------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
U.S. Supports U.N. Anti-Nukes Push
Northrop Grumman Takes Newport News
US, China Talk Nuclear Proliferation
U.S. to Ask China Again: Halt Pakistan Missile Aid
Czech, Austria Mull Nuclear Plant
U.N. snubs Iraq over depleted-uranium study
Going Backwards US Wins Defeat of Depleted Uranium Study
Saddam would attack Israel with non-conventional weapons
Israel's Sharon Travels to U.S.
Mideast Envoy Aims for Peace Talks
Pentagon to Launch Missile Test
Russia Hails UN ABM Treaty Support
No Russia Strategic Arms Concessions to US
Russia Hails UN ABM Treaty Support
N-Power Plants Need Fed Security Force
Feds Favor Maryland Co. for Uranium
GAO Challenges Plans for Storage Of Nuclear Waste
Delay urged on nuclear waste dump decision
Bush Defends Secret Tribunals for Terrorism Suspects
Powell Denies Rumors of a New War on Iraq
Egypt Minister Discusses Bush Policy

MILITARY
Troops on Call
Today in History - Nov. 30
Captured Taliban lined up and shot
US 'hero' may have triggered Mazar revolt
The Castle of Death
Powell defends missile deal with Egypt
Egypt's story
U.S. Military Aid Arrives in Manila
Ames Strain Of Anthrax Limited to Few Labs
Experts Sure Iraq Has Bio-Weapons
Chemical Weapons Linked to bin Laden
After the bloodbath: how Sharon wove a web of lies
Ex-Axis Powers Recast Foreign Military Roles
U.S. Military Aid Arrives in Manila
53 journalists killed in 2001
Vieques
Navy supremacy

POLICE / PRISONERS
Journalists assaulted in L.A. protest settle with police
Police Sentenced in S. Africa
Questions for Mr. Ashcroft
D.C. cameras bring woes others avoided

ENERGY AND OTHER
GENERATING RENEWABLE ENERGY ON PUBLIC LANDS ENCOURAGED
NEW DEVICE COULD AID PRODUCTION OF ELECTRICITY
Utility Seeks Operations Transfer
Commonwealth backs plan for $10 million traditional medicine hub
Smallpox Vaccine Plan Called Lacking

ACTIVISTS
URGENT
ACTION ALERT - CITIZEN INSPECTION
Arms Trade Resource Center Reports
Students walk out to protest Pennsylvania takeover plans
TAKE ACTION: EarthNet Special Report
To stop a nuclear terrorist the West must give up its nuclear weapons



-------- NUCLEAR

U.S. Supports U.N. Anti-Nukes Push

By Vanessa Gera
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 9:32 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38633-2001Nov30?language=printer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Nuclear.html?searchpv=aponline

VIENNA, Austria -- Warning anew of the threat of nuclear-related terrorism, the United States on Friday pledged to support the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency's efforts to stop terrorists from obtaining nuclear material.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the U.S. government is giving the International Atomic Energy Agency $1.2 million for the anti-terrorism effort while Washington discusses increasing its funding for the agency.

U.S. contributions now make up roughly 25 percent of the agency's $300 million annual budget, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

Speaking to the agency's board of governors in Vienna, Abraham praised the organization's efforts to help countries increase security at nuclear facilities, calling its work "vital to the global war on terrorism."

"The work the agency does to deny nuclear material and radioactive sources to terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism is an integral part of our effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Abraham said.

After Sept. 11, the agency's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, warned that terrorists could next try to attack nuclear plants or build radioactive bombs.

Nuclear experts have warned that the collapse of the Soviet Union created a political vacuum that left some nuclear material unaccounted for.

On Friday, ElBaradei asked the IAEA's wealthier members to increase the agency's budget by $30 million to $50 million annually so it can expand its efforts to help countries safeguard nuclear material.

ElBaradei said the 133-member agency would use the money to help governments prevent theft of radioactive materials and increase border controls in order to prevent the smuggling of such material.

"We have the solutions," ElBaradei said. "Now governments have to come up with the resources."

The agency, which sets international standards for radiation protection, said it has evidence of 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear materials since 1993.

-------- business

Northrop Grumman Takes Newport News

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Northrop-Newport-News.html?searchpv=aponline
also
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39697-2001Nov30?language=printer

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) -- Newport News Shipbuilding Inc., the nation's only builder of nuclear aircraft carriers, became part of Northrop Grumman Corp. on Friday.

The Los Angeles-based defense conglomerate took possession of its third shipyard a little more than three weeks after the Newport News board agreed to the $2.1 billion takeover.

``As we look ahead as one company, Northrop Grumman is enthusiastically embracing the business of building and maintaining ships -- and we are in this business for the long haul,'' Kent Kresa, Northrop Grumman's chief executive, said during a news conference at the shipyard.

About 100 corporate employees at Newport News will be laid off as a result of the takeover, said Thomas Schievelbein, who became president of the new Northrop Grumman-Newport News. He said hourly jobs will not be affected.

The Newport News yard has about 17,800 employees.

Northrop Grumman won a bidding war with rival shipbuilder General Dynamics Corp. Northrop argued that the General Dynamics bid would eliminate competition and endanger national security. General Dynamics and Newport News are the nation's only nuclear submarine builders.

