I asked one of the students, an Afghan refugee, Rahim Kunduz, age 12, what his reaction was to the Sept. 11 attacks, and he said: "Most likely the attack came from Americans inside America. I am pleased that America has had to face pain, because the rest of the world has tasted its pain." And his view of Americans generally? "They are unbelievers and do not like to befriend Muslims and they want to dominate the world with their power."

The Darul Uloom Haqqania madrasa is famous because the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, once attended it, as did many other top Taliban figures. Mullah Omar never graduated, our guide explained, "but we gave him an honorary degree anyway, because he left to do jihad and to create a pristine Islamic government."

As we were leaving, my Pakistani friend asked the school's rector a question he had posed to me, which I couldn't answer: How come Americans are so good at selling Coke and McDonald's to people all over the world, but can't sell their policies?

"Because their policies are poisonous and their Coke is sweet," said Moulana Samiul Haq.

I am all for reviewing our policies, but only the Pakistanis can rebuild their schools so they meld modernity, Islam and pluralism. Bin Laden is a sideshow, but one we must deal with. The real war for peace in this region, though, is in the schools. Which is why we must do our military operation against bin Laden quickly and then get out of here. When we return, and we must, we have to be armed with modern books and schools -- not tanks. Only then might we develop a new soil -- a new generation as hospitable to our policies as to our burgers.

Until then, nothing pro-American will grow here.

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Gains by Northern Alliance Mean Losses by Pakistan

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13REAC.html?searchpv=nytToday

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Tuesday, Nov. 13 -- The stunningly swift successes of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan amount to a huge setback for the longtime policy of Pakistan, which until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 had supported the ruling Taliban.

Under pressure from Washington, which gave Pakistan's military government little choice but to join the coalition against terrorism, Pakistan has become an indispensable American ally. But it has insisted that the Northern Alliance, which consists mainly of ethnic groups that rival the Pashtun who dominate southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, not be allowed to take over Kabul, the capital.

The Northern Alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif was front-page news in Pakistan. But officials and the news media have been cautious about the rapid advances of the last 24 hours -- the reported capture of key Afghan towns and the move toward Kabul, as the Taliban were reported to be leaving the city.

Partly, events moved too swiftly; partly, officials were cautious because Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, was out of the country and had made no public statement about the Northern Alliance's most recent gains.

General Musharraf has already taken a series of unpopular measures to accommodate American interests, and Pakistanis increasingly wonder why.

On Monday, during the daily briefing at the Foreign Ministry here -- before the latest Northern Alliance advances became known and before the reports about Kabul -- a Pakistani journalist said his country had received little from its alliance with the United States.

Washington, for instance, has pointedly refused to release 28 F-16 planes that Pakistan bought when it was a cold war ally but which the United States then withheld as part of its sanctions against the Pakistani effort to become a nuclear power.

"People are wondering, have we sold ourselves to the Americans very cheaply?" the journalist said, asking a question raised in many newspapers here.

Aziz Khan, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, laughed uneasily and played down the government's antipathy toward the Northern Alliance. "Pakistan does not oppose anybody," he said. "Pakistan's position is that no single faction or group should be in control of Kabul."

In a clear effort to help General Musharraf, President Bush had in fact warned the Northern Alliance against rushing into Kabul. He delivered that message during the general's visit to the United States over the weekend.

The Northern Alliance agreed, as long as Pakistan did not try to move its proxies into Kabul first. Given the rapidly changing events on the ground and its deep mistrust of Pakistan, however, it will was clear that it would not be easy to get the alliance to stick to its agreement.

An immediate rout of the Taliban by the alliance would place Pakistan, a nuclear power, in a very difficult position.

Pakistan would find itself surrounded by countries with capitals hostile to Islamabad: Tehran to the west, New Delhi to the east, Kabul to the north, and only the Arabian Sea to the south.

If the Northern Alliance began a widespread campaign against Pashtuns in Afghanistan, many Pakistanis would regard it as an attack on them. Pashtuns make up one of Pakistan's largest ethnic groups; family and ancestral ties between Pashtuns living in Pakistan and those living in Afghanistan make the border between the countries virtually meaningless. Over the weekend, after the alliance seized Mazar-i-Sharif, Dawn, Pakistan's most respected daily, said: "The Northern Alliance could suffer from the notion that they could take Kabul and install a government of their own there. Should this happen, there would be more bloodshed, because there can be no government in Kabul without the representation of Pashtuns."

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

UN Pressured to Unite Afghan Groups

Associated Press
November 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Post-Taliban.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United Nations is rushing to get Afghanistan's disparate groups together to form a transitional government following the sudden Taliban retreat from the capital.

The U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said Monday he hoped ``a representative sampling'' of the Afghan population can meet within days to work out arrangements to replace the Taliban government. He was to brief the U.N. Security Council on his efforts on Tuesday.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said key foreign ministers who met Monday ``stressed the need for speed ... to bring the political aspects in line with the military development on the ground.''

``We have always been aware that when you get into these kinds of operations, things can move very fast, and sometimes can get stuck,'' he said. ``We have to be nimble. We have to be able to move quickly, and we have to be flexible.''

The U.S. administration had been urging the opposition northern alliance, which is dominated by ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, to avoid Kabul, whose population is mainly Pashtun, in its current military offensive against the Taliban. It wanted a multiethnic government acceptable to all Afghan parties in the capital first to provide stability and prevent revenge killings.

But Taliban soldiers deserted Kabul at dawn Tuesday, and northern alliance forces quickly moved into the city.

On Monday, foreign ministers from eight key nations -- Afghanistan's six neighbors plus the United States and Russia met and agreed to accelerate efforts ``on an urgent basis'' to assemble a broad-based government.

The ministers said they wanted a ``multiethnic, politically balanced, freely chosen'' government. Brahimi didn't rule out Taliban participation.

Two U.S. officials said postwar arrangements were likely to include the use of peacekeepers from Muslim and non-Muslim countries. The idea originated with Turkey, and other likely participants are Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jordan, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The officials also said the United Nations might take immediate control of the capital.

The immediate challenge in the next few days, a senior U.S. State Department official said, is to find a way to convene a group of representative Afghans in the region or possibly in Europe.

Veteran U.S. diplomat James F. Dobbins, the Bush administration's top official in helping to fashion a post-Taliban regime, was to visit Europe and central Asia to consult with government leaders and insurgent Afghan groups. Brahimi is also scheduled to return to the region shortly.

``We have always insisted that this process should be homegrown,'' Brahimi said Monday. ``We are going to get people representing the various groups ... together as soon as possible.''

Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said the opposition has been getting the message that bloodshed must be avoided, and that the international community is against their governing Kabul alone.

The international community has also sent a message that the only way to run Afghanistan and stabilize the situation is to have a meeting of Afghan ethnic and religious groups that would in turn establish a Grand Council, or Loya Jirga, to form a provisional government after the fall of the Taliban, he said.

The so-called ``Six-plus-Two'' committee comprising the United States, Russia and the six Afghan neighbors -- Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- has been trying for years to end the war in Afghanistan.

In their declaration, the ministers endorsed ``efforts by the Afghan people to rid themselves of the Taliban regime'' -- a government they said had allowed Afghanistan to be used for terrorist activities.

They also condemned ``the export of international terrorism'' by the Al-Qaida network headed by Osama bin Laden, accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

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Blair: U.N. presence needed in Afghanistan

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/blair.htm

LONDON (AP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that a U.N. presence is required in Afghanistan "as soon as possible" to begin building a broad-based, stable coalition to replace the fleeing Taliban regime. Blair told reporters he believes that the northern alliance forces that have taken Kabul would accept sharing power in a new government, because that was a condition of the U.S. bombing that paved the way for advances on the ground.

"I think that you will find as the situation progresses over the next few days that everybody understands that the successor regime in Afghanistan has to be broad-based to be successful, because there are large numbers of Pushtun people who particularly in the south of the country who have to be involved in any successor regime" Blair said.

"And it is necessary also to make sure that any successor regime is a stable partner for the surrounding countries in the region."

Blair said he spoke to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan about the necessity to accelerate work on a successor government.

"That process is well advanced. It is only now with the military direction so clear that I think we are in the right position to be able to bring together the various ethnic and other factions likely to be involved in the formation of any successor government," Blair said.

"I believe we can, therefore, that we can make real progress toward the filling of the current power vacuum in Kabul. But we need a UN presence there as soon as possible," Blair said.

He said the U.S.-led coalition had not yet achieved its objectives, which included smashing the al-Qa'eda network of Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings in the United States.

"Whilst the military strategy is vindicated, and whilst we join in the celebrations of the people of Kabul and the other towns and villages from which the Taliban have fled, our forces know, and I know, that this is only setting the conditions in place for our objectives to be achieved," Blair said.

"Osama bin Laden remains at large, so do his closest associates. The Taliban regime are not yet fully dislodged from oppressing the people of Afghanistan and shielding al-Qa'eda.

"However, that task will now be eased by the scale of defections taking place, the ground being gained and the intelligence being gathered," Blair said.

Blair said British officials believed bin Laden was still in Afghanistan.

"And as for our ability to catch up with him, that has obviously increased as the power and authority of the Taliban regime that was shielding him was destroyed," he said.

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Opposition invites U.N. to help with new government

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/opposition-invited.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The foreign minister of the Afghan Northern Alliance said Tuesday that it had invited all the country's factions - except the Taliban - to come to newly captured Kabul to negotiate a post-Taliban government. The alliance has also asked the United Nations to send "teams" to the Afghan government to help the peace process, said the foreign minister, Abdullah, who goes by one name.

Abdullah spoke at a news conference in the capital hours after the Taliban abandoned the city and alliance fighters moved in. He insisted the alliance was "absolutely" committed to forming a government with other factions and ethnic groups - except the Taliban.

"We invite all Afghan groups to participate, to come to Kabul and to start negotiations and to speed up the negotiations about the future of Afghanistan," he said.

"We have also invited the United Nations to send their teams in Kabul in order to help us in the peace process," he said.

Abdullah defended the alliance decision to send troops into Kabul, something the United States had requested it refrain from doing.

He said alliance troops had planned to stop at the capital's edge but was obliged to enter because unruly elements were causing trouble.

"There was no option for us but to send our security forces into Kabul," he said.

The alliance defense minister, Mohammed Fahim, was leading a military security council to administer Kabul and maintain security, Abdullah said. The alliance's nominal leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani was in the northern city of Faizabad and would come to Kabul "when necessary," he said.

The alliance has deployed 3,000 security troops around the city to ensure order and guard international aid organizations, Yunis Qanoni, the alliance interior minister, said.

Qanoni said troops on the edge of Kabul would remain there until a "shura" council, gathering representatives from the country's ethnic groups, can be convened to decide on the government.

The alliance is made up of ethnic minorities, particularly Tajiks and Uzbeks. The United States and its allies insist that Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and the backbone of the Taliban, must be included in any post-Taliban government.

Abdullah denied reports that opposition fighters had massacred Taliban in areas the alliance captured in its five-day sweep that brought the entire north under its control.

The United Nations reported Tuesday that more than 100 Taliban fighters hiding in a school were executed in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Saturday.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, he said the situation in the southern city of Kandahar - the headquarters of the Taliban movement - was "chaotic" and that there was a popular uprising against Taliban rule in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

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U.N. envoy calls for transitional government

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/un-transitional.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations envoy called Tuesday for a two-year transitional government for Afghanistan backed by a multinational security force, while world leaders said the world body should have a leading role in the war-ravaged nation's peace process. Lakhdar Brahimi told the U.N. Security Council that a plan to bring Afghanistan's many ethnic and tribal groups together should be completed "as early as humanly possible."

As Northern Alliance soldiers replaced fleeing Taliban forces in the capital, Kabul, on Tuesday, there was concern that the speed of the military campaign was outpacing U.N.-led diplomatic efforts to get a transitional government installed. Many countries cautioned the Northern Alliance not to repeat the violence that wracked Kabul during their previous rule.

"We need a U.N. presence there as soon as possible," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London.

And John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the Security Council: "An international presence must be re-established as soon as possible."

President Bush called for a broad-based government to replace the Taliban.

"We will continue to work with the Northern Alliance to make sure they recognize that in order for there to be a stable Afghanistan ... after the Taliban leaves, that the country be a good neighbor and that they must recognize that a future government must include representatives from all of Afghanistan," he said in Washington.

