------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
A US-Russian alliance against megaterrorism
Safety Is Fewer Missiles
Analysts Debate Next Weapon in Al Qaeda Arsenal
Abandoned al - Qaida Lab Found in Kabul
Analysts Lukewarm on Nuclear Accord
New Cancer Radiation Therapy Shows Promise
IAEA mission to inspect Czech Temelin n-plant
Slovakia oks EBRD deal to fund nuke plant shutdown
Schroeder Faces Confidence Vote Risks
American caucus
Iraq Rejects Plan by U.N. on Sanctions
Japan reactor leak may have started July-company
Putin Offers Americans Thoughts on NATO, Bin Laden
Rapport, but not an arms deal
Putin Fields Questions From American Public on Talk Radio
Warmth, but No Thaw on Missiles
Closer ties for Russia?
U.S. to Pursue Missile Test Plans
U.S. Testing Goes Ahead; Could Violate ABM Treaty
Missile Impasse: The Shape of the Deal
Before and After Bush and Putin's Banter
Strategic missile test
Salvaged Russia Sub to Be Scrapped
Friendly leaders unable to agree on missile treaty
Missile treaty must remain, Putin tells Bush
Summit Is Important Step to Success
Putin refuses to scrap treaty
US rep. wants anti-radiation drug near nuke plants
Federal Guards for Nuke Plants Sought
Probe Finds Law Firm Had Dual Roles
Oak Ridge guards told they have final offer on labor pact
Nuclear Differences Remain as Summit Ends
U.S. Chamber of Commerce gives backing to Yucca
Probe finds Yucca law firm failed to disclose conflict

MILITARY
Alliance Commander Near Kandahar
Afghans Returning Home, Vindicated and Vengeful
Talks Fail With Taliban Besieged in Kunduz
Warlords Are Vying to Fill Vacuum Left by the Taliban
Man Pleads in $32M Weapons Plot
Major Anthrax Developments
U.S. Opts to Keep Smallpox Stock
U.S. Advises Anthrax Drug for Visitors to a Publisher
Senators Seek $3.2 Billion to Fight Germ Threats
Rumsfeld: N. Korea's Arms a Threat
Breaking the Circle
Cuba Ready for Normal US Relations
White House Urges Senate to Confirm 'Drug Czar'
Israel Eases Travel Restrictions during Ramadan
Peres Calls Palestinian State Israel's 'Best Bet' for Peace
A 2nd Night of Protests by Palestinians Angry at Arafat
Coup rumors
Money for Pakistan
Navy, Marine chiefs seek live-fire Vieques training
Sudan Urges U.N. to Review Sanctions
Rumsfeld: U.S. forces in ground combat
U.S. Special Forces Engaged in Ground Combat
A Travesty of Justice
Justice: One standard Secret military courts are unneeded

ENERGY AND OTHER
German parliament ups subsidies for green energy
Bonds to finance windmill construction
US energy demand to rise by one-third by 2020 - EIA
Did Ken Lay Understand What Was Happening at Enron?
UN environment agency welcomes new trade round
Sierra Protection Plan Upheld
Now, the Battle to Feed the Afghan Nation
TO COMBAT GLOBAL POVERTY
Two Roles for Military: Supplying Guns and Butter

POLICE / PRISONERS
Congress passes aviation security bill
Lawmakers demand hearings on tribunals
Gingrich Disfavors National ID Card
The New USA PATRIOT Act
Arabs Question Justice Dept. Plan
A Travesty of Justice
Inmate Education Is Found to Lower Risk of New Arrest
United Plans to Equip Pilots With Stun Guns
F.B.I. Visits Provoke Waves of Worry in Middle Eastern Men
Inquiries Put Mideast Men In Spotlight
Rumsfeld Offers Assurances About Use of Military Courts
Algerian Charged in LAX Bomb Plot
More Terrorists May Be Hiding in U.S.
Ridge Agrees Taliban Losses May Lead to New Terrorism

ACTIVISTS
War on Terror: False Victory


-------- NUCLEAR

A US-Russian alliance against megaterrorism

Boston Globe
By Graham Allison and Andrei Kokoshin,
11/16/2001
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/320/oped/A_US_Russian_alliance_against_megaterrorism+.shtml

PRESIDENT BUSH has warned the world that Osama bin Laden is ''seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.'' To meet this threat, the United States and Russia should take the lead in establishing an Alliance Against Megaterrorism. What should have been a crowning achievement of this week's summit was sadly a missed opportunity.

Presidents Putin and Bush are now actively transforming relations between the United States and Russia. Putin was the first international leader to call Bush after the Sept. 11 assault. Recognizing that US forces would go to alert status, Putin cancelled a Russian military exercise to avoid any possible confusion. As National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice noted: ''If you think back 25 years ago, this would have been a spiral of alerts between two heavily armed, ideologically opposed camps.'' This was, she said, ''the crystallizing moment for the end of the Cold War.''

As participants in building relations between Russia and the United States, we believe the current crisis presents a historic window of opportunity. In earlier discussions, both presidents searched for a ''new strategic concept'' for their post-Cold War relations. While we applaud the announcement of significant reductions in numbers of operational strategic offensive nuclear arms, that numbers game is a holdover from the Cold War, not the stuff of a ''new relationship for the 21st century.''

Post-Cold War relations should begin with shared vital national interests that require cooperation for their fulfillment. The urgency and importance of one such interest was made vivid by Sept. 11: to minimize dangers of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction terrorism. As the inventors and builders of 99 percent of the world's weapons of mass destruction, Russia and the United States have a special responsibility to exercise leadership in this arena.

The surest way to prevent terrorist assaults with weapons of mass destruction is to prevent terrorists from gaining control of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The readiest source of such weapons and materials are the vast arsenals and stockpiles Russia and America accumulated in the Cold War. America and Russia should act now to assure each other that their own houses are in order: securing and/or neutralizing all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material to agreed international security standards on the fastest timetable technically feasible. An ambitious program of action to achieve this objective should be jointly funded by the United States, Russia, and other members of the international coalition against terrorism.

The starting points for a high priority program of specific actions to this end have already been stated by the two presidents. In his major foreign policy campaign address at the Ronald Reagan Library, then-presidential candidate George W. Bush called for ''Congress to increase substantially our assistance to dismantle as many of Russia's weapons as possible, as quickly as possible.'' In his September 2000 address to the UN's Millennium Summit, Putin proposed, ''The world must find ways to block the spread of nuclear weapons by excluding use of enriched uranium and plutonium in global atomic energy production.'' At his joint press conference with Putin on Tuesday, Bush offered that, ''Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.''

What the two presidents failed to announce, however, are concrete actions to achieve this objective. A specific program for minimizing the danger of nuclear weapon terrorism has been developed by the bipartisan Baker-Cutler Task Force Report (www.hr.doe.gov/SEAB/rusrpt.pdf). Initiatives should concentrate weapons and materials in the fewest possible sites, secure them by the most technically advanced means, and neutralize highly enriched uranium by blending it down for subsequent use in civilian nuclear power plants. This program could essentially eliminate the risk that nuclear weapons could be stolen, sold to terrorists, and used to attack America or Russia or others.

Further elements of this new alliance must include a US-Russian led international coalition to cause all other nuclear-weapons states - including Pakistan - to secure their weapons and weapons-usable material within their borders. A complementary international effort to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states should focus on North Korea, Iran, and Iraq through joint political efforts to reinvent a more robust nonproliferation regime of controls on sale and export of weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies.

No one can doubt bin Laden's aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, which he has called a ''religious duty.'' As the international noose tightens around Al Qaeda's neck, it will become more desperate and audacious. The time to act to prevent nuclear terrorism is now.

Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School. Andrei Kokoshin is director of the Institute for International Security Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a former secretary of the Security Council of Russia.

This story ran on page A31 of the Boston Globe on 11/16/2001

---

Safety Is Fewer Missiles

Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2001
EDITORIAL
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-000091681nov16.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Deditorials

President Bush pulled out all the stops for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The White House meeting, followed by 21/2 days at the Bush ranch in Texas, was supposed to cement the friendship between the two. Mostly, it did. Bush ignored the far right and treated Putin as a partner to be consulted.

The dividends came fast and big--no more negotiators haggling for years about the explosive power of nuclear warheads. Bush and Putin boldly agreed to reduce the stockpile of warheads by about two-thirds over a decade.

Their reasons for wanting to slash missile forces, however, are quite different. Moscow cannot afford to keep maintaining and testing them. The Bush administration, however, wants to move from offensive to defensive weaponry--a national missile defense. It believes that by cutting the missile force, the United States can demonstrate to Russia and China that its actions are purely defensive. Putin wasn't buying, at least not yet. Despite the hopes of the Bush administration, he would not alter the 1972 ABM Treaty, which forbids development of a nationwide antiballistic missile system. Arms control analysts say that Putin won't raise a fuss if the administration skirts the edges of the treaty. The Russians figure that no one knows whether testing will actually lead to anything; they intend to make their real stand if a system can ever be deployed. Meanwhile, the United States would sink billions into what's likely to be a rat hole.

This is fine from the Russian perspective, but not from America's. The United States should not be wasting increasingly scarce resources on the 21st century's version of the Maginot Line. Instead, it should spend a little more to help Russia keep track of and decommission its nuclear stockpile; last month Congress rejected spending an additional $131 million to help accomplish that.

Putin clearly wants to move from a lingering Cold War mentality to alliance with the West. One of the most important changes is a willingness to work with NATO on common policies against terrorism and weapons proliferation. This is an amazing contrast with the threatening noises Russia was making until recently about NATO and its expansion into the Baltic states.

Bush's aim should be to lock in Russian cooperation as quickly as possible so that Putin's successors cannot reverse any changes. Missile defense is a mirage. Effective cooperation with Russia is not.

---

Analysts Debate Next Weapon in Al Qaeda Arsenal
Panel Finds Terrorists More Likely to Possess Radioactive 'Dirty Bombs' Than Nuclear Weapons

By Michael Dobbs and Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 16, 2001; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37649-2001Nov15.html

With Osama bin Laden on the run in Afghanistan and the Taliban regime in full retreat, one of the most pressing questions for experts studying bin Laden's terrorist career is whether the Saudi-born dissident has some final cataclysm to unleash on America as an ultimate act of revenge.

Probably not, say U.S. officials and most independent analysts, who are skeptical of claims by bin Laden that he has nuclear weapons or other sophisticated devices capable of causing much greater numbers of casualties than on Sept. 11. They caution, however, that his supporters have dabbled in chemical experiments and shown an interest in acquiring nuclear materials that could be used in conjunction with conventional explosives for a "dirty bomb."

In fact, the nation has more to fear from an attack by terrorists armed with dirty bombs containing radioactive materials packed around an explosive core than from nuclear weapons, a committee of leading radiation scientists has concluded in a report being sent to Congress today. The National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements said that contamination from such an attack would likely extend to several city blocks and that radiation would be "catastrophic but manageable."

The council's findings, which were the result of a three-year study, are in line with informal assessments by government counterterrorism officials and many independent experts. But there is a dissenting view, expressed most forcefully by Graham Allison of Harvard University, who said it is quite "probable" that bin Laden's al Qaeda network has acquired sufficient quantities of fissile material to create a crude nuclear device.

"I find it well within the realm of the probable that they have fissile material from Russia, which they could fashion into a device that they could put into a minivan," said Allison, who served as assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. Another scenario, he said, was to smuggle a nuclear device into the United States through one of the millions of containers that enter the country every year.

In public statements over the last few years, bin Laden has described the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction as "a religious duty" for Muslims waging jihad, or holy war, against the West. "If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God for enabling me to do so," he told Time magazine in December 1998, shortly after issuing a statement calling for America's destruction under the title "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam."

In his most recent interview, with a Pakistani journalist in a mountain hideout near Kabul this month, bin Laden, 44, said his supporters possessed chemical and nuclear weapons as "a deterrent" against the use of such weapons by the United States. But he refused to say how he had acquired his arsenal.

The Taliban's supreme religious leader, Mohammad Omar, was similarly vague yesterday when he was asked a question about bin Laden's possession of weapons of mass destruction in a rare interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. conducted over satellite phone. "The real matter is the extinction of America and, God willing, it will fall to the ground," predicting that this would happen within "a short period of time."

U.S. officials yesterday dismissed such threats as largely bluff, while not doubting that bin Laden is ruthless enough to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States should he ever acquire them.

"What these statements do is merely to reinforce the need to wipe these guys out," said a U.S. official involved in counterterrorism efforts. "When you have got a group that is clearly going after weapons of mass destruction, you have to assume that they will succeed at some point."

The official described the likelihood of bin Laden possessing a full-scale nuclear weapon as "not credible," given the huge difficulties in acquiring sufficient quantities of plutonium or highly enriched uranium needed to initiate a chain reaction. He said that a crude radiological bomb was much more likely, noting that there are 10,000 sites in the world where nuclear materials of one kind or another are stored.

Regardless of the amount of radiation released, any significant attack with a radioactive weapon would cause "chaos," according to the new report to Congress. Public panic caused by the fear of invisible radiation would be a key weapon for terrorists, the report states.

"It's a great psychological warfare weapon," said council member and Texas A&M University professor Ian Scott Hamilton. "It's great for spreading fear."

Council President Charles R. Meinhold said rescue workers would not necessarily be put at risk by radiation from a "dirty bomb," which might be less than levels acceptable for nuclear plant workers. He said the report's most important finding was that government agencies and medical facilities needed more training and equipment to cope with such attacks.

There is evidence that bin Laden has been trying to acquire nuclear materials since at least 1994. Testifying earlier this year in a trial of al Qaeda members accused of bombing U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, former bin Laden associate Jamal al-Fadal said he had tried to acquire uranium from a Sudanese source in late 1993 or early 1994. He did not know whether the acquisition attempts continued after he left the organization.

U.S. officials have also expressed concern at reports that bin Laden supporters have experimented with various poisonous substances at terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Ahmed Ressam, a former member of the al Qaeda terrorist network arrested by U.S. border guards in December 1999, has said his training at the Khalden camp included instruction in how to place cyanide gas near the air intake vents of a building.

In one experiment, Ressam told a New York court in July, an instructor put a dog in a box and poured in some cyanide and sulfuric acid. It took the dog about four minutes to die. "We wanted to know what is the effect of the gas," said Ressam, who is now cooperating with American prosecutors.

Reporters entering Kabul this week in the wake of the headlong Taliban retreat have found some evidence that al Qaeda dabbled in chemical experiments and studied widely known techniques for making nuclear devices. In a front-page report in the Times of London, the paper's correspondent in Kabul, Anthony Lloyd, said he found instructions on how to manufacture the deadly poison ricin in the cellar of an abandoned house used by al Qaeda members.

"A strong dose will be able to kill an adult and a dose equal to seven seeds will kill a child," the instructions said. It was not clear whether al Qaeda members had tried to produce ricin, which was used by the Bulgarian secret police to kill a dissident writer, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978.

Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution, said he would like to see much more evidence before concluding that bin Laden has weapons of mass destruction. "People who claim he has such devices are very skimpy about the evidence," he said. "If he had them, he would probably have used them by now. The goal of his movement is not to bargain and negotiate, but to punish."

--------

Abandoned al - Qaida Lab Found in Kabul

New York Times
November 16, 2001
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghanistan-Abandoned-Laboratory.html?searchpv=aponline

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Materials left behind in a compound used by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network -- including a booklet offering advice on how to survive a nuclear explosion -- suggest the terrorist group may have been trying to develop chemical arms and other unconventional weapons.

Foul-smelling liquids and charred papers covered with chemical formulas littered a makeshift laboratory in one al-Qaida building in the heart of Kabul. Maps, mines and computer manuals were found in others.

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Thursday that the documents are consistent with bin Laden's statements saying he desired nuclear weaponry.

But papers found detailing how to make a nuclear device were ``taken off the Internet some years ago'' and could've been widely available to people other than the al-Qaida terrorists, he said.

U.S. officials have said that they had no information to suggest bin Laden has succeeded in gaining nuclear weapons.

But ``we have to be prepared for all eventualities including a nuclear threat,'' Ridge said.

The Kabul compound appeared to have taken a direct hit from what northern alliance soldiers said was a U.S. rocket.

The Times of London newspaper reported Thursday that designs for nuclear weapons, bombs and missiles -- written in Arabic, German, Urdu and English -- were among the debris left behind.

``There are descriptions of how the detonation of TNT compresses plutonium into a critical mass, sparking a chain reaction, and ultimately a thermonuclear reaction,'' The Times said.

Room after room was filled with papers, formulas and maps, some partially burned, some with handwritten Arabic notations. There was a yellowed page from an old issue of Plane and Pilot magazine -- a story titled ``A Flight to Remember.''

At the rear of the main house, one room contained mountains of papers, some from training manuals showing diagrams of weapons. An English-language book described how to use a recoilless rifle. Small, anti-personnel mines littered the floor of another room.

An alliance soldier in camouflage dress, Mohammed Nisar, walked through three houses pointing out pieces of paper with formulas, handwritten diagrams, pictures of rockets and other weaponry. In the basement of one house was what looked to be a laboratory.

In another house where the al-Qaida men resided, according to Nisar, four different types of land mines were found. Northern alliance troops had emptied two old railway cars parked in the yard that its soldiers said had been packed with arms and ammunition.

``Look, you can see the land mines,'' Nisar said, moving to pick one up. ``It's safe now; we have disarmed it.''

Deep beneath the house were what seemed to be bunkers, with a roof of fresh cement. In one were parts of weapons, with the barrels of anti-aircraft weapons propped up in the corner.

In the yard and in the rooms were more papers and diagrams -- some in Arabic, some in Persian, some in Urdu -- and maps with large circles to mark locations.

Earlier this year, The Associated Press acquired an 11-volume Encyclopedia of Holy War, written in Arabic and dedicated to bin Laden and the Taliban.

Another sprawling al-Qaida compound, built on a former Scud missile base in the hills that surround Kabul's Darulaman Palace, apparently served as training grounds.

``We found lots of books and papers and newspapers,'' said Haji Abdullah, a northern alliance commander. ``We threw most of them out.''

A laminated certificate retrieved from the rubble identified the holder as a ``military training instructor,'' alliance soldier Jan Aga said.

The northern alliance, which now controls the abandoned base, had one Pakistani in custody, Naimad Ullah. Just 17, Ullah could only speak Urdu. He looked terrified.

``I am afraid to say anything, they will take my head off,'' he said in Urdu. The northern alliance soldiers said they had kept him safe for three days and had captured him on the front lines north of Kabul.

Ullah said he was a student at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan and had come to fight with the Taliban during his school holidays. His captors promised to keep him safe.

A letter left behind by another Pakistani was addressed to a brother in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Twelve days into the air campaign, Mohammed Khaliq had written: ``Don't worry about me. Pray for me five times a day. Our enemy is not strong; we will win. If we die here, there is no greater reward.''

---

Analysts Lukewarm on Nuclear Accord

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The mutual pledges to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles by President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia are receiving only lukewarm approval among longtime American analysts.

With the Cold War long over, and the two leaders building a new and friendly relationship, critics are disappointed they did not do more.

Jack Mendelsohn, a former U.S. negotiator now with the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, faults Bush for failing to put the U.S. and Russian cutbacks in a formal treaty.

A treaty would provide a systematic arrangement for doing what Bush promises: scrap about two-thirds of the U.S. strategic warheads stockpile of more than 7,000, Mendelsohn said in an interview. It also would give a way to ensure Bush and Putin follow through on their promises, he said.

At the summit, Putin promised to slash the current Russian long-range arsenal to one-third or less. The Russians are thought to have more than 5,000 warheads.

Mendelsohn said the new levels are still too high, and Bush is talking about spreading the U.S. reduction over 10 years. Questioning why the United States needs 2,000 warheads, the former negotiator said what Bush has done is free the United States from arms control so that U.S. nuclear forces can be increased or decreased.

Alistair Millar, vice president of the Fourth Freedom Forum, a private research group, registered concern that tactical, or short-range, nuclear weapons were not covered at all.

That, he said, is a big problem.

``They are much, much smaller, and they are vulnerable to theft, particularly by potential terrorists. The rise of international terrorism presents a grave and compelling reason to address these weapons,'' Millar said.

Beyond that, he said, ``There are plans in the U.S. and Russia to put more emphasis on development of these weapons for purposes of hitting underground bunkers and targets in the future.''

Neither Russia nor the United States know how many short-range nuclear weapons are in Russia, Millar said. The total could be as few as 4,000 or as many as 20,000, he said.

The United States has about 1,670 tactical nuclear weapons, the private analyst said.

Millar said the United States should take the initiative to encourage Russia ``to get a grip on this at a time when the relationship is closer, while we cooperate to fight terrorism.''

Lee Feinstein, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, offered a more positive critique of the summit talks.

Feinstein said an outline for agreement is within reach on anti-missile defenses as well as on offensive weapons reductions.

Still, he said, ``we don't know the details of the Bush reductions. We don't know, for example, if he is going to offer an executive order to cut back independently or whether he is going to wait for President Putin to take reciprocal action.''

``That's an important question,'' said Feinstein, deputy director of policy planning at the State Department in the Clinton administration.

But Feinstein said it was very significant that Bush proposed a lower U.S. ceiling than the United States and Russia had ever negotiated.

``The president has been trying to say he is not looking to negotiate agreements with Moscow,'' Feinstein said. ``But if you look closely, the two of them are engaged in high-profile negotiations that will wind up being an agreement even if Bush does not call it that.''

---

New Cancer Radiation Therapy Shows Promise

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/health/16CANC.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - A specialized molecule containing a single radioactive atom can find and kill cancer cells in laboratory experiments, according to a report appearing on Friday in the journal Science, and researchers hope to test the technique on humans next year.

Dr. David A. Scheinberg of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York said tests of the technique in mice showed that it selectively killed cancer cells and substantially prolonged the life of laboratory animals with tumors.

"You could inject several million of these molecules, and they would circulate around, find their targets' cells, be taken inside and then kill the cells," Dr. Scheinberg said. "These are extraordinarily potent drugs."

Before the technique can become a routine cancer therapy, researchers must find out whether its low radiation will harm normal cells.

In their study, Dr. Scheinberg and his associates put a single atom of actinium-225, a radioactive isotope, inside a cagelike molecule. Attached to the molecule and the radioactive atom was an antibody, a protein that will lock onto a corresponding protein on the surface of a cell.

When the molecule is injected into the body, it travels through the bloodstream until the antibody locks onto a cell and moves inside it. Once inside, particles irradiated from the actinium-225 will kill the cell.

Tests exposing the caged atom to laboratory cultures showed that it could kill a variety of cancers, including cells of leukemia, lymphoma and breast, ovarian and prostate cancer.

The researchers also tested the technique in mice that had been injected with human cancer cells. Mice that did not receive the therapy lived an average of 43 days before dying of cancer.

Treated mice lived up to 300 days, with those receiving the highest radiation dose living the longest. Mice that lived 300 days had no evidence of tumors.

-------- europe

IAEA mission to inspect Czech Temelin n-plant

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13328

PRAGUE - A mission of nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will inspect the controversial Czech nuclear power station at Temelin which has sparked a bitter row with neighbouring Austria, the plant said.

Temelin spokesman Milan Nebesar said yesterday the mission of 11 foreign experts would check the way the new Soviet-designed station has tackled objections from the fiercely anti-nuclear Austria.

Vienna fears an accident at the plant, built just 60 km (37 miles) from its borders. An Austrian observer will take part in the mission, which starts on Sunday and will last one week.

"The November inspection will focus on purely technical issues. It will evaluate the advance of their solution after five years, since a 1996 inspection," Nebesar said in a statement.

"Technical solutions which have been put in doubt by Austria and Germany will also be considered," the statement said.

Temelin is one of the key assets of power company CEZ , which the government aims to sell to a foreign investor by early 2002.

IAEA has carried out 17 missions at the station, which uses Soviet-designed VVER-1,000 reactors and a modified western control system.

Austria, which opposes the usage of nuclear energy as such, has threatened to block the Czech Republic's entry into the European Union, expected in 2004, if the plant is put into full operation. But the EU has said Temelin is not a European issue but rather a bilateral one.

The Czechs claim the plant is safe. Temelin's first of two blocks was launched last year but has gone through a number of minor glitches and has not been put in full operation.

Austrian and domestic opposers have criticised the design of high-pressure steam pipes and relief valves at the plant.

----

Slovakia oks EBRD deal to fund nuke plant shutdown

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13326/story.htm

BRATISLAVA - The Slovak government yesterday gave final approval to an agreement with the EBRD to set up a fund financing the shutdown of two reactors in the controversial nuclear power plant Jaslovske Bohunice.

Slovakia has pledged in an agreement with the EU to phase out the Soviet-designed V1 Jaslovske Bohunice reactors by 2006 and 2008.

Jaslovske Bohunice has drawn repeated criticism from Slovakia's nuclear-free neighbour Austria, which has questioned the plant's safety standards.

Under the approved agreement, the EBRD and Slovakia will co-manage a fund providing finances needed to rebuild the plant's infrastructure for a different use in the energy sector and to cover social programmes and retraining for V1 employees.

"The agreement will be signed in London tomorrow," Economy Ministry spokesman Peter Chalmovsky told Reuters.

The EU will contribute 6.5 billion crowns ($133.7 million) to the new fund. Economy Minister Lubomir Harach said in September that the entire cost for the shutdown of the two Bohunice reactors was estimated at 14.8 billion crowns.

The plant in Jaslovske Bohunice is the oldest nuclear power plant in Slovakia, with its first block put into operation in 1978 and the second in 1980.

The blocks, equipped with Soviet-type VVER 440 reactors, are to be taken off line in 2006 and 2008, respectively.

The government's original shut-down plan called for the V1 plant to be preserved for 70-80 years before being demolished.

The third and the fourth blocks of the Jaslovske Bohunice complex - part of the V2 plant - came on line in 1984 and 1985. The country also has two more nuclear reactors equipped with western technology in its more-modern Mochovce plant.

-------- germany

Schroeder Faces Confidence Vote Risks

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Germany-Politics.html?searchpv=aponline

BERLIN (AP) -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was betting his coalition with the Greens party would emerge strengthened from a confidence vote Friday that he tied to a mandate on German deployment in the war against terrorism.

Straw polls of the coalition factions in parliament early Friday indicated Schroeder was likely to win the gamble, which was aimed at underlining his pledge to engage 3,900 troops in the U.S.-led campaign. The Social Democrats closed ranks firmly behind the chancellor, and only four Greens lawmakers continue to oppose the deployment.

Schroeder's coalition needs a majority of all lawmakers in the 666-seat legislature -- 334 votes -- to survive. The deployment, however, would be approved with a simple majority of lawmakers present for the vote. The governing coalition has 341 seats; the opposition 325.

With some pacifists in his coalition stubbornly opposing what would be Germany's largest military foray outside Europe since World War II, Schroeder opted for the confidence vote -- only the fourth in postwar Germany -- rather than accepting approval of the deployment on the strength of opposition support.

In a speech to the full parliament, Schroeder urged lawmakers in his coalition to back the military deployment -- thereby reinforcing the government -- in a signal to the world of Germany's reliability in the international fight against terrorism.

``Today's decision on the military deployment will certainly be a turning point: for the first time soldiers will be readied for armed deployment outside the NATO region,'' Schroeder said. ``For a decision of such consequences, it is absolutely necessary that the chancellor and the government relies on a majority from their own coalition.''

With the military deployment tied to a confidence vote, the opposition has vowed to vote against the measure rather than support the chancellor. They have complained the chancellor's gamble has harmed Germany's image abroad.

``Mr. Chancellor, you are playing thoughtlessly with foreign policy because you cannot manage your domestic policies, in a last-ditch effort to save your government,'' the conservative Christian Democrats' parliamentary leader, Friedrich Merz, said. ``Such a chancellor doesn't deserve trust.''

However, some political analysts believe the chancellor is acting from a position of strength, seeking to consolidate power to keep the three-year-old coalition together until elections scheduled next fall.

Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, said Schroeder had calculated the risk -- and was unlikely to expose himself to early election. ``It's more an attempt to assert his leadership,'' Neugebauer said.

With a government majority of just 16, the chancellor left dissenters little room to maneuver.

``It's his decision as chancellor (but) I regret it,'' Greens' co-chairwoman Claudia Roth told Suedwestrundfunk radio. ``We still have colleagues who believe they can't vote yes.''

Stepping up the pressure, Schroeder's Social Democrats say they favor early elections if the confidence vote fails.

``We're not at all afraid,'' party Secretary-General Franz Muentefering said Thursday. But, he stressed, ``we're interested in being able to continue with this coalition.''

The military deployment itself isn't at risk. If it is defeated in Friday's vote, parliament will vote on it again next week, this time with opposition support.

New elections present risks for the opposition Christian Democrats, now engaged in an uncomfortable debate on whether chairwoman Angela Merkel or two rivals should be the next chancellor candidate.

And an early ballot would be dangerous for the Greens, who have lost support in a series of state elections as they made uncomfortable decisions over military operations and the slow phasing out of nuclear power.

The coalition itself has survived repeated bouts of tension over sending German forces to the Balkans in recent years, with the Greens' most prominent member, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, among the most ardent backers of deployments.

A survey by the Wahlen research group for ZDF television, released Thursday, showed 59 percent of Germans favor the military deployment and 36 percent oppose it. The telephone poll of 1,098 voters was carried out between Monday and Wednesday.

-------- india

American caucus

November 16, 2001
Embassy Row, James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011116-6586464.htm

Two years ago, Narayan Keshavan began a behind-the-scenes campaign to encourage members of the Indian Parliament to form an America caucus along the lines of the influential India caucus in the U.S. Congress.

Just before the Washington visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, lawmakers in New Delhi last week announced the opening of the Indo-American Parliamentary Forum.

Mr. Keshavan, an Indian American who served as director of the Congressional Caucus on India, said the new Indian parliamentary group would help improve relations with the United States by promoting contacts between elected officials of both countries.

"Now U.S.-Indian relations will receive a definitive boost because there will be effective coordination between the elected - and accountable - members of the legislatures of the world's two largest democracies," Mr. Keshavan told Embassy Row.

"Thus far, the destiny of U.S.-India relations was primarily controlled by unelected bureaucrats, especially pinstripes, from both nations.

"Now elected politicians from both nations will get to have a greater say, making the job of the White House and the prime minister's office a little bit easier."

Mr. Keshavan, now director of the Indian-American Republican Council, noted that the two caucuses were of comparable size, with 125 members of Congress and 120 Indian legislators.

In New Delhi, Rajiv Shukla, a member of Parliament, said the new Indian caucus will serve as a "bridge" and "consolidate relations" with the United States.

"The forum will also focus on explosive issues such as terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, drug trafficking and human rights," he said.

-------- iraq

Iraq Rejects Plan by U.N. on Sanctions

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/middleeast/16IRAQ.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 15 (Agence France-Presse) - Iraq reiterated its rejection of a United Nations resolution that would lift sanctions against the country in return for international weapons monitoring, the official Iraqi News Agency said today.