Support for the General Dynamics bid evaporated after the Justice Department said it would challenge such a merger on antitrust grounds. The Pentagon also supported the Northrop bid.

The Newport News yard initially will operate as a subsidiary of Northrop with Schievelbein replacing William Fricks at the helm of Newport News. Fricks' retirement took effect Thursday.

Newport News eventually will be managed by Northrop's ship systems sector, which already includes the Avondale and Ingalls shipyards in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Nuclear shipwork will continue to be done at Newport News while non-nuclear work be done at the other yards.

-------- china

US, China Talk Nuclear Proliferation

The Associated Press
Friday, November 30, 2001; 9:48 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42096-2001Nov30?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- U.S. and Chinese officials held productive talks on American concerns over Chinese compliance with an agreement on curbing the spread of nuclear technology, the State Department said Friday night.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton conducted the discussions with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya.

Bolton reiterated the emphasis on nonproliferation as a critical aspect of the war on terrorism, the State Department said.

The two sides also discussed a broader range of arms control issues. The Chinese delegation also met with other officials to discuss regional and counterterrorism issues.

Three months ago, the administration accused the China Metallurgical Equipment Corp., a government-owned engineering company, of supplying missile-related parts to Pakistan in violation of a November 2000 Sino-American agreement.

For two years, the company will be denied all new U.S. licenses for production of electronics and military equipment and for material used to launch commercial satellites. China has denied the allegation.

----

U.S. to Ask China Again: Halt Pakistan Missile Aid

November 30, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-china-usa.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, underscoring a post-Sept. 11 pledge to defeat terrorism, will hang tough in high-level talks with China Friday and renew a demand that the Chinese curb missile cooperation with Pakistan, a senior U.S. official said.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya are expected to hold the most extensive senior-level nonproliferation talks between their countries since President Bush took office in January.

The Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington have added urgency to the goal of halting the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that could fall into the hands of extremists.

Expectations are low, however, that Washington and Beijing can reach an agreement that would justify the lifting of U.S. sanctions that have delayed the export of American communications satellites to China.

China asked for Friday's meeting.

Bush told Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Shanghai last month that ``nonproliferation is a serious issue,'' another official told Reuters. ``'You've got to deal with it. You can't have the kind of relationship with the United States that you want until we deal with it,''' the official said, summarizing Bush's message.

The White House denies any advance knowledge of what Wang may say.

WASHINGTON WILL 'BE LISTENING'

``We don't have any reason to believe the Chinese position has changed,'' the senior official said Thursday, adding: ``But we'll be listening. ... We'll be interested to hear what they say.''

As for the American position, he said: ``We've told them before. We haven't changed in five months. It's still the same.''

If there is time, the United States may also use the meeting to voice its concern about China's biological weapons program.

China's priorities are to talk about lifting the sanctions and to learn the status of U.S. missile defense negotiations with Russia, the senior U.S. official said.

The U.S. preference would be to deal with Beijing's ''proliferation behavior'' across a range of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, he said.

But, ``frankly, if they can't address the missile sanction issue, then there is not a lot of point in talking about other aspects (of proliferation) at this stage,'' he added.

Failure to find common ground would show that the Chinese ''are fundamentally not willing to engage in a common course of conduct'' with the United States and other key countries, the senior official said.

Beijing has impressed Washington with its willingness to support the U.S. anti-terror campaign following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But discord over transferring missiles and other technology to Pakistan and other countries reflects the limits of this key relationship, which has improved dramatically in recent months.

BACKGROUND OF SANCTIONS

The sanctions were imposed on Sept. 1 on the China Metallurgical Equipment Corp. for allegedly transferring ballistic missile technology to Pakistan in violation of a November 2000 agreement with the United States.

The penalties include a U.S. refusal to issue licenses to U.S. companies to launch satellites on Chinese rockets.

Under the November 2000 accord, China pledged not to assist any country developing ballistic missiles that can be used to deliver nuclear weapons and to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary international accord that tries to limit missile exports to unstable regions.

China publicly denied breaking the accord, although U.S. officials said it told a different story in private.

In private talks, China argued that sanctions should be waived in return for a new pledge that missile technology transfers will not take place and Beijing will finally carry out an old promise to tighten export controls.

But the administration lost patience. In the past two decades, China has promised six times not to transfer missiles and missile technology, yet has broken each pledge by arming Pakistan, Syria, North Korea and possibly Libya, according to U.S. Senate and intelligence sources.

China has made clear to Washington that it views its ties with Pakistan as long-standing and integral to its security.

Congressional experts said they believed Beijing was committed to a military technology supply relationship with Pakistan despite U.S. objections.

An Asian diplomat said China did not appear to have expanded cooperation with Pakistan since the Afghan war began.

The sanctions issue is particularly awkward because the United States recently lifted proliferation-related sanctions on Pakistan. Pakistan has become America's crucial front-line ally in the war in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the U.S. attacks, and his allies are based.

-------- czech republic

Czech, Austria Mull Nuclear Plant

By Paul Ames
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2001; 6:33 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35511-2001Nov29?language=printer

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The Czech government agreed Thursday to tighten safety at the Temelin nuclear plant, defusing a dispute with Austria that threatened Czech prospects for an early entry into the European Union.

The EU mediated the deal reached by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel and Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman.

It would end a long-running dispute between the central European neighbors over the Russian-designed power plant which is just 30 miles from the northern border of nuclear-free Austria.