The Northern Alliance foreign minister, who uses the single name Abdullah, defended the opposition's move into Kabul, saying it had no choice because the Taliban's sudden withdrawal left a security vacuum. The United States had asked the alliance to avoid moving on the capital, afraid its presence would complicate efforts to create a coalition government.

At a news conference in Kabul, Abdullah said all Afghan groups should come to the capital to negotiate the future of Afghanistan. And he invited the United Nations to send teams "to help us in the peace process."

The forces of deposed Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani are the main group in the Northern Alliance. Rabbani's government still holds Afghanistan's U.N. seat.

In a memorandum sent to the other 188 U.N. members on Monday, Rabbani's government promised to support a broad-based multiethnic government, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Andrey Granovsky said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants Brahimi's deputy to travel to Kabul soon, and the United Nations is eager to get its staff back into the country and to deliver humanitarian aid.

At the heart of Brahimi's plan was a recommendation that Afghans administer the transitional government. This "would be far more credible than one run by U.N. officials parachuted in," he said.

Brahimi ruled out a U.N. peacekeeping force for Afghanistan, which he said would take several months to put together. He said his first preference would be an all-Afghan security force, but said a multinational security force could probably be assembled more quickly.

Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, called Tuesday for a U.N. peacekeeping mission made up of Muslim nations to deploy in Kabul and said Turkey and Pakistan could contribute.

"Kabul should remain as a demilitarized city," he said in Istanbul.

Brahimi said the goal would be to convene a provisional council that reflects the country's ethnic diversity. He suggested it should be chaired "by an individual recognized as a symbol of national unity," an apparent reference to Afghanistan's 87-year-old exiled king.

Under Brahimi's proposal, the council would put together the two-year transitional government. During that period, a loya jirga, or grand council of prominent Afghans, would draw up a constitution and a second gathering would approve it and create a permanent Afghan government.

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Musharraf seeks Muslim U.N. force

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/musharraf.htm

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) - Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, called for a U.N. peacekeeping mission made up of Muslim nations to deploy in Kabul and said Tuesday that Turkey and Pakistan could contribute. "Kabul should remain as a demilitarized city, this is the cause of the atrocities of the past and they must not be repeated," Musharraf said in Istanbul, hours after Afghan opposition forces seized the capital from the Taliban.

"It is very important that there ought to be a United Nations force ... composed of OIC countries," Musharraf said, referring to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which groups Muslim nations.

Speaking at a press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, Musharraf said Turkey and Pakistan could contribute to such a force.

"Turkey could play a role and also other Muslim countries, and maybe also Pakistan," he said.

Musharraf said peacekeepers should control the capital until a multi-ethnic government can be installed.

Pakistan does not want to see the opposition alliance - with which it has long had hostile relations - holding power in neighboring Afghanistan and fears an alliance takeover there could spark bloody factional fighting.

"In the past there has been fighting among these ethnic groups. Pakistan and Turkey must do what they can to prevent this," Musharraf said.

The alliance is made up largely of ethnic minorities - particularly Tajiks and Uzbeks - while the Taliban, who have ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996, are dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

Musharraf said Pashtuns must be included in any government formula. "Pashtun representation is important," he said.

Taliban forces fled Kabul toward the south after a series of lightning victories by the opposition alliance in the north. Opposition fighters entered the capital Tuesday.

Representatives of the alliance and Afghanistan's exiled former king have said they would meet in Ankara to discuss the formation of a broad-based government. There has been no time set for the meeting.

The meeting would be a crucial step in fulfilling an Oct.1 agreement between exiled King Mohammad Zaher Shah and the Northern Alliance on forming a transitional, post-Taliban government. The 87-year-old king has lived in Rome since his 1973 ouster in a palace coup

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

Bush Orders : Terror Trials by Military

truthout.com
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.truthout.com/11.14A.Terror.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush signed an order Tuesday that would allow the government to try people accused of terrorism in front of a special military commission instead of in civilian court.

The order, signed by Bush before he left for Crawford, Texas, gives the administration another avenue to bring the Sept. 11 terrorists to justice, White House counsel Albert Gonzales told The Associated Press.

``This is a new tool to use against terrorism,'' Gonzales said in a telephone interview. He said there were precedents in World War II and the Civil War.

The White House was to release the order late Tuesday.

Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court judge who is the president's top lawyer, said a military commission could have several advantages over a civilian court. It is easier to protect the sources and methods of investigators in military proceedings, for example, and a military trial can be held overseas.

Gonzales said there may be times when prosecutors feel a trial in America would be unsafe.

``There may not be a need for this and the president may make a determination that he does not want to use this tool, but he felt it appropriate that he have this tool available to him,'' the lawyer said.

The order is the latest effort by the administration to toughen the nation's laws against terrorists.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration pushed through Congress an anti-terrorism bill that Bush said was vital but civil liberties groups said went to far, violating Americans' constitutional rights. It expands the FBI's wiretapping and electronic surveillance authority and imposes stronger penalties for harboring or financing terrorists. The measure also increases the number of crimes considered terrorist acts and toughens the punishments for committing them.

Under the new order, Bush could establish a military commission in the future by asking the secretary of defense to establish the rules for one.

``This does not identify by name who should be exposed to military justice,'' Gonzales said. ``It just provides the framework that, should the president have findings in the future, he could'' order Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to establish such a commission.

Gonzales said there is precedent for such panels.

President Franklin Roosevelt had World War II saboteurs tried by military commission, as did President Lincoln during the Civil War, the lawyer said. Indeed, Lincoln assassination plotters were tried and convicted by military court, he said.

``This is a global war. To have successful prosecutions, we might have to give up sources and methods'' in a civilian court. ``We don't want to have to do that.''

Gonzalez said: ``Any individual subject to the order would be given a full and fair trial, pursuant to the secretary of defense.''

The administration has been considering both military and civilian trial options. In either scenario, any suspect would retain rights to a lawyer and to a trial by jury.

The military proceedings would give the government greater latitude, according to one military law expert. New York attorney Victor St. John said last month, ``A military court would probably have more control over things like media coverage and location. There is certainly a greater sense of security and formality that might keep things from dissolving into a circus.''

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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Terrorist trials to be by military commission

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush signed an order Tuesday that would allow the government to try people accused of terrorism in front of a special military commission instead of in civilian court.

The order, signed by Bush before he left for Crawford, Texas, gives the administration another avenue to bring the Sept. 11 terrorists to justice, White House counsel Albert Gonzales told The Associated Press.

"This is a new tool to use against terrorism," Gonzales said in a telephone interview. He said there were precedents in World War II and the Civil War.

The White House was to release the order late Tuesday.

Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court judge who is the president's top lawyer, said a military commission could have several advantages over a civilian court. It is easier to protect the sources and methods of investigators in military proceedings, for example, and a military trial can be held overseas.

Gonzales said there may be times when prosecutors feel a trial in America would be unsafe.

"There may not be a need for this and the president may make a determination that he does not want to use this tool, but he felt it appropriate that he have this tool available to him," the lawyer said.

The order is the latest effort by the administration to toughen the nation's laws against terrorists.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration pushed through Congress an anti-terrorism bill that Bush said was vital but civil liberties groups said went to far, violating Americans' constitutional rights. It expands the FBI's wiretapping and electronic surveillance authority and imposes stronger penalties for harboring or financing terrorists. The measure also increases the number of crimes considered terrorist acts and toughens the punishments for committing them.

Under the new order, Bush could establish a military commission in the future by asking the secretary of defense to establish the rules for one.

"This does not identify by name who should be exposed to military justice," Gonzales said. "It just provides the framework that, should the president have findings in the future, he could" order Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to establish such a commission.

Gonzales said there is precedent for such panels.

President Franklin Roosevelt had World War II saboteurs tried by military commission, as did President Lincoln during the Civil War, the lawyer said. Indeed, Lincoln assassination plotters were tried and convicted by military court, he said.

"This is a global war. To have successful prosecutions, we might have to give up sources and methods" in a civilian court. "We don't want to have to do that."

Gonzalez said: "Any individual subject to the order would be given a full and fair trial, pursuant to the secretary of defense."

The administration has been considering both military and civilian trial options. In either scenario, any suspect would retain rights to a lawyer and to a trial by jury.

The military proceedings would give the government greater latitude, according to one military law expert. New York attorney Victor St. John said last month, "A military court would probably have more control over things like media coverage and location. There is certainly a greater sense of security and formality that might keep things from dissolving into a circus."

---

USS Stennis headed for Persian Gulf

Associated Press
November 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-USS-Stennis.html

CORONADO, Calif. (AP) -- Hundreds of relatives and friends, some in tears, watched as crewmen of the USS John C. Stennis set sail from San Diego Bay to support the military action in Afghanistan.

It will be months before the 5,500-member crew will be able to see their families again.

Pauline Stewart of Earlimart held up her 2-month-old daughter, Jasmine, and waved to her husband, airman Joshua Stewart, who blew kisses to them from the Stennis' side.

``It's sad,'' the 17-year-old said with tears. ``When he comes home his baby is going to be so big. All of the things he's going to miss -- her first steps, her first word.''

The Stennis is the centerpiece of a 10-ship battle group that will spend six months in the Persian Gulf. Other ships in the group -- with a total of about 8,500 Navy and Marine personnel -- were sailing from other locations. They were being joined by a Canadian frigate, the HMCS Vancouver, with a crew of 224.

The well-wishers, ranging from grandparents to infants, waved from behind a fence at North Island Naval Air Station, many of them holding American flags.

Delores Kramer held her 3-month-old daughter, Anela, and watched the Stennis prepare to carry away her 21-year-old husband, Kalama Kramer, and his two brothers, Kekoa and Moku.

The three young men from Hilo, Hawaii, signed a special agreement allowing them to sail on the same ship.

``They love each other. They've never been apart,'' she said.

``Their mother is terrified, she added. ``She's scared. If anything happens, she won't have anyone.''

As the Stennis left port its horn let loose an ear-rattling blast and Aaron Copeland's poignant ``Fanfare for the Common Man'' played over its speakers. Then the ship slowly moved away from the dock, before picking up speed and sailing into San Diego Bay.

Men and women of the crew stood side by side, forming a human wall around the deck. But they could not break their at-ease stance to wave at loved ones or acknowledge shouts of ``Goodbye, Daddy'' from several children on shore.

Emiliana Barrera, who divides her time between a village in Mexico and the San Joaquin Valley town of Exeter, watched her 24-year-old son, Raymond, pull away.

The tiny woman clasped her hands to her lips and cried softly. ``May God bless you, my son.''


-------- OTHER

-------- energy

Bush wants emergency petroleum stockpile filled

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-13-stockpile.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amid a world oil glut and declining prices, the United States is moving for the first time to fill its emergency petroleum reserve to its full 700 million-barrel capacity over the next few years.

President Bush on Tuesday directed that the reserve be filled "in a deliberate and cost-effective manner," beginning as soon as possible, to protect against oil supply disruptions.

• Reserve was created in 1975 in salt domes on the Gulf Coast, near the Texas-Louisiana border, in response to the 1973 Arab oil embargo. First oil delivered into reserve in 1977.

• Reserve currently holds 544 million barrels of oil, equivalent to 54 days of imports.

• Storage capacity is 700 million barrels. Peak inventory was 592 million barrels in 1994.

• Reserve was tapped for 21 million barrels in 1990-91, in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War; 28 million barrels in 1996-97, to pay for operation; and 30 million in 2000, to stem soaring prices, in a ''swap'' arrangement in which companies are obligated to return the oil, plus a premium, by 2003.

• Maximum drawdown rate is 4.1 million barrels a day.

• Average purchase price of oil in storage was $27.14 a barrel, not counting royalty-in-kind payments. Oil currently in storage is worth nearly $11.9 billion at current prices.

The shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a series of Gulf Coast salt domes in Louisiana and Texas, are expected to begin next April and continue into 2003 at up to 130,000 barrels a day, according to the Interior Department.

Administration officials stressed there was no imminent threat of an oil supply interruption and denied the announcement was related to the war on terrorism or growing Middle East tensions.

"There's not any linkage to any kind of specific disruption threat, but we think it's a wise policy," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told reporters after meeting with the president at the White House.