Foreign Minister Naji Sabri renewed Iraq's rejection of the resolution in talks with the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, during a meeting of the General Assembly in New York last week.

Mr. Sabri told Mr. Annan that Baghdad "refuses to implement Resolution 1294," which was adopted by the Security Council in 1991 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The sanctions imposed after the invasion initially included a ban on all trade, embargoes on oil and weapons, a freeze of Iraq's foreign assets and a ban on international flights.

In April 1991, the council said the sanctions would be removed only when it was satisfied that Iraq had eliminated all its weapons of mass destruction.

Since then, it has allowed Iraq to export crude oil under United Nations supervision and to import food and other necessities, including oil industry equipment and spare parts.

Iraq insists that it has already eliminated banned weapons of mass destruction and has refused to allow United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country.

-------- japan

Japan reactor leak may have started July-company

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13338

TOKYO - Chubu Electric Power Co Inc said yesterday that a water leak found at a nuclear reactor at its power plant in central Japan late last week may have started in July.

"It is not conclusive, but some facts suggest that it may have been leaking since July," a company spokesman said.

Chubu Electric, Japan's third largest power utility in terms of electricity sales, first found the leak - which contained some radiation - on Friday during an inspection of the 540-megawatt No 1 reactor at the Hamaoka power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture.

The No. 1 reactor was shut down on Wednesday last week after emergency alarms sounded.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a government agency under Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), has tentatively classified the steam leak accident a "Level one" on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

The water leak was tentatively designated a "Level zero +" on the scale which runs from zero minus to seven, with seven being the most severe form of accident.

-------- missile defense

Putin Offers Americans Thoughts on NATO, Bin Laden

Yahoo News
Reuters
Friday November 16
By Ron Popeski
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011116/ts/summit_putin_radio_dc_1.html

WACO, Texas (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. radio listeners on Thursday that there was nothing Russia could do if more ex-communist countries wanted to join NATO and that he had various blunt ways of describing Osama bin Laden -- but that standards of decency prevented him from uttering them in public.

In a freewheeling 45-minute interview and phone-in on National Public Radio, Putin also offered some insight into his literary preferences and his passion for judo.

Putin told a listener from Seattle that he could neither support nor oppose NATO membership for the three former Soviet Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

``If we change the format of the relationship between Russia and NATO, then I think NATO enlargement will cease to be a relevant issue,'' Putin said in the broadcast, conducted in New York and heard throughout the country at the end of his three-day visit to the United States.

``I am not opposed to it, I just don't think it makes any sense if we are to deal with the issue of increasing national security. We, of course, are not in a position to tell people what to do. We cannot forbid people from making certain choices if they want to increase the security of their nations in a certain way.''

After holding talks with President Bush at his Texas ranch, Putin flew to New York to view the ruins of the World Trade Center, destroyed in the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks, and to express fresh solidarity with the United States in its campaign against terrorism.

Putin in October indicated for the first time that Russia would not oppose further enlargement of NATO if Moscow were involved in the process, and during his U.S. stay he stressed that NATO stood to gain from including Moscow in its decision-making and by treating it as an ally against threats to world security.

REAGAN ``A LITTLE EXTREME''

He issued his new broadside against bin Laden in response to a question from Virginia over how he felt in the 1980s, when he worked for the KGB, about then-President Ronald Reagan's denunciation of the Soviet Union as an ``evil empire.''

``I think he was being a little extreme and that such an attitude was unlikely to accomplish an objective even if his objectives were noble,'' he said ``It was a motto, a slogan of the day rather than a policy pursued by Reagan.''

But Bush's description of bin Laden as ``the evil one,'' he said, was ``very mild as a choice of words. I have other ways of putting it but am restrained by the fact that I am talking to the media and this is hardly appropriate. These terrorists do not treat the rest of humanity as human beings. We are not even enemies as far as they are concerned, just dust.''

Putin made only brief references to the failure during his visit to come to an agreement on U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield and withdraw from parts of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Bush continued to dismiss the pact as outdated, while Putin said Moscow was still in favor of retaining it.

The Kremlin leader raised no objections to a Texan listener's suggestion that the United States and Russia might join forces in creating such a shield.

``The most important thing is to work on a system that rather than generating mutual distrust...engages us in building a system toward the opposite end,'' he said. ``I believe such a scenario is feasible and that's what I feel my partner and colleague President Bush is prepared to do.''

Putin's interview, similar to phone-ins conducted by a Moscow radio station with former President Bill Clinton and other world leaders, also delved into Putin's life outside the Kremlin.

He told listeners he had started taking part in a Russian form of wrestling at 14 and later graduated to judo, which he still practiced regularly, and repeated his feeling that the sport amounted to a ``philosophy.'' He also listed his favorite classic authors as Russians -- Tolstoy, Chekhov and Gogol.

He discounted any possibility of foreign mediation to settle Russia's conflict with separatists in Chechnya, saying Russia's own territory was at issue. Political means would be used to find a solution, he said, without elaborating and ''terrorists'' and foreign mercenaries would be ``brought to justice or destroyed.''

---

Rapport, but not an arms deal
Talks will continue toward compromise on missile defense

Baltimore Sun
By David L. Greene and Mark Matthews
Sun National Staff Originally
November 16, 2001
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.summit16nov16.story?coll=bal%2Dnews%2Dnation

CRAWFORD, Texas - Despite signs of a growing personal rapport, President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ended their three-day summit yesterday without an agreement on how the United States can proceed with the development of a missile defense system.

"We have a difference of opinion," said Bush, who took Putin to Crawford High School near his ranch, where they fielded students' questions on issues ranging from Afghanistan to whether Putin enjoyed his Texas barbecue dinner.

"The great thing about our relationship is, our relationship is strong enough to endure this difference of opinion," Bush said. "And that's the positive development."

Both leaders said that talks toward a compromise on missile defense would continue. And they vowed to ensure that their rift over the issue would not mar relations between their nations. Bush hailed Putin as "a man who is going to make a huge difference in making the world more peaceful, by working closely with the United States."

The two presidents found much common ground, agreeing most notably that their countries, former Cold War rivals, would sharply reduce their nuclear arms stockpiles over the next decade. They also committed to continued cooperation in fighting international terrorism and in helping to build a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan free of terrorists and repression.

Bush said he had accepted an invitation from Putin to visit Russia, though he did not say when he would make the trip.

But on the missile defense issue so important to him, Bush failed to achieve what he wanted. He had hoped to reach at least an understanding with Putin that would allow U.S. missile defense testing to proceed aggressively without provisions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty standing in the way. The treaty bars the development of missile defense systems.

Putin, while signaling that he wants to be flexible on allowing American tests, refused to yield in his insistence that the ABM Treaty remain in force.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, told reporters: "One way or another, the United States is going to have to get out of the constraints of the ABM Treaty so that we can begin to explore in a robust way, rather than in a constrained way, what our options are for missile defenses."

She added: "We're not going to violate treaties, so we're going to have to find a way to get out of those constraints."

But Putin did not gain what he had hoped to take from the summit, either. The Russian leader arrived for his first visit to the United States as president with an expressed desire to secure a concrete deal on strategic arms. He will return home without the formal nuclear arms deal he had sought.

At the same time, the Russian president refused to budge in his position that the ABM Treaty should endure.

Putin said yesterday that he and Bush share a desire to protect the world from "future threats," presumably attacks from rogue states or terrorists. The Russian president said his belief that missile defense systems are not the ideal way to counter such threats means only that he differs with Bush on the "ways and means" to reach "the same objective."

Speaking last night on National Public Radio, Putin said: "We simply cannot fail to understand the importance of the quality of this relationship - no matter how difficult the challenges are, how difficult the problems are, that we are solving, such as the ABM Treaty."

Putin was in a strong position politically at home before the summit and will likely remain so, said Andrew Kuchins of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"I don't think it's ideal [for Putin] that he doesn't come out with a more solid agreement," Kuchins said. Before the summit, he noted, Putin had signaled readiness to compromise on the ABM Treaty and allow more expansive testing.

As long as a formal accord remains elusive, some analysts say, the United States will proceed with tests of an anti-missile system and Moscow will withhold any complaint unless it concludes that the treaty is being violated egregiously.

Rice said the timeline for missile defense testing remains unchanged. But the national security adviser said, perhaps more explicitly than ever, that Bush is open to negotiations on how to allow testing without necessarily scrapping the ABM Treaty.

"We're going to have to move beyond it," she said of the treaty. "What 'move beyond it' actually means - does it mean that there is a new strategic framework in place? That is the nature of these discussions, and those discussions are continuing."

Because the president has vowed not to violate the ABM Treaty, Pentagon officials said, any testing in the near future will be kept within the limits of the accord.

The next test is scheduled to take place between the end of this month and mid-December. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that the test will be altered to make sure it abides by the treaty.

Another test is to be held between January and March. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz has raised the possibility that this test - using anti-ballistic missile radars and air-defense radars - would violate the treaty.

Wade Boese, of the independent Arms Control Association, said this test would likely be postponed if Pentagon lawyers conclude that it would violate the treaty.

In any case, Boese said, "I don't think the Russians will raise a big stink. They're not going to do anything that will compel the United States to pull out of the treaty."

Rose Gottemoeller, an arms-control specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that with Bush intent on sustaining and strengthening the anti-terror coalition - in which Putin is a key partner - he is unlikely to announce a withdrawal from the treaty anytime soon.

Russian and U.S. officials gathered in Texas continued trying to hammer out a compromise on another area of disagreement yesterday. Putin has said that he wants to negotiate a formal treaty to ensure that, over the next decade, the nuclear weapons cuts announced this week can be verified.

Bush has said he prefers to treat the weapons cuts simply as unilateral steps by each nation, in response to a safer world today compared with the Cold War.

Putin did not bend on that point yesterday. When a Crawford student asked both men whether they intended to destroy nuclear warheads or simply make them inactive, the Russian leader said the question showed precisely why a formal agreement is necessary.

"What you would do with those arsenals is subject to negotiation," Putin said, "with the result of those negotiations depending on the level of trust between the United States and Russia."

Answering the same question, Bush went further than Putin, saying that "we are talking about reducing and destroying" warheads.

"We need to get beyond the notion that in order to keep the peace, we've got to destroy each other," he said.

Rice said Bush did not want to repeat the drawn-out U.S.-Russian arms talks of the past, and that "we are more than willing to talk with the Russians about various levels of codification of such an arrangement. We have not said 'treaty.' They have said they are interested in a treaty. But this is an open discussion."

As they spoke inside Crawford High, with drenching rain falling and thunder rumbling outside for the second day, Bush and Putin portrayed their personal chemistry as a "historic" improvement over past U.S.-Russian relations.

"When I was in high school, Russia was an enemy," Bush said. "Now, high school students can know Russia as a friend. We're working together to break the old ties, to establish a new spirit of cooperation."

Having held a formal news conference in Washington on Tuesday, Bush and Putin appeared relaxed, even playful, at their appearance yesterday at the high school.

Noting that he and Putin don't agree on every topic, Bush told the students: "You probably don't agree with your mother on every issue, but you still love her, though, don't you?"

Asked how he had enjoyed his barbecue dinner at Bush's ranch, Putin deadpanned: "I had a hard time imagining how a living person could create such a masterpiece of cooking."

Bush said he thought that Putin "really enjoyed himself" in Texas, and that he should come back.

"I told him he was welcome back next August," Bush said, referring to a time when the heat in central Texas often hits 100 degrees.

"He said, 'Fine, and maybe you'd like to go to Siberia in the winter.'"

---

THE WORLD
Putin Fields Questions From American Public on Talk Radio

Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2001
By STEVE CARNEY, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000091587nov16.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Da%5Fsection

WASHINGTON -- During an unprecedented hour of questioning Thursday night, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin plunged into American talk radio--showing off his dry wit and his contempt for terrorists, expressing optimism about the future of democracy in his country, and thanking Texans for the reception he received there.

His appearance on National Public Radio marked the first time a Russian or Soviet leader has taken questions live on the air from ordinary Americans. And moderator Robert Siegel, co-host of NPR's afternoon newsmagazine "All Things Considered," alternated his own questions with those asked by callers and the 2,000 others who e-mailed queries for Putin.

Putin's appearance at NPR's New York studios was delayed by a tour of the wreckage of the World Trade Center, even though he said his trip to New York was not an official part of his U.S. visit. "I could not help but come here," he said, "and pay my respects to those who had suffered in this tragedy." He said he inscribed a memorial poster at the scene, writing, "This great city, and the great people of America, will no doubt prevail."

The interview was a blend of present and past. When asked what he thought about President Reagan calling the Soviet Union "the evil empire," the former KGB colonel said "that assessment was more of a motto, a slogan of the day, than a long-term policy." But when asked about President Bush's calling Osama bin Laden and his fellow terrorists "the evil ones," Putin said Bush was "being very mild. I have other epithets."

Even though Putin and Bush have not been able to agree on the question of missile reduction and defense, the Russian leader said the ever-warming relationship between them and their countries will lead to an agreement. "I don't have any doubts whatsoever that, no matter which scenario unfolds, our relationship will not deteriorate. We will be able to arrive at a solution that will be acceptable for everyone involved," he said, agreeing to one listener's suggestion that the United States and Russia work on a missile defense system together.

During the 45 minutes that he took questions, Putin talked about his black belt in judo, rejected the idea of the United Nations brokering a peace in Chechnya and said that he never regretted having worked for the KGB or its successor agency.

"I did my duty, I served my country, and I believe that I did a fairly decent job at that," he said. "However, one must not forget that we lived in an entirely different world then, a world that is no longer here.

"As far as I know, though, in the United States, there is a certain amount of experience where ex-intelligence employees became heads of state," he said, jokingly referring to the first President Bush, who was once director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

NPR officials said they scored the exclusive when Russian Embassy officials contacted Martha Wexler, the network's editor for Russian coverage, a few weeks ago.

"When they came to talk to us," said NPR President and Chief Executive Kevin Klose, "I emphasized we have a very big national audience and [that] the listenership across the country is deeply interested in foreign news."

The network reaches about 15 million listeners weekly with its more than 600 affiliates. It also broadcasts overseas via NPR Worldwide and the American Forces Network.

The Russians specifically asked that Putin be able to take questions from American listeners. NPR's Klose said there were no ground rules regarding the questions, and the choice of callers was up to Siegel, who picked them from a computer screen showing their names and topics.

Siegel and Putin were joined by two translators--one provided by NPR, the other by the Russians. They worked in a studio separate from the two principals, said Bruce Drake, NPR vice president of news and information, to avoid the babble of several people speaking at once into open microphones. The translations were a necessity--Putin is just starting to learn English.

Siegel, who has interviewed President Clinton, the Dalai Lama and other world leaders, said earlier in the week of Putin: "He's one of these people who's leading his country at what may be a turning point. It's a bit like interviewing Gorbachev in 1987."

Putin's NPR appearance mirrors a visit Clinton made to Moscow in June 2000, when he took questions from Russians during a program on the independent radio station Echo of Moscow, since taken over by the state-run gas company. The takeover came after Vladimir A. Gusinsky, the media mogul who owned that station, had been charged with embezzlement, an arrest his supporters called retaliation for his government criticism.

"There's not a great record for supporting independent media," said Klose, a former Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post. But during Thursday's show, Putin said that the main barrier to a free press in Russia is the immaturity of the country's market economy, which keeps the media beholden to their financial sponsors. But he said that he's confident that the market economy and democracy in Russia are continuing on parallel paths.

"This is an irreversible process. The foundation of the democracy will continue to strengthen, and the market economy will continue to progress," Putin said. "The point of no return is way in the past."

---

Warmth, but No Thaw on Missiles

Los Angeles Times
November 16, 2001 U.S.
By JAMES GERSTENZANG and NORMAN KEMPSTER, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000091586nov16.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Da%5Fsection

CRAWFORD, Texas -- President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin wrapped up their three-day summit Thursday without resolving their disagreement on missile defenses, but they minimized their differences and stressed their readiness to reduce nuclear weapons and fight terrorism together.

"The more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way," Bush said.

The sessions at the White House and at the president's ranch were their fourth encounter in five months. At least in public, the two men this week displayed a growing chumminess that is rare on the diplomatic stage--particularly when leaders from Moscow and Washington meet. During a joint appearance Thursday at Crawford High School, Bush said in response to a student's question: "There's no doubt, the United States and Russia won't agree on every issue. But you probably don't agree with your mother on every issue."

Putin, abandoning the dour expression he often displays in public, grinned broadly.

Putin invited Bush to visit Russia, and Bush accepted--with the proviso that with the harsh Russian winter approaching the visit be scheduled for a warm time of the year.

In their comments at the high school, each signaled a willingness to work with the other on the missile defense issue.

Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said the Pentagon intends to proceed with its plan to test potential missile defense systems "in a robust way, so we can evaluate [their] potential." But she said the two presidents emerged with the understanding that their differences over such an issue will not stymie the improving relations between nations that were the Cold War's key combatants.

"We have a difference of opinion," Bush said of his goal of building a defense system. But he added: "Our relationship is strong enough to endure this difference of opinion. And that's the positive development. Our disagreements will not divide us."

He also said: "It's one thing for he and me to have a personal relationship. The key is that we establish a relationship between our countries strong enough that will endure beyond our presidencies."

Putin, taking his turn to answer a student's question, said: "Our objective is common both for the United States and for Russia. The objective is to achieve security for our states, for our nations and for the entire world."

He said Moscow and Washington share a concern about the threats posed by missiles, "and here is a common ground for our further discussions."

Whatever solution is reached, he said, "it will not threaten . . . the interests of both our countries and of the world."

The Russian president and his wife, Ludmila, spent the night at Bush's ranch, in a guest house near the president's home on the 1,600-acre spread.

During Putin's visit to the U.S., the two presidents shared four meals together over 53 hours. On at least two occasions, they delved deeply into the war in Afghanistan. After leaving Texas, Putin traveled to New York, where he toured the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

On Tuesday in Washington, each leader announced plans to reduce his nation's arsenal of nuclear arms by about two-thirds. Putin, however, would like to put these pledges into writing, while Bush questioned whether that would be necessary.

Although Bush didn't get the go-ahead from Putin for the U.S. missile defense program, the Russian president didn't say anything to cause the administration to change its plans. The Pentagon is tentatively scheduled to conduct its next test within weeks. And the administration hopes to begin building a command and testing facility in Alaska next spring.

The planned test of an interceptor rocket wouldn't violate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which allows each country to deploy up to 100 such rockets to defend either its capital or an offensive missile facility. Although Bush's plans for a nationwide defense system would violate the treaty, the current round of interceptor tests technically could be explained as an attempt to update rockets for the sort of system that is permitted.

The Bush administration acknowledges, however, that the Alaska facility would violate the treaty because it would be designed to test a system covering the whole country.

Russia believes that the ABM treaty ensures stability in the nuclear era because if neither country maintains a comprehensive defense against nuclear missile attack, each would probably refrain from launching an attack.

Bush argues that his proposed defensive system would not be built to protect the United States from Russia, but from an attack by "rogue states," such as Iraq or North Korea, or by a terrorist organization.

Most arms control experts believe that Bush and Putin have reached a tacit understanding allowing the United States to go ahead with tests, even if some prove technical violations of the treaty. This course would postpone a potential showdown on the missile defense issue until Washington is ready to deploy its system, possibly years away.

The experts say such an understanding would appear to meet the minimum needs of both leaders: Bush can go ahead with development of a missile defense system, and Putin can say he preserved the ABM treaty, at least for the time being. Moreover, from Bush's standpoint, the deal can be done without detailed negotiations.

"The U.S. doesn't have a deployment program--it has only a testing program," said Jack Mendelsohn, vice president of Lawyers Alliance for World Security and a former U.S. arms control negotiator. "The U.S. doesn't know what it will eventually deploy. The Russians are prepared to ease the testing limits, but they do not want to abandon the restrictions on deployment until they know what is headed their way."

Bush has made no secret of his intention to withdraw from the ABM treaty as soon as it starts to restrict his options. Because the pact allows either country to withdraw after giving six months' notice, there is nothing much Putin can do to stop Bush from tearing up the treaty. But by agreeing not to make an issue of testing, Putin can preserve the pact for several more years.

Raymond Garthoff, another former U.S. arms control negotiator, agreed that the summit means that "any serious difficulty over the ABM thing is put off for a while."

Overall, experts said the summit set a favorable tone but was short on accomplishments.

"It is a positive summit, but there is no breakthrough," said Ariel Cohen, an expert on Russia at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank. "Expectations were higher before the summit than they are today."

The two presidents used their joint appearance in the gymnasium at Crawford High to end the summit on a light note, joshing each other about the extreme weather one can encounter during a summer in Crawford and a winter in Siberia.

"I think the president really enjoyed himself," Bush said of Putin. "I told him he was welcome to come back next August. . . . He said, fine, maybe you'd like to go to Siberia in the winter."

The Russian president, apparently coached in the folkways of the state, said: "We in Russia have known for a long time that Texas is the most important state in the United States."

Pressuring Bush to hurry up his visit to Russia, Putin called out to the audience: "At the count of three, those who want your president to come to Russia, raise your hands and say, yes."

With that, he counted, in English, "one, two," and the audience shouted "Yes."

The notion of a visit by a Russian president to this town of 700 in conservative central Texas appeared to capture Bush's imagination.

"I bet a lot of folks here, particularly the older folks, never dreamed that an American president would be bringing the Russian president to Crawford, Texas," Bush said. "A lot of people never really dreamed that an American president and a Russian president could have established the friendship that we have."

Gerstenzang reported from Crawford, Kempster from Washington.

---

Closer ties for Russia?
Maybe it's time to make Moscow a closer partner in NATO.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Friday, November 16, 2001
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/11/16/opinion/COMRUBIN16.htm

Back in July, I had a surreal conversation in Moscow with a retired Russian general.

Eduard Vorobiov was a captain in the Soviet army that invaded Prague. He spent nearly 30 more years in the Soviet military as it confronted NATO at the height of the Cold War, then was elected to the Russian Duma.

Now, the ex-general with a grey crew cut and military bearing was telling me he wanted to mobilize Duma members to support Russian membership in NATO, the western military alliance he'd spent his life confronting. He said the pro-NATO bloc numbered 36, the anti-NATO bloc 250.

"Another Don Quixote," I thought. Four months ago, most Russians still resented or ignored NATO while U.S. leaders couldn't imagine Russia as a full military ally. In 1999, U.S. and Russian soldiers nearly fought each other in Kosovo. Many Russian generals still regard NATO expansion to Eastern Europe as a ploy to encircle Russia. Who could imagine absorbing into NATO a Russian behemoth that extends all the way to China?

But after the lovefest between President Bush and Vladimir Putin at the Crawford ranch, and more particularly, after Sept. 11, the idea of NATO membership for Russia doesn't seem quite so loopy. It's becoming a hot topic among Russian and American security experts.

"The big difference between now and pre-Sept. 11 is that the mainstream is considering the issue," says Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations. "It's clearly in the realm of the thinkable now."

The new reality goes beyond the warm personal relationship forged between two presidents over southern-fried catfish and poblano chiles. A warm friendship between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin didn't move mountains. But seismic events have changed the facts on the ground in Moscow and Washington.

Since Sept. 11, President Putin has bet his political future on anchoring Russia to the West. Who could have imagined in August that U.S. forces would be setting up air bases, with Russian acquiescence, in Central Asia, not just in Uzbekistan but in Tajikistan, where Russia has thousands of troops?

Both Putin and Bush have recognized that the nature of war has changed beyond recognition. No longer is the enemy a massive Soviet or NATO ground force in Europe. The future threats are terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction - possibly into the hands of terrorists. If the nature of war has changed, doesn't the nature of America's premier military alliance have to change, too?

What the Sept. 11 events revealed is that NATO has already evolved into a different organization. The alliance became more cumbersome after expanding to Central Europe for political rather than military reasons. It is becoming less of a military and more of a political fraternity.

This became evident when NATO reacted to Sept. 11. In the past, the famous Article 5 of NATO's charter was interpreted as pledging all members to come to the aid of any member who was attacked, presumably by the Soviet army. The NATO allies invoked Article 5 for the very first time after the World Trade Center disaster, but only we and Britain sent forces to Afghanistan. In effect, only a coalition of the willing chose to send troops.

"The interpretation of Article 5 during the cold war was that it was automatic," says Kupchan. "After the end of the cold war, Article 5 quietly began to mean something else." NATO has effectively become a club of like-minded democracies, who may or may not help each other - or even be needed - in battles outside Europe.

Says Kupchan, "There is a different NATO now, not the collective defense organization (of cold war days) but a way of keeping members at peace with each other." NATO keeps members Turkey and Greece from fighting each other. East European nations that hope to join have buried old ethnic disputes.

So why not invite Russia to join - if not immediately, then within the decade?

Were Russia a candidate, it would smooth agreement on how to carry out massive bilateral arms cuts and more tests of a U.S. missile defense system. More important, candidacy might persuade Russia to stop exporting weapons to the rogue nations that we fear might one day aim missiles at us. And it would help Moscow - and us - work on securing the Russian nuclear arsenal and preventing nuclear or biological materiél from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Skeptics will argue that Russia lags in democracy and in civilian control of its army. So why not set up a road map that Russia could follow to meet NATO standards? That's what Gen. Vorobiov wants. And the general notes that China would have no choice but to cooperate more with NATO if Russia became a member.

Russia already is associated loosely with NATO. It's time to move toward a closer association. In a rapidly shifting world, NATO has to change with the times.

Trudy Rubin's column appears on Wednesdays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is trubin@phillynews.com.

---

U.S. to Pursue Missile Test Plans

Yahoo News
Associated Press
Friday November 16
By SANDRA SOBIERAJ, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011116/ts/us_russia.html

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) - The United States will push ahead with aggressive testing of missile defenses, White House officials said after President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin ended their summit without agreement on the disputed program.

``The timeline has not really changed,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters after Bush bid his Russian counterpart a warm farewell Thursday at Bush's central Texas ranch.

``The president continues to believe that he has got to move forward with the testing program in a robust way, so that we can really begin to evaluate the potential for missile defenses,'' Rice said.

Putin, who went to New York, told National Public Radio later Thursday that, since he and Bush have a common goal of ensuring security, ``We will, at the end of the day, be able to arrive at a solution that will be acceptable for everyone.''

His Russian guests gone after three days of talks in Crawford and Washington, Bush and his wife, Laura, settled in for a long, quiet weekend on their remote ranch.

Already, there were active discussions about when Bush would make a reciprocal visit to Russia. Aides expect a springtime trip.

``Given that I'm from Texas and kind of like the warm weather, I was hoping to wait a couple of months,'' Bush joked Thursday at the final joint appearance of Putin's four-day visit to the United States.

Putin reaffirmed his opposition to testing any kind of a weapons system that could intercept missiles aimed at the United States and its allies. Such tests would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as it is currently interpreted.

Putin also said that, no matter what Bush does, ``Under no circumstances could it lead to any tension in the relations between Russia and the United States.''

U.S. officials said they viewed the remark as a signal that Putin won't try to stand in the way of coming missile tests. That understanding, however, fell far short of a formal deal to make the ABM flexible enough to allow testing, which had been Bush's hope for the summit.

Distracted by the war against terrorism, both leaders seemed to push the issue down the road.

``We shall continue our discussions,'' Putin said.

Aides said Bush's trip to Moscow next year might offer a fitting setting to resolve the ABM debate.

A provision in the treaty permits either party to withdraw on six months' notice. Already, the Pentagon, as recently as last month, postponed parts of missile-shield testing that might violate the Cold War-era treaty with the Soviet Union.

The Bush administration, eyeing the schedule for future testing, knows negotiations now are running out of time.

``I think that everybody, including the Russians, understands that we're soon going to run up against certain constraints of the treaty,'' Rice said.

In the meantime, both sides committed to continued talks.

``No particular `kaboom' breakthrough is to be expected at any particular time, but they are continuing to work the issue,'' Rice said.

``And we'll see how long we can go before we have to actually begin the testing and development program.''

On the separate issue of reducing Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear stockpiles, which both presidents promised after their Tuesday meetings at the White House, Putin said Thursday the question of whether warheads should be disarmed or destroyed must be decided in negotiations.

Bush countered: ``We are talking about reducing and destroying the number of warheads.''

Rice later used wording that suggested Bush should not have spoken so definitively. ``We are in the process right now of examining precisely how this drawdown takes place,'' she told reporters.

---

THE ARMS
U.S. Testing Goes Ahead; Could Violate ABM Treaty

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/16MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - With the failure of President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to reach an agreement on replacing or amending the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the Pentagon is moving ahead with plans for missile defense testing and construction work that could violate the treaty sometime next year, officials said today.

Pentagon officials said today they have not scheduled any tests for the rest of this year that were likely to conflict with the treaty's strictures. But the Pentagon has also been developing plans to conduct missile- tracking tests and build a communications system in Alaska sometime next spring or summer that could be interpreted as violating the treaty, senior military officials have said.

Asked in an interview on Wednesday whether preparations for those activities were continuing, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld replied, "You bet."

Pentagon officials said their plans did not mean that the Bush administration was prepared to unilaterally abandon the treaty at this point, noting that they could voluntarily constrain testing and construction activities before they violated the treaty next year.

Mr. Rumsfeld said that the military officials who run the missile defense program could live within the pact "for a period," even though it had "inhibited" their work.

Three weeks ago the Bush administration announced that it had postponed three antimissile tracking tests that Mr. Rumsfeld said might be interpreted as violating the treaty. The pact was signed with the Soviet Union in 1972 to prevent development of systems capable of defending the nation against long- range missile attacks.

At the time those tests were postponed, President Bush and President Putin were beginning talks on amending or replacing the treaty to allow the United States to build missile defenses. But today, the two presidents emerged from a meeting in Crawford, Tex., to say that they had failed to reach agreement on how to move beyond the treaty.

Though he said the administration would abide by the ABM Treaty for now, Mr. Rumsfeld left open the possibility that the United States would withdraw from the treaty after giving six month's notice, as is required, if talks with Russia remained stalled. He said that talks with Russia could continue even after a decision to pull out of the treaty, suggesting that such a move might be viewed by some in the administration as a way of pressuring the Russians to reach an agreement.

"It's purpose," Mr. Rumsfeld said of the treaty, "is to keep you from doing what we would like to do. Therefore it's a problem."

Mr. Rumsfeld has been among the administration's strongest advocates of eliminating the treaty and building defenses against what he considers to be the growing threat of missile attacks from terrorists and nations like North Korea or Iraq. But his views have often clashed with others inside the administration who worry that abolishing the treaty would raise nuclear tensions around the world.

Today, advocates of missile defense in Congress said the Pentagon should move ahead briskly with its testing and construction plans regardless of whether they might violate the treaty.

"I urge the president to move ahead with all deliberate speed on missile defense development and testing," said Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma. "We should not hesitate to formally withdraw from a treaty which no longer serves our national security interests."