"In the past, this has complicated relations between Austria and the Czech Republic. Now the skies have cleared," Zeman told reporters.

Under the deal, the Czech's safety commitments will be written into the republic's EU treaty of accession, expected in 2004.

In return, Austria agreed not to block negotiations on its neighbor's entry into the 15-nation Union.

Austria demanded the shutdown of the power plant which is due to become fully operational in 2003 after almost 20 years of construction and testing.

"The EU set out a sensible way forward. This is a fine example of good neighborliness," Schuessel said after the talks.

Based on Soviet design but updated with U.S. technology, the 2,000-megawatt plant has been plagued by technical problems since construction work began in 1986.

Testing of Temelin's reactors resumed Wednesday after a leaking circulation pump caused the latest, month-long, shutdown.


-------- depleted uranium

U.N. snubs Iraq over depleted-uranium study

Friday, November 30, 2001
By Irwin Arieff,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11302001/s_45735.asp

UNITED NATIONS - After lobbying by Washington, the General Assembly on Thursday rejected an Iraqi proposal that the United Nations study the effects of the depleted-uranium shells used by U.S.-led forces in the Gulf War.

Baghdad has insisted for years that there is a link between the depleted uranium used in armor-piercing weapons during the 1991 war and an increase in the number of Iraqis with leukemia and other kinds of cancer. Iraq's Health Ministry has said cancer cases rose to 10,931 in 1997 from 6,555 in 1989, especially in areas bombed during the war, in which a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait after it invaded its oil-rich neighbor.

The 189-nation General Assembly voted down the Iraqi plan 45-54, with 45 abstentions.

The assembly's committee on disarmament and international security had approved the plan earlier this month 49-45. Diplomats credited a lobbying campaign by Washington for the turnaround.

Acting at Baghdad's request, the World Health Organization this year began an in-depth study of the health impact of depleted-uranium use in Iraq. Baghdad has cited studies saying that coalition forces used 944,000 depleted-uranium shells against it during the Gulf War.

A resolution drafted by Iraq said the shells had spread radioactive particles and chemical dust over large areas and contaminated "animal and plant life and the soil.'' It asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to survey U.N. member nations and relevant outside groups "on all aspects of the effects of the use of depleted-uranimum armaments'' and submit a report to the assembly next year on his findings.

The use of ammunition containing depleted uranium sparked a furor across Europe earlier this year after some allied peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo said they had developed leukemia because of exposure to the material.

NATO and many health officials have denied that the munitions cause cancer. A study commissioned by the Atlantic alliance concluded that soldiers who served as peacekeepers in the NATO-led missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, where U.S. aircraft fired some 40,000 depleted-uranium shells, were no sicker than those who had not.

----

Going Backwards US Wins Defeat of Depleted Uranium Study

by Irwin Arieff
Friday, November 30, 2001
by Reuters
http://commondreams.org/headlines01/1130-01.htm

UNITED NATIONS - After lobbying by Washington, the General Assembly rejected yesterday an Iraqi proposal that the UN study the effects of the depleted-uranium shells used by US-led forces in the Gulf War.

Baghdad has insisted for years that there is a link between the depleted uranium used in armor-piercing weapons during the 1991 war and an increase in the number of Iraqis with leukemia and other kinds of cancer.

Iraq's Health Ministry has said that cancer cases rose to 10,931 in 1997 from 6,555 in 1989, especially in areas bombed during the war, in which a US-led coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait after it invaded its oil-rich neighbor.

The 189-nation General Assembly voted down the Iraqi plan 45-54, with 45 abstentions. The assembly's committee on disarmament and international security had approved the plan earlier this month, 49-45.

Diplomats credited a lobbying campaign by Washington for the turnaround.

Acting at Baghdad's request, the World Health Organization began an in-depth study this year of the health impact of depleted-uranium munitions used in Iraq. Baghdad has cited studies saying that coalition forces used 944,000 depleted-uranium shells against Iraq during the Gulf War.

A resolution drafted by Iraq said the shells had spread radioactive particles and chemical dust over large areas and contaminated ''animal and plant life and the soil.''

It asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to survey UN member nations and relevant outside groups ''on all aspects of the effects of the use of depleted-uranimum armaments'' and submit a report on his findings to the assembly next year.

The use of ammunition containing depleted uranium sparked a furor across Europe earlier this year, after some allied peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo said they had developed leukemia because of exposure to the material.

NATO and many health officials have denied that the munitions cause cancer.

-------- israel

Expert: Saddam would attack Israel with non-conventional weapons

By David Rudge,
November, 30 2001
Jerusalem Post
http://cgis.jpost.com/cgi-bin/General/printarticle.cgi?article=/Editions/2001/11/30/News/News.39093.html

HAIFA (November 30) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would almost certainly give the order to hit Israel with non-conventional weapons if he felt his regime was in imminent danger of destruction in the event of a major US attack, according to Iraqi affairs expert Prof. Amatzia Baram.

Baram, of the University of Haifa, acted as an adviser on Iraq to senior officials of the American administration while on sabbatical in the US two years ago.

He stressed, however, that the threat of an Iraqi retaliation could be reduced to virtually zero if the US and Israel were to adopt a series of measures, which he declined to discuss for security reasons.

According to Baram, director of the university's Jewish-Arab Center and the Gustav-Heinemann Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, Iraq is believed to have between six to 50 ballistic missiles and a few mobile launchers.