"Our current oil inventories, and those of our allies who hold strategic stocks, are sufficient to meet any potential near-term disruption in supplies," Bush said in his statement. He said the additional reserves "will strengthen (our) long-term energy security."

While the amount of diverted oil will be small compared to the total oil market, it sends a signal that the United States wants to stabilize prices by taking some crude out of the market.

Oil prices for future delivery jumped on the news, with December crude rising 44 cents to $21.67 in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Light crude was $21.82 on the New York spot market Tuesday.

The announcement came a day before oil ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries were to meet in Vienna, Austria, to decide on production cuts in an attempt to stem the recent slide of world crude prices. The worldwide economic slowdown, exacerbated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has resulted in an oil glut, forcing down prices.

The reserve currently has 544 million barrels of oil, which is enough to replace 54 days of oil imports. Created in 1975 after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the reserve is to be used to counter supply disruptions.

The United States uses about 19 million barrels of oil a day, with a little over half of that coming from imports.

Experts viewed the decision to add oil to the reserve as a prudent move at a time when oil prices are expected to stay relatively low and worldwide supplies plentiful.

"It's just prudent planning for the future," said Robert Ebel, an expert on energy security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The situation is a little dicey. We don't know what's going to happen ... and we've been lax in our attention to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

The amount of oil in the reserve has declined steadily since 1994, when it reached its peak of 592 million barrels. Attempts to fill the reserve have been sporadic over the years, with Congress reluctant to come up with money to buy oil.

For most of the 1990s, expanding the reserve "was clearly not on the congressional or administration agenda," with the debate often centered on drawing on the reserve, said a report last August by the Congressional Research Service.

The government has suspended oil purchases and tapped the reserve more than a half-dozen times, including 1990-91 - during the Gulf War - and last fall, when 30 million barrels were removed to stem soaring prices.

Under existing agreements about 48 million barrels are scheduled to be returned to the reserve by the end of next year, including the 30 million barrels taken last October. The president's directive Tuesday calls for another 108 million barrels to go into the reserve.

Little if any of the oil is expected to be purchased outright. Instead it is to be provided by producers holding federal oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, in lieu of cash royalty payments to the Treasury.

-------- environment

Administration waves flag for oil

USA Today
11/13/2001
By Lawrence M. Solan
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-13-ncguest2.htm

Experienced lawyers know that a trial is a battle between two stories. The party that persuades the jury to accept its narrative of the events will generally win. We saw this dynamic in the O.J. Simpson trial: Prosecutors attempted to convince the jury that Simpson murdered two innocent people. The evidence in their favor was strong. But Simpson's defense team focused the jury on an alternative story: a saga about an incompetent, racist police force that cared more about incarcerating black people than the truth. We all know which story prevailed.

Similar battles between competing stories are used in politics, too. Until recently, for example, the story President Bush used to promote his energy policies, which include drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, told of a forward-looking group of public servants intent on keeping America's growing energy needs fulfilled. In contrast, the opponents of Bush's energy policies describe them as an effort to enrich oil companies at the expense of the country's wildlife heritage. Thus far, the opponents' story has carried the day, both with the public and the Senate.

But Bush and his allies have revised their script after Sept. 11. Now their story is that arctic drilling is a matter of national security - and, by implication, patriotism. Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, for instance, said each senator must "recognize his obligations to our national security as opposed to environmental extremists." Bush also has referred to national security as a reason to support his plan.

So the administration's story has shifted: It's now a tale about a small group of radicals who place the future of trees and animals above their country.

More appealing

The new narrative is far more compelling than the old. No one wants to be seen as insensitive to the nation's ability to survive attack, least of all members of Congress up for re-election next year. But this shift in narrative is a disgracefully cynical political ploy.

For one thing, the new story is false. It displays enormous disrespect for the tens of millions of Americans who believe that we should focus our efforts on making the United States more energy-independent without endangering the arctic wilderness. These are not millions of "environmental extremists," but people from all walks of life who disagree with the administration's priorities. To use September's tragedy to question their motives is inappropriate.

Moreover, the administration's energy policy has never touted energy independence as its principal goal. Rather, its focus has been on meeting projected increases in demand. Drilling in Alaska was proposed as only a partial solution. Environmental groups say it would produce no new oil for 7 years; even then, it wouldn't put much of a dent in consumption.

A better way to cut dependence

A legislative agenda directed toward reducing our dependence on oil from the Middle East should address consumption. The administration could take the lead by requiring auto manufacturers to make sport-utility vehicles fuel efficient soon, and to place a hefty tax on those that do not meet high standards.

Immediate commitments to public transportation, recycling and other conservation measures also would be a natural part of any program seriously directed at reducing the need for foreign oil, as would the aggressive pursuit of alternative energy sources. But all of these potentially helpful measures are on Bush's back burner.

Just as lawyers have the right to present alternative trial narratives to the jury, politicians have the right to present alternative legislative narratives to the public. In both cases, however, there is a responsibility to tell truthful stories in good faith, consistent with the evidence. The administration fails to do this when it claims national security as the core benefit of its questionable energy policy and suggests that its opponents lack sufficient concern for the nation's survival. Congress should not reward such storytelling.

Lawrence M. Solan is a professor of law at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Law School.

---

Many of world's lakes face death, expert warns

Story by Elaine Lies,
Reuters:
13/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13272

TOKYO - Many of the world's freshwater lakes face death by pollution, resulting in catastrophe for the human populations that depend on them, an environmental expert warned yesterday.

"There is not a lake left on the planet that is not already being affected by human activities," said William Cosgrove, vice president of the World Water Council, an international organisation that deals with ecological problems involving water.

"We're killing the lakes, and that could be disaster to the human communities that depend on them."

Cosgrove, in Japan to attend a week-long conference on saving lakes held in Otsu, a city in central Japan, told Reuters that the situation faced by many of the world's lakes - estimated to number some five million - is dire.

A majority of the hazards result from a rising demand for water throughout the world sparked by population growth, according to a statement issued by the World Water Council.

This leads to increased use and diversion of water, often for irrigating crops, along with contamination by toxic substances and nutrients from industry, farms and sewage.

Cosgrove, a Canadian, said that one insidious aspect of the threat faced by lakes is that, even though a lake may appear pristine, it could already have suffered serious damage.

"Then something happens - like a change in water temperature - and all of a sudden a lake can be completely transformed," he said. "Once the process starts, it's hard to stop."

An extreme example is that of Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, which has over the last two decades suffered the death of several species of fish and a dramatic increase in plant growth due to pollution from several sources, including raw sewage from surrounding towns.

"Fishermen now can't even get their boats out away from the shore to go fishing," Cosgrove said.

Another seriously threatened lake is Taihu Lake in China, the World Water Council statement said, "where experts say you can practically walk on its surface because of severe pollution."

Deterioration on this scale can lead to a lack of livelihood, resulting in poor nutrition and starvation in the populations surrounding the lake. Other problems include illnesses due to drinking tainted water and crop failure.

The potential impact is huge, Cosgrove added.

"Humans are already using more than 50 percent of the usable freshwater resources, and 90 percent of this is in freshwater lakes," he said.

And despite the magnitude of the threat, dealing with the pollution of freshwater lakes remains low on the list of government priorities in many areas, he said.

As a result, one of the biggest goals of the World Water Council is simply to get the message across to ordinary people, hoping that the pressures of public opinion will finally prompt government action.

"The most important thing is to get their voices organised, to say (to governments) that this is not something we want to happen and to get your priorities straight," he said.

-------- health

Full-Body Scans Promise to Identify Disease Before Symptoms Occur.
But Does Such Screening Create More Problems Than It Uncovers?

By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; Page HE01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18097-2001Nov12?language=printer

Stjepan Sostaric's wife was insistent that her 49-year-old husband undergo a full-body CT scan to make sure he was as healthy as he felt. She had already had one and was convinced he should, too. "My wife is worried about getting all these cancers," said Sostaric, a Capitol Hill builder who reluctantly agreed to undergo the procedure, a radiological test using computerized tomography (CT) that provides three-dimensional images of the brain, heart, lungs and other organs to check for signs of disease.

While his wife's $850 scan revealed nothing unusual, Sostaric was not so lucky. After his 30-minute test at Washington's MillenniumScan in September, the radiologist spotted some small, suspicious lesions on his liver. His internist ordered further tests, including a colonoscopy to see if Sostaric had colon cancer that had spread. When that test was clean, Sostaric underwent a painful liver biopsy at George Washington University Hospital. Three weeks ago he learned the result: The spots weren't liver cancer, an uncommon and lethal malignancy, but rather a benign growth called a hemangioma that had been present for years and required no treatment.

"This is the greatest thing I ever did, and I can thank my wife for being a hypochondriac," said Sostaric, who thinks the "torture" of tests and the agonizing wait for results was worth the knowledge that he has no serious problem. Sostaric said he plans to have his body scanned every other year because "cancers happen. It's like catching the flu."

Sostaric's experience illustrates the promise and pitfalls of one of the most aggressively marketed, potentially lucrative and undeniably controversial procedures in medicine: full-body scanning of symptomless patients, many of them well-heeled baby boomers hurtling toward, or a few years past, 50.

From Beverly Hills to Baltimore, free-standing scanning centers, some located in shopping malls and many owned by radiologists, have sprung up in affluent metropolitan areas. These centers offer a comprehensive, painless, noninvasive, head-to-pelvis examination of the body's internal organs - including the brain, heart, liver, lungs, prostate, ovaries - for a $700 to $1,300 fee that is rarely covered by insurance.

MillenniumScan LLC, the first and so far only center in the Washington area, is owned by three investors led by Arnold Sussman, 66, a retired Virginia podiatrist. Eight radiologists from Metropolitan Radiology Associates read the scans. Another center, called Virtual Physical, is due to open next month.

Since it opened six months ago, Millennium has screened 1,000 patients, many lured by the center's frequent television and its print advertisements, which have appeared in The Washington Post and other publications. Millennium's monthly advertising budget is $45,000, according to Sussman.

Total body scanning is based on a compelling premise: Find cancer or heart disease or a brain tumor at its earliest stage - before a patient feels any symptoms or a more conventional test can detect it - and the problem can be contained, reversed or cured. For healthy patients the knowledge that nothing serious is wrong conveys peace of mind in the form of a "clean bill of health," in Sussman's words.

But critics - including prominent radiologists, health economists and officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - say that the practice of indiscriminately scanning healthy people is unproven, ill-advised and potentially dangerous. CT technology, they say, is far too imprecise to be used as a mass screening tool, even though it will inevitably find a few people with cancer or serious heart disease or a brain tumor.

"These centers are playing on people's emotions, and everybody knows somebody - a friend or colleague or relative - who could have been saved if only their cancer had been discovered earlier," noted Richard Mintzer, chairman of the radiology department at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. Mintzer points to his own friends: one whose kidney cancer was detected early and by accident through a scan, another who died of the same disease, discovered at an advanced stage after he had symptoms.

"People like to point to examples like that," Mintzer said, "but the reality is that we have a limited number of health care dollars."

More Harm Than Good?

Last year the American College of Radiology issued a statement saying it did not endorse such scanning. The group expressed concern "that this procedure will lead to the discovery of numerous findings that will not ultimately affect patients' health, but will result in increased patient anxiety, unnecessary follow-up examinations and treatments and wasted expense."

"These centers are entrepreneurial ventures, and they make a ton of money," said E. Stephen Amis Jr., chairman of the radiology department at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "That's why they're growing as fast as they are," not because they are medically sound.

"We have the best diagnostic equipment in the world," proclaimed Sussman, referring to Millennium's $2 million Marconi MX 8000 multi-slice CT scan machine which creates hundreds of cross-sectional images. "We're looking to find the diagnosis long before there's morbidity. Some patients say they want to come back here once a year before they go to their family doctor just to make sure everything's okay."

Thomas B. Shope Jr., special assistant to the director of the FDA's Office of Science and Health, said there is no scientific evidence that whole-body scanning detects disease early or saves lives.

"What's not clear is whether these CT scans do more good than potential harm," said Shope, a physicist, who worries that radiation exposure could increase the risk of developing cancer, especially in those who undergo repeated scans. Shope estimates that one total-body scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation equivalent to 400 to 500 chest X-rays. (Millennium's Web site says that a patient "will get about the same safe radiation exposure . . . as you would from a simple upper GI study.")