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he did not object to the Pentagon's planning for activities that might violate the treaty, so long as it did not carry them out.

"It will make us less secure to proceed in a unilateral way," he said.

Missile defense critics have argued that under their interpretation the ABM Treaty will not hamper missile testing for years to come. They contend that the postponed missile-tracking tests were scientifically pointless and were concocted by the Pentagon mainly to bolster its complaint that the treaty is constraining.

The Pentagon has denied that and is now moving ahead with plans to conduct similar, though more complex, tests early next year. It also plans to try to shoot down an intercontinental ballistic missile with a prototype interceptor rocket next month. That test, however, is not expected to violate the treaty, senior Pentagon officials said.

---

NEWS ANALYSIS
Missile Impasse: The Shape of the Deal

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/16ASSE.html?searchpv=nytToday

CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 15 - In the end, neither President Bush, nor President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wanted to pull the plug on the relationship they have built in the short season of summitry they started only last June.

After a three-day summit meeting on the Texas prairie where Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin had their most intimate talks since they first laid eyes on each other in Slovenia this summer, it seemed astonishing that there was no advance on the main issue that divides them - how to structure a new framework for strategic arms that will bind the United States and Russia well beyond their terms of office.

What was increasingly clear is that they are arguing how to put it all on paper and what to call that piece of paper - a treaty or something else.

Mr. Bush came into office clearly determined not to put anything on paper about the future of America's nuclear arsenal. The cold war was over. Russia was not an enemy and, indeed, Mr. Bush said he reserved the option to tear up some paper in the form of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which allows either party, the United States and the former Soviet Union, to withdraw with six months notice.

The president and a number of his top advisers denigrated the era of writing things down about limits on nuclear weapons that produced all of the major arms control treaties of the last 30 years.

His irritation showed this week in Washington when he said, standing next to Mr. Putin, "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand" on American plans for its nuclear arsenal. "And if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that."

But write down what?

For months, the Russian leadership has been waiting for the Bush administration to complete its review of America's nuclear future and determine how many nuclear weapons does an American president need to protect American security.

Mr. Bush promised last summer to provide the number to Mr. Putin and to link those reductions to how America would then build a missile defense shield over the United States, and perhaps over parts of Europe and Asia, too.

Debates in the Pentagon delayed a decision for months and Mr. Bush only delivered the result this week. He told Mr. Putin in Washington that the United States would reduce the number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons over the next decade to between 1,700 and 2,200, a significant reduction but short of the 1,500-warhead level that Mr. Putin was hoping for.

For Russia, this new strategic accounting was a critical element in how to respond to Mr. Bush's plan for missile defenses, which had been a dominant issue for his presidency until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

Armed with Mr. Bush's plans for reducing the American strategic arsenal, Mr. Putin put his response on the table this week. He told Mr. Bush that the United States and Russia should now codify the levels of offensive and defensive arms in their arsenals in a new arms control treaty.

The reason is straightforward in Mr. Putin's logic. Any country that builds missile defenses can eventually seize a nuclear advantage by protecting its own territory while threatening any adversary with offensive weapons fired from behind a shield. Even among friends, the Russian leader has argued, the nuclear balance should not be left to the vagaries of handshakes.

In Washington this week, Mr. Putin unveiled his strategy. "For the Russian part, we are prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control."

He did not bring a draft treaty with him, but Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, indicated that Mr. Putin made an extensive case for a detailed agreement that would require substantial further discussion.

"We are more than willing to talk with the Russians about various levels of codification of such an agreement," she said today. "We have not said, `treaty.' They have said they are interested in a treaty. But this is an open discussion."

She added that Mr. Bush and his advisers are prepared to include in some new agreement part of the old arms-control treaties that insured there was no cheating.

"We have said, both of us, that we are prepared to make this verifiable in some form, perhaps even using some of the verification procedures out of former treaties," she said. "But nothing is off the table in the regard of what this actually looks like in the final analysis."

The breakthrough that had been expected here at Crawford, was based on Russia's strategic shift since Sept. 11 in support of the American campaign against terrorism, and Mr. Putin's statements that he was ready to "stretch" the ABM treaty to allow American missile defense tests.

Mr. Putin himself created the expectation that once he understood the size of the American arsenal over the next decade, he and Mr. Bush could speedily reach an agreement on codifying the reductions in offensive arms while also modifying - or agreeing to ignore for now - the limits the ABM treaty sets on missile defense tests. The Pentagon is preparing for such tests next spring.

If Mr. Bush hoped to do that with a handshake, Mr. Putin showed that he believes that handshakes and trust between leaders is not enough to ensure a stable nuclear order, or address Russia's concerns that an unconstrained American power might someday bring pressure to bear that Moscow would not be able to resist.

Russian officials see a contradiction in Mr. Bush's position because any agreement on nuclear arms that will be executed over a decade will extend beyond Mr. Bush's presidency and, therefore, will be subject to modification by any future president.

"We made great progress," Mr. Bush said today to a gymnasium full of students at Crawford High School, adding: "It's one thing for he and me to have a personal relationship. The key is that we establish a relationship between our countries strong enough that will endure beyond our presidencies."

For now, Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin are engaged in a kind of brinkmanship among friends. Mr. Bush is loathe to withdraw unilaterally from the ABM Treaty, a step that in the midst of the Afghan campaign would reignite the taunts of "unilateralism" that Mr. Bush was hearing from Europe earlier this year.

Mr. Putin is anxious to build a strong relationship with Mr. Bush and America for all the benefits that accrues to Moscow as it seeks to rebuild a devastated economy.Both powers, meanwhile, are eager to preserve and build on the remarkable rapprochement since Sept. 11.

---

THE RANCH
Before and After Bush and Putin's Banter, No Agreement on Missile Defense

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/16PREX.html?searchpv=nytToday

CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 15 - President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ended their three-day summit meeting today with warm jokes and a pledge to bring stability to Afghanistan, but no discernible progress on amending the treaty that constrains Washington's plans to test an antimissile system.

After 24 hours on Mr. Bush's ranch here, punctuated by hours of private discussions and a barbecue dinner on Tuesday night that included lessons in how to dance the Cotton-Eyed Joe, the two presidents emerged this morning to visit the local high school.

What followed was a remarkable sight. For nearly an hour, the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers answered questions from the students on women's rights, the details of reducing their nuclear arsenals and their sudden race to put together a government in Afghanistan that represents a cross-section of the country's fractious tribes.

The two men were clearly more at ease with each other than Mr. Bush's father ever was with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. At the school today, Mr. Bush recalled facetiously inviting Mr. Putin to return here for a jog in the wilting August heat and Mr. Putin's quick rejoinder that Mr. Bush, whose distaste for cold climates is well known, might enjoy a winter visit to Siberia.

But when one student raised the sensitive subject of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Mr. Bush turned serious.

"We have a difference of opinion," he said, though he did not elaborate on why a compromise that seemed at hand when Mr. Putin arrived had slipped through their fingers, at least for now. "Our differences will not divide us."

Mr. Putin immediately suggested that he thought that an agreement might be eventually reached that would "not threaten the interests of both our countries and of the world."

For all the light banter and talk of the closeness of their new relationship, Mr. Bush could not paper over the fact that the agreement on missile defenses he wanted to strike did not happen.

Mr. Putin's reassuring tone raised the possibility that the United States was prepared to delay further its testing or that Russia might simply overlook tests that edge toward violations of the ABM treaty.

The timing is problematic. Mr. Bush would have to give six months' notice of his intention to withdraw from the treaty in a few weeks if he wants to move ahead with tests in the late spring, as the Pentagon hopes. The White House did not disclose its testing schedule.

The two men are not widely expected to see each other again this year, although Mr. Bush said today that he had accepted an invitation from Mr. Putin to visit Moscow next year, probably in the spring.

American officials dodged questions about what obstacles remained to an accord on strategic defenses. Mr. Bush has made clear his aversion to signing another formal treaty that could take time to negotiate and would require Senate approval. Mr. Putin insisted this week that he wanted to codify any new framework on both offensive and defensive weapons, so that no future president could reverse course.

As Mr. Putin was leaving this afternoon, Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, told reporters that Mr. Bush was still committed to going ahead with testing an antimissile system, even if an agreement could not be reached.

"The president has made clear that one way or another the U.S. will have to get out of the constraints of the missile defense treaty," Ms. Rice said. "The timeline has not really changed."

She set no deadlines and insisted that the relationship between the two men was so good that their differences over the treaty were less important than than they were earlier this year.

"This is a smaller element of the U.S.-Russia relationship than it was several months ago and certainly than it was before Sept. 11," Ms. Rice said.

The oddity of the leaders' meeting was that the tone was so good, while the specific accomplishments were relatively modest. Mr. Bush opened it by promising to cut America's nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, down to 1,700 to 2,200 warheads, in the next 10 years. That was no surprise. He had promised major cuts in the presidential campaign last year, even though he had not previously announced a number.

Mr. Putin clearly hoped for more. He had talked of cutting Russia's nuclear stockpile, to 1,500 warheads. But on this trip, he did not repeat the 1,500 figure, promising only cuts comparable to what Mr. Bush was promising.

Mr. Putin returns to Moscow with one great prize. Mr. Bush has committed to the cuts before Mr. Putin has agreed to any change of position on testing antimissile weapons. But the Russian is also insisting on a treaty that would establish how the two sides would verify each others' cuts and would define what constitutes a decommissioned missile.

Mr. Putin has some allies on Capitol Hill. Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, warned the Senate today against "fly-by- night arms control" based on handshakes and oral accords.

"I am shocked by the president's view that an agreement on arms reductions need not be on paper," Mr. Byrd said. "We do not need hush- hush agreements with other countries on our nuclear weapons."

Other critics of Mr. Bush's approach suggested that the struggle in the Bush administration over whether to abandon the ABM treaty was still under way. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is continuing to press for swift action to amend or abandon the pact. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is urging patience and reminding administration colleagues that this is no time to add strain on the loose coalition against terrorism.

"There are some who want to create a treaty crisis to push the process and get the tests," said Tom Z. Collina, director of global security for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "But the reality is that getting no deal in Crawford probably doesn't interfere with many of the next tests." The tests, Mr. Collina argued, could easily be designed within the confines of the ABM treaty.

The warmth of the meeting in the last two days was evident this morning when the two leaders went to the high school, where students, including 15 or so Russian exchange students temporarily living in Texas, gathered in a large gymnasium.

Mr. Bush mounted the stage in the brown field jacket that he uses for hiking on his ranch. Mr. Putin wore a black golf shirt and a sport coat.

"I bet a lot of folks here, particularly the older folks, never dreamt that an American president would be bringing the Russian president to Crawford," Mr. Bush said. "When I was in high school, Russia was an enemy.

He never mentioned points of conflict with Russia like human rights violations in Chechnya or the crackdown on independent news media.

Mr. Putin played to the Texas crowd with a skill that would have made Lyndon B. Johnson proud. "We in Russia have known for a long time that Texas is the most important state in the United States," he said.

He added that Russians understand the Texas culture better than they understand the rest of the country, "except maybe for Alaska, which we sold to you."

-------- russia

Strategic missile test

Inside the Ring
Notes from the Pentagon
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
November 16, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011116-78905562.htm

The growing friendship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush, who spent time together in Crawford, Texas, this week, apparently has not altered Moscow's drive to develop new and potentially revolutionary strategic weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials tell us the Nov. 1 flight test of a Russian SS-27 strategic missile had unique characteristics. It was the second time Moscow had carried out what appeared to be a test firing of a new low-trajectory missile. The SS-27 was fired from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and landed at the Kura test range on Kamchatka Peninsula.

In July, Russian military developers fired the first long-range strategic missile that left the atmosphere and then dropped down to an altitude of about 100,000 feet before impacting at a target range on the far eastern peninsula. The missile is believed to have a "scramjet"-powered last stage that travels at speeds around five times the speed of sound.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russians are developing the new missile stage to defeat U.S. strategic defenses, which are currently focused on hitting warheads in space.

Russia remains opposed to U.S. plans for a nationwide strategic defense network. Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin were unable to agree on changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that would allow the legal deployment of such a system. In response, the United States could pull out of the treaty next month.

----

Salvaged Russia Sub to Be Scrapped

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The Kursk nuclear submarine, salvaged from the sea floor, will be scrapped at the Nerpa plant in the northern Murmansk region, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said Friday.

The plan, which includes cutting out the submarine's reactor, is expected to be approved by the government by the end of the month, Klebanov said in remarks carried by the official Web site for the salvage operation, kursk.strana.ru.

The Kursk will be sent to the plant after prosecutors complete investigations inside its hull, said Klebanov, who is in charge of the operation. Plans for raising the forward section of the submarine will be approved later this month, he added.

Meanwhile, the 56th of 57 bodies retrieved from the hull has been identified, prosecutors said. Twelve other bodies were removed by divers during an operation last year.

The crew member was identified as Ensign Igor Fedorichev, 28, from Kaluga, just south of Moscow.

The Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, 2000, after two explosions tore through its forward torpedo section, sending a huge fireball through the hull that pulverized much of the 118-man crew.

-------- treaties

Friendly leaders unable to agree on missile treaty
The Independent War on Terrorism: Summit

By Rupert Cornwell
Washington 16 November 2001
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=105203

Despite three days of backslapping and bonhomie in both Washington and Texas, Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin have failed to strike a deal on the future of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the key legal obstacle in the way of Mr Bush's plan to build a national missile defence shield.

Speaking at a meeting of the two leaders with students at Crawford High School near his ranch in central Texas, Mr Bush acknowledged that "we have a difference of opinion". For his part, Mr Putin said the two former superpower rivals were split on the "ways and means" of handling the 1972 pact, which the US regards as an obsolete relic of the Cold War, but which Moscow still contends is the cornerstone of international arms control.

But, Mr Putin told hundreds of students and local people packed into the school gymnasium that discussions would continue ahead of the visit which Mr Bush will pay to Russia next year. By then however the US may have already given the required six months' notice of a unilateral withdrawal from the treaty, which bars the tests and construction work on the missile defence programme which the Pentagon wants to step up.

But both men made clear they would not let disagreement over the ABM treaty spoil a summit which has otherwise sealed a new rapprochement between Washington and Moscow - with promises by both countries to slash existing nuclear arsenals by up to two-thirds, and of unstinting Russian support for the US-led campaign against terrorism.

The growing personal confidence between the two men drew another reference from Mr Bush about peering into President Putin's "heart and soul. The more I get to see them, the more I know we can work together in a positive way."

The clearest sign of friendship however was the President's invitation to Mr Putin to spend a night at the 1,600-acre Bush spread, called "Prairie Chapel". Yesterday Mr Bush drove the Russian leader on a tour of the ranch, before heading off to the school at Crawford, whose normal population of 600 has been more than tripled by the invasion of media, aides and security men.

The previous evening, a thunderstorm had prevented Mr Bush from conducting more than a brief tour of the ranch - but in drought-affected Texas even that was hailed by the President as good news. Nor did the pouring rain get in the way of a traditional Texas barbecue.

"Anytime it rains in Texas it enhances the dinner," Bush said. Then he and the first foreign head of state to visit his ranch dined on mesquite-smoked beef, southern fried catfish and other Texan delicacies, served from a cowboy chuck wagon on the lawn, to the strains of the Texas Ranch Hands and "Drifting Along with the Tumbling Tumbleweed".

---

Missile treaty must remain, Putin tells Bush

Daily Telegraph
By Toby Harnden in Crawford, Texas
16/11/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/16/wus16.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/16/ixhome.html

PRESIDENT BUSH has failed to persuade President Putin to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty but he insists that the warm friendship they established at their summit in America makes a deal likely in the future.

"There's no doubt the United States and Russia won't agree on every issue," Mr Bush told a pupil at the high school in Crawford, the president's home town, yesterday. "But you probably don't agree with your mother on every issue. You still love her, though, don't you?

"Well, even though we don't agree on every issue, I still respect him [Mr Putin] and like him as a person." He added: "We have a difference of opinion. Our disagreements will not divide us."

Mr Bush insisted that the 1972 treaty was "outdated" because it was "signed during a period of time when we really hated each other". Under its terms, development of a missile defence system is banned.

But Mr Putin, who sees the treaty as a symbol of Russian prestige, was unmoved.

Having initially said that September 11 made missile defence even more necessary, Mr Bush now appears to have postponed America's intended withdrawal from the ABM Treaty as a result of Mr Putin's growing influence in the new era ushered in by the devastating attacks that day.

The Russian leader said he felt that "the time was not wasted" because the two leaders had a shared aim of making the world safer. "We differ in the ways and means that are suitable for reaching the same objective," he said.

Standing in front of a map of Texas in the school, Mr Bush and Mr Putin swapped jokes and, at one point, put their arms around each other.

"Yesterday, we tasted steak and listened to music, and all of this with a single purpose and objective to increase the level of confidence between the leaders and the peoples," said Mr Putin after staying at Mr Bush's ranch near Waco.

Mr Bush said: "We had a great dinner last night . . . and I think the president really enjoyed himself."

There appeared to be a genuine and surprising rapport between the two men, but they gave different interpretations of what would be done with the nuclear warheads to be removed from missiles under arms reductions they announced on Tuesday.

Mr Bush said: "We're talking about reducing and destroying the number of warheads to get down to . . . significantly lower levels."

But Mr Putin, who appeared to be abiding by Ronald Reagan's maxim of "trust but verify", said: "What we do with those arsenals is subject to negotiations with the result of those negotiations depending on the level of trust between the United States and Russia."

He added: "The president told me that we'll just limit ourselves to generalities, but he was mistaken."

---

Summit Is Important Step to Success

New York Newsday
By Eugene B. Rumer
Eugene B. Rumer is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. The views here are his own.
November 16, 2001
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vprum162465882nov16.story?coll=ny%2Dviewpoints%2Dheadlines

WHAT A difference a year makes.

On Nov. 15, 2000, President Bill Clinton held his final bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the margins of the Asia-Pacific forum in Brunei. The meeting was such a non-event that the chief architect of Clinton's Russia policy, Strobe Talbott, didn't even bother to attend.

The presidents agreed to disagree on the fate of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and went home, leaving behind an uncertain bilateral agenda soured by widespread perceptions that the relationship had reached a dead end and that the two countries would be better off going it alone.

That's ancient history now. The atmosphere that reportedly prevailed at the small, intimate dinner party between Putin and President George W. Bush on Nov. 14, 2001, in Crawford, Texas, couldn't have been more different. What's ancient history, too, is the feeling that Russia has fallen from the ranks of great powers and doesn't matter anymore, that the two countries got into a premature partnership and now need a pause in the relationship. Instead, there is a clear and unambiguous change in tone: The two countries need each other and cannot, should not, go it alone. That is the real bottom line on the latest Bush- Putin summit.

Make no mistake. There are many thorny, contentious issues on the U.S.- Russian agenda. For example, the Bush administration can be criticized for not going further in its unilateral commitment to reduce strategic nuclear arms. If the Cold War is really over, why does the United States need to keep between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads operationally deployed? If Russia is not the enemy, who are these thousands of weapons intended to deter? China, with its fewer than two dozen missiles? Iraq or Iran, either of which may, in the worst nightmare scenarios, acquire a handful of weapons?

Then there's the future of the ABM Treaty. There have been four U.S.-Russian presidential meetings in five months, and there's still no deal. And there are other issues as well, including the war in Chechnya and Russian arms sales to China and Iran, to name just a few.

But it turns out that the number of nuclear weapons each side aims at the other doesn't really matter at all. Cold War fears of nuclear winter are well behind us, and very few people on either side of the Atlantic are afraid of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Surprisingly, the ABM Treaty is not that important for bilateral relations, either. Outside the surreal world of nuclear exchange scenarios, nobody in Russia really fears that the United States will acquire a meaningful missile defense capability that will somehow deny Russia the option of a retaliatory strike.

By contrast, there are many in the United States who would like to see treaty constraints on testing done away with, but since Sept. 11 these priorities have been reordered. Nobody in the Bush administration seems prepared to jeopardize the relationship with Russia for the sake of meeting missile defense test schedules.

Certainly, the tragedy of Sept. 11 has helped put a new perspective on the relationship between Russia and the United States. The terrorist attacks did not render nuclear and missile defense issues obsolete, but they sent an important message to the leaders and the people of both countries that they need each other. They stand to gain from working together, and in the meantime, they can agree to disagree without having their differences affect their overall relationship - especially if their differences have more to do with mopping up the legacy of the Cold War than with meeting the challenge of the current war.

The list of documents Presidents Bush and Putin have issued at the summit is impressive and covers a whole range of post-Sept. 11 priorities - from cooperation on bioterrorism to Russian World Trade Organization accession. Some of them speak for themselves. For example, the threat of "loose germs" or nuclear weapons from Russia is what worries many Americans these days. Russian cooperation in securing and eliminating its stockpiles of biological and nuclear weapons will be one of the essential elements of our homeland defense. U.S. assistance to the Russians in this area will be one of theirs.

But why should Americans care about Russian WTO accession? Of course, there are investment opportunities for U.S. companies, most notably in the energy sector, but elsewhere, too, from agriculture to communications and military high technology.

Still, beyond the prospect of millions of dollars, the most important stake the United States has in Russian WTO membership is the promise of Russia's becoming stronger sooner, of its becoming a normal country. WTO membership will give a powerful push to Russian domestic reform. From opening Russian markets to fair trade, to pushing it toward greater rule of law, Russian membership in the WTO will propel Russia that much closer to the First World - and put our fears of its slipping into the Third World that much farther behind us. The closer we are to that goal, the sooner we will be able to stop worrying about loose nukes and germs from Russia.

Most likely, we will find in the months and years to come that the goal of securing Russia's place in the First World will prove far more difficult than cutting a deal on missile defenses or warheads. But if the Bush-Putin summit has moved us closer to this goal - and there is every reason to think that it has - then it was a success.

---

Putin refuses to scrap treaty

November 16, 2001
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011116-9756679.htm

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush yesterday ended his first American summit with Vladimir Putin without convincing the Russian president to withdraw from an arms treaty that is preventing the United States from testing a missile defense shield.

"We have a difference of opinion," Mr. Bush acknowledged during a joint appearance with Mr. Putin at Crawford High School.

"We differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective," Mr. Putin added during a lengthy question-and-answer session with students.

Although there had been hopes in the administration for some movement on the part of Mr. Putin, the Russian refused to budge from his support of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty during three days of talks in Washington and Crawford.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said the ABM Treaty "continues to be a source of disagreement between the two sides." She said Mr. Putin showed no willingness to join the United States in a simultaneous withdrawal from the pact anytime soon.

"No particular, you know, 'kaboom' breakthrough is to be expected at any particular time," Miss Rice said in response to questions from The Washington Times. "But they are continuing to work the issue and we'll see how long we can go before we have to actually begin the testing."

Since that testing would violate the ABM Treaty, the United States must either convince Russia to jointly withdraw from the treaty or notify Moscow that Washington will unilaterally withdraw after a six-month period prescribed by the document. A senior administration official has said the United States will give its six-month notice if Russia does not agree to a joint withdrawal by the end of the year.

"The Russians understand that we're soon going to run up against certain constraints of the treaty," Miss Rice warned. "One way or another, the United States is going to have to get out of the constraints."

Although Mr. Bush has derided ABM as a relic of the Cold War, Mr. Putin told him yesterday that he continues "to believe that the ABM treaty has a certain importance to the post-Cold War era," Miss Rice said. As for allowing tests for a missile defense shield, Mr. Putin "continues to believe that this ought to be done within the context of the ABM treaty," she added.

Mr. Putin also favors codifying his various arms-control agreements with Mr. Bush in treaty form. Although Mr. Bush had been leery of getting entangled in another formal agreement that might someday become obsolete, he appeared to soften his opposition yesterday.

"We are more than willing to talk with the Russians about various levels of codification of such an arrangement," Miss Rice said. "We are prepared to make this verifiable in some form, perhaps even using some of the verification procedures out of former treaties."

But she added: "We do not believe that it needs to look like the thousands and thousands of pages that attended all the SALT and START treaties."

Back in Washington, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, expressed outrage at Mr. Bush's reluctance to enter a new formal treaty. "I am shocked by the president's view that an agreement on arms reductions need not be on paper," he said. "Legally and technically, it need not be, but it ought to be."

He added: "What will happen to the agreement when President Bush and President Putin leave office? A written treaty could provide clear answers."

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

US rep. wants anti-radiation drug near nuke plants

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13330

WASHINGTON - A U.S. lawmaker has proposed a bill that would stockpile anti-radiation medicine near American nuclear power plants in case attackers released dangerous radioactive material into the air.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, a longtime critic of the nuclear industry, wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to have ready supplies of potassium iodide within 200 miles (320 km) of each of the country's 103 operating nuclear power plants.

The drug has been shown to protect the body's thyroid gland from diseases caused by radiation exposure, Markey said. It must be taken several hours after exposure to be effective.

"Potassium iodide is to radiation exposure what Cipro is to anthrax," he said in a statement.

The bill would also require the government commission to stock potassium iodide at individual homes and public facilities within 50 miles (80 km) of a plant.

In the wake of the deadly Sept. 11 aerial attacks on Washington and New York, Markey has urged lawmakers to pass measures to step up security at nuclear plants, which he views as vulnerable to attack.

"In this new era of terrorism, in which the threat of an intentional release of radioactivity can no longer be ignored, we should waste no more time," Markey said.

Government and private industry officials say all commercial nuclear plants have been on high alert since the September attacks and have adopted stricter security measures.

----

Federal Guards for Nuke Plants Sought

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Guards.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two Democratic senators plan to introduce legislation after the Thanksgiving congressional recess to federalize security guards at the country's nuclear power plants.

``We can no longer leave the security at our nation's nuclear power plants to chance,'' said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who along with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., were drafting the legislation.

Reid, who is assistant Senate majority leader and chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over nuclear issues, noted that Congress just agreed to federalize passenger and baggage screeners at airports.

``It's time we focus the same energy to improve safety at nuclear power plants,'' said Reid.

GOP conservatives in the House had opposed making the airport workers federal employees, and may also object to federalizing guards at nuclear plants.

Private guards hired by the plant operators now handle security at the 103 nuclear reactors in 31 states. Although they carry weapons, they have no police power.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the private security forces at many of the plants have been augmented by local or state police and in at least seven states by National Guard troops.

-------- nevada

Probe Finds Law Firm Had Dual Roles

By KEN RITTER,
Associated Press Writer,
Friday November 16 9:46 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011116/us/nuclear_waste_1.html

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A law firm hired to help the Energy Department get a license for a nuclear waste dump in Nevada failed to disclose a relationship with a pro-dump lobbying firm, the department's inspector general found.

At least 14 members of the Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn working on the $16.5 million government contract also worked for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying firm that supports the Yucca Mountain project, reported DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman, who stopped short of declaring the relationship a conflict of interest.

But Nevada's two U.S. senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, said the report documents ``rampant conflict of interest violations'' that contaminated 17 years of study of the Yucca Mountain site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

State officials and the Nevada congressional delegation oppose the proposed dump, which would store radioactive waste from about 100 nuclear sites nationwide.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, based in Washington, D.C., has lobbied to promote the use of nuclear power and favors the Yucca Mountain site. It is the only site under study by the government to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste.

In his report, Friedman said Winston & Strawn denied a conflict of interest and denied it compromised work on the Yucca Mountain project.

James Thompson, Winston & Strawn chairman and former Illinois governor, referred questions to spokesman Chuck Connor at the Dilen Schneider Group in Chicago, who wouldn't comment.

Connor also wouldn't comment on recent allegations that Winston & Strawn leaked to the Energy Department a confidential document outlining the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's standards for approving the project.

Reid called last week for Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General Hubert T. Bell to investigate that allegation. It was not addressed in Friedman's report.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said Thursday that Winston & Strawn is still working for the Energy Department, and the department would study Friedman's findings.

``It's important to note,'' Davis said, ``that the report found no evidence that the work performed by Winston & Strawn created an improper bias in the department's scientific evaluation of Yucca Mountain.''

The site selection process is in its final weeks, but officials said Friedman's report opens the licensing process to a possible legal challenge.

Photo: http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20011116/capt.1005921729nuclear_wastes_vg801.jpg

Mechanic Sid Dickey welds a piece of a core drilling machine May 9, 2000, at the Yucca Mountain Project on the Nevada Test Site. A law firm hired to help the federal Energy Department gain approval for this national nuclear waste dump in Nevada failed to disclose a close relationship with a pro-dump lobbying firm, the Energy Department's inspector general found. (AP Photo/Laura Rauch, File)

-------- tennessee

Oak Ridge guards told they have final offer on labor pact

From: magnu96196@aol.com
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 12:54:08 EST
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/business/article/0,1406,KNS_376_878087,00.html

Oak Ridge guards told they have final offer on labor pact By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer

OAK RIDGE - The Oak Ridge guards' union says it has authority to call a strike at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant later this month if the management team doesn't return to the bargaining table. The government's security contractor says it has already made a "best-and-final'' offer, which the Y12 guards rejected, and that contingency plans are in place to protect the nuclear facilities if a strike occurs Nov. 29.

Y-12 makes parts for every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, and the Oak Ridge plant is the national repository for bombgrade uranium.

Both sides said Wednesday they want to avert a strike if at all possible, although the route to resolution is not yet clear.

"We have no desire whatsoever to go out, but on the other hand we don't feel like we should be taken advantage of,'' said Mike Rimmer, local president of the International Guards Union of America.

Rimmer said many guards were particularly upset by what they viewed as a reduction of short-term disability benefits.

Wackenhut Services Inc., the Department of Energy's security contractor in Oak Ridge, made a final contract offer to the union last week, and the guards voted on that offer on Monday.

Two guard units - at Y-12 and the Federal Office Building - rejected the contract offer, while another unit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory approved the proposal.

In an unusual situation, the union leadership signed the new contract Wednesday for the ORNL unit, and that will go into effect for about 30 guards at the lab.

Meanwhile, about 300 guards at Y-12 and the Federal Office Building are still without a contract and reportedly have given strike authority to the union's leadership. The current contract expires Nov. 29.

Rimmer said he sent a registered letter to Wackenhut asking for additional negotiations but had not received a response.

Lynn Calvert, the senior vice president and general manager of Wackenhut's Oak Ridge operations, said the company negotiated in good faith and enhanced an already good package. Wackenhut said the offer included an 11.3 percent pay increase over three years.

Calvert said as far as he's concerned the contract negotiations are over, although he said he hopes some misunderstandings will be corrected and that the guards will vote again on the contract offer. He said he believes there was some confusion among guards as to the company's actual proposal.

"We think we made these folks a really good offer,'' he said.

The union president said guards are concerned about the timing of a possible strike and recognize it would not be a popular decision, but he said the guards also have to think about their families and their livelihood.

"Going into the negotiations, it was a concern that we would try to take advantage of this (heightened-security) situation,'' Rimmer said. "But we finished our proposal the first part of August, and we did not change our proposal from that point on.''