There is also the possibility of Saddam using drones or suicide pilots as a means for conveying some of his arsenal of biological and chemical agents and even nuclear waste to Israel's shores.

Baram noted that the radioactive material would be extremely difficult to load into bombs or missile warheads, and would be as dangerous to the attackers as to the people in the intended target area.

It was more likely, therefore, that Saddam would try to use his remaining missiles fitted with biological or chemical agents - even though these have never been field-tested properly and could malfunction by burning out when re-entering the atmosphere or become unbalanced and go out of control.

Baram revealed that Saddam had given prior orders to his missile commanders to launch Scuds with non-conventional warheads at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War in the event that Baghdad was surrounded and about to fall, and communications with himself were cut.

The orders - never published or even publicly acknowledged - were gleaned by members of the UN's special commission to supervise Iraqi weapons of mass destruction from interviews with leading Iraqi officials.

"I believe the reports of these orders, based on what we already know, my own studies, and interviews and from overt sources, to be very solid and this gives us further data about Saddam and his way of thinking," said Baram, who expounded on the issue in a recently published article in the highly-respected US magazine, the Monterey-based Non-Proliferation Review.

On this basis, Baram is convinced that Saddam would be prepared to sacrifice Baghdad and all its citizens, believing that a non-conventional strike on Israel would result in a nuclear retaliation by the latter on Iraq's capital.

"This is the Iraqi perception of Israel's likely response to a non-conventional Iraqi attack on its territory, although nobody can know for certain how Israel would react.

"Saddam's theory, apparently, is that such massive destruction and loss of life certainly in Iraq and possibly in Israel would put an end to any war being waged against Iraq by America and its allies.

"He seems to believe that he personally and most of his elite would be able to survive the devastation by remaining in their underground nuclear shelters scattered all around Iraq, and that after the dust and fallout settled would emerge and declare victory.

"It should be stressed, however, that Saddam is not a suicidal type and would only give the orders for non-conventional attacks on Israel if he felt his regime was in imminent danger of collapse either from non-stop US bombing attacks or a massive offensive involving also the use of ground forces," Baram said.

Baram maintained it was less likely that Saddam would order the launch of conventional missiles against Israel in the event of a limited US assault because this would expose the continued existence of such weapons, and give America a powerful diplomatic tool to press for indefinite sanctions against Iraq and the need for renewed UN supervision.

He also noted that Israel a decade after the Gulf War is in a much better position to protect itself against missile attacks of any kind through the Arrow and vastly improved Patriot anti-missile systems.

"Given this and other measures that could and should be adopted, including applying psychological pressure on the Iraqi army and particularly missile unit commanders, there is an excellent prospect of averting the Armageddon scenario completely," said Baram.

"Certainly, in my opinion, the dangers do not constitute sufficient reasons for the US to refrain from trying to topple a regime that poses such a danger to stability in the region and the world in general. On the contrary, it seems to me that the US will have to eliminate Saddam's regime while using the measures and means which I cannot elaborate upon to minimize the risks," Baram added.

----

Israel's Sharon Travels to U.S.

By Steve Weizman
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 8:43 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38477-2001Nov30?language=printer

NEW YORK -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began a five-day visit to the United States on Friday, despite calls for him to stay home after a surge of attacks on Israelis by Palestinians militants.

Israel army radio quoted members of Sharon's entourage as saying he ordered retaliatory attacks in response to a suicide bombing on a bus late Thursday. Three passengers and the assailant were killed, and the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Sharon briefed U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni about his plans to strike back, the report said. Zinni, a retired Marine Corps general, is in the region to try to revive a truce plan and restart peace talks.

Zinni said Friday that new violence would not deter him and that he would stay until his mission is completed. Since he arrived earlier this week, seven Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks. Five assailants have also been killed, in addition to three Palestinians fatally shot by Israeli troops in other incidents.

The explosion on the bus came just before Sharon left late Thursday for the United States. He considered canceling the trip but decided to go ahead, aides said.

The decision drew some criticism in Israel. Sharon left "with blood, fire and pillars of smoke in the background, and all this without any plans to do anything of importance over the weekend in New York," wrote Ben Caspit, who covers the prime minister for the Maariv daily.

After his arrival Friday, Sharon was to tour the ruins of the World Trade Center with New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He had no public engagements planned over the Jewish Sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

Sharon is scheduled to fly to Washington on Sunday and meet with President Bush on Monday. He said before his departure that he expects a commitment from Bush that Israel will receive an early warning if American forces launch an attack on Iraq.

"We definitely have things to coordinate together because this kind of activity can really have an effect on us," Sharon said Thursday, adding that Washington tipped him off more than 48 hours before the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan began Oct. 7.

Iraq - a potential target in the U.S.-led war against terrorism - has asserted it would repulse a U.S. attack and hinted that in the event of such a strike it could fire missiles at Israel, as it did during the 1991 Gulf War.

"Iraq is a state which is exceptionally dangerous for Israel, a state with the potential and knowledge for weapons of mass destruction," Sharon said. "It may be that within a short time they will have nuclear weapons."

But he said he would not press for a U.S. strike against Baghdad. "I have no intention of suggesting to the Americans whether they should or should not attack," he said.

High on the agenda at the meeting with Bush will be how to end the 14-month conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which has killed more than 770 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and more than 200 on the Israeli side.