Sussman dismissed Shope's calculation as "absolute nonsense." But Joel B. Bowers, the radiologist who is Millennium's medical director, said that while he thinks Shope's chest X-ray comparison is "an exaggeration," he agreed that the amount of radiation is not insignificant. "We try to make it less," he added. "I wish it was less."

But, Bowers added, "you have to balance the risk [from radiation] with the possibility of finding out you have a condition that could kill you in a few years."

"This is a wonderful screening technique for use in asymptomatic patients to look for hidden disease," said Bowers, who compares it to mammography, which is widely used to screen apparently healthy women for breast cancer. "But people sometimes think it's a substitute for seeing your physician, which it is not."

Even so, it's difficult to find a radiologist unaffiliated with a scanning center who believes whole-body tests are appropriate for people without symptoms.

"These scans are a bad idea," said Michael J. Pentecost, chairman of the radiology department at Georgetown University School of Medicine. "The idea that you have a clean bill of health is fallacious and can give patients a false sense of security. A person can have terrible metabolic problems that are not detected by CT scan," such as diabetes or hypertension, two of the leading causes of disability and death.

Another drawback, Pentecost and other critics say, is inaccuracy, in the form of false negatives - the failure to find a significant problem - and false positives - the incorrect indication of a serious problem - which inevitably triggers further testing that can be risky and expensive.

"We know from old studies of CT scans that disease is concealed - and the false negative rate is very, very high - without contrast," noted Bruce Hillman, chairman of the radiology department at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Contrast studies involve the injection of dye into a vein to sharpen images and aid diagnosis. Contrast is not used in whole-body scanning.

And no one knows what the false positive or false negative rate is for total-body scanning, added Hillman, who chairs the American College of Radiology's Imaging Network which analyzes screening technology, because it has never been studied, nor is it likely to be.

Sussman said that about 30 percent of patients have abnormalities on their scans that require further testing. Bowers estimated that fewer than 5 percent of patients were found to have a serious problem. Three of eight Millennium patients interviewed for this story said their scans detected growths on their livers; all underwent further testing and in each case the mass was found be benign.

"We haven't found any false positives or false negatives," Sussman said. "How do I know? Because if we did, we'd have a complaint, which we haven't. We find what's there and we don't find what's not there."

Robert J. Cihak, a retired radiologist in Aberdeen, Wash., said he regards body scans as a legitimate use of technology and the issue as one of "optimizing personal choice. Look at mammography," he said. "There are probably 10 false negatives or additional studies required to get that one cancer."

Sussman said that the biggest benefit from a scan is its potential to detect disease in time for effective, even lifesaving, treatment. "We see aneurysms, we see people with calcifications [on their coronary arteries] they didn't know about, including a man who had a triple bypass two days after his scan that saved his life," said Sussman.

Among those unsuspecting patients was Veronica Marshall, 56, of Fairfax County, whose scan in July revealed a walnut-sized growth on her lung; further testing revealed it was a cancer that had not spread.

"I had no reason to go to the doctor and I had no symptoms," said Marshall. She had part of her lung removed in August.

Marshall, who said she has never smoked, said she decided to have a scan after seeing ads for the procedure and because she was curious about her health. "The MillenniumScan saved my life," she said. "I can't recommend this enough to people who are concerned about their health."

No Definitive Answers

"Doctors think that CT scans are great tests for good reason," said Alan M. Garber, an internist and economist who is an associate professor of medicine and economics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Garber, an expert in the evaluation of medical technology and the formulation of clinical guidelines, noted that CT scans, developed in the 1970s, were an enormous boon to diagnosis because they enabled doctors to visualize what was going on inside the body by providing cross-sectional images - or slices - of organs that are much more detailed than conventional X-rays.

But their ability to pick up so much - an ability that has been steadily refined over the past three decades - means that CT scans will detect a lot of incidental things that would never make a difference to patients: benign tumors, cysts, scar tissue. CT scans cannot definitively distinguish between a growth that is benign or malignant. That requires a biopsy.

A suspicious or unexpected finding, Garber noted, will invariably trigger a cascade of medical interventions, all of which carry their own quantifiable risks: a possible allergic reaction to the dye used in a follow-up contrast study, a potentially life-threatening lung biopsy, a painful liver biopsy and even surgery to determine whether that suspicious growth is a harmless tangle of blood vessels or a smoldering and lethal cancer.

And CT scans, Garber noted, have limitations. Although many scanning centers say they can detect cancers at their earliest stages, CT scans cannot pick up cancers smaller than half a centimeter, according to Garber.

"It will certainly find some kidney tumors, but you won't find prostate cancer unless it's totally out of the box, or breast cancer or early bowel cancers," said Einstein's Amis.

Virginia's Hillman said that ovarian cancer could be detected by a CT scan "once it's big" and that emphysema wouldn't show up "unless it was pretty significant disease." A CT scan would pick up an aneurysm, which is a bulge in a blood vessel that can be life-threatening, as well as kidney stones and gallstones, he said.

As for claims that a scan can detect brain disease, Hillman said that "the likelihood of a person having brain disease without significant symptomatology is minuscule." Most brain diseases, Hillman added, are diagnosed using an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, device.

Sometimes, Hillman notes, CT scans find disease that is significant, even life-threatening, for which treatment rarely prolongs life. That's true of pancreatic cancer, Hillman said, and may even be true of lung cancer. Finding cancer before a patient has symptoms may simply mean living with the devastating knowledge longer, a situation that carries its own psychological risks, doctors say.

But Hillman and other opponents of whole-body scanning say that for targeted groups of patients over 50, CT scans of the heart for those with a family history of cardiac disease and of the lungs for smokers may prove useful; none is yet widely recommended because both are the subjects of large clinical trials to determine their value. Virtual colonoscopy is also being studied, but there is no consensus that it is as good as the standard procedure.

While Cihak and Sussman say that the cost of scans is being borne by the patients themselves - not insurance, which rarely covers them - Georgetown's Pentecost says that's misleading.

"The advocates say, 'These people have discretionary income and if they'd rather do this than go to dinner at Kinkead's, well, that's America,'" Pentecost said. "But we all pay for this in the form of higher health premiums when the follow-up tests are done. That's on our tab, not theirs."

Case in point: a 45-year-old commercial real estate executive from Potomac who underwent a scan at Millennium at the suggestion of his physician father-in-law, who had had one in Pittsburgh. The radiologist detected some growths on the younger man's liver, which led to a second scan with contrast dye, also performed at Millennium. That follow-up test cost $1,100 and revealed benign cysts.

"I'm glad I did it because it gave me peace of mind that nothing's growing," said the executive who asked not to be identified, "and my insurance paid for it."

Bruce L. Ames, an obstetrician-gynecologist with offices two floors above Millennium, said that he has sent "dozens" of patients for a whole-body scan. Most, he said, are the "worried well" - women in their thirties or older who have no symptoms but are unusually fearful of getting ovarian or breast cancer.

Ames, 53, said he underwent a scan himself, one of about 50 physicians to do so, according to Sussman. He got scanned, he said, "for peace of mind" and so he could tell patients "been there, done that." Ames did not pay for his test; Sussman said physicians are routinely offered a discount on the procedure.

"I recommend it in cases where there is a certain level of anxiety that is decreasing an individual's quality of life that can be allayed" with this level of screening, said Ames, who owns a chain of laser hair removal clinics. Such patients, he added, are "almost always" reassured by the results.

To Hillman, the growing popularity of body scans represents the triumph of emotion over epidemiology. "We're all susceptible to anecdote and public relations," he said, "even physicians."

-------- imf / world bank

WTO to foster China-Taiwan ties

News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/world/w5.htm

TAIPEI: The admission of Taiwan and China to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would foster closer economic ties which could lead to warmer relations between the two foes, officials and analysts say. Both sides of the Taiwan Strait should shelve the thorny sovereignty issue while pushing for trade ties under the WTO framework and try to build up mutual trust, they say.

President Chen Shui-bian said Monday the step would push normalisation in economic ties between the two sides but lamented Beijing had tried to "dwarf our international status, squeeze our international space" during the access negotiations.

Chen Ming-tung, vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) which charts the island's China policy, has said Taipei hoped to ease friction with Beijing and gradually improve ties under WTO rules. "More frequent economic and trade exchanges of the two sides are expected," Chen told reporters Thursday.

"Hopefully the two sides can subsequently try to seek a mechanism that may eventually lead to political integration (of the two sides)." The WTO ministers meeting in Qatar endorsed Taiwan's membership Sunday, allowing the island to join the 142-member body as a custom territory -- "Chinese Taipei" -- after 12 years of strenuous talks.

China, which considers the island part of its territory, was admitted Saturday. "Direct contact across the Strait has to begin somewhere and a start from the economic front would help build mutual trust," said Yan Jian-fa, Chinese affairs director of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). "It's like taking an exam -- you work on the easier part first. If we cannot solve the core problem right now, we can at least try to resolve the marginal differences," Yan said.

Joining the WTO could be a catalyst for breaking the stalemate in cross-strait ties, said Yuan I, associate research fellow of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University."Both sides could use the organisation as a venue for trust-building and hopefully, they would eventually touch on political issues," Yuan said, describing the process as a "spill-over effect".But he admitted the "One China" issue would remain the stumbling block in Taiwan-China ties.

Beijing has insisted Taipei should acknowledge its "One China" policy to seek eventual reunification of the two sides separated in 1949 at the end of a civil war. Taiwan, however, has snubbed Beijing's demand, stressing its independent sovereignty instead.

-------- police / prisoners

U.S. SENATOR THOMAS DASCHLE (D-SD)

truthout
PRESS CONFERENCE
NOVEMBER 13, 2001
http://www.truthout.com/11.14B.DB.htm

DASCHLE: We just made a motion to proceed to the bill, the homeland security/economic recovery package. There will be a period of debate for debate purposes only until we take up the legislative agenda that was already scheduled earlier today, the nomination of a circuit court judge and the budget resolution that was the subject of debate this morning. Those votes will occur this afternoon, I think at around 5:00.

And we will have those votes, then we'll go back to the economic recovery package.

As you may have heard, we have been working with a number of our colleagues in an effort to address both the finance part, as well as the appropriations part of this economic package, and I noticed that Senator Byrd was describing for you our homeland security proposal that has been the effort under way in the Appropriations Committee now for some time. It's about a $15 billion package that deals only with homeland security. We have taken out any of those pieces that would not neatly fit in homeland security, and as a result we address, as I said earlier, a number of very specific needs. And I'll just quickly read them to you, because I think they are worth ensuring you're fully aware.

It's a $15 billion package that would address bioterrorism and food safety; federal, state and local law enforcement, and the emergency response for law enforcement; transportation security for borders, ports, rail, mass transit and airports; and also resources for secure mail, federal facilities and nuclear security.

That's, as I said, a $15 billion package. That is the entirety of the homeland security part.

On the unemployment and the economic recovery package, we provide for unemployment insurance for 13 additional weeks. Health coverage for the unemployment, reimbursed at 75 percent. Medicaid and additional Medicaid funds for states to cover people ineligible for the health care plan under COBRA. Rebate checks to 45 million taxpayers, the 34 million who didn't get a check last summer, plus the 11 million people who only got a partial check; those are largely people who paid more payroll tax than income tax or no income tax at all but a lot of payroll tax. A $10,000 increase in small business expensing. A 10 percent immediate expensing for investments over the next 12 years. And then a couple of billion dollars for agriculture relief. And then the tax extenders, which I might remind you were in the House bill. Those expiring provisions that would be addressed under just about any scenario before the end of the year were put in this bill in large measure because the House put them in as well. So we will be those even though in some cases they aren't necessarily directly related to the economic recovery package that Democrats had fashioned.

So that is it. We will go to the bill this afternoon. Our hope is that we can work with our Republican colleagues to complete our work before the end of the week.

QUESTION: Senator Lott said a few moments ago that he called again for bipartisan negotiations on this bill, saying you don't have the votes to pass yours, they can't pass theirs with the 60-vote hurdle. Are you going to go along with that proposal?

DASCHLE: Well, you know, we tried, as I think I reported to you on dozens of occasions over the last several weeks, to do exactly that, to have these bipartisan negotiations, and we were rebuffed at every turn. We were told that the Republicans simply had to introduce their own bill.