Calvert said a work-stoppage would not be good, particularly at this time, but he said plans are in place should guards go out on strike at Y-12 and the Federal Office Building. He declined to be specific about how the guards would be replaced.

"You can be assured that the Department of Energy is not going to allow these facilities to go unprotected,'' he said.

The last guards strike in Oak Ridge took place in 1983, but two weeks into that strike the international leadership of the union ordered the guards back to work against their will, citing national-security concerns at Y-12.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

-------- us nuc politics

Nuclear Differences Remain as Summit Ends
Bush and Putin Pledge To Maintain Relationship

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 16, 2001; Page A43
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37516-2001Nov15.html

CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 15 -- President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin closed two rain-drenched days of talks here without agreement on how to reduce nuclear stockpiles or the future of missile defenses and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But both leaders made clear they would not allow differences over nuclear policy to cause a rift in a relationship that has become far broader.

The Russian president flew to New York this afternoon to tour the destroyed World Trade Center site, completing a trip that began Tuesday at the White House and included a speech in Houston, a barbecue and tour at Bush's ranch here, and a joint appearance before Crawford High School students this morning.

After their fourth set of meetings this year, the two leaders, backslapping, first-name-using and laughing at each other's jokes, said their relationship, along with relations between their countries, had been transformed. They played down their most significant disagreement: the future of the 1972 ABM Treaty, which forbids the sort of missile defense tests Bush plans.

Putin, who earlier called the treaty a cornerstone of international stability, presented a more flexible position today. "We share the concerns of the president of the United States . . . that we must think of future threats," Putin said. "We differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective. And given the nature of the relationship between the United States and Russia, one can rest assured that whatever final solution is found, it will not threaten . . . the interests of both our countries and of the world."

Putin signaled even more willingness to compromise later in the evening when he appeared on a call-in program on National Public Radio in New York. "We also believe that the 1972 treaty that we have now is flexible enough for us to use it for different kinds of efforts towards a greater level of security, both for the United States and Russia," he said. Putin did not elaborate on what he meant, but he may have been signaling that he ultimately would be willing to allow testing that arguably is banned by the treaty.

Bush aides pointed to Putin's remarks as evidence that they would be able eventually to proceed with missile defense without a standoff with Russia. "What President Putin said here is extremely important," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said this afternoon. "This is now a very broad relationship in which the nature of our nuclear relationship is a small part. This is 180 degrees from where we were with the Soviet Union, which was where it was the only issue, really, in our relationship."

Bush aides indicated the president, too, had become more flexible about his missile defense plan, a core element of his presidential campaign. "We'll see how long we can go before we have to actually begin the testing and development program," Rice said. She added that the United States still wants to extricate itself from the treaty's constraints but emphasized that "we're still in the one-way-or-another phase."

Bush, like Putin, minimized the disagreements. "We have a difference of opinion," he said. "But, nevertheless, our disagreements will not divide us, as nations that need to combine to make the world more peaceful and more prosperous."

Though both men earlier this week vowed to trim nuclear arsenals by two-thirds, they did not agree on whether the weapons would be destroyed and whether the reductions would be permanent.

In his remarks this morning, Bush appeared to commit himself to destroying the nuclear warheads eliminated when he reduces the American arsenal. "We are talking about reducing and destroying the number of warheads to get down to specific levels, from significant higher levels today to significantly lower levels tomorrow," he said.

But Rice said later that only "a number of them" will be destroyed and suggested others would be stored. "What the president was referring to is, we will not have these warheads near the places at which they could be deployed," she said.

Arms control advocates have criticized Bush's plan because it does not commit to the destruction of the decommissioned warheads. Putin, who has been wary of the American position, said the fate of dismantled warheads "is subject to negotiations."

Aides said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and subsequent war in Afghanistan have made clear to both leaders that other matters are of urgent concern, and those topics dominated the private talks. The two men shared intelligence from Afghanistan and held detailed discussions about how to build a new government, a requirement made more urgent by the Taliban's rapid retreat.

Both presidents pledged to pressure the Northern Alliance to show restraint as a broad-based government is introduced. As part of their talks about nuclear proliferation, Putin and Bush also discussed Osama bin Laden's efforts to obtain such weapons, allegations bolstered by reports from Kabul that nuclear construction manuals had been found.

Putin made clear how much he was affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. In the NPR interview, after his visit to ground zero tonight, he said that the stop was not part of his visit but "I just could not help but come here." He said seeing the wreckage of the towers "was very emotional." He said he came not only to pay his respects, but also "to do everything I can to make sure that nothing like this happens in the future."

During their high school appearance, Putin, normally a cool, even dour personality, warmed to Bush's style of banter. After Bush said the two men would take questions from the students, an uncharacteristically impish Putin interjected: "No math questions."

"Good idea," Bush replied, then recalled an old campaign line. "Particularly no fuzzy math questions."

The high-spirited presidents offered some fuzzy math of their own, however. Bush explained how they had learned to move beyond the zero-sum relations of the Cold War. "We now understand one plus one can equal three," he said.

Putin also displayed his arithmetic skills in a bid to get Bush to commit to a Russia visit. "On the count of three, those of you who want your president to come to Russia, say yes," Putin said through an interpreter, then added in English: "One! Two!" But he never said three. After a pause, the students shouted "yes" anyway.

It was obvious that the two presidents, who liked each other to begin with, grew closer during their talks in Washington and Texas. Bush called Putin "Vladimir." He said he had had further opportunity to inspect the Russian premier's "heart and soul."

Putin called the barbecue he ate at Bush's Prairie Chapel ranch a "masterpiece of cooking." When Bush suggested Putin visit the ranch in August, the Russian gave a noncommittal wave of his hand. Bush said Putin's response amounted to: "Fine -- and maybe you'd like to go to Siberia in the winter?"

All in all, Putin professed affection for Texas, despite two days of rain and thunder. "We in Russia somehow tend to know about Texas rather better than about the rest of the United States," he said. "Except maybe for Alaska, which we sold to you."

Correspondent Peter Baker contributed to this report.

-------- us nuc waste

U.S. Chamber of Commerce gives backing to Yucca
Las Vegas chapter fumes at decision

Las Vegas Review-Journal
Friday, November 16, 2001
By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-16-Fri-2001/news/17465673.html

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday unveiled a lobbying campaign to urge speedy approval of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, presenting national figures John Sununu and Geraldine Ferraro to head the effort.

A chamber leader said a 1,200-group coalition it formed in mid-May to bolster President Bush's energy strategy now will turn its attention to Nevada.

The Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth will promote spent fuel storage as a key element to ensure the nation's energy security, said Bruce Josten, the chamber's executive vice president for government affairs.

But apparently nobody told chamber leaders in Las Vegas, who blanched at being associated with a pro-repository movement.

Government affairs director Kami Dempsey said the Las Vegas chamber will consider withdrawing from the U.S. group at a board meeting this month or next.

"The fact is they have never contacted us for our opinion and our thoughts on Yucca Mountain," Dempsey said. "We are the third-largest chamber in the United States, and we consider we should be consulted when making huge decisions."

The Las Vegas chamber adopted a resolution in January opposing nuclear waste storage in Nevada. Two months ago chamber President Pat Shalmy wrote to U.S. chamber President Thomas Donohue saying the local affiliate would not support a pro-repository stance by the national association.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce serves as a trade association for chambers across the country and is a major player in Washington lobbying. It sponsors benefit programs for its members, runs seminars on organization and fund-raising and keeps its membership informed on business issues.

Dempsey said the Las Vegas affiliate pays $3,000 in annual dues but is not a heavy user of services provided by the Washington-based group.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials said it is expected that not all members will agree on all things, and this would not be the first time a member has left in disagreement.

The Las Vegas chamber, along with chambers from Sparks, Pahrump and Carson City, were among 10 Nevada organizations listed as members of the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth. Membership was free, along with a promise to be kept up to date about energy legislation is Congress. Until now, the alliance had not involved itself in the nuclear waste issue.

Another group listed was the Nevada Restaurant Association, whose president, Van Heffner, planned to protest the Yucca Mountain campaign to the National Restaurant Association, which solicited him to join the alliance.

"I'm immediately going to call the national office and see what's going on," Heffner said. "What are they thinking?"

Josten said the Yucca Mountain effort has not been budgeted yet. Besides the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the alliance includes such major energy firms as the National Mining Association, Edison Electric Institute, Nuclear Energy Institute and American Petroleum Institute.

Sununu, a former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff, will be a face on the Yucca campaign, along with Ferraro, a former congresswoman from New York and vice presidential candidate.

"We're going to talk about the issue as visible individuals," Sununu said. "There will be advertising."

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the inclusion of the two is an example of the nuclear power industry reaching into deep pockets to fund the goal of burying waste in Nevada.

"I'm sure they're going to be paid well," Reid said.

He said he would not minimize the potential for the chamber coalition to build support for a Nevada repository.

"They can be effective," he said. "They have the best that money can buy, they're greedy, and they have a direction they don't turn from."

---

Probe finds Yucca law firm failed to disclose conflict
Relationship with industry group not revealed

Las Vegas Review-Journal
Friday, November 16, 2001
By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-16-Fri-2001/news/17464793.html

WASHINGTON -- A law firm given $16.5 million to advise the Energy Department on the Yucca Mountain project failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest both before and after it began working for the government in 1999, the department's internal investigators said in a report released Thursday after a 3 1/2-month probe.

Inspector General Gregory Friedman advised DOE leaders to "promptly evaluate" whether Winston & Strawn, one of the oldest and largest law firms in the nation, violated its contract or its "professional ethical obligations" by failing to reveal a relationship with the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group that supports building a spent-fuel repository at the Nevada site.

The law firm had been a registered lobbyist for the institute from January 1995 until July but did not discuss those activities with the Energy Department until after news reports prompted Winston & Strawn to terminate its registration, the investigation confirmed.

Friedman asked department officials to respond within 15 working days.

The Energy Department is charged with conducting an unbiased assessment of whether Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, can be developed into an underground repository that can shield radiation releases from 77,000 tons of spent radioactive fuel.

Nevada leaders who oppose the repository said the report casts further questions on the department's ability to perform a study untainted by influence from pro-nuclear interests.

The Energy Department's Office of General Counsel will conduct an "expeditious review" of the report and the department's options, spokesman Joe Davis said.

It was not clear what range of remedies were available to the government, or how the outcome may affect ongoing work on the program.

Davis said Winston & Strawn was retained "to begin work solely on a potential license application" for Yucca Mountain that could be submitted in two or three years to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission if the site is recommended for waste burial.

"It's important to note the inspector general found no evidence that work performed by Winston & Strawn created an improper bias in the department's evaluation of Yucca Mountain," he said.

However, Nevada's senators, who had asked Friedman to check out the conflict allegations, said the findings raise questions about the Yucca Mountain program that they will try to explore through congressional hearings and other action.

"We're strategizing right now to take another look to see whether Winston & Strawn legal advice has tainted the whole process and, by extension, has biased the science," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who chairs a nuclear regulation subcommittee, said he may hold a hearing to question Energy Department and NRC officials about the matter.

Reid also said the report provides an opportunity for further legal action by the state of Nevada, which already is planning multiple lawsuits to challenge the Yucca Mountain program on health and safety grounds.

"If I were a litigator, this would be a big pile of gravy for me," he said.

The Energy Department and Winston & Strawn told investigators they were working together to craft some "written understanding of how potential conflict of interest concerns may be more regularly raised and resolved." Davis said the results of those talks may be incorporated into the general counsel's review.

Reid said the Energy Department has no recourse but "to dump this contractor. There's nothing to work out."

Winston & Strawn did not comment Thursday. The investigators noted the firm stated there was no conflict of interest in its activities, and that Energy Department officials "expressed general satisfaction with Winston & Strawn's work."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

STRONGHOLD
Alliance Commander Near Kandahar Says Taliban's Leader Refused a Peace Offer

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/asia/16KAND.html

CHAMAN, Pakistan, Nov. 15 - The American backed anti-Taliban commander, Hamid Karzai, said today that a formal peace offer he made to the Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been swiftly rebuffed as Kandahar, the only major city that has not fallen, remained in the tenuous hold of Taliban forces.

Mullah Omar's refusal to consider Mr. Karzai's peace offer came as the Taliban leader used his harshest language yet against the United States. In a rare interview with the BBC, he called for the "destruction of America" and said the "current situation in Afghanistan" was dedicated to that "bigger cause."

"If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time - keep in mind this prediction," the mullah warned. And he dismissed the efforts to establish a broad-based government in Afghanistan. "We would prefer death to the government of fascists," he said.

The mullah's language in the interview was far closer to that of Osama bin Laden, which indicated, experts said, that as the Taliban crumbled, it was also splitting into sharply divided groups. Mullah Omar leads the hard-line faction, as he has in the past. But there are moderates whom Mr. Karzai is appealing to and getting support from, according to his supporters.

In an interview today, Mr. Karzai said he welcomed Taliban fighters to join him. "The Taliban are Afghans, they can go to their home and can play a role in government and ask for their rights," he told the BBC.

But there were clearly many Taliban who did not want anything to do with Mr. Karzai or their own leader, Mullah Omar, and fled instead.

Many senior Taliban leaders have fled Kandahar, the political stronghold that gave birth to the movement seven years ago but where Taliban fighters appeared to be either awaiting opposition forces or planning to flee the city before they arrived. Taliban soldiers continued to escape from Kandahar into this Pakistani border town today.

But as the Taliban hung on in Kandahar, the southern opposition commanders who have made the city and the surrounding province the focus of their efforts, did not yet appear to have stirred the rebellion they widely advertised.

There was no fighting inside Kandahar, residents reached by telephone said. Well-armed Taliban soldiers continued to patrol the streets, they said.

The easy flow of people across the border from Kandahar into this border town suggested that there was little fighting on the road out of the city. Travelers made the journey from Kandahar here in the usual three hours or so. For the moment anyway, life had such a patina of normalcy in southern Afghanistan that huge commercial trucks carrying pomegranates and scrap metal came across the border today into Pakistan; trucks with sacks of wheat for sale in the Afghan markets drove the other way.

Opposition commanders insisted that the airport south of the city had been captured, but those reports could not be confirmed. Travelers from Kandahar interviewed at the border said that there was one checkpoint on the road near the airport but that it was easy to pass.

They reported that the airport was in the hands of the Taliban. Arab fighters have traditionally guarded the airport and are reported to have redoubled their strength there.

But Mr. Karzai said the airport had been seized by local tribal chiefs. He also said there had been fighting south of the city, presumably in the airport region.

A senior Pakistani border official said he believed that the situation around Kandahar was "very fluid."

"So far, people haven't decided which side they are on," he said. "If the local population decides to go with the guerrillas, it will be a very long process. If the local commanders succeed, it will be much easier."

Mr. Karzai, who said on the BBC Pashtun service that he was in Orozgun province north of Kandahar, was reported to have supporters marching toward Kandahar from his post. From the other side of the city, another anti-Taliban commander, Gul Agha, was reported to be moving north toward Kandahar.

The number of forces with the opposition commanders around Kandahar remained vague. It was not clear how many men Commander Agha had entered with or how many he would pick up along the way.

The commanders, who come from the Pashtun tribe as do the majority of Taliban, have said they were not seeking to encourage Pashtuns to fight Pashtuns. Rather, they said, they wanted to find what they called a peaceful solution through defections and direct talks with the Taliban.

But the lack of a discernible uprising so far was not surprising, a Western diplomat said. Traditionally, Afghan opposition fighters have been poorly organized and consisted of "a lot of bluff and very little action - they do little and talk it up."

The number of Taliban soldiers coming into the border town here today increased considerably, border guards said. They had ditched their weapons and in many cases had shed their distinctive black turbans, blending into the throngs of traders and smugglers milling along the road leading to Quetta, the provincial capital.

One man who said he was a fighter, Abdul Manan, put on a brave face, insisting that he had come to Pakistan only to visit some friends and would be returning to Afghanistan. "We are regrouping," he said. "Sometimes you retreat; sometimes you go ahead. I hope we will go ahead again."

On the road south from the border crossing two black pickup trucks with license plates from Kashmir sped along filled with men covered in dust from the journey from inside Afghanistan. Kashmiri fighters are among the foreigners - along with Arabs and Pakistanis - who have joined the Taliban and are among the most despised by the Afghan population.

Huge defections of hard-core fighters into Pakistan have yet to materialize, a senior border guard said today. "Most who have come across are the raw material - Pakistani students from the madrasses," he said, referring to the Islamic religious schools that have been the training ground for Taliban recruits.

------

THE DISPLACED
Afghans Returning Home, Vindicated and Vengeful

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/asia/16HERA.html

TAYBAD, Iran, Nov. 15 - In the year he spent in Iran, Aziz Habibi was a construction worker with no family and no history. In Afghanistan, his homeland, he had been a farmer and a mujahedeen member, a father and husband. This weekend, he will return to reclaim those identities.

Davoud Salamat was an aid worker in Afghanistan who left three years ago for Iran where he, too, became a construction worker. He watched with dismay as the world ignored the atrocities perpetrated within his country. This weekend, he will go home to begin rebuilding it.

In Afghanistan, Davoud Haidari became a second-class citizen, harassed because he did not speak Pashto, accosted because he did not support the Taliban. He left for Iran two years ago. This weekend, he will return to exact his revenge.

Drenched with joy, shadowed by bloodlust, the self-repatriation of Iran's huge Afghan population is under way. This border town, about 10 miles from Afghanistan, has for years been a way station for Afghans coming to Iran to work or escape persecution. Now the traffic is flowing the other way.

Since Herat, about 60 miles inside Afghanistan, fell to the Northern Alliance on Monday, three busloads of Afghans a day have been heading to the border, according to a local police official. Over the past few years, they had paid smugglers as much as $200 to get out. With the hated Taliban gone, the dispossessed can barely wait to get back in. The celebrations in Tehran and other cities quickly gave way to planning for the journey home.

Around 30 returnees had stopped for a night or two at the municipal guest house here, and tonight in its common room they quietly watched Iran fail to qualify for the World Cup. They spoke of their hope for peace, their desire for democratic elections, their excitement at imminent family reunions.

One man, Abdul Latif, 40, a carpenter, said he had not seen his mother and siblings in Herat in six years. He lives in Germany, and booked a flight to Iran as soon as it seemed the Taliban were going to fall.

Mr. Habibi said that the Taliban's defeat in Herat represented the dawn of a new year for him. His family in Herat has no phone, so he has not spoken to them in a year - not even to tell them he is returning.

"I'm just going," he said.

But he and others made clear that the war was far from over, and that it could continue on a disturbingly intimate scale. Some said they were going home to finish off the Taliban for good, and suggested that neighbors who had not sufficiently opposed the Taliban would also be called to account.

After their relatives had been killed, their property taken, their dignity assaulted, some returnees said it was impossible to simply go home and pick up their plows, pretending nothing had happened.

"I've been shot twice," Mr. Haidari said. "Four of my uncles and two cousins died. I cannot go back feeling nothing. I have to take revenge."

The Pashtuns in Herat had harassed him because he spoke a different language, Mr. Haidari said. They had taken his money and carpets, and the land and homes of others he knew. "We want to take from them what they took from us by force," he said. "We told them when they were armed and harassing us that things will change, and we will do the same thing back to them."

He was crossing the border with 20 men who he said would pick up arms on the other side. But he insisted that the elders in his family would not let him kill or injure anyone. "I just have to harass the people who harassed me," he said.

Abdullahi Feiz Muhammad, 40, came to Iran a year ago and worked at the headquarters of Ismail Khan, a Northern Alliance commander, in Mashad. He will take over some border and customs posts abandoned when the Taliban fled. And he will help fight.

Whether on their own or because of coercion, the Taliban's supporters in Herat acted as spies, Mr. Muhammad said. They would keep the Taliban updated on forays by opposition troops. So now, he said, "If we recognize who they were, we will take revenge. Many people lost sons, brothers, fathers because they spied on them, and they were arrested and killed."

Mr. Muhammad said repeatedly that Afghans should have elections to choose their leaders; the West, he said, should not impose a government on the population simply to make sure that every ethnic group was represented. Like all of those interviewed, he reveres Mr. Khan, who would, it seems, have little trouble sweeping any election in Herat.

But his insistence that the Afghan people finally be freed to choose their own representatives was not absolute. Asked if he would ever countenance letting the Taliban put candidates on a ballot anywhere in the country, he replied with an unequivocal no.

------

THE TRAP
Talks Fail With Taliban Besieged in Kunduz

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/asia/16FIGH.html

BANGI, Afghanistan, Nov. 15 - Talks to secure a peaceful handover of the besieged Taliban-held city of Kunduz collapsed today, setting the stage for a possible battle involving thousands of foreign Taliban troops believed to be trapped in the northern Afghan city.

American B-52's and fighter- bombers struck Taliban positions outside the city for the first time, and Northern Alliance commanders decided that they would move into the city, which its troops had surrounded. The actions followed the breakdown of negotiations between Taliban and Northern Alliance fighters set up to find a way to avert a battle.

Northern Alliance commanders said they hoped that many Taliban troops would join them once the fighting started. But they said a garrison of Taliban fighters from other Muslim lands, whom commanders estimate to number between 3,000 and 6,000, would not be given the opportunity to change sides. The choice for them, they said, will be to go to prison or die on the battlefield.

"The foreigners are between life and death," Gen. Daoud Khan said. "They are desperate. They will try anything."

Most alliance troops regard the foreign Taliban troops as invaders who have wrecked their country, and they hold them in an especially bitter contempt.

"The foreign terrorists should be killed," said Mahmood, 41, an alliance officer on the front lines in Bangi. He said about 100 of his friends, both military and civilian, were killed by the Taliban and their foreign supporters in recent years.

The battle for Kunduz, if it comes, could prove to be one of the biggest of the war.

Alliance commanders believe that the city holds the largest concentration of Taliban soldiers left in Afghanistan - more than 20,000, many of them refugees from defeats elsewhere, and many of them fighters from other Muslim lands. The Taliban garrison in Kunduz has no way out, as alliance commanders say they have cut all the roads leading out of the city.

There were indications that the Taliban soldiers in Kunduz were beginning to crack under the pressure. The alliance said a Taliban commander, Mirza Muhammad Nasri, had agreed to defect with the 1,000 soldiers under his command. Pir Muhammad, an alliance commander here, said Taliban leaders on Wednesday executed five local commanders who were suspected of negotiating with the alliance. Commander Muhammad said that according to Northern Alliance agents in Kunduz, the suspected traitors were hanged in public.

"When we tried to reach them on the radio, no one answered," he said.

The looming battle for Kunduz displayed all the attributes of a traditional Afghan test of nerves. General Khan said the alliance would slowly tighten its circle around the city. As his men move in closer, he said, he hoped that they would be able to persuade Taliban commanders to rise up against the others.

"If they do not submit, then they will be killed," he said.

General Khan and others said some Taliban commanders and soldiers had given strong indications that they would be willing to change sides. He said he and his lieutenants had spoken to more than 20 Taliban commanders. One, he said, was a senior commander named Haji Omar, who General Khan said had pleaded for time to enable him to persuade others to defect to the alliance. "If he comes out, a lot of others will follow," he said.

The most likely turncoats, he said, were from the Taliban units recruited from northern Afghanistan. Those, he said, were made up of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, two groups that predominate in the north.

"If they wish to embrace us, then they will be forgiven," he said.

The Taliban soldiers most likely to resist, General Khan said, would be those from the southern part of the country where the Taliban originated. Most of those are ethnic Pashtuns, who make up the majority of the Taliban. Unlike most Afghan cities in the north, Kunduz's population is nearly 50 percent Pashtun, suggesting that the Taliban fighters might have substantial public support there.

Then there are the Taliban fighters from foreign lands, most of them young and illiterate soldiers from Muslim countries in the Middle East. There are few credible estimates for the number of foreign soldiers who enlisted with the Taliban, although the alliance maintains jails that teem with captured Pakistanis, Saudis and Chechens. The alliance put several foreign prisoners on display today in Taliqan, which was captured earlier this week.

General Khan said he held out virtually no hope that the foreign fighters believed to be in Kunduz would surrender. Indeed, if the declarations of many alliance troops were credible, the fate that awaits them seems clear.

Commander Muhammad said about 450 hard-core Taliban troops, including many foreigners, barricaded themselves in a mosque in Mazar- i-Sharif after alliance troops moved in last week. They were all killed, he said, in a battle that ended today.

General Khan said that if the foreign soldiers in Kunduz surrendered, they would most likely be imprisoned and tried in a court.

"Then maybe they will be killed," he said.

---

AFGHANISTAN REDUX
Warlords Are Vying to Fill Vacuum Left by the Taliban

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/asia/16AFGH.html

POL-E CHARKHI, Afghanistan Nov. 15 - In a 10-minute span this afternoon, three different cars arrived here from towns ruled by three different Afghan warlords. The first car arrived from Jalalabad, where a local political leader named Mawlawi Yunis Khalis has declared himself ruler, rejecting the Northern Alliance and the Taliban's authority.

The second came from the nearby city of Towr Kham, where a local commander named Hazrati Ali has seized power. The third arrived from Sorubi, where Ezatullah, a local commander with only one name, has created his own fief.

All three arrived at a Northern Alliance checkpoint set up near Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan, one of five provinces where Taliban forces have fled but Northern Alliance forces have failed to establish control.

Three days after the fall of Kabul, power vacuums in outlying provinces are being filled by local military commanders, political leaders and anyone with a gun. Parts of Afghanistan are beginning to present the same picture of lawlessness that led to the rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990's.

"The local people who have guns are now powerful," said Musa, a 30-year-old baker from Towr Kham. "We need some security."

Passengers in all three cars described fear and unease in the towns, but not yet panic and lawlessness. They suggested that if the situation is not addressed quickly, divisions could deepen.

The only direct front line that still exists between the alliance and Taliban forces is 100 miles southwest of Kabul near the city of Ghazni. Elsewhere, warlords seem to have established fiefs as former Taliban leaders melt away and rival groups within the dominant ethnic Pashtun group battle for the spoils.

Less than a week after Taliban power began to collapse across Afghanistan with the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif to forces of the Northern Alliance, the country's political map is beginning to look ominously like the map of 1989, after Soviet forces withdrew, or for that matter, like the map of Afghanistan while Moscow was attempting to turn Afghanistan into a pliant colony on its southern frontier.

Even under King Mohammad Zahir Shah, overthrown in 1973, Afghanistan was a construct of semi-independent fiefs, ruled by feudal chiefs who pledged loyalty to the monarchy in Kabul but acted, in practice, with wide autonomy. How the United States and its Western allies might impose unity on this fragmented country remains unclear.

Once the feudal lords of Afghanistan protected their power with muskets. But the warlords - the so-called "jihadi" commanders of the 1980's Muslim guerilla struggle against Moscow and its puppet government in Kabul -acquired the weapons of modern warfare, including mortars, shoulder-fired rockets, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and millions of Kalashnikov rifles.

By one 1989 estimate, more than 10 million Kalashnikovs were funneled into Afghanistan in the nine years of the Soviet occupation - more than one rifle for every two Afghans in a country of about 15 million at the time of the 1978 Communist coup. Many of these weapons are still available.

Until this week, the high tide of new warlordism came between 1992 and 1996, when the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic factions that now comprise the Northern Alliance, as well as one of the major Pashtun factions, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, gained control of Kabul. That action came in the wake of the collapse of the puppet pro-Moscow government of President Mohammed Najibullah.

Today, the men from Jalalabad said that Mr. Khalis, the local political leader, was the most powerful figure in the city. But they said armed supporters of Abdul Haq, the Afghan dissident hung by the Taliban last month, and Haji Kadir, a senior official in the Northern Alliance, are also present.

"The United States and United Nations should follow their plan, they should come to these places," pleaded Mohammad Zaman, a shopkeeper who arrived in the car from Jalalabad. "We are all afraid of this."

The gains made by alliance forces in the last week have created the potential for fragmentation across a wide swath of Afghanistan.

In the North, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek alliance commander, now appears to control the city of Mazar-i-Sharif and is again in position to receive aid from Uzbekistan.

In the West, Gen. Ismael Khan, an alliance commander, has regained control of the city of Herat, and is again in position to be Iran's proxy. Many provinces in eastern Afghanistan could fall under the influence of Pakistan. Pashtuns live on either side of the eastern border, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Northern Alliance officials have apparently decided to not use force to win control of areas dominated by the Pashtuns. There was no evidence of a significant number of troops being massed near Nangarhar and Logar provinces today, two areas east and south of Kabul where local officials seized power after the Taliban fled.

One report here today suggested that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notoriously ruthless warlord, had returned from self-exile in Iran to proclaim himself governor of Logar Province. Control of Logar, which at its northern edge is only 15 miles south of Kabul, would make Hekmatyar a major power-broker. Hekmatyar is in many ways the incarnation of the Afghan warlord - ruthless, pitiless toward enemies, dedicated to nothing but power.

As a student at Kabul University in the 1960's, he was notorious as the leader of a militant Islamic student group that threw acid in the face of unveiled women students.

The Northern Alliance seems unready to take such warlords on, at least for now. It may well lack the manpower needed to mount attacks across the country. The alliance fields only 15,000 soldiers and the amount of territory it controls has quadrupled in two weeks. The alliance is also under pressure to reach out to all Afghans rather than confront ethnic rivals.

Sardar, the driver of the car from Towr Kham, one of the towns where a local leader has seized power, said local soldiers there were blocking people from coming to Kabul. Shahaqa, a passenger in a car from Surobi, another town under local control, said people there were worried that the local soldiers might back the town's new self-declared ruler.

"Maybe they will steal, maybe they will fight," he said. "They are all Taliban who just took off their turbans."

-------- arms sales

Man Pleads in $32M Weapons Plot

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Arms-Deal-Sting.html?searchpv=aponline

MIAMI (AP) -- A man pleaded guilty Thursday to trying to illegally export $32 million in missiles, military weaponry and other arms.

The federal charge against Mohammed Malik of attempting to export weapons without a license carries a maximum 10-year prison term. Co-defendant Diaa Mohsen planned to enter a similar plea Friday, attorneys said.

The charges were the result of a 30-month sting involving an informant. The defendants talked to the informant about buying a 19-item laundry list of arms, including shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank TOW missiles, M-16 rifles and night-vision goggles.

``Not one bullet was ever exported. Not one dollar was ever brought in this country,'' defense attorney James Eisenberg said in stressing the tentative nature of the weapons deals.

While the intended buyers were not spelled out by the prosecution, Mohsen's attorney has said undisclosed Egyptians were on the other end of talks.

Numerous promised wire transfers never arrived, but there were discussions of foreign bankers taking payoffs to move the purchase money to the United States, said prosecutor Rolando Garcia.

Malik, 52, a U.S. citizen from Jersey City, N.J., and Mohsen, an Egyptian national, were arrested last June after inspecting a Stinger missile and a silencer-equipped M-16 at a West Palm Beach warehouse.