Sharon said before his departure that he would not budge from a demand for a week without Palestinian attacks as a condition for carrying out a U.S.-backed truce deal. "It will be seven days, not one hour less," he said.

U.S. officials have not come out publicly in support of Sharon's condition. Paul Pattin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Washington's main concern was to see a drop in the violence. "Why argue about seven days when you can't even get one day?" he said.

Pattin said Bush wants to hear from Sharon a renewed commitment to implement recommendations of a panel headed by former Sen. George Mitchell.

The recommendations include a freeze on housing construction for Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Powell, who will also meet with Sharon, has accused Israel of crippling peace prospects with settlement activity.

----

Mideast Envoy Aims for Peace Talks

By Jason Keyser
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 9:20 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38601-2001Nov30?language=printer

JERUSALEM -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's special Mideast envoy said Friday that violence will not derail his mission of restoring calm and restarting peace talks, and that he will stay in the region "as long as it takes to make that happen."

The mediator, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, spoke a day after three Israeli bus passengers were killed in a suicide bombing by Islamic militants, an Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian gunman, and two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops at a West Bank checkpoint.

Zinni's remarks marked the first time he talked about the length of his mission. Since his arrival Monday, he has met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and security officials on both sides.

The general spent Thursday evening closeted with Palestinian security officials and negotiators, talking about ways to implement a truce.

During the meet e militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility. The bomber was identified as Samer Abu Suleiman, 32, from the West Bank village of Silet al-Harthiyeh near Jenin. The assailant had explosives strapped to his body and detonated them on the bus.

After meeting with Israeli President Moshe Katsav on Friday, Zinni condemned the attack. "I want to say that I, in the most strongest sense, condemn this violence. The groups that do this are clearly trying to make my mission fail," Zinni said. "It did not succeed."

"I am not committed to work for words, I am committed to work for action on the ground, and I will be here as long as it takes to make that happen," Zinni said.

Sharon charged that Arafat was "directly responsible for the acts of murder and terrorism" that have surged upward in the five days since Zinni arrived.

Sharon, addressing reporters before his departure for the United States late Thursday, said that Israel "will not undertake negotiations in any form until there is quiet and until Arafat fights terror."

Sharon arrived in New York on Friday morning to start a five-day visit during which he was to meet with President Bush and other senior U.S. officials.

In the West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian police arrested three Islamic Jihad activists on Friday, security officials said. In the town of Hebron, Israeli troops entered Palestinian-controlled territory and arrested three members of the group.

A senior Palestinian official read a statement to reporters "condemning all the terror attacks that target civilians from both sides" and pledging to arrest those who violate the decision to implement a cease-fire. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the statement was issued in the name of the Palestinian leadership, and that the Palestinian Cabinet was to release its own statement later Friday.

In the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, home to several previous suicide bombers, about 3,000 people marched and celebrated after the bus attack, witnesses said. They chanted, "Sharon, prepare the body bags."

At a rally in memory of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, the leader of the Hamas military wing killed in an Israeli missile attack last week, a Hamas leader in Nablus told a crowd of about 3,000 the group would carry out more attacks.

"I am telling Sharon, 'you can kill our fighters, but the colleagues of Abu Hanoud avenged him in Hadera, and tomorrow in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv," Yasser Mansour said.

The suicide bomber made a videotape before blowing himself up. He said he was avenging Israeli killings of suspected militants and protesting the "international conspiracy against Palestinian rights."

In two other incidents Thursday, two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed. The Palestinians died when Israeli soldiers fired on a car at a checkpoint. The Israeli military said the car tried to run over soldiers, while Palestinian witnesses said the car was driving away from the roadblock when the shots were fired. The soldiers killed the driver and a bystander, the military said, expressing regret for the death of the second Palestinian.

At another checkpoint, Palestinian gunmen in a passing car fired at soldiers, killing one and wounding another, the military said.

Since fighting broke out on Sept. 28, 2000, 777 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 205 people have been killed on the Israeli side.

Trying to cement a truce, Zinni talked about a timetable with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, Palestinians said. Earlier, Sharon repeated his insistence on a seven-day period with no Palestinian attacks before moving toward other truce steps, like removing Israeli roadblocks and withdrawing troops from Palestinian population centers.

In Washington, asked if the United States backs Sharon's demand, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher replied, "I don't think we have ever said that."

-------- missile defense

Pentagon to Launch Missile Test

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A successful test this weekend of part of the Pentagon's missile defense program would lead to more complicated and realistic tests soon, the head of the program said Friday.

If an interceptor rocket succeeds in shooting a dummy missile out of the sky Saturday, the next tests would include more complications, such as defensive measures designed to confuse the interceptor, said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Saturday's test, in which the dummy warhead and the ``kill vehicle'' are expected to collide 144 miles above the South Pacific, is the fifth in a series of about 20 planned for the missile defense system.

The Bush administration says America needs a way to shoot down long-range missiles fired by ``rogue states.''

Russia opposes the U.S. missile defense drive, saying the project will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Missile-defense backers say the treaty is a Cold War relic which should be discarded. President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to agree on scrapping or changing the ABM treaty during their summit earlier this month.

The latest test will not violate the ABM treaty, Kadish said. Three planned parts of the test, such as using ship-based Aegis radar to track the dummy warhead, have been dropped because of concerns about violating the treaty.