So I have consulted with Senator Lott this morning, and I'm hopeful that, even though we've made these overtures on several occasions in the past, that we can sit down sometime soon and begin working out a bipartisan solution.

QUESTION: Just to follow up, he specifically said you, yourself, that the ranking members of the committee, and the counterparts in the House, should sit down, write a bill, write one bill that could pass the Senate, send it to the House, let them pass it, and that way to avoid this sort of have to compromise twice situation.

AUDIO GAP

Q Senator, what is the outlook for the airline security conference legislation with the pressures that many people say are coming from Monday's crash to get something done to make people feel reassured about flying? SEN. DASCHLE: I think that's it's imperative we finish this bill this week. If we leave without finishing airport security, I think we have a right to be criticized. It's got to be done. Senator Hollings again reiterated in caucus his strong desire to finish this bill. He's willing to go a long way to do it. I hope we can see the same effort on the other side.

Q The problem is the dispute over federalizing the security jobs, and either the Senate has to give in and have more private jobs, or the House has to allow for more federal. Do you see any break in this, or do you hope for a break?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, we have to. There are more issues on the table, of course, than the professionalization of the workforce. We've got to find ways to address all of those issues, and Senator Hollings again reiterated his desire to deal with all of them.

Q Senator, if you haven't finished airport security or economic stimulus, will you get to take a few days off next week?

SEN. DASCHLE: We haven't made any decisions about schedule long- term, but it is our desire to complete the work on both bills.

Q Senator, what's your reaction to the Republican press to attach ANWR onto the spending bill?

SEN. DASCHLE: I think attaching ANWR to the economic recovery bill would send as clear a signal as you could send that they're not really serious about passing an economic recovery bill this year. That's what it would say to us and to the American people.

Q Can you give us an update on what's happening with the Hart Building, and does the presence of more anthrax in more offices push back the date even further for when it might be reopened?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, the EPA has reconfirmed just this morning that they are determined to complete their work by the 21st of November. I think that's ambitious, but I'm hopeful they can meet that target date. That is the date that we have shared with our colleagues, and I think it's important we try to be as aggressive in finishing the remediation as possible.

Q Well, I talked to a couple of different senators today. Senator Boxer, in particular, said, "I never thought that we'd get it done before January 1st." Does that -- I mean, how ambitious is November 21st?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, as you can imagine, there's a lot of concern for how long we have had to endure this ordeal, and I'm sympathetic. I have an office there, as well as 49 others. So I'm very sympathetic to the inconvenience. But I think every senator will tell you that if it's a matter of inconvenience or a question of safety for their staff, safety for staff has a much, much higher priority.

Q Senator, if you do enter into this discussion with the White House on the recovery package with House and Senate Republicans, will you insist that the Byrd package on homeland security be part of this?

SEN. DASCHLE: We were told that the Republicans simply had to introduce their own bill. So I have consulted with Senator Lott this morning, and I'm hopeful that even though we made these overtures on several occasions in the past, that we can sit down sometime soon and begin working out a bipartisan solution.

Q Just to follow up. He specifically said you, yourself, senator -- the ranking member of the committee and your counterparts in the House, should sit down, write a bill, write one bill that can pass the Senate, send it to the House, let them pass it, and that way you can avoid this sort of having to compromise twice situation. And that's the idea that he was proposing. Is that something that you would find amenable or --

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I have talked to both the president as well as to Senator Lott and Speaker Hastert, and I have made it abundantly clear that we are not going to negotiate this more than once. If they are prepared to sit down with us, as we have suggested now for several months -- or I should say several weeks -- it feels like months -- for several weeks. If they are prepared to sit down with us -- House, White House, and Senate Republicans -- we're prepared to do that beginning this afternoon. There's no need to wait. We're simply not prepared to sit down with our Republican colleagues, reach an agreement, then do the same with our House colleagues and then the White House. It's got to be simultaneously. And I have made that offer to them, and I am hopeful that we can reach some agreement procedurally.

Q Would you pull the bill from the floor, if you got an agreement?

SEN. DASCHLE: No, I think we would probably continue to negotiate as we debated, just in case the negotiations were not as fruitful as many of us would like. Linda?

Q What did the president and Speaker Hastert say in response to your saying that?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I think they wanted to consult. I don't know that they are in a position yet to make a decision, but I hope we can resolve the matter soon. As I understand it, the Republicans are meeting this afternoon at 4:00 to discuss their strategy and how we might proceed. And I'm hopeful from that we can reach some agreement.

Q Do you think the president is involved as much as you'd like to see him involved? Is he helping these negotiations even get started?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, the president, again this morning, offered to be as engaged as we needed him to be. Whether it's the president or his representative, they need to be at the table, as I said, in large measure because we don't want to negotiate unless we know we're negotiating with everybody who will ultimately have to sign off on the bill.

(AUDIO GAP)

Well, I'm not going to get into specific procedural aspects of these negotiations, but I will say that we have to have some assurance that the Senate will have an opportunity to take up and debate and ultimately vote upon the homeland security package. And we'll have to have some understanding in that regard.

Q (Off mike.)

SEN. DASCHLE: There are still a lot of outstanding questions about how to address the Internet taxation legislation. We have not been able to resolve the procedural questions on either side, and as a result, I haven't been able to bring it up. I am hopeful that we can come up with a procedural agreement sometime very soon.

Q Is there a Democratic hold on that bill? We've been hearing differing reports that maybe there's a Democratic senator -- SEN. DASCHLE: Well, it's a moving target. There really isn't a bill to bring to the floor at this point, in part because people on one side or the other have yet to resolve their own issues and because that lack of resolution was an impediment as late as last Thursday, we were unable to bring it up.

Q Senator, when you said you need some assurances that you'll be able to bring up and vote upon homeland security, you mean before you go home -- I mean, before the end of this session?

SEN. DASCHLE: Correct.

Q This year?

SEN. DASCHLE: Correct. Absolutely.

Q Senator, just follow up, the point is it doesn't have to be part of the economic security bill?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I'm not -- I really don't want to get into the negotiations in front of the cameras, Jen. I'm just going to tell you that, you know, there are procedural ways to address the impasse that we have, and I want to be as flexible as I can without being any more definitive than that. We want it together. We want to pass the entire package. We want to negotiate the entire package. That is my desire. That is my insistence right now. That is exactly what we want to do. We'll have to try to find a way to address their equal insistence that it not be together. And what I want to say is in good faith, we ought to be able to find a way to address it.

Q Senator, on airline security, Senator Lott seemed to say that the differences between the two sides were not that great on economic stimulus. Would you agree with that?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, you know, I think that it depends on what he's referring to.

They're great if they continue to insist that there ought not be any homeland security funding this year. That's a great difference and we have to resolve that difference in some fashion. I think on the Finance Committee side, on the tax side, the revenue issues I think are resolvable. He may have been referring to that, and I would agree with him as far as the revenue issues go. Q Senator, on airline security, you said Senator Hollings is open to compromise. Do you think that there is more resistance coming from the House negotiators? Why is it taking so long?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I don't know. I would say that I think the Senate conferees are determined to ensure the highest quality of professional representation in airports as we can possibly achieve. And in our view, that means federalized workers, law enforcement officials who work for the federal government. We saw the sky marshals in action last night on an airplane near Dulles. If you ever needed any more evidence about the importance of having federal workers do their job, I don't know how you could find it. That was, I think, an example of what we're talking about. We want to do the same with those who handle baggage, those who work in the airports and on the ground. That, to me, is the essence of this debate, and we hope we can resolve these differences soon.

Q (Off mike) -- compromise on that point at all.

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, again, I'm not going to negotiate in front of the cameras. I think we've got to find a way to resolve these issues, but we feel very strongly about the caliber and the quality of people involved in these responsibilities.

Q Senator, back on the stimulus negotiations. Senator Lott was here earlier and he specifically said let's have this negotiation bicameral, bipartisan. Are you saying right now, "Yeah, let's do it," or, "Yeah, but," or is there a condition on accepting that offer?

Q Or "No."

Or are you saying no?

SEN. DASCHLE: No, I -- first of all, as I understand it, our Republican colleagues have to make some decision about what to do with homeland security, and they haven't arrived at a point where they can say what they've decided in that regard. As I understand it, they are largely opposed to committing any additional resources to homeland security this year. If that's the case, it would be very hard for us to sit down without some way of ensuring procedurally that we can address homeland security every bit as aggressively as we're going to address economic recovery. No one has provided me with a clear (audio gap) What I have said is that really there are two things that we've got to resolve. And I've spoken to the president, to Republican leadership about it, and I again reiterate it this afternoon. Number one, I only want to negotiate this once. And number two, I want to make sure that when we are negotiating, we are negotiating both the economic recovery as well as the homeland security questions. Whether they're together or separately is an issue we've got to resolve.

Q Senator, the nuclear security -- (inaudible) -- homeland security bill -- (inaudible) -- discussions with in the nuclear power industry. Are they saying they need specific enhanced security, or are they coming from some other venue?

SEN. DASCHLE: I think there is a -- I don't have any specific request in mind as we talk about our response to the array of issues that we're trying to address in our homeland security package, but clearly there is stepped up security around our nuclear facilities, as you would expect. And we want to make sure that the resources are there to be able to continue to do that. Thank you all.

Q Thank you, Senator.

------

Justice Dept. wants to interview 5,000 foreign men

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/justice-interview.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department wants to talk to 5,000 young male foreigners who entered the country from Middle Eastern and other countries as part of the terrorism investigation, officials said Tuesday. A list of 5,000 names was being distributed to federal prosecutors around the country who were ordered to work with state and local police to locate and interview the men, said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. The interviews would be voluntary, she said.

The men are not suspects, said Tucker, but "people who we think might be helpful" in assisting authorities investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and possible new attacks.

"They could be witnesses, we won't know until we talk to them," said Tucker.

The names were compiled from immigration and State Department records of foreigners who sought entry into the country since Jan. 1, 2000 on tourist, student and business visas. Only men aged 18 to 33 with nonimmigrant visas and a U.S. address went on the list.

Tucker declined to name which countries the immigrants to be questioned came from but said the list of nations would include those that have surfaced in investigations of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda organization. Countries that have been way stations for the Sept. 11 hijackers and other terrorists would be on the list.

A number of the 19 hijackers from the Sept. 11 attacks entered the United States from Europe and some obtained visas in Saudi Arabia.

Tucker did not have details about what questions the foreigners would be asked but said they would not be questioned about their religious beliefs and practices. They can decline to be questioned but authorities hope they will cooperate.

"We've allowed them to come into this country and we expect them to help," said Tucker.

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Embattled Illinois Sheriff Resigns

Associated Press
November 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missing-Sheriff.html

EUREKA, Ill. (AP) -- A sheriff who has been missing since questions were raised about charges to department credit cards resigned in a one-line letter delivered by mail Monday.

Woodford County Sheriff Bill Myers, 51, was last seen at his office Oct. 24. He called his department a few days later but didn't say where he was or when he'd be back.

Myers' resignation was received by county board Chairman Tom Janssen, who said Myers offered no reason for his actions. The letter will be read at Tuesday's board meeting, filed away and accepted, Janssen said.

The (Peoria) Journal Star reported that Myers had been admitted to a medical center with an undisclosed condition but hospital officials would not confirm whether he was a patient.

Myers disappeared shortly after county board members raised questions about $28,000 in credit card charges, including cash advances and at least one automated teller machine withdrawal made at a strip club.

It is unclear how many employees have access to the cards.

No criminal charges have been filed against Myers.

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SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
Experts Divided on New Antiterror Policy That Scuttles Lawyer-Client Confidentiality

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/national/13LEGA.html

Legal experts differ sharply on the new Justice Department policy of monitoring communications between people the government says have been involved in terrorism and their lawyers.

But people on both sides of the issue said the policy was one of the clearest examples of how the government's expansive terrorism investigation is restricting long-recognized rights, like the right to confidential communications between lawyer and client.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the policy was intended to stop inmates who had been involved in terrorism from passing messages to confederates through lawyers, their assistants or translators "for the purpose of continuing terrorist activities."

The policy, which drew public attention last week, has become a central issue in the debate over the expansion of the government's law enforcement powers, said Benito Romano, a New York lawyer and a former United States attorney in Manhattan.