-------- biological weapons

Major Anthrax Developments

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Anthrax-Major-Developments.html

Developments Friday related to anthrax cases:

-- An anthrax-tainted letter addressed to Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy is found, the second letter sent to Congress that contained anthrax. The letter has similar handwriting and the same Trenton, N.J.-postmark as one sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the FBI says.

-- Small traces of anthrax are discovered in letters and packages sent through France's mail system, the first such cases in the country.

-- A team decontaminates a postal distribution center in Raleigh, N.C., where a trace amount of anthrax is found on a shrink-wrapped pallet. The pallet carried stamps from the Brentwood postal facility in Washington where two postal workers died.

-- Government scientists head to North Dakota and Texas to find out how much anthrax is safe. The two states had naturally caused outbreaks of anthrax in animals and CDC scientists are to study how much anthrax contamination is present in those environments.

---

U.S. Opts to Keep Smallpox Stock

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Smallpox.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration said Friday it will keep the government's stock of smallpox virus in case it should be needed to develop new vaccines or treatments, putting off yet again a commitment eventually to destroy it.

The virus is supposed to be held in only two locations worldwide: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and a similar facility in Russia. Many bioterrorism experts believe that other nations, such as North Korea or Iraq, may have samples that could be unleashed.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said he agrees with scientists who argue that the United States should hold onto its stock in case it is needed to develop new treatments or a vaccine that is safer that the one that exists today.

``Until we have developed our defenses, we must keep this killer secure but available for needed research,'' he said in a statement. ``Events of the last two months make all too clear that if smallpox virus fell into the wrong hands, it might be deliberately unleashed. While the chance of release of smallpox remains small, it is nonetheless real, and we must be prepared to combat it.''

After the disease was declared eradicated in 1980, the World Health Organization brokered an agreement that nations would send their stocks to the United States and Russia. They were eventually to destroy the stocks after scientists had completed study on the virus and had made sure the disease actually was gone from the world.

But in 1999, the Clinton administration decided not to destroy the U.S. stock but promised to return to the issue in 2002.

One of the most prominent critics of the 1999 decision is now Thompson's top bioterrorism adviser: Dr. D.A. Henderson, who lead the smallpox eradication campaign. In a speech just last week, Henderson argued that the Clinton administration was wrong to keep the smallpox on hand. Destroying it, he said, would decrease the likelihood that it would be released.

HHS spokesman Kevin Keane said he doesn't know if Henderson was consulted about the decision to keep it.

Thompson said in his statement that he had informed the World Health Organization of the administration's decision. Officials from WHO could not be reached for comment Friday either in Geneva, Switzerland, or Washington.

------

THE DISEASE
U.S. Advises Anthrax Drug for Visitors to a Publisher

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16CDC.html

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 15 - Anthrax spores have been found throughout the headquarters of a tabloid publisher, leading local health officials to suspect it received more than one tainted letter.

Investigators said today that it was unlikely that just one letter had spread spores to all three floors of the 68,000-square-foot American Media Inc. building in Boca Raton.

Tim O'Connor of the Palm Beach County Health Department said the theory that one letter was shared by people throughout the building could not be ruled out. But, Mr. O'Connor said, the evidence of spores on three floors "would indicate there's more than one letter."

An editor at an American Media tabloid died of inhalation anthrax on Oct. 5. Another worker in the building contracted the disease but recovered. The source is believed to be one or more letters containing anthrax, but no tainted letters have been found in the building.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today that people who had visited the American Media building as far back as August should take a two-month regimen of antibiotics to protect against anthrax.

The centers published a list today of specific groups of people who should take the antibiotics - Cipro or doxycycline - because they may have been exposed to anthrax spores.

The agency said employees and visitors to the American Media offices who had spent more than an hour in the building from Aug. 1 to Oct. 6 should take the pills.

Other groups the centers urged to take the protective drugs include these:

¶Employees who worked on the second and third floors of the south section of the Morgan Central Postal Facility in Manhattan from Oct. 9 to Oct. 26. Five machines there have tested positive for anthrax.

¶Workers and visitors who were in the Postal Service's Route 130 Processing and Distribution Center in Hamilton, N.J., from Sept. 18 to Oct. 18. Two employees there contracted inhalation anthrax.

¶People who were on the fifth and sixth floors of the southeast wing of the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 15. A letter containing anthrax spores, sent to Senator Tom Daschle, was opened there that day.

¶Employees and visitors who were in the nonpublic mailroom of the Postal Service's Brentwood center in Washington from Oct. 12 to Oct. 21. Two postal workers there died of inhalation anthrax.

¶Mailroom employees and visitors who were at the State Department's Annex 32 mailroom in Sterling, Va., from Oct. 12 to Oct. 22. A mail handler there contracted inhalation anthrax.

The disease centers say about 32,000 people have taken the antibiotics as a precaution since the first anthrax cases were diagnosed more than a month ago. Doctors advised most of those people to stop taking the drugs after investigators determined they were not at risk.

---

BIOTERRORISM
Senators Seek $3.2 Billion to Fight Germ Threats, Doubling Bush Plan

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/politics/16BIO.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation today calling for $3.2 billion to fight bioterrorism and said it believed President Bush, who has proposed spending half that much, would support the bill. But the White House said its support was not assured.

At issue, said Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, is how well the Senate's bioterrorism measure will mesh with the president's plan for spending the $40 billion Congress has appropriated to improve defenses against terrorism of all types.

Mr. Thompson said the administration was not opposed to spending $3.2 billion but the expenditure "may have to be phased in over a couple of years."

Scott McClellan, a spokesman for the president, said Mr. Bush viewed the bill as "an important step toward reaching bipartisan consensus." He said the administration would continue to work with the bill's co-sponsors, Senators Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, and Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, on a bioterrorism package they could agree on.

A central difference between the proposals is how much they devote to state and local preparedness. The administration's $1.5 billion proposal would give the states $300 million and spend the rest largely on drugs and vaccines.

Mr. Thompson is negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to buy 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine, one for every American. Testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, he said that "with all probability," contracts with the companies would be signed next week.

The smallpox vaccine alone is estimated to cost more than $509 million, and the administration wants to spend another $643 million to expand the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, a cache of medicines and supplies to be used after a germ attack.

The Frist-Kennedy package includes $509 million for smallpox vaccine and $643 million for the drug stockpile. But it would also offer nearly $1.1 billion to states, including $670 million to create grants for bioterrorism preparedness.

At a news conference announcing the legislation today, Senator Frist said 80 percent of city and county health departments lacked comprehensive bioterror plans and more than half lacked the equipment to send faxes to multiple recipients.

Senator Frist, a heart surgeon, said state and local health departments were "the first line of defense."

Senator Kennedy said the recent anthrax attacks, which have killed four Americans and sickened more than a dozen, amply demonstrated the need to be better prepared.

"The clock is ticking on America's preparedness for a future attack," Mr. Kennedy said at the news conference, which was attended by seven Democrats and three Republicans. "We've had the clearest possible warning, and we can't afford to ignore it."

In the House hearing, Representative Greg Ganske, Republican of Iowa and a reconstructive surgeon, said he would introduce legislation identical to the Frist-Kennedy bill. Several lawmakers said the administration's plan did not go far enough.

"We need to focus our spending on systems and people, not just things," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. He called for more money to train public health professionals and laboratory workers.

Lawmakers in both parties agreed that the physical plant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta sorely needed upgrading. Scientists at the centers, who have been working around the clock to investigate the anthrax attacks, occupy laboratories that date to World War II, and the buildings are so badly deteriorated that expensive equipment must be covered in plastic sheeting to protect against rain, which seeps through the roof.

Mr. Thompson, who attended the hearing accompanied by Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, the agency's director, said plans to spend money to improve the facility were "like music to my ears."

-------- chemical weapons

Rumsfeld: N. Korea's Arms a Threat

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Korea.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld used the occasion of a visit by South Korea's defense minister to contend that North Korea's weapons programs pose a real threat to the United States.

Rumsfeld voiced his concerns during a joint news conference with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Dong-Shin.

During their talks, Kim said he and Rumsfeld reaffirmed support for resumed security talks, without conditions, between the United States and North Korea. President Bush offered to resume the talks on June 6, and North Korea has yet to respond.

Rumsfeld was unresponsive to whether North Korea has been providing chemical or biological weapons to the Afghan-based al-Qaida group or other terrorist organizations.

He said Thursday he had seen ``scraps of things'' over time but had nothing to announce.

Asked about North Korea's potential to threaten the United States, Rumsfeld said it is it is beyond question that North Korea has been developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and has been marketing missile technologies to several countries.

``It's also clear they've been making efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction,'' he said. ``And certainly the capabilities that they are seeking and that they're selling do, in fact, constitute the threat that has been posed and discussed and is very real.''

His comments suggested North Korea is continuing to develop long-range missiles even though they have abided by a moratorium on flight tests since 1998.

Unease over Pyongyang's missile program has provided impetus for the Bush administration to insist that a national missile defense system be built.

As for exports of missile technology, a senior administration official said last week that North Korea is trying to sell missiles to three or four countries in Asia and the Middle East.

North Korean missiles sales to such countries as Iran and Syria over the years have provided major amounts of foreign exchange to the cash-strapped country.

A year ago, during negotiations with the Clinton administration, North Korea showed keen interest in abandoning its missile program in exchange for economic benefits.

On a separate issue, Kim raised concerns with Rumsfeld about the possible threat of terrorism to the success of the World Cup soccer tournament, which Seoul will co-host with Japan in 2002, and the Asian Games, which will be held in the southern city of in Pusan, also in 2002.

---

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Breaking the Circle

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/opinion/16FRIE.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Although it was never his intention, Osama bin Laden has triggered the most serious debate in years, among Muslims, about Islam's ability to adapt to modernity. In Arab states this debate is still muted. But in Pakistan and other Muslim countries with a relatively free press, writers are raising it openly and bluntly. Nothing could be more important.

Here's why: Many Arab-Muslim states today share the same rigid political structure. Think of it as two islands: one island is occupied by the secular autocratic regimes and the business class around them. On the other island are the mullahs, imams and religious authorities who dominate Islamic practice and education, which is still based largely on traditional Koranic interpretations that are not embracing of modernity, pluralism or the equality of women. The governing bargain is that the regimes get to stay in power forever and the mullahs get a monopoly on religious practice and education forever.

This bargain lasted all these years because oil money, or U.S. or Soviet aid, enabled many Arab-Muslim countries to survive without opening their economies or modernizing their education systems. But as oil revenues have declined and the population of young people seeking jobs has exploded, this bargain can't hold much longer. These countries can't survive without opening up to global investment, the Internet, modern education and emancipation of their women so that they will not be competing with just half of their populations. But the more they do that, the more threatened the religious authorities feel.

Bin Laden's challenge was an attempt by the extreme Islamists to break out of their island and seize control of the secular state island. The states responded by crushing or expelling the Islamists, but without ever trying to reform the Islamic schools - called madrasas - or the political conditions that keep producing angry Islamist waves. So the deadly circle that produced bin Ladenism - poverty, dictatorship and religious anti- modernism, each reinforcing the other - just gets perpetuated.

Some are now demanding the circle be broken. Consider this remarkable open letter to bin Laden that a Pakistani writer and businessman, Izzat Majeed, wrote in last Friday's popular Pakistani daily The Nation:

"We Muslims cannot keep blaming the West for all our ills. . . . The embarrassment of wretchedness among us is beyond repair. It is not just the poverty, the illiteracy and the absence of any commonly accepted social contract that define our sense of wretchedness; it is, rather, the increasing awareness among us that we have failed as a civil society by not confronting the historical, social and political demons within us. . . . Without a reformation in the practice of Islam that makes it move forward and not backward, there is no hope for us Muslims anywhere. We have reduced Islam to the organized hypocrisy of state-sponsored mullahism. For more than a thousand years Islam has stood still because the mullahs, who became de facto clergy instead of genuine scholars, closed the door on `ijtehad' [reinterpreting Islam in light of modernity] and no one came forward with an evolving application of the message of the Holy Quran. All that the mullahs tell you today is how to go back a millennium. We have not been able to evolve a dynamic practice to bring Islam to the people in the language of their own specific era. . . . Oxford and Cambridge were the `madrasas' of Christendom in the 13th century. Look where they are today - among the leading institutions of education in the world. Where are our institutions of learning?"

The Protestant Reformation, melding Christianity with modernity, happened only when wealthy princes came along ready to finance and protect the breakaway reformers. But in the Muslim world today, the wealthiest princes, like Saudi Arabia's, are funding anti-modern schools from Pakistan to Bosnia, while the dictators pay off the anti-modern mullahs (or use them to whack the liberals) rather than reform them. This keeps the soil for bin Ladenism ever fertile.

Addressing bin Laden, Mr. Majeed concluded, "The last thing [Muslims] need is the growing darkness in your caves. . . . Holy Prophet Muhammad, on returning from a battle, said: `We return from little Jihad to greater Jihad.' True Jihad today is not in the hijacking of planes, but in the manufacturing of them."

-------- cuba

Cuba Ready for Normal US Relations

NOVEMBER 16, 07:09 EST
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/?PACKAGEID=cuba

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Cuba's foreign minister said a U.S. offer of assistance following Hurricane Michelle is ``a positive signal,'' and he declared that Havana is ready for normal relations with Washington.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Felipe Perez Roque said he hoped the U.S. offer of help heralded a change in policy by President Bush.

Asked what Cuba would consider a positive follow-up action by the Bush administration, he replied: ``To allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba.'' U.S. citizens, unless granted waivers, are banned from Cuban travel.

Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo since shortly after Fidel Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. His communist nation, just 90 miles from Miami, has continued to vex subsequent U.S. administrations.

Perez Roque said U.S. policy toward Cuba is ``held hostage'' by a minority of Cuban-Americans opposed to lifting trade restrictions.

He urged Bush ``to go beyond the influence'' of this group ``from the far right in Miami'' and pay closer attention to U.S. public opinion, which he said supports lifting the embargo. Bush has previously vowed not to ease the trade ban.

Even though Cuba has suffered under the U.S. embargo, Perez Roque said, its people have ``no grudges or ill feelings'' toward Americans.

Cuba, he said, ``stands ready to have normal, respectful relations with the United States.''

There have been no political discussions between the two countries since 1982. As the price for normal relations, the United States demands that Castro replace his communist system with a democracy.

Cuba turned down the offer of free U.S. aid, but Perez Roque said it has opened talks with the United States for a one-time cash purchase of food and medicine to replenish stocks depleted by the hurricane.

Creating a small opening in the trade embargo, the U.S. Congress last year legalized sales of food to the communist island for the first time since 1961. The Cuban government vowed not to buy ``a single gram'' of American food unless Washington did more to loosen or do away with the trade restrictions.

But Castro made an exception because of the devastation of Hurricane Michelle, which destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses and vast tracts of farmland. Perez Roque called it the worst hurricane to hit Cuba in half a century, saying it decimated the country's banana plantations and badly affected the citrus and sugar crops.

``The government of the United States offered assistance to us. They offered to send some people from the United States to make an assessment on the damage, and then provide assistance,'' the foreign minister said.

``We replied that it was very positive that for the first time ever after 40 years, the United States was going to have a gesture of this nature towards Cuba,'' he said.

Perez Roque didn't say why Cuba rejected the U.S. help and offered instead to pay cash for food and medicine, but he reiterated that the government wanted to seize ``that positive offer made by the government of the United States.''

The foreign minister said the fact that the highest levels of the Bush administration have to authorize a special permit for the shipments ``proves how irrational the blockade of the United States against Cuba is, and how pointless it is to maintain the current blockade restrictions.''

U.S.-Cuban talks are under way through diplomatic channels, Perez Roque said, and he is ``moderately optimistic'' that an agreement will be reached to allow the shipments of food and medicine.

Cuban officials have presented a list of goods for examination by U.S. officials, and also have contacted 15 agricultural and pharmaceutical companies in the United States, he said.

U.S. sources estimated the value of the products requested by Cuba at between $3 million and $10 million, but Perez Roque couldn't confirm the figures.

The foreign minister indicated that if approved, the goods will be shipped on U.S. or third-country vessels. The United States rejected a Cuban request that the goods be transported on Cuban ships, U.S. sources said. Perez Roque indicated that Cuban boats might be subject to seizure in U.S. waters.

Pamela Falk, a law professor and consultant to several grain and producer groups, called the expected deal ``a toe in the door'' and predicted that U.S. sales to Cuba could reach $1 billion a year if political conditions improve.

CIA Factbook on Cuba http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html

-------- drug war

White House Urges Senate to Confirm 'Drug Czar'

Yahoo News
Politics - Reuters
Friday November 16 1:38 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011116/pl/bush_cabinet_dc_1.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday stepped up pressure on the Democrat-led Senate to confirm the last member of President Bush's cabinet -- John Walters as the new chief of the administration's drug control policies.

Adding urgency to their appeal, Walters' supporters asserted that his confirmation as the nation's 'drug czar' was critical to combating drug trafficking, believed to be a source of funding for terrorist groups like those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

One of Bush's most controversial nominees, Walters has come under fire from key Senate Democrats and some experts for questioning the effectiveness of drug-abuse treatment.

The White House and its allies defended Bush's choice to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy and urged the Senate to immediately approve the nomination.

``We need to act and act quickly,'' Rep. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, told reporters after meeting with White House officials and anti-drug groups about Walters' nomination.

``Just as he (Bush) needs a general in the war in Afghanistan, he needs a general in this battle in the United States to reduce substance abuse,'' Portman added.

Walters was nominated for the post more than five months ago. Despite objections from former first lady Betty Ford and drug treatment authorities, he won the backing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 8 in a 14-5 vote.

The full Senate had been expected to follow suit soon after the committee vote, but administration officials said Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, has so far refused to bring the nomination to the floor for a final vote.

Portman blamed a handful of Democrats for putting secret ''holds'' on Walters' nomination.

``The nomination has been up in the Senate for five months and we would hope they would act quickly to give the president the advantage of the advice and counsel of all of his closest advisers at this important time,'' a White House official said.

Much of the criticism of Walters has been based on his past writings and statements.

They range from questioning the effectiveness of drug treatment to challenging the need for federal support of drug-abuse prevention and dismissing as an ``urban myth'' the belief that the criminal justice system has a racial bias.

At Walters' Senate confirmation hearing last month, he said he favored a balanced approach to drug prevention ``consistent with common sense.''

Walters served in the office of drug control policy in the administration of Bush's father, President George Bush.

Since 1996, Walters has served as president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, working with charitable organizations, including ones involved in drug prevention and treatment.

-------- israel

MIDEAST
Israel Eases Travel Restrictions during Ramadan

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Police sent reinforcements into Jerusalem on Friday for the start of the holy month of Ramadan, while a hard-line Israeli Cabinet minister said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's offer of a Palestinian state was not serious.

Environment Minister Tsachi Hanegbi, from Sharon's Likud party, said Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres should be fired for telling the U.N. General Assembly in Thursday that in Israel, ``there is support for a Palestinian independence, support for a Palestinian state,'' but adding that this was not official government policy.

Responding to a Peres retort that Sharon himself offered the Palestinians a state, Hanegbi indicated that Sharon's offer was not made in good faith, because it was ``tied to a series of conditions that the Palestinians have not accepted and cannot accept.''

Interviewed on Israel Radio before returning home Friday, Peres warned that the alternative to an independent Palestinian state would be ``an Arab majority in a binational state'' in place of predominantly Jewish Israel.

President Bush has said repeatedly that a Palestinian state should be the outcome of peace negotiations. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has a speech scheduled for Monday, in which he is expected to spell out U.S. Mideast policy.

Police reinforcements poured into Jerusalem as Muslims headed for the Al Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers to mark the start of Ramadan. Islamic militants have stepped up attacks against Israel during Ramadan in the past.

For the first time in months, police said they would allow some Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza to pray at the mosque, Islam's third-holiest site.

At a crossing point between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, police briefly blocked the road with jeeps and armored vehicles, then allowed older Palestinians to pass. However, younger men were stopped.

Ahmed Tamari, 35, was one of those held back by troops, but he said he would sneak around the roadblock. ``My spirits are high, I will pray in Jerusalem,'' he said.

Israeli authorities said they were easing travel restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza for the holiday, lifting roadblocks in place during most of the year of fighting. Military official Arieh Spitzen said Israel was taking security risks ``to allow normal life during this holy month.''

Palestinians have demanded that Israel remove all the roadblocks, charging that the restrictions are part of an Israeli policy aimed at destroying the Palestinian economy.

In a sternly worded message for Ramadan, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the militant Hamas, called on his people to keep up their fight against Israel ``until victory or martyrdom.'' He criticized Muslims for showing weakness in the face of attacks ``here and in Afghanistan.''

Yassin wrote that jihad (holy war) is an obligation ``to liberate our countries and ourselves from occupiers, aggressors and tyrants,'' charging Israel and the United States with waging a war of terrorism against Muslims.

In violence Friday, Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian in central Israel, and Israeli tanks moved briefly into Palestinian areas in Gaza.

Operating on intelligence reports, police converged on an orchard near the Israeli city of Ramle, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, said police spokesman Gil Kleiman. They started pursuing two Palestinians, opening fire, killing one and wounding the other. Kleiman said the two were in Israel illegally.

Israel Radio reported that the two were smuggled from Gaza by an Israeli several days ago and were suspected of planning a terror attack.

In Gaza, Israeli tanks entered Palestinian territory in two places, Palestinian security officials said. In northern Gaza, they leveled farmland, and near the Karni crossing in central Gaza, they destroyed a Palestinian police post, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

---

Peres Calls Palestinian State Israel's 'Best Bet' for Peace

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/middleeast/16NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 15 - Echoing President Bush's call for a separate state of Palestine, the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, told the General Assembly today that there was "broad agreement" that the creation of an independent Palestinian state "is the best bet."

"A Palestinian state - which enables the Palestinians to breathe freedom, to initiate a new economy, to maintain their traditions, and enjoy the highest level of education - will also provide for real security," Mr. Peres said. "As far as Israel is concerned, we are convinced that good neighbors are better than good guns."

He did not say this was the position of Israel; the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not yet proclaimed itself in favor of a Palestinian state. He explained later that he was expressing his own position and "the feelings of many Israelis."

"I do not see any other solution for Palestinians or for us or for peace in the future," he said.

But even if unofficial, and coming from one of Israel's most enduring doves, the reference to a Palestinian state by an Israeli at the United Nations reveals how rapidly the notion has become generally accepted. "Yesterday, you would hardly find, for example, support for a Palestinian state," Mr. Peres remarked.

The statement reflected, too, the anticipation that the Bush administration would soon begin a new effort to revive the negotiating process after 14 months of violence. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is expected to outline the new effort in a speech on Monday, though officials in Washington said the plan was not yet firm.

The Israeli-Arab conflict has been a strong secondary theme at the General Assembly, which has been dominated by the campaign against terrorism. But instead of the condemnations of Israel that were the stuff of all third-world speeches in the past, many nations have taken a more measured tone, citing the war on terrorism as a reason why the conflict must be resolved.

Mr. Peres took note of this in a brief exchange with reporters. "From our standpoint, we see a major change in the structure of the United Nations," he said. "Until now, the Arab camp enjoyed the support of three groups - the Arab group, the Islamic bloc and the nonaligned. It was an almost automatic majority against us, and we couldn't stand a chance to win on any suggestion. What happened in our eyes is the disappearance of nonaligned nations. All important nations are aligning themselves against terror. The two largest countries, China and India, are joining in with Latin American, African nations."

In Gaza, the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, today called on the United Nations Security Council to "establish an international mechanism" that would oblige the Israelis and Palestinians to immediately resume negotiations on a final settlement, and would dispatch international observers to Israel.

Mr. Arafat made the remarks in a broadcast marking the 13th anniversary of the symbolic declaration of a Palestinian state by the Palestine Liberation Organization. The proposal was a variation on Mr. Arafat's call at the United Nations last Saturday for an international conference to propose a comprehensive framework for a permanent solution.

Mr. Arafat said then that "interim solutions" were no longer viable. Mr. Sharon has been seeking negotiations on partial agreements.

---

A 2nd Night of Protests by Palestinians Angry at Arafat

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/middleeast/16MIDE.html

JENIN, West Bank, Nov. 15 - Using stones, guns and small explosives, hundreds of Palestinians vented their disgust this evening with Yasir Arafat's governing Palestinian Authority, clashing with Palestinian security forces who seemed as frightened as they were furious when the mob surged against them.

As leaders on both sides shouted for calm amid the gunfire, one screaming security officer tried to charge the demonstrators with his semiautomatic rifle but was dragged away by comrades. Demonstrators grabbed metal rods from a construction site and hurled rocks at the police, but most people on both sides were aiming their guns at thin air, and no injuries were reported.

It was the second night of violent protest against the arrest by Palestinian officers of a leading militant here, and it exposed the widening generational gap between Mr. Arafat and the young leaders who are taking over this uprising against the Israelis, and with it perhaps the Palestinian cause.

In his long walk down a political balance beam, Mr. Arafat is starting again to teeter. The Bush administration, with an array of nations, has suggested that it will not treat Mr. Arafat as a legitimate national leader if he does not crack down on extremists. But the Palestinians supplying the shock troops and on-the- ground leadership of the intifada have made clear, here and elsewhere, that they will not follow Mr. Arafat if he does so.

"They don't openly go out and defy him, but in reality they go out and do what they want to do," said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Dr. Shikaki was referring to a rising generation of Palestinian leaders he calls the young guard.

In cities like Jenin - islands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, cut off by Israeli forces, that Mr. Arafat seldom visits - his power has been curtailed, Dr. Shikaki said. The local leaders in the fight against the Israelis have gained strength. "The de facto power is in the hands of the young guard," he said. "They are the ones who make decisions, and people know that."

As long as those decisions align with Mr. Arafat's interests, there is no problem. But when they conflict, the dilemma can be excruciating. "I don't know what to do," blurted Mahmoud Abujildeh as he strapped on a helmet today and prepared to step from behind a wall with his M-16 rife to confront the demonstrators, pouring down from Jenin's refugee camp.

"I'm from the refugee camp and these people are my people," he said. Then he gestured toward the security officers in camouflage bunched against the wall on the other side of the street, nervously eyeing the approaching throng. "And these people are my people," he added.

In the end, Mr. Abujildeh, 27, was among a handful of officers who brokered a compromise. The marchers stopped attacking the police, and in exchange they were permitted to parade through town, firing their rifles in the air and chanting the last name of the man arrested Wednesday, Mahmoud Nurasi Tawalbi, a local leader of the Islamic Jihad.

Interviewed by chance earlier in the day as he passed with his gun through the Jenin market, Mr. Abujildeh had made his own sympathies clear: As long as Israelis were blockading Jenin and the peace process was stuck, he said, Palestinians should not be doing the Israelis' and Americans' bidding and arresting their own leaders. "He cannot play with fire," Mr. Abujildeh said of Mr. Arafat.

Israeli officials say that Jenin has become a factory for suicide bombers. They have traced several recent terrorist attacks here, and they accuse Mr. Tawalbi of recruiting some of the killers. Despite pleas by the Bush administration for a withdrawal, Israeli troops continue to occupy positions in Palestinian-controlled territory here in hopes, Israeli officials say, of stopping further attacks.

A city of about 35,000 at the northern tip of the West Bank, Jenin depended before the intifada on commerce with Israeli Arabs. Since the intifada began in late September last year, business here has collapsed. One restaurateur, who sells shwarma sandwiches, said he used to go through 1,000 pitas in a day. Now, he said, he averages about 70.

An inchoate rage is building among the residents, many of whom have not been outside what one called this "small jail" in more than a year. As dusk came tonight, more than a dozen boys of perhaps 5 years old were dragging car parts into the street to block access to the refugee camp of Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The children were said to be intent on blocking Israeli undercover agents, but the only people they were stopping appeared to be fellow Palestinians.

Only one man interviewed here today, a doctor, expressed approval of the arrest of Mr. Tawalbi. He asked that this name not be published.

Like Palestinians generally, residents of Jenin said they have seen no benefit from the intifada, but they demanded that it continue. After so much sacrifice, they said, Palestinians could not accede now to Israeli demands without any evident gain. They insisted on their respect for Mr. Arafat, but they talked about him as a symbol more than as a vibrant, present leader. And their respect appeared to extend no farther than the ambit of their agreement with him.

Zakaria Zbaidi, 25, wears dark glasses to protect his nearly blind eyes and, it seemed, to cover his blackened cheeks and nose. He said that the damage was done when an Israeli tank shell exploded near him while he was fighting here. "I lost my face!" he said. "What did I achieve? I'm a refugee still." He said Palestinians could not settle for less than "an end to occupation."

Asked what would happen if Mr. Arafat did not relent and instead continued arresting militants, Mr. Zbaidi curled one hand into a fist. "It's a time bomb here," he said. "People will not take Arafat into consideration."

Today was the 13th anniversary of Mr. Arafat's declaration of Palestinian independence, which he made while in exile, in Algeria. But the parade planned here in commemoration was canceled, residents said, in hopes of averting more violence.

Leaders of the Palestinian factions in Jenin, including Fatah, met late Wednesday night and for hours again today in hopes of calming the tumult. Qadoura Musa, the local Fatah leader, said that the group spoke by telephone with Mr. Arafat and urged him to release Mr. Tawalbi. "He said, `I will implement the law,' " Mr. Musa said. "We don't know what that means."

Mr. Musa, flanked by half a dozen other local leaders, was interviewed on the sidewalk here outside the Red Crescent offices, which scores of police were using as a base as they prepared for possible demonstrations. He insisted that the protest against the arrest was "a cloud in the sky that will pass away."

But another Fatah leader, Nayef Swaitat, observed that people had reached "a point of pressure that cannot be held back," as the sporadic gunfire from the refugee camp became a a steady pounding and drew much closer.

As the demonstrators thronged into view around a bend, the factional leaders piled together into two subcompact cars and backed hurriedly away, vanishing in the opposite direction.

-------- pakistan

Coup rumors

Inside the Ring -
Notes from the Pentagon
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
November 16, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011116-78905562.htm

U.S. intelligence officials said reports had reached Washington last week of a planned Pakistani military coup to coincide with the visit to the United States by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose stay here ended Monday.

Gen. Musharraf's departure was delayed slightly by the crash of an American Airlines Airbus A300 that day.

The intelligence reports, we are told, stated that disaffected Pakistani military officers and personnel were planning to carry out a coup during the president's absence. The officers were said to be upset with Gen. Musharraf's pro-U.S. policies.

Reports of the coup planning, we are told, were one reason President Bush announced during a joint press conference Saturday with Gen. Musharraf that he hoped Northern Alliance forces would not occupy Kabul. The fall of the Afghan capital was seen as a blow to the Pakistani military, which in the past had supported the Taliban.

Other intelligence reports last week said a small number of Pakistan Army personnel had defected to Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban forces.

The defections provided further intelligence evidence that all was not well within the government and military of Gen. Musharraf.