Saturday's test is nearly identical to one performed in July, in which the interceptor destroyed a dummy warhead. If the interceptor misses, as happened with two previous tests, this test will not be regarded as a failure, Kadish said.

``We are testing to learn,'' he told reporters at a Pentagon news briefing Friday. ``We are not testing as pass/fail.''

Critics of the program say the tests have been so tightly scripted that they don't prove the anti-missile system will work. Kadish said such criticism misses the point of the tests, which are designed to test various key parts of the system so they can be perfected before final, realistic tests are done.

----

Russia Hails UN ABM Treaty Support

By Deborah Seward
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 11:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39249-2001Nov30?language=printer

MOSCOW -- Russia on Friday welcomed a U.N. vote supporting the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty and said it was evidence of growing international support in the 29-year-old pact, the focus of a persistent dispute between Russia and the United States.

The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday voted 84-5 with 62 abstentions in favor of maintaining the 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty, which governs American and Russian missile defenses.

The United States voted against the nonbinding resolution, which calls on Washington and Moscow to exert renewed efforts to preserve and strengthen the treaty through strict compliance and says any measure undermining the pact could threaten world peace.

The United States claims it faces a threat from ballistic missiles that could be launched from so-called "rogue states" and wants to test missile-defense technologies that the ABM treaty bans. Russia insists that the treaty is a cornerstone of international security and opposes changes.

"The results of the vote testify to the growing support in the world for this treaty and a striving not to allow its destruction," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.

The statement said Russia would continue to aim to "adhere to this unique treaty, which it said helps ensure strategic stability in the world while allowing for cuts in nuclear weapons.

The United States plans this weekend to test part of its missile defense program by trying to shoot a mock warhead out of the sky with an interceptor rocket. The Pentagon says the test is designed to stay within the limits of the ABM treaty.

The Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian military official as saying Friday that Russia believed the United States may abandon the ABM treaty and that Russia was prepared to take reciprocal action. He did not specify how Russia might respond.

"We are inclined to continue consultations with the United States on ABM, but I do not rule out that Washington could unilaterally leave this document," said Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy head of the Russian General Staff.

But he said he had no reason to believe the United States intends to take actions that would violate the treaty in the immediate future.

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to reach an agreement in their dispute over ABM treaty during a summit in the United States in mid-November.

Bush has said that unless he reaches an arrangement with Russia that accommodates his missile defense program, the United States will withdraw from the treaty, which it is permitted to do with six months' notice.

-------- russia

General: No Russia Strategic Arms Concessions to US

November 30, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-arms-russia.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior member of the Russian military ruled out Friday any basic concessions by Moscow to the United States on strategic arms, Interfax news agency said.

Speaking to journalists, Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy head of the Russian general staff, said: ``From the Russian side, there are no concessions, there have been none and there will not be any, on the question of anti-missile defense and strategic arms.''

Baluyevsky spoke two weeks after a U.S.-Russian summit in the United States at which President Bush said Washington would reduce the number of its strategic weapons but made clear it would press ahead with plans to develop an anti-missile defense system opposed by Russia.

-------- treaties

Russia Hails UN ABM Treaty Support

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia on Friday welcomed a U.N. vote supporting the Anti-ballistic Missile treaty and said it was evidence of growing international support in the 29-year-old pact, the focus of a persistent dispute between Russia and the United States.

The U.N. General Assembly on Thursday voted 84-5 with 62 abstentions in favor of maintaining the 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty, which governs American and Russian missile defenses.

The United States voted against the nonbinding resolution, which calls on Washington and Moscow to exert renewed efforts to preserve and strengthen the treaty through strict compliance and says any measure undermining the pact could threaten world peace.

The United States claims it faces a threat from ballistic missiles that could be launched from so-called ``rogue states'' and wants to test missile-defense technologies that the ABM treaty bans. Russia insists that the treaty is a cornerstone of international security and opposes changes.

``The results of the vote testify to the growing support in the world for this treaty and a striving not to allow its destruction,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.

The statement said Russia would continue to aim to ``adhere to this unique treaty, which it said helps ensure strategic stability in the world while allowing for cuts in nuclear weapons.

The United States plans this weekend to test part of its missile defense program by trying to shoot a mock warhead out of the sky with an interceptor rocket. The Pentagon says the test is designed to stay within the limits of the ABM treaty.

The Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian military official as saying Friday that Russia believed the United States may abandon the ABM treaty and that Russia was prepared to take reciprocal action. He did not specify how Russia might respond.

``We are inclined to continue consultations with the United States on ABM, but I do not rule out that Washington could unilaterally leave this document,'' said Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy head of the Russian General Staff.

But he said he had no reason to believe the United States intends to take actions that would violate the treaty in the immediate future.

President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to reach an agreement in their dispute over ABM treaty during a summit in the United States in mid-November.

Bush has said that unless he reaches an arrangement with Russia that accommodates his missile defense program, the United States will withdraw from the treaty, which it is permitted to do with six months' notice.

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

Senators: N-Power Plants Need Fed Security Force

Friday, November 30, 2001,
BY ERIN KELLY
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
http://www.sltrib.com/11302001/nation_w/153577.htm

WASHINGTON -- The nation's 103 nuclear power plants remain vulnerable to terrorist attack and should be protected by a new federal security force, key Democratic senators urged Thursday.