"How far do you want to go in sacrificing civil liberties for the purpose of furthering an investigation?" Mr. Romano asked.

Civil liberties and lawyers' groups, including the American Bar Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, have criticized the policy. Mr. Romano was one of many lawyers who said the policy was an unnecessary limitation on the right guaranteed by the Constitution to legal representation.

But the Justice Department measure also won support from some legal experts and former prosecutors who said it was carefully designed to protect the public while impinging as little as possible on the rights of people to confer with their lawyers.

Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor who was solicitor general in the Reagan administration, said the Justice Department policy was a reasonable way for officials to try to prevent attacks.

"Under certain circumstances," Mr. Fried said, "the lawyer is part of the conspiracy and, wittingly or unwittingly, the conversation is a means of furthering the conspiracy."

The policy was instituted on Oct. 30 with little public notice. In an announcement published the next day, the Justice Department said communications between inmates and their lawyers would be monitored when "reasonable suspicion exists to believe that a particular inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of terrorism."

Mr. Ashcroft has said only a small number of inmates and their lawyers would be monitored.

Critics of the policy said it would violate the Constitution by inhibiting free communication with lawyers and by taking information learned in the monitoring. The Sixth Amendment grants a criminal defendant the right "to have the assistance of counsel for his defense," and the Fourth Amendment gives citizens a right to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Irwin H. Schwartz, a Seattle lawyer and president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the measure would most likely be challenged in court.

"We call ourselves a nation of laws," Mr. Schwartz said, "and the test of a nation of laws is whether it adheres to them in times of stress."

He said that by threatening lawyer-client confidentiality, the Justice Department was "sliding toward being what we condemn other countries for."

Some critics said they were most troubled by the fact that the policy permits officials to monitor communications without getting prior approval from a judge.

"You are concentrating an enormous amount of power in the hands of a very few government officials," said Gregory J. Wallance, a New York lawyer who is a former federal prosecutor.

Lewis R. Katz, an expert on criminal law at Case Western Reserve University, said that since Sept. 11 he had changed many of his views about how expansive investigators' powers ought to be. But he said monitoring lawyer-client communications went over the line of what should be permitted by the Constitution.

"I don't think there's any valid reason for not going to court" for permission to intrude on the lawyer- client relationship, Mr. Katz said.

George Rutherglen, a legal ethics specialist at the University of Virginia, said the monitoring was unnecessary because "there are ways to get this information now." Agents could get a court-approved wiretap, he said, if they had probable cause to believe that a lawyer was involved in furthering a crime.

But some experts said the critics were relying on legal concepts that have become outmoded by the deaths of so many civilians. Otto G. Obermaier, another former United States attorney in Manhattan, said the government could now make a far stronger case for monitoring lawyer-client conversations than would have been possible before Sept. 11.

"It gives the government significant justification for conduct that in other circumstances might not be totally in accordance with longstanding practices," Mr. Obermaier said. "Sept. 11 changed a whole lot."

---

Lessons From Sept. 11 Are Followed in Quick Transportation Shutdowns and Restarts

New York Times
November 13, 2001
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/nyregion/13SECU.html?searchpv=nytToday&pagewanted=all

New York's major airports shut down, bridges and tunnels were closed, some buses and trains were halted and the Empire State Building was evacuated. The United Nations was locked down, security at government buildings and nuclear plants was tightened and a city traumatized by terrorism suffered a bad case of the jitters yesterday after the American Airlines jetliner crashed in Queens.

The security clampdown, which lasted for hours until investigators began to lean toward explanations of mechanical failure rather than terrorism, disrupted travel across much of the region, and for millions of people it was a harsh reminder of the horrendous losses and swirling emotions of Sept. 11.

But in a city still struggling to cope with terrorist threats, outbreaks of anthrax and a war in Afghanistan, the swift imposition of a broad defensive security shield that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago seemed appropriate -- even normal -- in the new world of living with terrorism.

In Washington, the crash set off the first test of the nation's new homeland security system, set in place two months ago. President Bush and his senior security and intelligence advisers quickly met to analyze information as it became available and coordinate the response of various federal and local agencies that make up the security spectrum.

By late morning and early afternoon, the tense city began to stand down, reopening the airports, river crossings and other transportation links. Traffic began flowing, and millions of people who had watched the drama on television, fearing another terrorist attack, breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Bush administration signaled that it did not appear to be a terrorist attack.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, stepping back into his familiar role as reassuring father, spoke solemnly of the crash and its victims, but was upbeat about New Yorkers. "The city has to keep going forward," the mayor said at a late-afternoon news conference. "The people of this city are the bravest, strongest, the most determined. We are going to keep moving forward."

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said the city's response -- including the closing of airports, bridges and tunnels -- was highly effective and based largely on the experience gained in the World Trade Center attacks. "You have a much quicker reaction to something like this than you would prior to Sept. 11," said Mr. Kerik, who rushed to the site of the crash with the mayor.

Within minutes of the crash, New York City declared the highest alert in its security repertoire. Kennedy International, La Guardia and Newark International Airports were closed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airports. The Federal Aviation Administration barred all aircraft, commercial and private, from a 25-mile radius of Kennedy Airport.

After briefly considering a nationwide air traffic shutdown, like the one it ordered on Sept. 11, the F.A.A. left airports across the rest of the country open. But dozens of domestic and international flights bound for the New York area had to be grounded before their departures or diverted to other airports. Delays and disruptions affected thousands of travelers, who were temporarily stranded at many airports.

Many were irritated, but not Sandy Kramer, 67, a grandmother from Hobe Sound, Fla. "You've got to go with the flow," she said at Newark Airport, where cancellations and delays winked on the departure monitors. "I feel protected because you have soldiers here, and dogs sniffing luggage. But I'm not going to let anyone stop me."

But by 2 p.m., all flight operations had been resumed at La Guardia and Newark Airports, and inbound flights were allowed to land at Kennedy Airport. Departing flights from Kennedy were grounded until early evening, officials said, and delays from the backup continued for hours.

In other precautionary moves, all bridges and tunnels in the city were closed by 9:45 a.m. to private and commercial traffic, according to Tom Cocola, a spokesman for the city's Department of Transportation. The closings led to traffic backups, but no major tangles. Officials noted that traffic was lighter than normal because many workers had the day off for Veterans Day. And city subways and buses continued running.

The purpose of the bridge and tunnel closings, Mr. Cocola said, was not to prevent the movement of potential terrorists but to clear the way for emergency vehicles to get around the city. By 11 a.m., he said, outbound traffic from Manhattan was allowed to resume, and by 12:10 p.m. most of the bridges and tunnels were reopened.

National Guard troops, who have been in place at bridges, tunnels, train stations, airports and other critical sites, had no new orders after the crash. "Our security posture, which was high to begin with, has not changed," said Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, a Guard spokesman. "We already have personnel assigned in direct support of the local authorities. That's there; that has not changed."

Besides closing its bridges and tunnels between Manhattan and New Jersey, the Port Authority closed its bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan, and the PATH rapid transit system to New Jersey was closed for about two hours.

At the United Nations, where security had been stepped up over the weekend with the arrival of President Bush and many world leaders for annual meetings of the General Assembly, news of the crash prompted federal and local law enforcement officials to seal off the 39-story headquarters to pedestrian and vehicular traffic for three hours.

Scores of delegates, staff members, journalists and visitors were turned away until early afternoon, when the restrictions were lifted. Only a few meetings were canceled, but the mood was solemn as shocked officials stood in corridors watching television reports or at windows overlooking Queens and the plumes of smoke rising from the crash site in the distance.

Security had been tight at the United Nations since Sept. 11, with large sanitation trucks filled with sand blocking the approaches on First Avenue and maritime traffic on the East River kept away.

The Empire State Building, the city's tallest skyscraper since the collapse of the trade center, was evacuated. Security guards herded visitors and workers down stairwells as a disembodied voice on a public address system urged office employees to turn off their coffee makers. It had all happened before. "You just have to accept it," Drake Asklar, a clothing designer, said. "This is about the fifth or sixth time we've been evacuated."

At Buchanan, N.Y., 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, security at the Indian Point nuclear plants was heightened after the crash. But Michael Slobodien, director of emergency programs for Entergy , the company that owns the plants, declined to provide details.

"We did increase some of our security activities to reflect a heightened awareness," he said. "We were on the lookout for anything unusual this morning, and we have maintained our posture."

The military did not increase fighter patrols that were already in place over New York City, said Maj. Barry E. Venable, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Since Sept. 11, the command has been flying constant patrols over New York and Washington. More than 100 fighters at 26 bases, mostly Air Force F-15's and F-16's, are on high alert.

Richard J. Sheirer, director of the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, said the security measures put into place yesterday were prudent and effective, a result of learning from experience.

"As we've all said, Sept. 11 was a day that changed just about everything," Mr. Sheirer said. "So our immediate reaction was to take steps we thought were prudent until we knew exactly what we had, and that's exactly what was done."

While the state of Connecticut remained on high alert, no major changes in security were made at airports or nuclear power plants. Bradley International Airport, the Millstone nuclear power station and other sites were on the lookout for trouble after the crash in New York, and Gov. John G. Rowland and other officials were monitoring the situation, a spokesman said.

Metro-North commuter trains ran on schedule, said Dan Brucker, a spokesman for the line.

But New Jersey Transit suspended all bus service into the city during the closing of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, N.J. Transit trains, however, honored bus passes and continued running.

In upstate New York, security at many airports was stepped up as diverted flights from New York made landings and nervous travelers to the city were confronted with delays. Cancellations or delays were posted at airports in Syracuse, Albany, Buffalo-Niagara and Rochester. Several flights diverted from New York landed at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh. Other New York-bound flights were diverted to Atlantic City.

In Washington, President Bush was informed of the crash in New York within minutes, and cleared his agenda to confer with Tom Ridge, the new homeland security director, and other senior advisers. For almost two hours, a group that included Attorney General John Ashcroft, F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and others met by conference call and discussed reports of the crash and how to respond.

Administration officials did not rule out terrorism or any other possible causes. But by assigning the National Transportation Safety Board to take the lead in the investigation, instead of the F.B.I., the Bush administration signaled that the crash was most likely a tragic accident.

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Four convicted in 1986 Berlin disco bombing

USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/13/discobombing.htm

BERLIN (AP) - A Berlin court convicted four people Tuesday in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. The United States blamed the attack on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi - a charge the court said was not proven.

The court said the bombing was planned by members of the Libyan secret service and workers at the Libyan Embassy in then-East Berlin. But Judge Peter Marhofer said prosecutors failed to prove that Gadhafi himself ordered the attack, due to the refusal of the German and U.S. secret services to provide evidence.

Marhofer said "the limited willingness" of the German and U.S. governments to share additional intelligence was one of the disappointments of the trial.

The court said all four defendants plotted the attack, but it found only Verena Channa, a 42-year-old German, guilty of murder. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Yassir Chraidi, a 42-year-old Palestinian accused of being the main organizer, was convicted of multiple counts of attempted murder, as were Musbah Abdulghasem Eter, a 44-year-old Libyan, and a Lebanese-born German, Ali Chanaa, 42. Chraidi was sentenced to 14 years; Eter and Ali Chanaa to 12 years each.

Prosecutors had sought life sentences for all four.

A fifth defendant, Verana Chanaa's sister, Andrea Haeusler, 36, was acquitted because of a lack of evidence.

The April 5, 1986, explosion at the La Belle disco killed Sgt. Kenneth T. Ford, 21, and Nermin Hannay, a 29-year-old Turkish woman, immediately. Another U.S. soldier, 25-year-old Sgt. James E. Goins, died later of his injuries, and 229 people were wounded.

The United States launched retaliatory airstrikes that month on two cities in Libya, which it blamed for the bombing. But after years of investigations and often murky testimony, the four-year trial became a lesson in the difficulty of trying to prove terrorist connections - especially more than a decade after the events.

Prosecutors hoped the trial would prove that Gadhafi had ordered the attack in an act of state-sponsored terrorism.

Chief prosecutor Detlev Mehlis argued that proving his charge of Libyan "state terrorism" in court would strengthen the signal intended by the U.S. war on terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington - that its sponsors will not go unpunished.

Investigators were largely in the dark before the archives of the former East German secret service, the Stasi, opened up after the Berlin Wall fell and Germany reunited in 1990.