Osama's reporter

Hamid Mir, editor of Pakistan's Ausaf newspaper, is the only reporter known to have interviewed Osama bin Laden since the September 11 attacks. Mr. Mir told the world he was driven by jeep blindfolded for five hours on Nov. 7, and met the world's most wanted man in a brick hut somewhere in Afghanistan.

A U.S. intelligence official tells us Washington believes Mr. Mir's trek to bin Laden was much longer - 10 hours longer. The official suggests the editor gave the five-hour timeline to stay in bin Laden's good graces and perhaps win a follow-up interview.

"We're very skeptical," said this official, noting that the CIA and U.S. special operations forces are gaining more intelligence sources on the ground. "At least half the time was deceptive driving with a mask on. North for three hours, then south for three hours."

----

Money for Pakistan

November 16, 2001
Embassy Row, James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011116-6586464.htm

The United States yesterday rewarded Pakistan for its support of the war in Afghanistan when the U.S. ambassador signed an agreement to provide $600 million in aid.

Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin said the aid is the first installment of a billion-dollar package pledged to Pakistan during President Pervez Musharraf's weekend visit to the United States.

Miss Chamberlin and Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz signed an agreement to release the aid, saying the money would help ease the strain on the Pakistani economy from the Afghan war.

"The terrorist attacks put an additional strain on the world economy," she told reporters at the signing ceremony in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

"Nowhere has that been more evident than on Pakistan, which prior to that event had put into place a strong economic-reform and poverty-alleviation program."

Miss Chamberlin said the aid also is a sign of renewed strength in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

"It is a mark of the dramatically changed relationship we now enjoy," she said. "Our aid is partly in recognition of Pakistan's support for the campaign against terrorism. This is not a one-shot package but represents a long-term relationship with Pakistan."

-------- puerto rico

Navy, Marine chiefs seek live-fire Vieques training

November 16, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011116-19923132.htm

The top officers of the Navy and Marine Corps in a private letter have asked Navy Secretary Gordon England to allow sailors and Marines to resume using live bombs and rounds during training on the island of Vieques.

Gen. James Jones, the Marine commandant, and Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, cite the war on terrorism as a reason to let the next carrier battle group conduct limited live-fire practice. The issue is one of Washington's hottest political debates, and a decision to resume the use of real ammunition could reignite protests on the Puerto Rican island.

"We respectfully request support of a wartime modification of current practice to sanction the use of live ordnance during combined arms training exercises prior to deployment," the two four-star officers said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

Under a policy ordered by President Clinton to defuse protests, naval combatants were limited to "dummy" rounds on Vieques. But military advocates say the inert rounds do not adequately prepare pilots, gunners and infantry for battle.

"We're at war, and our deploying forces need proper training," Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and a Senate Armed Services Committee member, said yesterday. "Training not only enhances their warfighting effectiveness, it saves lives. Simply put, the best - and most realistic - practice for war is live-fire training."

He added, "I commend the commandant and the Navy CNO for their steadfast commitment to providing the highest level of training and safety for our men and women in uniform."

Gen. Jones and Adm. Clark specifically asked that the carrier USS John F. Kennedy, and its battle group of surface ships and Marine-carrying amphibious assault vessels, be allowed to use live munitions.

The Kennedy is the next carrier to depart the East Coast for a six-month, or longer, tour in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions this spring. It is scheduled to relieve the USS Theodore Roosevelt, whose aircraft are conducting strikes over Afghanistan from the Arabian Sea.

The Kennedy's pilots and Marines could go into combat in Afghanistan or Iraq. The State Department says Baghdad is a supporter of international terrorism, which President Bush has vowed to eliminate.

A Navy spokesman at the Pentagon declined yesterday to discuss the letter.

"As a matter of policy and common courtesy, we are not in the habit of confirming or discussing internal discussions within the Navy Department," the spokesman said.

The request was expected to reinvigorate a hotly contested issue that had subsided after the September 11 attacks, as Navy pilots went to war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Puerto Rican politicians and the Democratic Party have pushed the Bush administration to immediately close the range. Mr. Bush has proposed a compromise that would end Vieques training in two years while the Navy searches for an alternative to Vieques' unique setting that allows components of a battle group to practice simultaneously.

Congress voted in 2000 to authorize a referendum on the island to let residents decide the range's future. But that vote, delayed until this January, will never happen, congressional sources said yesterday.

An ongoing House-Senate conference on the 2002 defense authorization bill likely will produce language that cancels the referendum. Instead, the bill would direct the Navy to keep Vieques open until Adm. Clark and Gen. Jones certify they have found an alternative site equal to Vieques.

That requirement could keep Vieques open indefinitely, since top officers have testified that the island range offers unique features.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signaled in a letter to Congress that he would support the amendment as long as it did not require a "single" site but perhaps a complex of training areas.

In their letter, Gen. Jones and Adm. Clark spelled out the kind of training they were seeking.

They wrote, "Such training would be limited in scope and only apply to 'graduate level' exercises in which (1) Navy and Marine units finalize coordination for combat operations, and (2) a limited amount of live fire air-to-ground operations are conducted to certify end-to-end handling and delivery systems from aircraft carriers in a realistic tactical environment."

They said the live-fire part of the battle group training would happen in January for three to four days.

-------- sudan

Sudan Urges U.N. to Review Sanctions

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Sudan.html?searchpv=aponline

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Sudan's foreign minister welcomed the lifting of U.N. sanctions and urged the world body to review its embargoes on other nations, including Iraq and Libya.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Mustafa Osman also reiterated his country's demand for the U.N. Security Council to investigate a 1998 U.S. missile strike that destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The missile strike followed the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people.

The United States said the plant belonged to terror suspect Osama bin Laden, who once lived in Sudan.

Osman said the ending of aviation restrictions and diplomatic sanctions in September has allowed Sudan to ``continue its cooperation with the international community.

``In this context, the Sudan calls upon the Security Council to continue this objective policy by reviewing the sanctions imposed on a number of countries, among which are Libya and Iraq,'' he said.

``The time has come to end the unilateral economic coercive measures ... so as to avoid their negative implications, particularly on women and children,'' the minister said.

Sudan, which is fighting an 18-year-old civil war that has cost the lives of 2 million people, has been on a U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism since 1993.

The Security Council and the United States each imposed sanctions after a 1995 assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia.

The sanctions were intended to compel Sudan to hand over the suspects, who were believed to have fled there. The gunmen are believed to have later left the country.

While the Security Council lifted the sanctions in September, saying it was satisfied with progress in the country, the United States has kept its embargoes because of continued concern about the country's record on terrorism and human rights violations.

President Omar el-Bashir's government has been working with U.S. anti-terrorism experts since March 2000 and was quick to condemn the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which Washington blamed on bin Laden.

Sudan ordered bin Laden out of the country in 1996 and has repeatedly said it has nothing to do with him.

The Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 to pressure leader Moammar Gadhafi to turn over two indicted suspects in the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. Since then, one man was convicted and another was acquitted, but the United States and Britain still demand Libya take responsibility for the incident.

Iraq has been under sweeping international sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

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

Rumsfeld: U.S. forces in ground combat

November 16, 2001
By Pauline Jelinek
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/default-200111161265.htm

GREAT LAKES, Ill. - U.S. special forces have been involved in ground combat in Afghanistan, killing Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today. No Americans have died in the operations, he said.

``They are armed and they're participating,'' the Pentagon chief said, describing the ongoing battle to erase the al-Qaida terrorist network and the Taliban militia that supports them.

``They have gone into places and met resistance and dealt with it,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said. He declined to say specifically how many forces are there. ``We have hundreds.''

Troops from U.S.-allied countries also are on the ground, Mr. Rumsfeld said, but he would not identify those countries.

As a result of ground action in the south of Afghanistan, he said, ``It is becoming less and less hospitable for al-Qaida to be around.''

He spoke to reporters while flying here to address the graduating class at the Naval Training Center. The center, the only boot camp for Navy enlisted men and women, graduates 55,000 recruits a year.

Mr. Rumsfeld said high-level Taliban leaders have been captured by opposition Afghan forces and American officials are planning to interrogate them.

Mr. Rumsfeld's comments came after U.S. officials declared they were ``tightening the noose'' around Osama bin Laden's terrorist network with selective air attacks and clandestine direct action on the ground.

``We have not had anyone killed but they have been in situations,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said of the U.S. ground operations in Afghanistan.

The defense secretary said there's ``a good deal happening'' in the south of the country where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters have fled as the opposition has overtaken large parts of the country.

Talking about tribes in the south, Mr. Rumsfeld said, ``They have been moving into towns and villages and cities and putting pressure on the Taliban to leave.''

Asked what the U.S. special forces are doing in the south, he said, ``They are looking for information. They're interdicting roads. They're killing Taliban that won't surrender and al-Qaida that are trying to move from one place to another.''

He said special forces are also looking for airfields where transport aircraft can land supplies as operations continue in the area.

Mr. Rumsfeld didn't specify how many combat incidents U.S. ground forces had been involved in. At times U.S. forces had were overrun but were able to call in airstrikes to fend off their attackers.

One of the incidents took place near Mazar-e Sharif, he said.

He pledged to keep up the pressure through the Muslim holy time of Ramadan, including hunting down terrorist leader bin Laden and his cohorts ``as rapidly as possible.''

A second group of Marines, meanwhile, is heading to the Arabian Sea to join the U.S. military operation against Afghanistan, defense officials said today. About 2,100 Marines aboard a three-ship Amphibious Ready Group, led by the USS Bataan, sailed through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea yesterday, the officials said. Another group of 2,100 Marines already is in the Arabian Sea.

Pentagon officials said today that the bombing of Afghanistan has continued apace. ``No change in operations as a result of Ramadan,'' said spokesman Richard McGraw. He didn't specify where the bombing was occurring but offered: ``I wouldn't characterize any area as secure.''

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in the region, planned to present his updated war plan to President Bush today. The sudden retreat of Taliban forces from northern Afghanistan this week has prompted Franks to focus more intensely on rooting out leaders of the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

--------

U.S. Special Forces Engaged in Ground Combat
Rumsfeld Discounts Reports of bin Laden Fleeing to Pakistan

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 16, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/pm_defense111601.html

GREAT LAKES, Ill., Nov. 16 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that U.S. special operations forces are engaged in ground combat in southern Afghanistan, operating inside the country for days at a time and "killing Taliban that won't surrender."

Rumsfeld also said that he had reviewed verbal and written reports that Mohammed Atef, military commander of Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden's terrorist al Qaeda network, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.

"Do I know for a fact that's the case? I don't," Rumsfeld said. "The reports I've received seem authoritative. And indeed, he was very, very senior, number two, something like that. We have been obviously seeking out command and control activities and have been targeting them and have targeted successfully a number of them, particularly in the last five or six days."

Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, in a press briefing later in the day at the Pentagon, said the reports of Atef's death were received after a U.S. airstrike "a couple of days ago."

"If in fact, Atef has been killed, that will have an impact on their future operations . . . ," Stufflebeem said. "Osama bin Laden no longer has a principal assistant that he has been counting on for developing military or terrorist operations. If he has, in fact, been responsible for the personal security of Osama bin Laden, then that describes to me an environment where that individual is now going to feel much less secure about where he is, what may happen to him next."

Rumsfeld discounted reports that bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar have been flown from Afghanistan to Pakistan. "There is no reason to believe he's in Pakistan," Rumsfeld said of bin Laden. "There's every reason to believe he's in Afghanistan, as is the case undoubtedly with Omar."

But Rumsfeld said it is possible that bin Laden still has the use of one or more helicopters that he could use to flee Afghanistan. "I don't doubt for a minute that there are some well hidden helicopters that we can't find and they are undoubtedly available to the senior people . . . and it is possible to run down a ravine and not be seen," Rumsfeld said. "It is also possible to climb on a donkey or a mule and just walk across the border. There are no guards there. It's not like there's a big barrier up."

In his briefing, Stufflebeem also acknowledged reports from Afghanistan that Omar has told his forces to leave the embattled city of Kandahar in the southern part of the country. But he cautioned that U.S. military leaders don't put a lot of confidence in those reports.

"I don't believe it," he said. "I think that our forces who are there still operating under an assumption that it's a hostile environment, and I think that the opposition groups are probably operating in the same way."

Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters before and after attending a graduation ceremony at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, made his most expansive comments to date on the role of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. A number of special operations teams from the United States and other coalition countries, he said, are moving around the contested southern part of the country in an effort to foment anti-Taliban rebellion by Pashtun tribal leaders, some of whom are now working directly with the U.S. military.

Those forces have "gone in and are staying for periods of time," Rumsfeld said. "They're looking for information, they're interdicting roads, they're killing Taliban that won't surrender and al Qaeda that are trying to move from one place to another. They're doing assessments with respect to places we can land aircraft."

Asked if those activities constitute ground combat, Rumsfeld said: "The answer is yes. . . . In the south, they've gone into places and met resistance and dealt with it."

In northern Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said, U.S. forces came close to being "overrun" along with Northern Alliance troops north of Mazar-e Sharif earlier this month as a battle ebbed and flowed but called in U.S. airstrikes that successfully halted a Taliban attack.

Stufflebeem, asked about Rumsfeld's remarks, said the U.S. forces are "doing strategic reconnaissance. They are ready to engage in direct actions if and when they positively identify enemy or have to defend themselves. I have not seen reports that they, in fact, have done that. . . . What I'm trying to display is that there's not a sense that there is a group of forces that are roaming the country and looking to engage in fights."

Elsewhere in the north, Rumsfeld said, al Qaeda forces - for the most part Arabs and other non-Afghans - continue fighting for their lives around Kunduz in fierce combat.

"Were they Afghans they could melt into the scenery," Rumsfeld said. "Were they Afghans they could defect and switch sides. The Afghans putting pressure on them are unlikely to want someone to switch sides if they're not Afghans, particularly if they're al Qaeda. Once they were cut off from Kabul . . . they had really only one choice, which was to surrender or fight, and they chose the latter."

Rumsfeld said they have made attempts to surrender, to no avail. "It's still going on," he said. "There have been attempts to get them to surrender, but the basis on which they wanted to surrender was not acceptable. They wanted conditions, and there aren't conditions."

A number of senior Taliban leaders, Rumsfeld said, have been captured by the opposition Northern Alliance and will be interrogated by the U.S. military. "We do have some names, and they were not privates, some of them," Rumsfeld said.

He also said that a number of al Qaeda leaders have been killed. "I'm sure that's the case, but I do not have a laundry list of their names or really good validation of that," Rumsfeld said.

The situation in the south, he said, has been marked by increasing anti-Taliban rebellion by Pashtun leaders. "The tribes in the south that have been relatively inactive have become more active, they have been moving into towns and villages and cities, putting pressure on Taliban to leave, which they are doing," Rumsfeld said. "They are in varying degrees talking to each other and us. In some cases we have people with those tribes, in some cases we don't. In some cases we're in communication, and in some cases we're not."

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is meeting with the National Security Council today in Washington to review battlefield options in light of the Taliban's swift collapse, but Rumsfeld said that there would be no new war plan. Franks's battle plan, he said, would be "modestly recalibrated" at most. "It was designed from the beginning to be sustained over a considerable period of time. It was designed to apply pressure in a lot of locations. It was designed to make the circumstance of al Qaeda and Taliban difficult so that options were reduced and they had to move and not be able to function effectively. It's playing out that way."

Rumsfeld also left no doubt that airstrikes and ground operations would continue through the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins tomorrow.

"We are determined to find the leadership of Taliban and al Qaeda and we're determined to find them as rapidly as possible and stop them from committing terrorist acts around the world," Rumsfeld said.

Before meeting with the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times, Rumsfeld showed reporters photographs of U.S. Special Forces troops riding into battle in Afghanistan with fighters from the Northern Alliance.

"The Rumsfeld transformation," he joked, referring to his own efforts to "transform" the U.S. military into a high-tech, 21st century fighting force.

He also displayed a photograph of a donkey used by the Northern Alliance to transport food and ammunition. "Literally, I have seen drop orders," Rumsfeld said, "that included saddles, bridles and horse feed."

--------

A Travesty of Justice

November 16, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/opinion/16FRI1.html

President Bush's plan to use secret military tribunals to try terrorists is a dangerous idea, made even worse by the fact that it is so superficially attractive. In his effort to defend America from terrorists, Mr. Bush is eroding the very values and principles he seeks to protect, including the rule of law.

The administration's action is the latest in a troubling series of attempts since Sept. 11 to do an end run around the Constitution. It comes on the heels of an announcement that the Justice Department intends to wiretap conversations between some prisoners and their lawyers. The administration also continues to hold hundreds of detainees without revealing their identities, the charges being brought against them or even the reasons for such secrecy.

The temptation to employ extrajudicial proceedings to deal with Osama bin Laden and his henchmen is understandable. The horrific attacks of Sept. 11 give credence to the notion that these foreign terrorists are uniquely malevolent outlaws, undeserving of American constitutional protections. Military tribunals can act swiftly, anywhere, averting the security problems that a high-profile trial in New York or Washington could pose.

But by ruling that terrorists fall outside the norms of civilian and military justice, Mr. Bush has taken it upon himself to establish a prosecutorial channel that answers only to him. The decision is an insult to the exquisite balancing of executive, legislative and judicial powers that the framers incorporated into the Constitution. With the flick of a pen, in this case, Mr. Bush has essentially discarded the rulebook of American justice painstakingly assembled over the course of more than two centuries. In the place of fair trials and due process he has substituted a crude and unaccountable system that any dictator would admire.

The tribunals Mr. Bush envisions are a breathtaking departure from due process. He alone will decide who should come before these courts. The military prosecutors and judges who determine the fate of defendants will all report to him as commander in chief. Cases can be heard in secret. Hearsay, and evidence that civilian courts may deem illegally obtained, may be permissible. A majority of only two-thirds of the presiding officers would be required to convict, or to impose a death sentence. There would be no right of appeal to any other court.

American civilian courts have proved themselves perfectly capable of handling terrorist cases without overriding defendants' basic rights. Federal prosecutors in New York recently won guilty verdicts against bin Laden compatriots who were accused of bombing two American embassies in Africa in 1998. Osama bin Laden himself was indicted in those attacks. Federal courts have ample discretion to keep sensitive intelligence under seal, while still affording defendants a legitimate adversarial process. The law already limits the reach of the Bill of Rights overseas. American troops need not show a warrant before entering a cave in Afghanistan for their findings to be admissible at trial in the United States.

Using secretive military tribunals would ultimately undermine American interests in the Islamic world by casting doubt on the credibility of a verdict against Osama bin Laden and his aides. No amount of spinning by Mr. Bush's public relations team could overcome the impression that the verdict had been dictated before the trial began. Reliance on tribunals would also signal a lack of confidence in the case against the terrorists and in the nation's democratic institutions.

A better way to administer justice must be found. If Mr. Bush is determined to bring terrorists to trial abroad, he should ask the United Nations Security Council to establish an international tribunal like the one set up to deal with war crimes in the Balkans. The proceedings of this court have been fair and effective, and it is respected around the world. If Slobodan Milosevic can be brought to trial before such a court, so can Osama bin Laden.

More than half a century ago the United States and its allies brought some of history's most monstrous criminals to justice in Nuremberg, Germany. In his opening statement at the trial of Nazi leaders, Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, warned of the danger of tainted justice. "To pass those defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well," he said. President Bush would be wise to heed those words.

-------

Justice: One standard Secret military courts are unneeded

Sacramento Bee
Friday, Nov. 16, 2001
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/editorials/story/1177026p-1244672c.html

In times of war, formally declared or not, extraordinary measures to protect the country and to defeat the enemy are necessary. Closer scrutiny of foreign visitors and investigation of residents (citizen or noncitizen) engaged in behavior deemed suspicious must be tolerated, even if government sometimes stretches the boundaries of permissible infringement of rights the U.S. Constitution grants to "all persons" under U.S. jurisdiction. But now, in its zeal to find and punish terrorists, the Bush administration has gone too far.

President Bush has signed an executive order that in effect gives him the power to determine whether noncitizen suspects should be tried in secret -- inside or outside the United States -- by a military tribunal. The tribunals could impose sentences, including death, entirely beyond review by the U.S. court system. The public would not know who was arrested, on what charges, what evidence was presented or even, presumably, what punishment was imposed. The strict rules of evidence used in criminal courts would not apply. Indeed, some experts say that a defendant in such a setting would have fewer protections than in a military court-martial.

Administration officials, backed by some constitutional scholars, say this is entirely legal under the U.S. Constitution. But so, at one time, were slavery, the denial of equal rights to women and the wartime internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, who were seen as a threat to national security.

The last example is especially instructive. America must not go down that road again.

There is precedent for what the president seeks to do -- for example, during World War II, eight German agents on a sabotage and espionage mission in this country were caught, tried and convicted, and six were hanged. But there is also evidence that terrorists and those who harbor or otherwise aid them can be dealt with without resorting to the kind of summary justice contemplated.

Those who first bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 were prosecuted and convicted in a federal courtroom in which classified evidence was presented but was kept from the public; jurors remained anonymous and were shielded from public view. Why isn't the administration willing to adopt that approach now?

One likely reason is the fear that the evidence against terrorist suspects, compelling as it is, might not meet the strict standards required in U.S. criminal courts and thus could result in acquittal; another may be that some procedural slipup by arresting officers or prosecutors could undermine the case. (One might as easily argue that, in the circumstances, Osama bin Laden and his associates could not obtain a fair trial because, in the mind of every potential juror, their guilt is beyond question.)

In defending this dangerous legal short-cut, Attorney General John Ashcroft keeps saying that the country is at war, and that foreign terrorists "are not entitled to ... the protections of the American Constitution." But what about foreigners living in this country, who are so entitled? Are they combatants in a war, or criminal suspects -- or what?

Surely we are at war, albeit of a unique type. In that context, in the wake of the monstrous acts committed Sept. 11, and with secret rules of procedure likely to put the burden of proof more on the defendant than the prosecution, miscarriages of justice -- especially against people with only tenuous links to terrorists -- seem likelier than in a normal court of law. Of course, the American people would never have the opportunity to make that judgment for themselves.

Congress has been virtually ignored on this and other questionable steps the administration is taking to strengthen its hand. Even those lawmakers expressing concern still seem passively to accept the executive branch's grab for almost unlimited power, perhaps because they sense that public opinion is so strongly behind the president that opposition would be futile and politically risky.

Lawmakers need to summon their courage and demand, at a minimum, that the administration justify its plans, even if it has to be done behind closed doors. And if they are not persuaded, they must fight this threatened subversion of American principles -- principles that deserve to be defended just as fiercely as the war against terrorism must be fought.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

German parliament ups subsidies for green energy

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13327/story.htm

FRANKFURT - Germany's parliament has agreed to increase subsidies next year for four kinds of renewable energy, overruling Economics Minister Werner Mueller who had wanted to cut financial support for the sector.

The parliamentary budget committee decided to raise subsidies for solar, thermal, biogas and geothermal energy to 400 million marks from 300 million in 2001, said a source from the Green Party yesterday.

Mueller, who is politically independent, had proposed to cut this budget by 100 million marks.

The minister had also wanted to cut the government's research budget into renewable energy by 65 million marks to 235 million marks from 300 million but the committee decided to cut the budget by less to 274 million marks.

It might end up being higher than the 274 million figure because another six million marks could still become available from the science ministry.

"It is positive that Mueller's plans could be partially averted," the source said.

"There was a consensus that it is important to help ease the way for renewable energies into the market.

--------

Bonds to finance windmill construction

Fri, Nov 16, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Tri-City Herald
http://www.hanfordnews.com/2001/1116.html

Energy Northwest sold bonds this week to finance construction of 37 power-generating windmills south of Finley.

It is the first time in 20 years the utility has done so with the Bonneville Power Administration's backing.

"This is a milestone event. We worked through a lot of issues to get to this point. It will be much easier next time," said Jerry Kucera, Energy Northwest's chief financial officer, in a press release.

The $70.7 million bond sale will pay for the Nine Canyon Wind Project, which is supposed to be capable of producing up to 48 megawatts of electricity, although 14 to 15 megawatts is a more likely amount.

Energy Northwest, which owns and operates the Columbia Generating Station's 1,200-megawatt reactor north of Richland, expects construction to begin soon. The 37 windmills are supposed to be up and running by late 2002, the utility cooperative said in a press release.

Each windmill will be able to generate up to 1.3 megawatts of power, but that assumes constant 35 mph winds at the site two miles east of Jump-Off Joe Butte and eight miles southeast of Kennewick. However, the average wind speed in that area is 15 mph, so the windmills are expected to generate electricity at 30 percent of their capacity, said Energy Northwest spokesman Don McManman. That would translate to 14 to 15 megawatts.

Each windmill -- 200 feet tall with three 100-foot-long blades -- needs a breeze of at least 8 mph to start producing electricity.

Energy Northwest last sold bonds in 1981 when it was called the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS). That sale was for part of the construction of WPPSS' proposed five-reactor system to be located at Hanford and Satsop. But cost overruns and other miscalculations led to only one reactor -- WNP-2, now known as the Columbia Generating Station -- being finished. WPPSS defaulted on $2.25 billion in bonds, the biggest default in Wall Street's history at that time.

Since then, the BPA has backed WPPSS or Energy Northwest in 22 bond-refinancing sales to obtain lower interest rates, according to Energy Northwest.

In the late 1990s, WPPSS changed its name to Energy Northwest to help shed its 1980s reputation.

Energy Northwest is branching into wind power as a diversification effort. Besides its reactor, Energy Northwest also operates a 27-megawatt hydroelectric dam near Packwood in the Cascade Mountains. Nine utilities will buy electricity from the Nine Canyon Wind Project.

Assuming the wind farm generates 48 megawatts, the Benton Public Utility District will receive 3 megawatts; Chelan PUD, 6 megawatts; Douglas PUD, 3 megawatts; Grant PUD, 12 megawatts; Grays Harbor PUD, 6 megawatts; Lewis PUD, 1 megawatt; Mason PUD No. 3, 1 megawatt; Okanogan PUD, 12 megawatts; and the Columbia Generating Station, 4 megawatts.

The power from the wind farm is expected to cost about 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. Columbia Generating Station produces power at slightly more than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is close to the BPA's wholesale rate.

-------- energy

US energy demand to rise by one-third by 2020 - EIA

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13331/story.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. energy demand is expected to increase by one-third over the next two decades, as businesses and consumers use more oil and electricity to fuel a growing American economy, according to a government report released this week.

Growth in commercial buildings and personal travel, combined with slower increases in fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, is expected to account for the large increase in energy demand by 2020. The Energy Department's statistical arm, the Energy Information Administration, issued its annual report with demand and supply forecasts stretching out to 2020.

Total U.S. demand for all types of energy is projected to jump from 99 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2000 to 131 quadrillion Btu in 2020. The latter is higher than what the EIA projected for 2020 in its annual report last year.

Domestic crude oil production is projected to decline slightly by 2020 to 5.6 million barrels per day (bpd). As a result, foreign imports are expected to account for 62 percent of U.S. oil supplies by 2020, up from 53 percent in 2000, the EIA said. However, that rise is lower than the 64 percent-share for oil imports by 2020 that EIA forecast in its report last year.

The difference is due to higher expected domestic production from new oil fields in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve. The National Petroleum Reserve, covering 23 million acres in northwestern Alaska, has been owned by the federal government since the 1920s for military fuel. In 1999, the Interior Department leased some tracts in the reserve to energy companies, which have reported at least two discoveries.

Another lease sale in the reserve is planned for June. The EIA report also projected world oil demand would increase from the current 76 million bpd to 118.9 million bpd by 2020, due to higher demand in the United States and developing countries in the Pacific Rim, and Central and South America. OPEC oil production is expected to reach 57.5 million bpd in two decades, up from the cartel's 30 million bpd this year. Other highlights of the EIA forecast were:

? Coal remains the primary fuel for U.S. electricity generation, although its share is projected to decline from 52 percent in 2000 to 46 percent by 2020.

? Natural gas demand will increase by 50 percent by 2020, largely due to its popularity as a fuel for U.S. electricity generation.

? Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. fuel consumption will reach 2,088 million tonnes by 2020, 54 percent higher than the 1,352 tonnes in 1990.

? Nuclear generating capacity will decline because of the high cost to maintain aging U.S. nuclear power plants.

? U.S. ENERGY FORECASTS (includes EIA's new 2020 forecast and previous one)

2000 2020 2020(actual) (pvs f'cast) (new f'cast)
DEMAND ---------
World crude (mln bpd) 76.0 117.4 118.9
US nat gas (trillion cu ft) 22.8 32.8 33.8
US coal (mln tons) 1,081 1,297 1,365
US electricity n/a n/a n/a
PRODUCTION -----
US crude oil (mln bpd) 5.8 5.1 5.6
US nat gas (trillion cu ft) 19.1 29.1 28.5
US coal (mln tons) 1,084 1,331 1,397
US electricity n/a n/a n/a
PRICES ---------
World crude oil ($/barrel) 27.72 22.92 24.68
US nat gas ($/mcf wellhead) 3.60 3.20 3.26
US coal ($/ton minemouth) 16.45 12.99 12.79
US electricity (cts/Kwh) 6.9 6.1 6.5

(All data from EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2002 report).

----

Did Ken Lay Understand What Was Happening at Enron?

New York Times
November 16, 2001
FLOYD NORRIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/business/16NORR.html

What a tangled web was weaved by Enron. Both investors and managers seem to have been misled.

"Enron became overleveraged," Kenneth L. Lay, Enron's chairman and chief executive, said this week, adding that things went wrong in ways that "I could not have ever contemplated." He pointed to investments that "performed far worse than we ever could have imagined."

That was the first time that Enron had admitted it had a leverage problem, and it came only after the brutal reality had become apparent to many others. Mr. Lay says he understood what was going on, but I suspect he had left crucial details to others who have since departed and did not fully grasp the reality that was obscured by Enron's soothing financial statements.

When Enron was riding high, it could easily have sold stock to raise capital that it now desperately wants. Mr. Lay and other executives sold stock, but the company did not. Just a month ago, Mr. Lay spoke enthusiastically of how great the company's continuing earnings were.

The leverage was not easy to find. A lot of it was carried off Enron's balance sheet. Partnerships and special- purpose entities that Enron set up borrowed money and funneled the cash to Enron. Enron guaranteed the debt but did not have to show it on its own balance sheet because it could meet its obligations by issuing stock. As undisclosed losses built up in those entities, it became more likely they could not pay their bills, leaving Enron to do so.

It is also clear that the bond rating agencies did not understand Enron's plight until the last couple of weeks. When they figured it out, it took a $1.5 billion equity infusion that is part of the Dynegy takeover to keep Enron's rating above junk level.

Now Enron has a board committee investigating various transactions, and promises to release details as they are uncovered. Officials speak as if they are learning what happened for the first time, and perhaps they are. Jeffrey Skilling, Mr. Lay's protégé, was Enron's chief financial engineer until he quit this summer. And Enron's chief financial officer and treasurer were ousted as Enron unraveled.