"Because of their clear and harrowing potential as terrorist targets, nuclear plants must be protected . . . so that we are not tragica

Lieberman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., introduced the "Nuclear Security Act" to replace private security workers at the plants with federal employees -- echoing a move already under way at the nation's airports.

The bill would also require federal officials to stockpile potassium iodide at schools and community centers within a 50-mile radius of a nuclear plant. Potassium iodide minimizes the potentially fatal effects of radiation exposure if taken within a few hours of a disaster.

The legislation, sponsored in the House by Democratic Reps. Nita Lowey of New York and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, would force nuclear plants to meet higher security standards that take new terrorist threats into account.

In past tests by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, security guards at nuclear facilities failed to defend their plants nearly half the time in mock terrorist attacks, Reid said. And those tests were based on less sophisticated forms of terrorism than those used Sept. 11, Markey said.

Clinton, who lives near the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan -- 24 miles north of New York City -- said stepped-up security at that plant and others after Sept. 11 did not reassure her or her constituents. Lieberman expressed similar concerns about the Millstone 2 and 3 plants in Connecticut.

Security standards vary from plant to plant. In some states, security guards are not even allowed to carry automatic weapons, Clinton said. She and the other lawmakers advocate national standards.

"We need to take the offensive," Clinton said. "We don't want [terrorists] to turn power plants into nuclear weapons."

Supporters of the bill face strong opposition from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry, which would have to pay for the estimated $1 billion cost of a federal security force.

Reid said the industry is already paying a great deal for its "rent-a-cops" and should be able to afford the federal force. But industry spokesmen say federal agents aren't needed.

"Security forces at nuclear power plants are qualified, trained and deployed in accordance with federal standards," said a statement issued by the Nuclear Energy Institute. "There would be little benefit in replacing proven security forces at U.S. nuclear power plants with federal security employees."

Since Sept. 11, New York Gov. George Pataki and the owners of Indian Point have beefed up security, dispatching the National Guard, police and the U.S. Coast Guard to protect the site.

"While these decisions were prudent and wise, not every state or nuclear plant has taken similar steps," Lowey said. "That's why we must establish a seamless approach to security at our nuclear power plants."

-------- maryland

Feds Favor Maryland Co. for Uranium

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Uranium-Deal.html?searchpv=aponline also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39883-2001Nov30.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is leaning toward allowing a U.S. company to continue as the government's only purchaser of uranium fuel from Russia, running the ``megatons to megawatts'' program designed to keep bomb-grade uranium out of the hands of terrorists.

Critics say the company, USEC Inc. (news/quote ) of Bethesda, Md., overcharges U.S. utilities for the Russian uranium. And they question the wisdom of placing the future of a key U.S.-Russian agreement with a company that has had a dismal financial record recently.

USEC is the world's leading supplier of uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants; its subsidiary, the United States Enrichment Corporation, is the only uranium enrichment company in America. USEC acts as middleman for sales of uranium recycled from former Soviet warheads, which accounts for about half the enriched uranium used by U.S. nuclear plants.

USEC faced heavy criticism last year when it announced it would close one of its two uranium enrichment plants, forcing hundreds out of jobs. Its credit rating was reduced to junk-bond level and its stock price plummeted.

Some utilities want to purchase uranium directly from the Russians, saying it would reduce the cost of producing electricity and lower power bills for consumers.

The Bush administration has been studying whether to keep USEC as the government's purchaser of Russian uranium. Multiple sources say the administration is close to keeping USEC, but with certain conditions.

Among them: a promise by USEC to build a more efficient enrichment plant than its 50-year-old facility in Paducah, Ky., but to keep that plant operational until the new one opens. If USEC fails to keep the plant open, the government wants to run it.

A senior Bush administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the administration has three goals: getting the uranium out of Russia so it doesn't fall into enemy hands; ensuring there is a domestic supplier of enriched uranium; and seeing that U.S. utilities have a reliable and affordable source of nuclear fuel.

John Longenecker, a consultant specializing in nuclear energy who previously managed the government's uranium enrichment business, said those goals work to USEC's advantage.

``Today USEC has a gun to Congress' and the administration's head, and obviously are indicating if they don't receive a subsidy of some kind they may go out of business, and we may be highly dependent on foreign sources,'' he said.

A pricing agreement between USEC and its Russian counterpart, Tenex, expires at the end of the year. USEC wants a long-term deal with a lower purchase price, which would bolster its bottom line. The U.S. and Russian governments must approve any agreement, and analysts say the Russians may be unwilling to agree to the lower price.

Calls to Tenex officials were not returned.

If a new pricing agreement is not in place by Jan. 1, the current contract can be rolled over for another year. But USEC says it is committed to securing a better price. The company would probably have more leverage if the Bush administration publicly stated that USEC would remain the sole U.S. purchaser.

USEC executives argue they should be able to continue as the sole agent because the program is running smoothly. ``It's working, and it's working very well,'' said USEC Chief Operating Officer Dennis Spurgeon.

Company executives say the program has eliminated the equivalent of more than 5,400 nuclear warheads, and they say USEC always meets its delivery deadlines.

But utilities such as North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp. (news/quote) say the monopoly setup allows USEC to overcharge, inflating the cost of nuclear power.