Stasi files led prosecutors to Eter, who in 1986 was persuaded to provide evidence for the government's case. He remained a defendant, however, because of what prosecutors cited as limited cooperation.

Prosecutors say he was the Libyan spy agency's point man at the embassy in what was then communist East Berlin. He also was listed as an agent in the Stasi's files.

Two others who worked at the former Libyan Embassy - Chraidi and Lebanese-born Ali Chanaa - were accused of organizing the attack.

The indictment accused Gadhafi of ordering the bombing in revenge for a U.S.-Libyan naval clash in the Mediterranean.

Among the evidence cited was an intercepted radio transmission from the Libyan capital of Tripoli to the Libyan Embassy in then-East Berlin calling for an attack "with as many victims as possible."

The five suspects were arrested in 1996 in Lebanon, Italy, Greece and Berlin.


-------- activists

Loving his neighbor via protest

November 13, 2001
Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/bal-te.journal13nov13.story

Mission: The Rev. Roy Bourgeois is under growing fire as he plans another demonstration to close a military training school in Georgia with a dark history of violence.

COLUMBUS, Ga. - The sign outside Father Roy Bourgeois' tiny apartment here says, "Welcome to Fort Benning." But lately, the sprawling Army base and its host city have been anything but hospitable to the 63-year-old Catholic priest.

Bourgeois is a drawling Cajun who served in Vietnam as a Navy lieutenant before embracing nonviolence and entering the seminary. This weekend, as he has for 11 years, Bourgeois plans to lead thousands of protesters who will be demanding the closing of a U.S.-run school for Latin American soldiers on the base.

The 55-year-old school has a dark past, with a number of notorious alumni tied to killings of civilians in Central and South America. Known for most of its existence as the School of the Americas - foes prefer "School of Assassins" - it was reborn this year as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Though officials have renamed the school, revamped the curriculum and declared a stronger commitment to human rights, Bourgeois and his allies are unmoved. They insist that it remains a training camp for violent thugs, and so the protests continue.

Past demonstrations have seemed almost choreographed. Protesters, who have included actor Martin Sheen, would rally near Fort Benning's main gate, stage a mock funeral procession onto the base and be stopped by military police. First-time trespassers would get letters barring them from the base, while repeat offenders - an 88-year-old nun among them - faced criminal charges.

The Sept. 11 attacks have broken that routine. The grudging tolerance the base and city showed past gatherings seems to have rotted like a Georgia peach left in the sun.

The base, on high alert like all military installations, asked Columbus Mayor Bobby G. Peters shortly after the attacks to deny protesters permission to assemble in front of the main gate, now protected by a barbed-wire fence. The mayor agreed and went even further, asking Bourgeois to put off the gathering until next year.

"This year is different," Peters says, speaking of a need to balance free speech and public safety. "Most common-sense people can see why it's different."

Bourgeois has rejected the request. School graduates have killed and tortured people in El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere, he says, and even in a time of war those victims "cannot be forgotten."

Protesters even draw a link between their aims and President Bush's war on terrorism. "We feel that now more than ever is a time to speak out against terrorism everywhere," says Briana Binkerd-Dale of the School of the Americas Watch, a group Bourgeois founded.

That logic angers school officials. "I'm really insulted and offended they would try to capitalize on what is in the news and try to paint us that way," says Col. Richard Downie, the institute's commandant since January. The idea that he trains terrorists "might make for a great episode on X-Files," he says, but it is false.

The dispute has led to some odd moments: The protesters say their mock funeral procession Sunday does not need a city parade permit because funerals do not require permits. After Peters countered that a funeral can't be a funeral without a body, Bourgeois mused about putting a body - a live one - in a coffin.

The ground rules keep changing. First. Peters told marchers they could rally in Benning Park, a mile and a half from the gate, but not hold a parade. After the City Council deemed that too close to a neighborhood, the mayor offered Golden Park, farther still from the gate. But he said protesters have to disperse before Sunday afternoon's Columbus Riverdragons minor-league basketball game. And still no procession.

The area has not always been home to the school, which opened in Panama in 1946 and remained there until 1984. The aim was to improve Latin American armies and promote democracy. But, in an era when the United States sometimes overlooked human rights problems in the name of fighting communism, even the Army acknowledges some alumni committed wrongs.

Still, the Army says the school has trained more than 60,000 students. "Nobody condemns Harvard because the Unibomber went there," former Army Secretary Louis Caldera once said.

The school's infamous alumni include former Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega and Roberto d'Aubuisson, who led death squads in El Salvador. Others were members of a Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that engaged in kidnapping, torture and executions of several hundred suspected "subversives" in the 1980s.

And according to a United Nations panel, 19 Salvadoran officers who attended the school were involved in the killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador on Nov. 16, 1989.

That was the first time Bourgeois heard of the school.

Born near New Orleans, Bourgeois studied geology in college so he could get rich in the oilfields of Latin America. But after graduating in the early 1960s, with U.S. involvement in Vietnam deepening, he enrolled in officer candidate school in Newport, R.I.

In 1965, he went to Vietnam with the Navy. During a yearlong tour, he met a Canadian missionary priest, he says, and gradually realized the priesthood might be his calling. An Army chaplain recommended he join the activist Maryknoll order, calling it the "Marines of the Catholic Church."

Bourgeois spent several years in seminary, he says, before being assigned to a mission in Bolivia in 1972. During his five years living in a slum outside La Paz, he tasted the repressive rule of leader Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez - a 1961 graduate of the School of the Americas, he later found out.

Kicked out of Bolivia by the government for protesting, Bourgeois turned his attention to the conflict in El Salvador. He was living in Minneapolis in 1989 when the Jesuit priests were massacred, and he went to Georgia to investigate the school's role.

Later that year, Bourgeois rented the small apartment he still calls home and in late 1990 helped organize the first protest to mark the massacre's anniversary. There were just three protesters.

Since then, Bourgeois has made it his mission to shut down the school. SOA Watch is not subtle: Its logo is a skull wearing a graduation cap with a noose hanging from one side instead of a tassel.

The protests have grown over the years, and last year about 8,000 people showed up. Of those, 3,500 marched onto the base, and dozens were charged with criminal trespass. Twenty-four were convicted and sentenced to federal prison, including Sister Dorothy Marie Hennessey, 88, who went to prison after turning down an offer of six months' house arrest in a convent.

Others took note of the school's activities over the years, including several members of Congress who began agitating to close it. Under pressure, the Pentagon decided to remake the school with a more humanitarian face.

Bourgeois says the name change is irrelevant: "It's like taking a bottle of poison and writing 'penicillin' on it. It's still deadly." He says courses still teach combat training.

But Downie, the commandant, says the school is "a new institute for a new century," with an emphasis on peacekeeping, counternarcotics, disaster relief operations and respect for civilian authority. One sign of change: Although sniper training no longer is offered, beefed-up human rights instruction is required of all students, who increasingly consist of Latin American government civilians as well as soldiers and police officers.

None of that moves Bourgeois, who said that with or without a parade permit, "We will march." SOA Watch's Web site says marchers may try to scale or go around the fence to reach the school, about two miles inside the base.

And so Downie is uneasy, worried that tactics used at world trade protests in Seattle and Genoa may resurface in western Georgia, even though previous marches have been nonviolent.

"You're going to have some of these lunatics, and that's going to divert a number of security forces [at Fort Benning]," he says. "We really don't need these kinds of shenanigans and pranks."

----

Trading Up in Qatar

Christian Science Monitor
November 13, 2001
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1113/p10s2-comv.html

The real protests at this week's World Trade Organization talks aren't public. They're happening behind closed doors, and they're coming from farmers' groups, unions, and corporations.

Expanding global freedom for trade - the whole point of the WTO negotiations in the sheikdom of Qatar - is bound to put thousands of companies and millions of people out of work. But so did the cotton gin, NAFTA, and just-in-time management. Economic progress is inevitable, and so should be lowering of trade barriers. The difficult (and compassionate) issue is how to manage the transition so that workers and firms can adjust, instead of being protected forever.

But in Qatar so far, each nation's delegation appears to be defending special interests rather than doing the horse-trading necessary to strike a deal that will help all nations, rich and poor. Ending trade barriers would hike the income of developing countries by between $200 billion and $500 billion a year, according to the World Bank. That alone is worth making a deal.

The United States is defending textile workers, steel companies, and others, while its big developed-nation trading partners, the European Union and Japan, have their own feisty fiefdoms demanding special breaks.

The war on terrorism hangs over the talks in the Gulf, forcing tighter security. But the war's larger meaning is that now is the time to expand freedom, not keep it in check.

Just as the US and its Western allies used open trade during the cold war as a diplomatic tool to oppose communism, they should now expand trade to end the poverty that drives many nations and people to support terrorism against rich nations. That's the "protest" that should be heard.

---

Antitrade activists face tough sell

Christian Science Monitor
November 13, 2001
By Peter Ford
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1113/p6s1-wogi.html

PARIS - Lively salsa tunes blared from a flatbed truck outside the Paris stock exchange, concession stands did brisk business in spicy sausage sandwiches, and thousands of people milled around in the bright autumn sunshine as they unfurled their banners.

"WTO - global pillage" read one. "We are not a commodity" declared another.

But despite the glorious weather, turnout for Saturday's demonstration here against the World Trade Organization meeting in Doha, Qatar, was disappointing. Similar protests across Europe over the weekend also drew only a few thousand people each.

In the wake of Sept. 11, these are difficult days for the anti-globalization movement. Calls that inspired hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Genoa last July, at a summit of rich country leaders, are today less widely heeded.

"We have to fight the same battle for public attention as anyone else," says George Monbiot, an English anthropologist and author who has become a leading light of the movement in Europe. "It is very hard to focus public attention on anything except the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan."

Anti-globalizers, however, are putting a brave face on what they say is only a temporary eclipse. In the long run, they insist, the attacks on New York and Washington only point up the need to create a more just and equitable world.

"The struggle for a fairer, more united world, more respectful of human beings, is one of the surest defenses against the blind hatred and fanaticism of the terrorists," argued a flyer handed out at the protest.

They are not the only ones who believe that the events of Sept. 11 should work to their advantage. Supporters of globalization, who want the WTO's 142 members to launch a new round of negotiations to liberalize world trade in Doha, see the meeting as their response to terrorism.

"By promoting the WTO's agenda," US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said in a recent speech, "these 142 nations can counter the revulsive destructionism of terrorism."

Mr. Zoellick is leading the US delegation to the Doha conference, which closes this evening, in a bid to recover from the disaster that befell the WTO at its last summit in Seattle in December 1999.

At that meeting, an attempt to launch a new round of trade negotiations collapsed - victim of acrimonious disputes between rich and poor countries and tumultuous demonstrations outside.

This time, such demonstrations are impossible: The Qatari authorities - pleading lack of hotel space - have allowed only 300 or so nongovernmental organizations to send one representative each. However, the talks themselves, are no less contentious. The European Union yesterday refused to accept an end to farming export subsidies, putting the 15-nation bloc at odd with the US.

At the same time, a new mood is abroad in the anti-globalization movement, that mass protests, especially violent ones, are no longer appropriate.

"We are turning to more appropriate tactics, vigils not protests, phone-banking instead of sit-ins," says Lori Wallach, who handles trade issues for Ralph Nader's Public Citizen movement and who has traveled to Doha.

The issues the anti-globalizers raise - their arguments that rich countries force poor ones to do their economic bidding and open themselves to exploitation by multinational corporations - have also taken on a different aspect in the past two months. The anti-American flavor that tinged the protests in many parts of the world has lost some of its appeal. A fledgling campaign to boycott Esso, for example, in protest at its role in funding George Bush's campaign and supporting his rejection of the Kyoto treaty on global warming, ground to a halt.

"Anti-Bush arguments were perceived as anti-American," says Monbiot.

Despite people's attention being distracted from world trade issues, traffic on Public Citizen's website has "gone through the ceiling" in the past two months, Ms. Wallach says. In France, Attac - the leading anti-globalization movement - says it is recruiting new members at the same rate as before.

"The more things develop, the more people wonder, 'What can we do about this besides bombing Afghanistan?' " says Remi Parmentier, political director for Greenpeace, the international environmental organization. "What happened and what is happening shows even more the need for a new kind of global security that does not give any purchase to terrorism."