Some investors would say none of that matters now, that the only important fact is that Dynegy is buying Enron anyway. Chuck Watson, Dynegy's chief executive, is convinced that Enron's energy trading business is a gem that more than justifies the price Dynegy is paying. He figures the losses from the bad investments can be contained.

The big question now may be whether Mr. Watson will retain his enthusiasm after his people study Enron's trading positions. Enron has always said it hedged its big derivative positions - positions that can contain huge leverage that does not show up on the balance sheet - but some of that hedging was with affiliated companies. If big surprises are found, Dynegy could back out of the deal.

There is plenty of blame to go around here, and suits have been filed against Enron, its current and former officials, and its auditor, Arthur Andersen. But investors also bear responsibility. Enron's financial statements were, as Mr. Lay conceded this week, "opaque and difficult to understand." Investors and analysts knew they did not know what was going on. They bought anyway.

Enron was viewed as a company that always made its numbers. An old-line gas pipeline company had been transformed into a brilliant trader that could apply its magic around the world. Investors did not care how Enron made the numbers. Now, when it is too late, they do.

-------- environment

UN environment agency welcomes new trade round

Reuters:
16/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13333

NAIROBI - The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said yesterday it was optimistic that a deal to start fresh talks on liberalising world commerce would deliver a more environmentally friendly trading system.

Ministers meeting at a World Trade Organisation conference (WTO) in Qatar this week agreed to include environmental issues in the agenda for a new round of global trade talks, despite opposition from many poor countries.

"Negotiations on trade and the environment were, until recently, a taboo subject in the WTO," said Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the Nairobi-based UNEP.

"We still have a long way to go. But the agreements in Doha are, I believe, a new beginning," he said in a statement.

After six days of haggling, ministers agreed to begin negotiations next year on trade issues such as cutting farm subsidies and industrial tariffs, as well as tackling a host of other barriers to trade.

On the environment, there will be negotiations on the relationship between WTO rules and trade obligations included in international environmental agreements like the Convention on Bio-Diversity.

Toepfer said the agreement reached in the Qatari capital Doha recognised the links between the need to liberalise trade while protecting the world's forests, fisheries, wetlands, wildlife and other natural resources.

Developing countries had long sought to bar ecological issues from trade talks, saying industrialised nations would impose rules on environmental standards that would effectively block access by their goods to rich-world markets.

----

Sierra Protection Plan Upheld

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sierra-Logging.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- The nation's forest chief on Friday upheld a management plan that helps protect 11 million acres of the Sierra Nevada, but ordered a review of its proposals on handling wildfires.

The plan, known as the Sierra Nevada Framework, was approved in January by regional forester Bradley Powell. It is designed to protect wildlife, water and old-growth timber and to reduce the risk of wildfires near mountain communities through forest ``thinning.''

Environmentalists say they suspect Friday's ruling by Forestry Service chief Dale Bosworth will lead to more logging.

``He wants more authority to log in the name of wildfire protections,'' said David Edelson, spokesman for the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, a coalition of 75 conservation groups.

The plan covers 11 national forests in an area stretching more than 460 miles, from the Sequoia National Forest east of Bakersfield to the Modoc National Forest in California's northeast corner.

Bosworth's ruling rejected 234 appeals of the plan -- most from the timber industry, ranchers and summer cabin owners -- and upheld Powell's decision.

But he also ordered Powell to look for flexibility in reducing the risks of wildfires while protecting wildlife.

``I believe opportunities exist for refining the decision,'' Bosworth said. ``Decades of fire suppression have often produced overcrowded vegetation in our forests, weakening trees and rendering them more fire prone and more susceptible to pests, diseases and displacement by invasive species.''

The California Forestry Association, a timber industry group, said Bosworth should throw out the plan if he wants to reduce the number of acres destroyed by wildfires.

The association criticized the plan for failing to meet air quality standards, utilize forest fuel for energy production, reduce taxpayer expenses and improve overstocked timber stands.

-------- human rights

THE OUTLOOK
Now, the Battle to Feed the Afghan Nation

November 16, 2001
By TIM WEINER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/16RELI.html

The retreat of the Taliban has opened the next critical phase of the American campaign in Afghanistan: joining the effort to deliver relief for millions of hungry, cold, sick, war-weary Afghans, thousands of them at death's door. In the end, the war against famine, disease and misery may prove as important as the military campaign in ending a generation of misrule and chaos.

The military will be full partners in the mobilization now getting under way. NATO allies will ship food, clothing, shelter and medicine to the nations surrounding Afghanistan for United Nations relief organizations, private aid groups and intrepid Afghan truckers to deliver to people in ruined cities and shattered villages. The United States is buying millions of tons of wheat, much of it delivered in red, white and blue bags stamped USA, to help keep Afghans from starving this winter.

This is not pure charity. It is basic strategy, part of the West's campaign to show Afghans that the American-led coalition can help them live new lives.

In a sign of the opportunity that has opened as the Taliban loses control, and of the urgency of eliminating the logistical and security obstacles that remain, the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development arrived yesterday in the newly claimed territory of the Northern Alliance, where fighting is continuing. As if he were a military commander at the front lines, the official, Andrew S. Natsios, was flown in a Special Forces helicopter.

Some Americans, transfixed by terrorism and threats from abroad, may want to rebuild ground zero at the World Trade Center before they think about helping Afghanistan. But the United States government recognizes that the plight of Afghanistan is "a terrible situation facing the world," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said.

"One of the great tragedies of Afghanistan right now is that a lot of these people were condemned to death long before the 11th of September by the droughts, by the situation, by the collapse of the agricultural system," Secretary Powell said.

There are other problems, some caused by America's allies in Afghanistan. In the few days since the Northern Alliance seized half the country and local warlords claimed their old fiefs, the humanitarian effort has been slowed by thievery.

An upsurge of food deliveries that was under way screeched to a halt as relief agencies recognized that it was, for the moment, far too risky to rush in. Even so, foreign staff workers who had been ejected by the Taliban are now starting to return in a mood of optimism, tempered by grim experience.

Before their work resumes, the American-led military coalition must help pave the way for aid to reach some 5 million starving people inside Afghanistan and the stark refugee camps on its borders. The aid workers may soon be protected, and to some extent assisted, by military forces sent by NATO, France, Britain, Canada and Jordan.

The military will not take over the aid operation, commanders are quick to say. But its role will be essential, both in speeding food and other supplies immediately into the country by air, and in securing the supply routes and logistical hubs for civilian relief agencies.

"We intend to continue to provide support to agencies, nongovernmental agencies, international organizations, other nations who are working humanitarian assistance," Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the region, said yesterday. "It's important to note that we certainly will not be giving them instructions. What we will be doing is giving them information, upon which they can base their decisions about where to move the humanitarian assistance."

NATO is drafting a plan to fly aid to surrounding countries, just as other organizations are doing. It would handle air traffic control and protect relief planes. In some cases, military trucks might move supplies and escorts might accompany convoys.

The push for a NATO role is politically important. First, it associates the other countries in the alliance with the Afghan campaign, which has been waged entirely by American and British forces. Second, it helps deflect criticism of the war among Europeans, criticism that has focused on the harm to civilians.

NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, and the American ambassador to the organization, Nicholas K. Burns, helped propel the new strategy through the bureaucracy. There was a delay of a few days in issuing the order to plan the operation when the French became concerned about taking on missions outside of Europe. But as a humanitarian mission developed, that objection faded away.

The need is urgent. The Pentagon's highly publicized airdrops of rations represent less than 1 percent of what is needed. What is needed is wheat - about a quarter of a million tons of it - along with clothing, shelter and medicine for Afghan civilians.

The United States, doing what it can to help feed some of the same people it has been bombing, is paying for much of the food that the coalition is moving into Afghanistan with trucks, river barges and thousands of mules as winter sets in.

"People are dying," said Bernd McConnell, director of the United States A.I.D. program in Central Asia. "Hungry people get sick very easily when they get cold." Local Dangers Looting and Thuggery In an Aura of Anarchy

But war and anarchy have tangled the humanitarian lifelines, creating "fear and uncertainty," said Lindsey Davies, of the United Nations World Food Program.

Like the Taliban before them, Northern Alliance commanders have been stealing relief goods. This week, a convoy of Unicef trucks carrying 200 tons of supplies was seized, United Nations warehouses were looted of 89 tons of food and aid offices were ransacked by armed men outside Mazar-i- Sharif, where the Northern Alliance had just seized power.

During the fighting, shrapnel from an unknown source hit 20 loaded trucks headed for Afghanistan's central mountains, destroying more than 260 tons of food.

As Kabul fell, Taliban soldiers and freebooting Pashtun warlords held up hundreds of tons of the World Food Program's wheat at the border with Pakistan. The W.F.P., which has been delivering most of the aid, said it suspended shipments "in light of the tense security situation."

The aid agencies say they have to deliver at least 52,000 tons of food every month for at least the next four months.

--------

FEINSTEIN INTRODUCES RESOLUTION CALLING FOR RESTORATION OF FOREIGN AID TO COMBAT GLOBAL POVERTY

11.16.01
http://www.truthout.com/11.17D.Feinstein.Poverty.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today introduced a resolution calling upon Congress to triple foreign assistance over the next five years to help combat global poverty. Senators Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) cosponsored the resolution.

"As America undertakes a war on terrorism, we must declare war on global poverty as well, and we must do so because our national security demands no less," Senator Feinstein said. "If we are going to win this war against terrorism, we have to be willing to invest in the lives and livelihoods of the people of the developing world. For it is the poverty and the resulting political instability and institutional weakness of developing countries which provide the ecosystem in which terrorists, terrorist operations, terrorist recruitment, and terrorist organizations are able to flourish."

The resolution calls upon the Congress to increase foreign assistance spending by 25 percent a year, for the next 5 years. This will restore spending on foreign aid to 3 percent of total federal budget outlays, the level that it was in 1962. Today, the U.S. spends six-tenths of 1 percent of the budget on foreign assistance programs.

The statistics on global poverty are staggering: All in all, about 2.8 billion people live in poverty in the world, getting by on $2 a day.

The World Bank estimates that 1.2 billion residents of poor nations live on less than $1 a day, including 550 million people in Southeast Asia and 291 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations estimates that nearly 800 million people in the developing world are undernourished, 1.2 billion lack access to safe drinking water, 2.9 billion have inadequate access to sanitation, and over 1 billion people are either unemployed or underemployed.

"For all too many of these people, there is precious little hope in their daily life, and they experience a world in which progress or betterment is virtually impossible," Senator Feinstein said. "I am prepared to make a commitment to fight global poverty, and I hope my colleagues will make this commitment as well."

--------

FOOD DROPS
Two Roles for Military: Supplying Guns and Butter

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/international/asia/16DROP.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The Pentagon plans to continue airdropping packets of food into Afghanistan, military officials said this week, even though the United States plans to rebuild Afghan airbases and open roads that would allow much larger deliveries into needy areas.

With the deep snows of winter piling up in the mountain passes, the officials said some regions of northern Afghanistan would remain inaccessible to supply trucks even after Taliban forces have retreated, leaving American cargo planes as the only means for getting food to some isolated villages.

"It's true the airdrops are the most inefficient way to get food to people," said Bryan G. Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. "But in the winter, they may be the only way to get food to some people."

Almost every day, two C-17 Globemaster cargo planes take off from Ramstein Air Base in Germany carrying as many as 34,000 packets, each filled with two vegetarian meals, to be dropped from 20,000 feet onto the remotest regions of Afghanistan, especially those where hunger is most widespread.

This week the cumulative shipments of the ready-to-eat meals, which have included such items as lentil stew, peanut butter and Pop-Tarts, surpassed 1.5 million daily rations, the Pentagon said.

Each of the yellow plastic containers is emblazoned with the words, "Food gift from the people of the United States of America," and some critics have ridiculed the food drops as little more than Pentagon propaganda.

The Pentagon has also been criticized for packaging the rations in yellow - the same color as antipersonnel cluster bomblets that the military has been dropping on Afghanistan. A change to blue is planned, but not, Air Force officials said, until the rest of the yellow packets have been dropped.

Some international relief organizations have argued that the food was reaching fewer than 1 percent of the people who needed it the most. They also contend that having the Air Force participate in food aid programs has blurred the distinctions between the military and nongovernmental relief groups, placing relief workers in Afghanistan in danger of reprisals.

With the retreat of Taliban forces, several relief officials said the Air Force should stop its food drops.

"We thought from the beginning they were ineffective as a humanitarian device," said Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA. "The significance of airdrops, which had a marginal impact at best, will drop even more as soon as land deliveries pick up."

Military officials acknowledged that land routes would provide a far more efficient way of delivering food, but said it could take weeks, even months, to remove mines from some roads and to rebuild damaged or rundown airfields, both in Afghanistan and in surrounding countries such as Tajikistan.

Despite reports that Northern Alliance commanders are hoarding food for their troops or selling the packets, some relief officials said there was also clear evidence that some desperately hungry people had benefited from the drops.

"Airdrops will remain important throughout the winter as a way to get food to inaccessible populations," said Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group, and a former Pentagon spokesman.

-------- police / prisoners

Congress passes aviation security bill

USA Today
11/16/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-16-security-billpasses.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress on Friday sent President Bush the most far-reaching aviation security bill in decades, hoping to restore travelers' confidence a little more than two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The compromise legislation, which adds new layers of protection at airports and on airplanes, passed the House by a 410-9 vote just hours after it was endorsed by the Senate on a voice vote. ''This is a historic moment,'' said the House Transportation Committee chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. He called the package ''the best security bill this nation has every had for the flying public.''

Key provisions of the aviation security package agreed to Thursday by House and Senate negotiators:

• Federal supervision of airport security, including making all baggage screeners and supervisors federal employees, within a year.

• After 3 years, airports could opt out and hire screeners who work for private firms.

• More armed federal air marshals on flights.

• Reinforced cockpit doors.

• Pilots could carry guns.

• All checked baggage would be screened by 2003.

• Increased security training, performance standards and background checks for airport workers.

• More money for high-tech screening equipment to detect explosive, chemical or biochemical materials.

• An added $2.50 security fee on each flight, up to a maximum of $5 per trip.

Bush plans to sign the bill Monday. The completed bill comes just days before the Thanksgiving holiday, the heaviest traveling season of the year, and lawmakers were determined to send a message to Americans that it is safe to fly.

"As families prepare for the biggest travel day in the nation they can feel assured that airport security will be strengthened nationwide the very moment the president signs this landmark legislation into law," said Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga.

The legislation, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have a "major, major impact on the American people" who are reluctant to board an airliner because of fears that air travel is not safe.

Bush lauded the compromise plan forged after weeks of difficult negotiations, saying that by putting the federal government in charge of aviation security Congress was "making airline travel safer for the American people."

In addition to putting airport screening under federal control with a federal work force, the legislation moves toward inspection of all checked bags, requires fortified cockpit doors, increases the use of air marshals on flights and law enforcement in all areas of airports, and increases coordination between the Transportation Department and law enforcement agencies to cross-check passengers.

A new agency is created in the Transportation Department to oversee all transportation security matters. A $2.50 passenger fee per flight, with a maximum of $5 per trip, will be levied within 60 days to pay for the added security. Some of the provisions, such as required use of explosives detection machines, could take months or years to put in place, but lawmakers said the psychological effects of enacting the legislation could be instant.

By Thanksgiving, travelers should start seeing more law enforcement officers at screening stations and more of their checked baggage undergoing inspections.

The Senate passed its bill by 100-0 on Oct. 11, but action in the House was delayed because some Republicans objected to provisions in the Senate bill that put all 28,000 airport screeners, now the employees of private security firms contracted by airlines, on the federal payroll. The House eventually passed legislation to put the federal government in control of screening operations but let the administration decide whether they should be private or public employees.

The compromise on the screening issue, crafted by Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, requires that within a year all airport screening be under the supervision of the government with federal-U.S. citizen workers and that this system will be in effect for three years.

However, during that period five airports of differing sizes will be allowed to participate in pilot programs to test various screening approaches. After three years airports that abide by strict federal standards will be able to opt out of the federal worker program.

David Beaton, chief executive of Argenbright Security, which handles 40% of domestic airport security, said "this is clearly not the outcome we had hoped for, because we believed the real solution to aviation security is a strong public-private partnership."

But he said Argenbright, which has been hit with more than $1 million in fines for security lapses in recent years, would work with the Transportation Department during the transition period to ensure that security remained high.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who strongly opposed the Senate approach of using federal workers, praised the compromise, which he said adopted the stronger House language in many areas. He said that included steps to increase security for the tarmac, caterers, the perimeter and checked baggage.

The legislation requires airports to act within 60 days to maximize inspection of checked bags, with the target of inspecting all bags by the end of 2002.

Transportation Department officials told a Senate hearing Wednesday that less than 10% of checked luggage at American airports is screened for explosives.

---

Lawmakers demand hearings on tribunals

USA Today
11/16/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/16/tribunal-hearings.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Black lawmakers and some of the House's more liberal white Democrats and conservative Republicans are urging hearings into President Bush's decision to try by military tribunals foreigners charged with acts of terror.

"They're literally dismantling justice and the justice system as we know it," Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said Friday. She suggested the effects could "spill over into domestic affairs."

The Justice Department has refused to disclose identities or status of more than 1,100 people arrested or detained in the weeks since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said their incarceration "smacks of racial profiling."

She and Waters are black.

Conservative Rep. Bob Barr, a white Republican from Georgia, said he objected to the president acting without consulting with Congress or waiting to see whether recently expanded investigative powers are sufficient to fight terrorism. Barr, a former federal prosecutor, said he was disturbed by the "fundamental changes to federal law and procedure" in the order establishing procedures for detention and trial by military courts of foreign suspects.

"The scope of this executive order takes your breath away," Barr said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Attorney General John Ashcroft on Friday to appear before the committee Nov. 28. Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, said no decision had been made as of Friday whether to hold hearings.

Bush signed an executive order Tuesday approving the tribunals, which could bring terror suspects to trial faster and in more secrecy than normal criminal courts. His order did not require congressional approval.

Under the order, Bush would decide when to use a military court. It is unclear whether the government would have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but the right to appeal a conviction or sentence would be much more limited than in civilian courts. Lawyers say the government likely would be able to use hearsay statements and evidence collected through normally unconstitutional searches or wiretaps. Conviction and sentencing would be by two-thirds of commission members present for the vote.

"These procedures belong in a Soviet state or a dictatorship, not in a free society," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

---

Gingrich Disfavors National ID Card

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-National-ID-Card.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newt Gingrich and other former Republican lawmakers predicted Friday that a new national identification card system will probably never become a reality despite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

``It's a dead end. It won't happen,'' Gingrich told a House Government Reform subcommittee.

Talking about national IDs smacks of Nazism and ``Big Brother'' in people's minds, and Congress will not have the political support to get it through, said former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wy. ``You use the words 'national ID,' it's over,'' he said.

Indeed, former Rep. Bill McCollum, R-Fla., called a new all-encompassing national identification system ``offensive'' and said it ``contradicts some of our most sacrosanct American principles of personal liberty and expectations of privacy and is far in excess of what is needed to provide us with the security and protections we all want.''

Gingrich, McCollum and Simpson said instead the government should invest in securing existing means of identification. The three lawmakers called for the use of more identifiers like fingerprints and retina scans.

``We need to make the Social Security card and our drivers licenses more tamper-resistant and counterfeit proof,'' McCollum said. ``Both of these documents, outside of passports and green cards, are the most commonly used identification cards in America.''

Several people proposed starting a new national identification system following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Bush administration has yet to take a position on the cards, although Attorney General John Ashcroft has frowned upon the idea.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also has said that the Fourth Amendment doesn't mention a national ID card but if such a popular vote were held on allowing a national ID card, ``Personally, I'd probably vote against it,'' he said.

Rep. Stephen Horn, R-Calif., the subcommittee chairman, refused to dismiss the idea out of hand. ``While holding firm to America's freedoms, we must also be open to new ideas,'' he said. ``The survival of this great nation may depend on it.''

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have strongly opposed the idea of another national identifier. ``A national ID card would substantially infringe on the rights of privacy and equality of many Americans, yet would not prevent terrorist attacks,'' ACLU lawyer Katie Corrigan said.

The Sept. 11 attacks showed that a national identification system probably would not help make America safer, said Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill.

``Systems like national identification cards will not deter the crazed terrorist from his or her mission,'' she said. ``Those terrorist all had driver's licenses, credit cards and Internet accounts.''

--------

The New USA PATRIOT Act

Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001
From: "Molly Johnson" <mollypj@yahoo.com>

Published on Friday, November 9, 2001 The New USA PATRIOT Act Are You a Patriot? by John Kaminski

The USA Patriot Act, now passed and the law of the land, has eliminated the Constitutional guarantee of probable cause when investigating a crime, and now allows the police - at any time and for any reason - to enter and search your house, your files, your bank account - and not even tell you about it. Are you a patriot? Well, the fact of the matter is, you are whether you want to be or not. But are you an American or a mindless corporate stooge? Well, that's another question.

The recent passage and signing of the Patriot Act has effectively nullified at least six amendments of the Bill of Rights addendum to the U.S. Constitution. As a result of this, America is longer America, but a police state, pure and simple. This Patriot Bill is, in fact, a massive violation of the Constitution it purports to uphold and improve.

Among other things, it mandates that judges give police search warrants when they ask for them, for any reason. In fact, judges can't deny these warrants to police, because police don't need a stated reason to ask for them.

The Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of American freedom. During the debates on the adoption of the Constitution in the 1790s, its opponents repeatedly charged that the Constitution as drafted would open the way to tyranny by the central government. Many states would not have signed the original Constitution without knowing that these amendments would be added, according to the federal website which displays the Constitution.These amendments became known as the Bill of Rights, which Americans have cherished, protected and fought for for over 200 years.

The Patriot Act rushed through Congress and signed by President George W. Bush is a major step toward a totalitarian state in which individual liberty is crushed by the whim of police and corporate demagogues masquerading as patriots.

The Patriot Act:

Violates the First Amendment freedom of speech guarantee, right to peaceably assemble provision, and petition the government for redress of grievances provision; it violates the First Amendment to the Constitution three times. More on this below.

Violates the Fourth Amendment guarantee of probable cause in astonishingly major and repeated ways. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons of things to be seized." The Patriot Act, now passed and the law of the land, has revoked the necessity for probable cause, and now allows the police, at any time and for any reason, to enter and search your house - and not even tell you about it.

Violates the Fifth Amendment by allowing for indefinite incarceration without trial for those deemed by the Attorney General to be threats to national security. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and the Patriot Act does away with due process. It even allows people to be kept in prison for life without even a trial.

Violates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of the right to a speedy and public trial. Now you may get no trial at all, ever.

Violates the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment).

Violates the 13th Amendment (punishment without conviction). Most of the following information is taken from the ACLU's written objections to Congress before and after the passage of the Patriot Act. My comments are in brackets [].

The Patriot Act does the following (I'm putting the immigration stuff at the bottom because that least affects most of the people who will be reading this):

[It keeps judges out the process and lets cops do what they want (cops meaning FBI, CIA, etc.)] It minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement authorities in anti-terrorism investigations and in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. [Unrelated to terrorism - that means anything. How long do you think before that includes political dissent? Oops, too late, that's already happened.]

It expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches - again in anti-terrorism investigations and in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. [Unrelated to terrorism - that means anything they want it to mean. If we don't agree with Nazi Republican ideas, they can now arrest us.]

It gives the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering the country. Under this provision the payment of membership dues is a deportable offense. [That means, among other things, that Bush and Ashcroft can decide Greenpeace and Ralph Nader are terrorists, and under this law, it can put them in jail.]

It grants the FBI broad access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court order. [It means they can do what they want for no good reason, except to persecute and imprison people with humanistic, noncorporate rip-off views.]

It could lead to large-scale investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes and use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in criminal cases. [Bye bye peace movement. You're all going to jail; me too.]

It puts the CIA and other intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for intelligence surveillance in the United States. [This is what America worked so hard for all those years to eliminate.]

It allows searches of highly personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even relevancy to an ongoing terrorism investigation. [They can do any of this stuff without any reason whatsoever. This is the kind of freedom these fascists always wanted - freedom to put everyone who disagrees with them in jail.]

It creates a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" that could sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and enhanced penalties. [This means they can jail anyone who disagrees with them, and keep them in jail for life without a trial.] On immigration specifically, the new law permits the detention of non-citizens facing deportation based merely on the Attorney General's certification that he has "reasonable grounds to believe" the non-citizen endangers national security. While immigration or criminal charges must be filed within seven days, these charges need not have anything to do with terrorism, but can be minor visa violations of the kind that normally would not result in detention at all. Non-citizens ordered removed on visa violations could be indefinitely detained if they are stateless, their country of origin refuses to accept them, or they are granted relief from deportation because they would be tortured if they were returned to their country of origin.

It permits the Attorney General to indefinitely incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to deny readmission to the United States of non-citizens (including lawful permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment. [Or, what used to be the First Amendment. Now, it doesn't exist.]

Let me just take a bit more of your valuable time to make a couple of points crystal clear, again using material from the ACLU's objections to passage of the Patriot Act.

Wiretapping and Intelligence Surveillance

The wiretapping and intelligence provisions in the USA Patriot Act sound two themes: they minimize the role of a judge in ensuring that law enforcement wiretapping is conducted legally and with proper justification, and they permit use of intelligence investigative authority to by-pass normal criminal procedures that protect privacy. Specifically:

1. The USA Patriot Act allows the government to use its intelligence gathering power to circumvent the standard that must be met for criminal wiretaps. Currently FISA surveillance, which does not contain many of the same checks and balances that govern wiretaps for criminal purposes, can be used only when foreign intelligence gathering is the primary purpose. The new law allows use of FISA surveillance authority even if the primary purpose were a criminal investigation. Intelligence surveillance merely needs to be only a "significant" purpose. This provision authorizes unconstitutional physical searches and wiretaps: though it is searching primarily for evidence of crime, law enforcement conducts a search without probable cause of crime.

2. The USA Patriot Act extends a very low threshold of proof for access to Internet communications that are far more revealing than numbers dialed on a phone. Under current law, a law enforcement agent can get a pen register or trap and trace order requiring the telephone company to reveal the numbers dialed to and from a particular phone. To get such an order, law enforcement must simply certify to a judge - who must grant the order - that the information to be obtained is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." This is a very low level of proof, far less than probable cause. This provision apparently applies to law enforcement efforts to determine what websites a person had visited, which is like giving law enforcement the power - based only on its own certification - to require the librarian to report on the books you had perused while visiting the public library. This provision extends a low standard of proof - far less than probable cause - to actual "content" information.

3. In allowing for "nationwide service" of pen register and trap and trace orders, the law further marginalizes the role of the judiciary. It authorizes what would be the equivalent of a blank warrant in the physical world: the court issues the order, and the law enforcement agent fills in the places to be searched. This is not consistent with the important Fourth Amendment privacy protection of requiring that warrants specify the place to be searched. Under this legislation, a judge is unable to meaningfully monitor the extent to which her order was being used to access information about Internet communications.

4. The Act also grants the FBI broad access in "intelligence" investigations to records about a person maintained by a business. The FBI need only certify to a court that it is conducting an intelligence investigation and that the records it seeks may be relevant. With this new power, the FBI can force a business to turn over a person's educational, medical, financial, mental health and travel records based on a very low standard of proof and without meaningful judicial oversight.

The ACLU noted that the FBI already had broad authority to monitor telephone and Internet communications. Most of the changes apply not just to surveillance of terrorists, but instead to all surveillance in the United States. [All surveillance. The WTO geeks will love this one. Now we can be just like China.]

Law enforcement authorities -- even when they are required to obtain court orders - have great leeway under current law to investigate suspects in terrorist attacks. Current law already provided, for example, that wiretaps can be obtained for the crimes involved in terrorist attacks, including destruction of aircraft and aircraft piracy.

The FBI also already had authority to intercept these communications without showing probable cause of crime for "intelligence" purposes under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In fact, FISA wiretaps now exceed wiretapping for all domestic criminal investigations. The standards for obtaining a FISA wiretap are lower than the standards for obtaining a criminal wiretap.

Criminal Justice

The law dramatically expands the use of secret searches. Normally, a person is notified when law enforcement conducts a search. In some cases regarding searches for electronic information, law enforcement authorities can get court permission to delay notification of a search. The USA Patriot Act extends the authority of the government to request "secret searches" to every criminal case. This vast expansion of power goes far beyond anything necessary to conduct terrorism investigations.

The Act also allows for the broad sharing of sensitive information in criminal cases with intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the NSA, the INS and the Secret Service. It permits sharing of sensitive grand jury and wiretap information without judicial review or any safeguards regarding the future use or dissemination of such information.

These information sharing authorizations and mandates effectively put the CIA back in the business of spying on Americans: Once the CIA makes clear the kind of information it seeks, law enforcement agencies can use tools like wiretaps and intelligence searches to provide data to the CIA. In fact, the law specifically gives the Director of Central Intelligence - who heads the CIA -- the power to identify domestic intelligence requirements.

The law also creates a new crime of "domestic terrorism." The new offense threatens to transform protesters into terrorists if they engage in conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life." Members of Operation Rescue, the Environmental Liberation Front and Greenpeace, for example, have all engaged in activities that could subject them to prosecution as terrorists. Then, under this law, the dominos begin to fall. Those who provide lodging or other assistance to these "domestic terrorists" could have their homes wiretapped and could be prosecuted.

[If you have any doubt that these are the trappings of a police state, then you need to go back to elementary school and read about the Constitution, which we no longer have.]

[Fox News Channel reports tonight that 90% of the American people are really happy with what Bush has done. I think somebody wrote this all in a book once, that when a free people gave away their freedom, they did it happily and with much fanfare.]

John Kaminski live in Englewood Florida. E-mail: skylax@home.com

Molly Johnson - SLO CO Grandmothers for Peace 6290 Hawk Ridge Place, San Miguel, CA 93451 805/467-2431

------

Arabs Question Justice Dept. Plan

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Interviewees.html

DALLAS (AP) -- Arabs and Muslims expressed outrage Friday at the U.S. Justice Department's plan to interview 5,000 young male foreigners, who are not suspected of any crimes, as part of the terrorism investigation.

Civil rights activists say the action constitutes racial profiling.

``Unless the government has credible evidence that all these 5,000 men were involved in terrorism, which is very unlikely, then what Mr. Ashcroft is advocating is racial profiling at its most fundamental level,'' said Ramzi Dakour, vice president of the Arab American Students Association at the University of Texas at Austin.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Tuesday that the Justice Department has distributed a list of 5,000 men it wanted to interview about the Sept. 11 attacks. The list comprises men ages 18 to 33 who entered the United States since Jan. 1, 2000, from certain countries.

The countries represented were linked to the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks or were waystations for the terrorist organization, al-Qaida. The department acknowledges the men are likely to be Arab and Muslim, but says the list wasn't based on ethnic origin.

``This is yet another example of the heavy-handedness that's being used without any rhyme or reason,'' said Sohail Mohammed, an immigration lawyer in New Jersey. He represents several men who were questioned shortly after the attacks and are now jailed on immigration charges.