For advocates of globalization, real solutions mean increasing trade liberalization, which they say boosts growth and prosperity everywhere. But to launch a new trade round, they need third world support in the WTO.

"America's ability to sustain coalitions against terrorism will depend in part on attention to problems faced by our partners," Zoellick acknowledged in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

In Doha, says Helwig Schlögl, deputy Secretary General of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), "a new realization that you can't go it alone" and an "increased determination for multilateral cooperation" could engender a new spirit of compromise, he suggests.

The obstacles will not be easy to overcome, however.

The US and other industrialized countries opposes demands from third world countries that they be allowed to override drug patents so as to provide affordable medicines to AIDS sufferers and other patients. This dispute could scupper the meeting, WTO director general Mike Moore has warned.

Developing countries are also demanding that the results of the last round of trade negotiations be implemented before embarking on a new round, and resisting pressure from rich countries to open their economies to foreign investment before local firms are strong enough to compete.

At the same time, Japan is demanding that the US drop punitive duties on certain imports, and developing countries are refusing EU demands that labor rights and environmental protection provisions be included in trade pacts.

------

Hundreds protest disputed German nuclear waste shipment

Tuesday, November 13, 2001
By Stephen Graham,
Associated Press
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11132001/ap_45551.asp

DANNENBERG, Germany -- About 60 tractors on Sunday staged a blockade along the route a shipment of atomic waste will take this week to a long-disputed dump in northern Germany, while hundreds of antinuclear protesters gathered nearby despite a heavy police presence.

Decked with banners such as "Chernobyl on tour," the tractors blocked the main road 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 antinuclear movement.

Authorities imposed restrictions on low flights over the last stretch of the route, but police said the measure was routine and unlinked to any fears of terrorism. Thousands of officers are on duty to help protect the trainload of waste on its journey from a reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, where it was expected to start overnight.

Still, they were unable to prevent about 700 protesters staging a brief demonstration in the village of Splietau, near Dannenberg, although a court had banned gatherings within 50 meters (yards) of the shipment's route. Police put water cannons in place, though they kept them at a distance from the protesters.

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 antinuclear activists. Germany sends spent nuclear fuel to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the waste, shipments the protesters maintain are unsafe.

"We can't stop the shipments, but if nobody goes on to the streets, things would just get worse," said protester Ursula Nass, a 60-year-old Dannenberg resident. "It's not just about here," she added. "It's a global problem."

Authorities are keen to prevent a repeat of protests that disrupted the last waste transport to Gorleben in March, which environmentalists delayed for 16 hours by chaining themselves to the tracks.

But although Sunday's actions and a gathering of some 5,000 people Saturday were peaceful, police have warned that some activists are becoming more radical and could make the shipment a focus of their protest against the war in Afghanistan.

To rally support, protest groups have seized on the Sept. 11 terror attacks as more evidence of the danger posed by nuclear power and the resultant waste shipments.

German authorities acknowledge that nuclear installations wouldn't withstand the kind of attack that felled New York's World Trade Center but insist that there is no reason to call off the shipment.

----

The Coming Apocalypse -
Does anybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?

by Geov Parrish
Tue, 13 Nov 2001
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>

Does anybody in this country get it?

Does anybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?

Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were -- through a gut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression -- at risk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost all delivery of food from the outside world stopped. Now, roads and bridges are destroyed, millions more people are dislocated, and the snow is steadily approaching from higher elevations and from the north.

For weeks, aid organizations, along with voices from throughout the region, have been begging the United States to call off its bombing campaign, at least for long enough so that aid agencies can conduct the massive transfer of food into and throughout Afghanistan that is necessary to prevent death on a scale the world has not seen in a long, long time.

Seven and a half million people at risk of dying in a matter of months.

That's three times the number of people Pol Pot took years to kill. Thirty-five times the number that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. If 5,000 died on September 11, we're talking the equivalent number of deaths to ten World Trade Centers, every day, for 150 days.

Slow, painful deaths. Entirely avoidable deaths. Deaths whose sole cause is not the United States, but most of which can still be prevented -- except that the United States is refusing to allow them to be prevented.

It repulses me to say this, but I suspect a lot of Americans don't care. They'd rather see the United States "get" Osama bin Laden (though there's no actual evidence that we're any closer to that today than we were two months ago, and probably the task is harder as he becomes more popular and protected).

An apocalypse of this scale is simply unimaginable to most of us: no food, in a country with no roads left, no vehicles, displaced people, lost relatives, where the winters are too cold to walk or ride a donkey even to an adjoining village where there might be food.

It's a long way from driving to the nearest Safeway or drive-thru lane when you're hungry. But a lot of people in this country do not care that a staggering number of innocent people are on the verge of being condemned to death, or that most of the world will blame the United States, correctly.

We should care. If the object of this war was to thwart terrorism -- to bring existing terrorists to justice, and to isolate them politically and culturally so that others won't throw in their lot -- in less than a month, the United States already has perpetrated one of the most abject failures in military history.

It still does not know where any of Al-Qaeda's leadership even is. It is on the verge of succeeding in its goal of creating a unified Afghanistan government -- unfortunately, Afghans are uniting behind the Taliban, as warlord after warlord sets aside long-standing differences to stand shoulder to shoulder to fight the American invaders. Tens of thousands more young Muslim men are lining up to cross the borders into Afghanistan to join them. The ones that survive the experience will carry a lifetime of hate: living, breathing proof that within a month, America bombed a country but lost its war in spectacular fashion.

That's today. What will happen if millions of Afghans die this winter? How much future terrorism will the dunderheads of the Bush Administration have inspired then? If several million Islamic sisters and brothers starve to death, innocent civilians trapped between winter and the rage of America, how many of Islam's 1.2 billion adherents -- or the five billion other people on earth -- are going to take George Bush's proclamations about eradicating "terrorists" and "evildoers" to heart, and label him, and us, as the prime examples?

In less than two months, the United States government has gone from the moral high ground of being victimized by one of the most heinous crimes in world history, to being within a week or two of quite visibly committing a crime so much larger as to obliterate the world's memory of September 11.

Remarkably, almost nobody in the United States seems to have noticed, understood, or cared. While even progressives wring their hands over the ambiguity of a war fought under the auspices of America's legitimate right to defend itself, a situation is unfolding in which there is absolutely no moral ambiguity at all, and for which many people will want to hold each of us as accountable as the world held post-war Germans.

Where were you? What did you say? How could you allow this to happen? Or, a more likely reaction in the Islamic world: Why should millions of you not die as well?

America will have set out to isolate one man, and instead killed millions and isolated itself. And much of the world will not rest until we are brought to our knees. Seven and a half million people. The snowline is creeping down the mountainsides. The food is almost gone. The infrastructure is in shambles. There will be no "independent verification" of the body count. There wasn't in the Holocaust or Rwanda or Cambodia, either. The judgment of the world did not need one. The clock is ticking.

Where were you?

-------

Justice and development, not war is answer

Japan Today
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
David Palmer
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=comment&id=110

The current international crisis, which began on Sept 11 with the terrorist attacks on the United States, has now become a U.S.-led war centered in Afghanistan but with the potential to spread throughout the region. U.S. President George W Bush has called for an international coalition to fight a "war against terrorism" in response to the attacks on the U.S.

Many of those opposed to President Bush's approach have started to organize a new peace movement. In the OECD countries opinion is increasingly polarized along these lines, while opinion in the United States overwhelmingly supports the current U.S. government policy. There is a danger in addressing this crisis solely in terms of "war versus peace."

An alternative answer is to look at this international crisis outside these polarities - to view it in terms of international justice and development. The needs of humanity - not the interests of nation states, specific organizations or ideologies - must come first. The following program aims to move toward a solution to the current crisis along these lines.

1)The terrorist attacks on the United States must be condemned unequivocably as an international crime against humanity. Understanding possible motives of the terrorists and their networks can in no way justify such criminality.

2) Recognize that the United States has a positive role to play, given that it is the world's only superpower at this time. However, such a positive role can occur only if the United States recognizes that it is an equal - not superior - to other nations. One basis for this equality among nations is better recognition and utilization of the United Nations and its agencies.

3) The centrality of international law and the establishment and active support of international legal institutions - including an international court - must be affirmed. Due process must apply to all. At the same time, apprehension by force to enforce international law may be required where peaceful means of apprehension are impossible. Those involved in the U.S. attacks must be apprehended and brought to justice.

4) Enforcement of international law may require U.S. leadership, but it must be done in cooperation with U.N. member states and through an international force. Present U.S. policy is aimed at war measures, rather than enforcement of international law - a policy that should be rejected as unworkable and a danger to spreading conflict. Proper enforcement also requires coordinating intelligence and law enforcement operations internationally rather than the United States acting unilaterally in this particular area.

5) Justice demands the implementation of conflict resolution, not conflict escalation.

a) The bombing of Afghan cities has proven counterproductive and is destroying many innocent civilians. It should stop immediately.

b) The voices of Muslim moderates must be heard if Islamist-based terrorism is to be undercut. For too long the Palestinian peoples' voices, in particular, have gone unheeded. Israeli troops must be compelled to pull out of Palestinian territory. Current U.S. military aid to Israel would be best directed toward an international peace keeping force. Israeli and Palestinian representatives should resume negotiations, based on the principles of the Mitchell report, which calls for all parties to move toward calm and to recognize the right of Israel and Palestine to exist as nations. No groups should be barred from these negotiations.

6) Those nations presently excluded from the world community who have expressed sympathy with the victims of the U.S. terrorist attack should be included. If the international coalition against terrorism is to be truly international, then it should include Iran, Libya, and Cuba - and existing economic sanctions should be removed from these countries.

7) The refugee crisis in Afghanistan and throughout much of Central and West Asia must be addressed seriously by all nations in the international coalition. Immediate means should include:

a) Lifting economic sanctions against Iraq as a way to help stem the flood of refugees from that country and to allow food and medicine to again move freely into the country on behalf of people there.

b) OECD countries must open their borders to refugees from these countries and provide them with assistance, including proper housing, medical care, and educational facilities for children.

8) The recruiting bases for terrorism must be eradicated, not by force, but by economic development. This economic development, focused on Central and South Asia must include:

a) Ending smuggling and drug trafficking in the region through law enforcement measures, economic regulation (customs and taxation free of bribery), and active international encouragement of legal trade, transport, and subsidized agricultural production. The objective should be to destroy the black market in Central Asia.

b) Provision of housing and secular education for those in refugee camps throughout the region, as well as promotion of secular education beyond the refugee camps.

c) Encouraging economic development through a varied investment approach, including encouragement of local businesses and hiring, as well as micro-loans to individual merchants.

d) Government and corporate sponsored rebuilding projects throughout the region that will aim to employ large numbers of those currently unemployed.

9) Ensure civil liberties in the developed countries, actively encourage civil liberties and democracy in the developing countries (in particular in South and Central Asia, the present focal point of the crisis).

10) Promote disarmament on all levels.

a) Recall small arms throughout South and Central Asia, along the lines of the Australian government's gun recall program that followed the Port Arthur massacre.

b) Shut off the small arms trade that eminates from countries beyond South and Central Asia.

c) Promote nuclear disarmament among all those countries that now have nuclear weapons. The United States must lead by example.

d) Implement international agreements eliminating nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Again, the United States must lead by example.

The current war in Afghanistan must be addressed in more specific ways than the points above. A useful starting point would be to act on the recommendations of Ahmed Rashid in "The Future of Afghanistan" (Chapter 16 of "Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia," London: I.B Tauris, 2000, pp. 207-216).

The author is a senior lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

----

Token hunger strike against factory's privatisation

Briefs
News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
By our correspondent
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/national/n7.htm

SUKKUR: Pak-Saudi Fertiliser Employees Union (CBA) observed a token hunger strike against privatisation of the factory at its main gate on Monday. Eight employees including union General Secretary Munir Ahmed Ramijo observed the token hunger strike. Hundreds of factory workers were present at the hunger strike camp. CBA President Muhammad Ameen Soomro told the gathering that the government, just to appease its favourites, was selling the factory valued at about Rs 35 to 40 billion at a throw-away price of Rs 6 to 7 billion. He said they could earn Rs 6 to 7 billion for the factory within a short period of four years. He said the government was bent upon ruining the factory, earning Rs 2 billion yearly. Police had cordoned off the entire factory area.

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