Mohammed said he would advise people to cooperate with questioners ``if there's a good, well-articulated reason other than just a general fishing around.''

Earlier interviews seemed to be just that, he said, ``Stupid questions like, `What do you think of American civilization?' and `Why do you pray five times a day?' If that's what they're going to ask this time, people will say, `No fishing in this house.' ``

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is distributing hundreds of pamphlets, some in Arabic, explaining civil rights under federal and state law.

The Justice Department interview initiative is ``formalized, black-and-white stated policy directing law officers to racially profile,'' said William Harrell, executive director of the state ACLU.

Hana Saleh, a member of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Texas at Dallas, said students are increasingly concerned about racial profiling.

``You can't just say that because a person is from this part of the world, they will act this way,'' she said. ``People who know us personally would never approve of this. As human beings, we all want freedom.''

Najat Elsayed, president of the University of Houston's Council of American-Islamic Relations, said people with no connection to the attacks may feel nervous about talking to investigators for fear a miscommunication could land them in jail.

``We want to help as much as possible, but we haven't done anything wrong and we are legal, productive citizens,'' she said. ``We don't see why we should be subjected just because someone from our race did something.''

------

A Travesty of Justice

New York Times
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/opinion/16FRI1.html

President Bush's plan to use secret military tribunals to try terrorists is a dangerous idea, made even worse by the fact that it is so superficially attractive. In his effort to defend America from terrorists, Mr. Bush is eroding the very values and principles he seeks to protect, including the rule of law.

The administration's action is the latest in a troubling series of attempts since Sept. 11 to do an end run around the Constitution. It comes on the heels of an announcement that the Justice Department intends to wiretap conversations between some prisoners and their lawyers. The administration also continues to hold hundreds of detainees without revealing their identities, the charges being brought against them or even the reasons for such secrecy.

The temptation to employ extrajudicial proceedings to deal with Osama bin Laden and his henchmen is understandable. The horrific attacks of Sept. 11 give credence to the notion that these foreign terrorists are uniquely malevolent outlaws, undeserving of American constitutional protections. Military tribunals can act swiftly, anywhere, averting the security problems that a high-profile trial in New York or Washington could pose.

But by ruling that terrorists fall outside the norms of civilian and military justice, Mr. Bush has taken it upon himself to establish a prosecutorial channel that answers only to him. The decision is an insult to the exquisite balancing of executive, legislative and judicial powers that the framers incorporated into the Constitution. With the flick of a pen, in this case, Mr. Bush has essentially discarded the rulebook of American justice painstakingly assembled over the course of more than two centuries. In the place of fair trials and due process he has substituted a crude and unaccountable system that any dictator would admire.

The tribunals Mr. Bush envisions are a breathtaking departure from due process. He alone will decide who should come before these courts. The military prosecutors and judges who determine the fate of defendants will all report to him as commander in chief. Cases can be heard in secret. Hearsay, and evidence that civilian courts may deem illegally obtained, may be permissible. A majority of only two-thirds of the presiding officers would be required to convict, or to impose a death sentence. There would be no right of appeal to any other court.

American civilian courts have proved themselves perfectly capable of handling terrorist cases without overriding defendants' basic rights. Federal prosecutors in New York recently won guilty verdicts against bin Laden compatriots who were accused of bombing two American embassies in Africa in 1998. Osama bin Laden himself was indicted in those attacks. Federal courts have ample discretion to keep sensitive intelligence under seal, while still affording defendants a legitimate adversarial process. The law already limits the reach of the Bill of Rights overseas. American troops need not show a warrant before entering a cave in Afghanistan for their findings to be admissible at trial in the United States.

Using secretive military tribunals would ultimately undermine American interests in the Islamic world by casting doubt on the credibility of a verdict against Osama bin Laden and his aides. No amount of spinning by Mr. Bush's public relations team could overcome the impression that the verdict had been dictated before the trial began. Reliance on tribunals would also signal a lack of confidence in the case against the terrorists and in the nation's democratic institutions.

A better way to administer justice must be found. If Mr. Bush is determined to bring terrorists to trial abroad, he should ask the United Nations Security Council to establish an international tribunal like the one set up to deal with war crimes in the Balkans. The proceedings of this court have been fair and effective, and it is respected around the world. If Slobodan Milosevic can be brought to trial before such a court, so can Osama bin Laden.

More than half a century ago the United States and its allies brought some of history's most monstrous criminals to justice in Nuremberg, Germany. In his opening statement at the trial of Nazi leaders, Robert Jackson, the chief American prosecutor, warned of the danger of tainted justice. "To pass those defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our lips as well," he said. President Bush would be wise to heed those words.

---

Inmate Education Is Found to Lower Risk of New Arrest

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By TAMAR LEWIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/education/16PRIS.html

Inmates who receive schooling - through vocational training or classes at the high school or college level - are far less likely to return to prison within three years of their release, according to a study for the Department of Education.

The study, which followed more than 3,000 prisoners in Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio, found that three years after their release, 22 percent of the prisoners who had taken classes returned to prison, compared with 31 percent of the released prisoners who had not attended school while behind bars.

"The public safety question, the reduction in crime is very important," said Stephen J. Steurer of the Correctional Education Association, the lead author on the study. "But there are also real financial savings. We found that for every dollar you spend on education, you save two dollars by avoiding the cost of re- incarceration."

Some education officials said they hoped the study, to be released next week, would help build a consensus that prison education was worthwhile.

"We knew before this report that education would reduce recidivism, but we never quantified it before," said Nancy Grasnick, the Maryland superintendent of schools. "A study like this is just going to strengthen, so much, the notion that it is in society's best interest, both morally and financially, that these individuals get an education."

A second study, which will also be released next week, found even greater benefits among women who took college classes offered at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, New York's only maximum-security prison for women.

According to that study, by the Open Society Institute, a philanthropy backed by George Soros, fewer than 8 percent of the former inmates who attended college classes in prison returned to prison after three years, compared with almost 30 percent of the women who had not participated in the college program.

While the three-state study looked at all prisoners to be released in a given period, the Bedford Hills study compared a group of women who had taken college classes to a group that had not, leaving open the possibility that the results were due, at least in part, to self-selection, with the women most motivated to avoid reincarceration being the ones who took the college classes.

Michelle Fine, a City University of New York Graduate Center professor who directed the Bedford Hills study, said that while self-selection might have played a role most of the women who had the educational background to be eligible for the college classes participated, so the program was not limited to the most motivated inmates.

"There are other factors, too," Ms. Fine said. "One is that women have lower recidivism rates in general. Another is that while study after study finds that any kind of education reduces recidivism, higher education might have more impact than vocational education."

But as a political matter, even if college classes in prison yield the best results, it remains difficult to get public financing for such classes.

In 1994, when politicians nationwide were trying to show they were tough on crime, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, making people convicted of felonies ineligible for Pell grants, the federal tuition assistance for the poor. Prison education accounted for less than 1 percent of the Pell grant budget.

But since then, under the Higher Education Act's Grants for Youthful Offenders program, the federal government has begun providing about $17 million for postsecondary education, mostly vocational, for inmates under 25 with less than five years to serve.

Educational opportunities for inmates vary widely by state, with half or fewer prisoners getting some form of education in most states - and, increasingly, waiting lists of others who want classes.

But recently, there has been a growing consensus among liberals and conservatives alike that educating inmates leads to better outcomes when they leave prison.

"I'd like to see people taking classes, working and developing skills while they're in prison," said Krista Kafer, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "I think it's consistent with being tough on crime. And while they're in there, just sitting around is not helping them to get the skills they need once they get out."

---

AIRLINE SAFETY
United Plans to Equip Pilots With Stun Guns

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16STUN.html

CHICAGO, Nov. 15 - United Airlines will put Taser weapons, or stun guns, in every cockpit of its 500 planes to help pilots fend off hijackers without damaging their planes, the airline said today.

"United and its pilots believe Tasers are an important addition to enhanced cockpit security," said Andrew Studdert, United's chief operating officer. "Tasers will incapacitate an attacker without endangering the airplane."

United, with other airlines, has already reinforced cockpit doors with special metal bars. But the carrier, a unit of the UAL Corporation, which is based in Elk Grove Village, Ill., is the first major American airline to provide its pilots with stun guns.

Tasers shoot an electrical charge that incapacitates an attacker for about 15 minutes. But the charges are not lethal and the weapons do not run the risk of rupturing an airplane's fuselage, as bullets fired from a gun would.

The stun guns would be locked in the cockpit and only pilots would be able to get to them, a spokesman for United said.

Federal Aviation Administration rules prohibit "deadly or dangerous" weapons on aircraft, with the exception of those carried by federal air marshals.

"At this point there is no plan to change the rule," an F.A.A. spokesman said. But United said it was confident it would secure the agency's approval.

An American Airlines spokesman had no immediate comment on whether his company was considering issuing stun guns to its pilots. Other large airlines also had no immediate comment.

Mesa Airlines, a feeder line for America West, said last month it would equip its pilots with Tasers.

---

F.B.I. Visits Provoke Waves of Worry in Middle Eastern Men

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By GREG WINTER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16CALI.html

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14 - Ghaith Aljazzar recognized them immediately. Seated at a picnic table in a sea of college students chatting between classes today, the two men in suits and dark glasses were plainly Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, even before they flashed their badges.

Mr. Aljazzar, a 21-year-old student from Syria, suppressed his anxiety and sat down. The morning before, F.B.I. agents had gone to his home, telling his mother that they wanted to ask him some questions. But what about? He had spoken at a peace rally a few days earlier. Could that be it?

"I didn't know what to expect," said Mr. Aljazzar, president of the Muslim Student Union at the University of California at Irvine.

As the agents asked him about the political leanings of his group and the extent of anti-American sentiment on campus, he relaxed a bit, comfortable that he was not a suspect.

But after the interview, with the agents reminding him to call if he heard of any terrorist plots, Mr. Aljazzar said he wondered if the meeting had been worth all the apprehension it had produced.

"If I knew something crazy was going to happen," he said, "I would have called them anyway. They didn't need to contact me."

Polite and informal though they may be, the F.B.I.'s interviews with 5,000 young men in the United States on tourist, student or business visas have sent waves of worry across campuses, mosques and community organizations in Southern California. Muslims are asking who will be next.

"There is a great deal of fear," said Mahmoud Abdel-Baset, the religious director of the Islamic Center of Southern California. "Many of us came from police states, where people can be detained for no good reason. We are used to not trusting the government, and I don't think the attorney general's tone or his words are reassuring anybody."

Local bureau officials met with Arab American and Muslim groups recently, reminding residents that they are not necessarily suspects if they are called in for questioning. But at the same meetings, officials said that they have tens of thousands of tips to pursue in Southern California alone.

"That means the whole community is being investigated," said Michel Shehadeh, the West Coast director of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee.

The apprehension is perhaps most palpable at universities, where many foreign students wonder if the political or social activities that once raised their status on campus are federal agents' attention.

Bilal Khan, president of the Muslim Student Association at the University for California at Los Angeles, said that several members had been questioned by bureau agents. None have been arrested or detained, Mr. Khan said, but they are irritated, especially because the group's main focus is tutoring high school students and pulling together free health clinics in poor neighborhoods.

"People here are asking, `Why us, when all we're trying to do is give back to the community?' " Mr. Khan said. "But there's no real answer, other than the Arabic names, and that's why the people here are panicked."

Some professors said they were worried that the interviews would hasten the exodus of students who have not already left the United States at the behest of their families.

Richard H. Dekmejian, a professor of Middle Eastern politics at the University of Southern California, said the stigma of being questioned by law enforcement officials was pervasive among Muslims from abroad, making it difficult for his students to see the interviews as anything but an indication of suspicion.

"We try to comfort them as much as possible," Professor Dekmejian said.

For many residents, the prospect of being questioned seems considerably more harrowing than the interviews themselves. For three weeks, bureau agents have been leaving messages for Haitham Aranki, a 43- year-old Palestinian who makes springs for garage doors and car suspensions, informing him that they want to question him.

Mr. Aranki has been trying to set up a meeting, but to no avail.

"I'm left with this feeling of not knowing what they want from me," Mr. Aranki said, "if I'm being watched, if they'll come to my house and tell my daughters that the F.B.I. wants to talk to me. You stay in a very emotional state, not knowing what's going on."

---

THE DETROIT AREA
Inquiries Put Mideast Men In Spotlight

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By DANNY HAKIM
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16DETR.html

DETROIT, Nov. 15 - With law enforcement officials set to interview 5,000 Middle Eastern men living in the United States, no part of the country feels itself more in the spotlight than Detroit and Dearborn, a suburb that is home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab-Americans.

Starting next week, more than 800 men in Michigan, most in this area, will be questioned as part of a widening federal investigation into terrorist threats to the United States.

Interviews have already begun in other parts of the country, but the number of interview subjects is so high here that local investigators will not even start until next week, after the United States attorney's office convenes a meeting of local and state agencies to discuss how to proceed.

Greg Guibord, the police chief in Dearborn, said his department had not yet received any instructions or requests regarding the interviews.

Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. office in Detroit, said that the bureau's role would be minimal and that state and local authorities would conduct the interviews. She said the effort was being coordinated by United States attorneys' offices.

This week, Attorney General John Ashcroft said interviews with the 5,000 men, ages 18 to 33, who have come to the United States since the beginning of last year on student, tourist or work visas, must be completed in a month.

"When they come into this country, they have to leave an address and where they can be reached," said Ms. Clenney, referring to the people set to be interviewed. "The visas go through the State Department. We just had a lot in this area." The interviews will be conducted by home visits."

"If people refuse, no negative inference will be drawn," she said.

News of the increased scrutiny to come has aroused concern from local community leaders.

Abraham Turaani, a projects coordinator for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, said, "The Arab-American community is fully behind the investigation to find and root out the perpetrators and their accomplices in the U.S."

"What we are concerned about," Mr. Turaani said, "is any measure by law enforcement to X-ray the entire community for terroristic malignancies."

Aiman Mackie, 21, president of the Lebanese Students Association at the University of Michigan, is from Dearborn and fears that the sweeps will make Arab-Americans try to hide their origins.

"The younger generation, like any younger generation, are pulling away," Mr. Mackie said. "This will make it even worse."

---

THE TRIBUNALS
Rumsfeld Offers Assurances About Use of Military Courts

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16TRIB.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld sought today to address growing criticism over plans to try terrorists before military tribunals, saying he would move in a "very measured and conservative" way to establish procedures for such trials.

"It's not something we want to deal with on an ad hoc basis as it happens," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

In comments at the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said he had asked the department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, to begin writing the procedures for the tribunals, which would be the first since World War II. Mr. Haynes, he said, would review precedents in American history dating to the Revolutionary War.

Mr. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the rules for military tribunals would be decidedly differently from those for civilian trials. And Pentagon officials said today that they were devising regulations that were likely to include a more flexible standard for evidence than civilian trials would accept. They said the tribunals would probably allow conviction of a suspected terrorist on a two-thirds vote of the officers on the panel.

Such departures have drawn complaints from civil liberties groups and members of Congress.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, took to the Senate floor today to demand hearings on the plan, contending that the White House was bypassing Congress and unilaterally expanding its powers.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, quickly picked up a microphone to agree with Mr. Specter.

He then added complaints about other recent administration actions taken without Congressional participation.

Mr. Leahy said tonight that he would hold hearings immediately after Thanksgiving and that he would expect Attorney General John Ashcroft to answer questions at them.

One issue that remained unclear was exactly which prisoners would qualify for a military tribunal. At the least, the tribunals would be used for people arrested overseas who could then be tried on military bases or, as Pentagon officials said today, on ships at sea.

Vice President Dick Cheney and other White House officials suggested on Wednesday that foreigners arrested in the United States might also be subject to the tribunals, but senior Justice Department officials tonight said they were unaware of any such plans.

The officials also said they had no indication that any of the more than 1,100 people taken into custody since the Sept. 11 attacks would be transferred to military custody.

Still, a senior Pentagon official said today that the first suspects could be transferred to military custody before tribunal procedures were completed, suggesting that turnovers could come at any time.

George J. Terwilliger III, a former deputy attorney general in the first Bush administration who has been an adviser to the Justice Department, said in a speech today that it might also be permissible for the United States government to transfer terrorist suspects to other nations with different standards of interrogation.

"We can't be picking and choosing our friends," Mr. Terwilliger said at a meeting of the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers group that was holding its annual meeting in Washington.

There appeared to be widespread support for the administration's actions among those at the meeting, though some conservatives voiced rumblings of disquiet over the increasing authority of the federal government.

Prof. Eugene Volokh, who teaches at the law schools of the University of California at Los Angeles and George Mason University, said that "many people, conservatives, are feeling tension between the extension of government power and the realization that there are real security concerns at issue here."

Eugene B. Meyer, the executive director of the Federalist Society, said the expansion of federal power might divide some in the group because of the traditional dichotomy of conservatives who are libertarians and those who favor a strong governmental authority.

Manuel J. Klausner, a Los Angeles lawyer and founding editor of the libertarian magazine Reason who was attending the meeting, said that the libertarians usually made an exception to their distaste for government in the case of national security.

"I believe in appropriate defense, because this is a matter of our survival," Mr. Klausner said. But he added that he hoped the steps taken by the administration would be short-lived.

Stewart A. Baker, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel of the National Security Agency, said that he was mildly concerned about the changes but generally supported the need for new procedures.

"I don't think anyone wants to see Osama bin Laden brought before a court here to be defended by Johnnie Cochran," he said.

-------- terrorism

Algerian Charged in LAX Bomb Plot

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Millennium-Terror.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- An Algerian man was charged Friday with helping a terrorist trained by Osama bin Laden in the failed plot to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport during millennium celebrations.

U.S. authorities on Thursday served Samir Ati Mohamed, 32, with an extradition warrant. Canadian authorities said Mohamed had been in custody in Vancouver on alleged immigration violations since July.

Authorities filed charges against Mohamed under seal last month. A criminal complaint made public Friday accuses him of trying to get weapons for Ahmed Ressam so Ressam could raise money for the Los Angeles attack by robbing banks.

The plot was foiled when Ressam -- who trained in bin Laden-financed terrorist camps in Afghanistan -- was arrested entering the country in late 1999 with a trunkload of explosives. He pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against other terrorism suspects in hopes of reducing a potential 130-year sentence.

Mohamed allegedly agreed ``to get Ressam two hand grenades and a machine gun with a silencer,'' according to an FBI affidavit. The complaint also accuses him of working with another man, Mokhtar Haouari, to obtain ``a credit card in an alias for Ressam's use in connection with his planned terrorist operation and jihad work.''

Mohamed ended up providing a 9mm semiautomatic pistol with a silencer, knowing Ressam intended a terrorist attack in the United States, court papers said. Ressam used the pistol in an August 1999 holdup attempt at a Montreal currency exchange, papers said.

The complaint charges Mohamed with two counts of conspiring to commit international terrorism. If convicted, he could receive life in prison.

Ressam became the key witness in a New York trial at which Haouari was convicted of participating in the same plot. Ressam told the court he and Mohamed talked about ``blowing up a neighborhood in Canada where there was an Israeli interest.''

Mohamed suggested that any bomb ``be implanted in a gasoline truck for a larger and more serious explosion,'' Ressam testified. He also said Mohamed and some friends wanted to start their own training camp in Afghanistan.

Haouari, who faces up to 50 years in prison, had been scheduled for sentencing this month. A judge postponed the sentencing until Dec. 17 after prosecutors revealed Ressam had failed to disclose the Montreal robbery attempt -- information that the defense could have used to attack his credibility. Haouari's lawyer has said he will seek a new trial.

No sentencing date for Ressam has been set.

---

More Terrorists May Be Hiding in U.S.

Associated Press
November 16, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Investigation.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Associates of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and other terrorist groups probably are hiding in the United States, and investigators are trying to find out who and where they are, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Friday.

``There are persons in the United States who have association with, affiliation with, support of certain terrorist groups,'' said Mueller. ``We're doing everything we can to identify exactly the extent of that activity.''

He said terrorists groups have established a presence in the United States but didn't specify where they are based. He said it wasn't just al-Qaida that has a beachhead in America.

``I wouldn't rule out any of the known terrorist organizations,'' Mueller said, referring to the Palestinian Hamas movement and the Saudi Hezbollah group.

In the search for information about terrorists operatives here, authorities have arrested or detained more than 1,100 people and want to question more than 5,000 male foreigners in the United States who have passports from Middle East and other countries where terrorists are known to operate.

Civil rights groups have criticized the FBI for casting such a wide net, saying many innocent people could be caught up in the terrorist investigation simply because they are of Arab or Muslim descent. Mueller said the Justice Department has established guidelines for interviewing foreigners who are not considered suspects.

Speaking with reporters, Mueller divulged few other new details about the progress of a massive investigation into the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings and the anthrax cases that have killed four people and sickened dozens.

On the anthrax investigation, Mueller said investigators are still retracing the steps of Kathy Nguyen, the New York woman who died of inhalation anthrax, and are looking at people who knew her and sent mail to her.

It's still not clear how Nguyen, a hospital worker who lived in the Bronx, was exposed.

``The investigators are trying to dissect her life to determine at what point in her day-to-day activities she could have been exposed to anthrax,'' Mueller said, adding that authorities have not discovered a letter that could be the source her infection.

The FBI director said another hijacker may have been recruited to take the place of a Yemeni man who was supposed to help hijack a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania but was prevented from entering the country.

Mueller said Ramsi Binalshibh is believed to have intended to be part of the hijacking team that commandeered United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania.

``Once Binalshibh was prevented from coming into the country they may well have turned to other person or persons to fill that role,'' said Mueller.

Binalshibh is now the subject of an international manhunt.

Mueller said authorities haven't ruled out the possibility that a French-Algerian man detained in New York could have been planning to be a hijacker.

Zacarias Moussaoui was detained Aug. 17 on immigration charges after officials at a flight school where he sought training grew suspicious and called authorities. He is being held as a material witness -- someone with possibly important information -- in the investigation of the terrorist attacks.

Mueller said security plans for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City have been beefed up, but cited no specific measures.

``In some instances where has been enhancements to ensure that the Winter Olympics go off without a glitch,'' said Mueller.

---

HOMELAND DEFENSE
Ridge Agrees Taliban Losses May Lead to New Terrorism

New York Times
November 16, 2001
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/16/national/16RIDG.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Taliban defeats in Afghanistan could lead Al Qaeda to strike back with another terrorist attack, Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security, suggested today.

Asked whether Osama bin Laden might be more likely to attack because of Taliban losses in Afghanistan, Mr. Ridge said "common sense" dictated that "if you are putting pressure on your enemy in one area or one venue, they may choose to act out in a separate area, in a different venue."

He said the nation's "state of readiness and wariness" was as high as it had ever been.

Mr. Ridge said the country would remain on high alert until Mr. bin Laden was caught and his network dismantled.

As the war in Afghanistan reached a critical stage, Mr. Ridge toured an Energy Department exhibition of counterterrorism devices, addressed a conference on national security, held a town hall meeting at Hofstra University on Long Island and was interviewed tonight by Larry King on CNN. He said technological advances would be at the heart of government strategy for making the nation safer.

Mr. Ridge confirmed reports that designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons were found in a Qaeda safe house in Kabul, but played down their significance. He said he was told that much of the information was widely available.

Mr. Ridge said a report in The Times of London that the information was found half-burned in Kabul was "certainly consistent" with other signs that Mr. bin Laden wanted to obtain nuclear weapons.

"It does not confirm that he has the capacity," he said. "It just shows that whether it's bin Laden or some other potential foe of this country, we have to be prepared for all eventualities, including a nuclear threat."

Several other government officials said today that all they knew about the documents was what they had read in news accounts and that they had no reason to change their assessment that Al Qaeda did not have nuclear capabilities.

Fleshing out his mission to develop a comprehensive plan for security, Mr. Ridge opened the door to a wide-ranging reorganization of the federal government.

"We will prepare not to fight the wars of the past," he said. "We must create a blueprint to win the wars of the future."

He said that the government needed to "rethink traditional missions and traditional relationships" and that the Bush administration was looking at how to realign agencies.

He cited as an example the federal agencies that handle food safety, noting that one group of inspectors looks at vegetables, another at livestock.

"Wherever you have multiple organizations that seem to be tasked to the same general area," Mr. Ridge said, "for functional improvement, for economic improvement, for security enhancement, we ought to at least take a look at whether or not we need to merge functions, merge agencies."

Food safety responsibilities are scattered among agencies, including the Agriculture Department, the Commerce Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Customs Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In Congress there is also pressure to merge the Border Patrol, the Customs Service and the Coast Guard, a consolidation Mr. Ridge has said he will consider. He said the administration would look at whether the National Guard needed to be reconfigured for homeland security. Thousands of National Guard troops are protecting airports, and they will be sent this week to guard the Capitol.

But Mr. Ridge said the Bush administration would deploy the regular military to handle domestic terrorist attacks only as a last resort.

Mr. Ridge said priority had to be given to standardizing training and equipment for firefighters, the police and emergency personnel across the country and creating a "seamless" communication system.

He expressed interest in more use of "biometric" cards that contain such information as fingerprints or iris scans for such things as visas or airport security. He did not speak of a national identification card.

Mr. Ridge said he was looking at the cost of homeland defense and that President Bush's next budget would "reflect the priorities of this office." He said the president had also told him that if he saw immediate needs he could propose an emergency spending package for early next year.

While many in Congress say Mr. Ridge needs more power and an independent agency, he insisted that his responsibilities were too diffuse to be put in one cabinet department.

"If they choose to create another agency, if they choose to create a cabinet position, that's fine," he said, "but I'm not applying. I already have a job, and I like it."

At the town hall meeting this evening, Mr. Ridge offered assurances that extensive security measures were in place.

"America will prevail," Mr. Ridge said. "I believe you'd have to be living in a cave not to know that."

-------

War on Terror: False Victory

The Mirror (London)
16 November 2001, pp. 6,7
By John Pilger
From: Louise Auerhahn <louise@mailhome.com>

THERE is no victory in Afghanistan's tribal war, only the exchange of one group of killers for another. The difference is that President Bush calls the latest occupiers of Kabul "our friends".

However welcome the scenes of people playing music and shaving off their beards, the so-called Northern Alliance are no bringers of freedom. They are the same people welcomed by similar scenes of jubilation in 1992, who then killed an estimated 50,000 in four years of internecine feuding. The new heroes so far have tortured and executed at least 100 prisoners of war, and countless others, as well as looted food supplies and re-established their monopoly on the heroin trade. This week, Amnesty International made an unusually blunt statement that was buried in the news. It ought to be emblazoned across every front page and television screen. "By failing to appreciate the gravity of the human rights concerns in relation to Northern Alliance leaders," said Amnesty, "UK ministers at best perpetuate a culture of impunity for past crimes; at worst they risk being complicit in human rights abuse." The truth is that the latest crop of criminals to "liberate" Kabul have been given a second chance by the most powerful country on earth pounding into dust one of the poorest, where people's life expectancy is just over 40.

And for what?

Not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has yet to be caught or killed. Osama bin Laden and his network have almost certainly slipped into the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier of Pakistan. Will Pakistan now be bombed? And Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, where Islamic extremism and its military network took root? Of course not. The Saudi sheikhs, many of them as extreme as the Taliban, control America's greatest source of oil. The Egyptian regime, bribed with billions of US dollars, is an important American proxy. No daisy cutters for them.

There was, and still is, no "war on terrorism". Instead, we have watched a variation of the great imperial game of swapping "bad" terrorists for "good" terrorists, while untold numbers of innocent people have paid with their lives: most of one village, whole families, a hospital, as well as teenage conscripts suitably dehumanised by the word "Taliban".

It is perfectly understandable that those in the West who supported this latest American terror from the air, or hedged their bets, should now seek to cover the blood on their reputations with absurd claims that "bombing works". Tell that to grieving parents at fresh graves in impoverished places of whom the sofa bomb-aimers know nothing.

The contortion of intellect and morality that this triumphalism requires is not a new phenomenon. Putting aside the terminally naive, it mostly comes from those who like to play at war: who have seen nothing of bombing, as I have experienced it: cluster bombs, daisy cutters: the lot. How appropriate that the last American missile to hit Kabul before the "liberators" arrived should destroy the satellite transmitter of the Al-Jazeera television station, virtually the only reliable source of news in the region.

For weeks, American officials have been pressuring the government of Qatar, the Gulf state where Al-Jazeera is based, to silence its broadcasters, who have given a view of the "war against terrorism" other than that based on the false premises of the Bush and Blair "crusade". The guilty secret is that the attack on Afghanistan was unnecessary. The "smoking gun" of this entire episode is evidence of the British Government's lies about the basis for the war. According to Tony Blair, it was impossible to secure Osama bin Laden's extradition from Afghanistan by means other than bombing. Yet in late September and early October, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiated bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September 11 attacks. The deal was that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar. According to reports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this had both bin Laden's approval and that of Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader.

The offer was that he would face an international tribunal, which would decide whether to try him or hand him over to America. Either way, he would have been out of Afghanistan, and a tentative justice would be seen to be in progress. It was vetoed by Pakistan's president Musharraf who said he "could not guarantee bin Laden's safety".

But who really killed the deal?

The US Ambassador to Pakistan was notified in advance of the proposal and the mission to put it to the Taliban. Later, a US official said that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr bin Laden was captured". And yet the US and British governments insisted there was no alternative to bombing Afghanistan because the Taliban had "refused" to hand over Osama bin Laden. What the Afghani people got instead was "American justice" - imposed by a president who, as well as denouncing international agreements on nuclear weapons, biological weapons, torture, and global warming, has refused to sign up for an international court to try war criminals: the one place where bin Laden might be put on trial.

When Tony Blair said this war was not an attack on Islam as such, he was correct. Its aim, in the short term, was to satisfy a domestic audience then to accelerate American influence in a vital region where there has been a power vacuum since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of China, whose oil needs are expected eventually to surpass even those of the US. That is why control of Central Asia and the Caspian basin oilfields is important as exploration gets under way.

There was, until the cluster bombing of innocents, a broad-based recognition that there had to be international action to combat the kind of terrorism that took thousands of lives in New York. But these humane responses to September 11 were appropriated by an American administration, whose subsequent actions ought to have left all but the complicit and the politically blind in no doubt that it intended to reinforce its post-cold war assertion of global supremacy - an assertion that has a long, documented history.

The "war on terrorism" gave Bush the pretext to pressure Congress into pushing through laws that erode much of the basis of American justice and democracy. Blair has followed behind with anti-terrorism laws of the very kind that failed to catch a single terrorist during the Irish war.

In this atmosphere of draconian controls and fear, in the US and Britain, mere explanation of the root causes of the attacks on America invites ludicrous accusations of treachery." Above all, what this false victory has demonstrated is that, to those in power in Washington and London and those who speak for them, certain human lives have greater worth than others and that the killing of only one set of civilians is a crime. If we accept that, we beckon the repetition of atrocities on all sides, again and again.



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