``I don't believe any utilities are looking to put USEC out of business. What we're looking for is competition in the marketplace,'' said David Culp, Duke's manager of nuclear fuel management.

USEC is a former government enterprise that was spun off in 1998 in a $1.9 billion stock deal. Since going public, USEC has seen its stock price drop by nearly half. The company made a $41 million profit in the fiscal year that ended in June, down more than 60 percent from the previous year.

Thomas Neff, a senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who came up with the idea of the megatons-to-megawatts program, said he thinks it might be time for a change.

He thinks utilities should buy the Russian uranium on their own or through a nonprofit consortium. Utilities say they could pay the Russians more than USEC and still reduce the cost of producing power by not having to pay a middleman.

``It minimizes the cost of fuel and it stabilizes the (uranium) agreement,'' Neff said. ``The Russians and the U.S. utilities both benefit.''

-------- nevada

GAO Challenges Plans for Storage Of Nuclear Waste
Report Urges Bush Administration To Delay Decision on Nevada Project

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36269-2001Nov29?language=printer

The General Accounting Office is urging the Bush administration to indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to build a huge, permanent and centralized nuclear waste storage site in the Nevada desert and is raising serious questions about whether it could ever be built as currently conceived.

The remote site beneath Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been eyed by Congress and the Energy Department for the past 20 years as the only candidate for the storage of all nuclear waste generated in the United States. The newly reenergized nuclear power industry, championed by the Bush administration, recently has been predicting that the site could be opened as soon as 2010.

But according to a GAO draft report obtained by The Washington Post, the Energy Department "is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and has no reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, such a repository could be opened."

The report presents a challenge to the administration's aggressive schedule, which calls for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to recommend to President Bush this winter whether to formally designate Yucca Mountain as the site for 78,000 tons of radioactive waste.

Abraham is certain to urge Bush to move ahead with the project, according to government officials and industry sources. But the GAO study has greatly complicated the administration's efforts, particularly because it reflects the views of Bechtel SAIC Co., the private contractor hired by the Energy Department to oversee the project.

The study said Bechtel SAIC recently told the DOE that it would take until January 2006 to complete the detailed research and cost estimates and to resolve hundreds of outstanding issues before the administration could responsibly designate the site and then begin the lengthy process of seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "DOE is not ready to make a site recommendation because it does not yet have all of the technical information needed for a recommendation and a subsequent license application," the study said.

The GAO also warned that the plans for Yucca Mountain that officials have been showing to lawmakers and Nevada residents "may not describe the facilities that DOE would actually develop."

Controversy over the proposed underground storage site has persisted for nearly two decades as the nation gropes for a way to dispose the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities. Having no access to a centralized storage facility, plant owners are holding about 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel in temporary storage at 72 plant sites in 36 states.

With so much uncertainty over the fate of the project, the report said, the administration is considering, as a fallback position, temporarily storing nuclear waste above ground at the site beginning in 2010.

The project is widely unpopular in Nevada and has drawn strong opposition from lawmakers and state officials, including Gov. Kenny Guinn (R), Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D) and Rep. Shelley Berkley (D). The state is prepared to file a formal protest against the project if Bush decides to seek a license for Yucca Mountain -- a dispute that eventually would have to be resolved by majorities in the House and the Senate.

With Reid and Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) vowing to block the project in the Senate, the prospects for passage appear bleak as long as the Democrats are in control. However, with conflicting concerns about the need for increased sources of energy and the importance of tightening controls over nuclear waste, experts say it is impossible to predict how Congress will eventually resolve the controversy.

Reid, who commissioned the GAO study, said yesterday that the findings will provide him and other opponents with powerful ammunition in the effort to defeat a project that has already cost the federal government $8 billion.

"I think it's the beginning of the end of Yucca Mountain," he said. "This report is a damning indictment of a process Americans relied upon to protect their health and safety."

But Energy Department officials indicated that they will not be deterred by the GAO study and that by law the administration is entitled to make a decision on the site long before it completes all the studies and research necessary to apply for a license.

"We're perplexed how GAO could find any technical or legal basis to support their conclusion in their draft report," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the department. As for Bechtel SAIC's assertion that it will take years to complete the preliminary research necessary to decide whether to go forward, Davis said: "We don't agree."

The Bush administration has embraced the project as vital to the president's plan to address the nation's long-term energy needs partly by expanding the use of nuclear power plants. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, some industry officials have pleaded for fast action on the project to relieve them of responsibility for nuclear waste that could be targeted by terrorists.

In June, the administration unveiled the final health and safety standards for the proposed depository that officials had hoped would allow construction of the project to proceed. With the new standards regulating all potential sources of radiation exposure from ground water, air and soil, administration officials said they hope they have overcome a difficult political obstacle.

But the GAO report said the Energy Department is still gathering and analyzing technical information on nearly 300 separate issues. These include the expected lifetime of engineered barriers and waste containers, the physical properties of the site and the mathematical models used to evaluate the performance of the planned project.

--------

Delay urged on nuclear waste dump decision

USA TODAY
11/30/2001
The Associated Press
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-30-nuclear-waste.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41289-2001Nov30?language=printer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional investigators recommend that the Bush administration indefinitely postpone a decision on whether to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada, saying it may be years before some of the technical issues are worked out, according to a draft report.

The finding by the General Accounting Office was the latest blow to the Yucca Mountain nuclear project, which is considered essential to the nuclear industry. The industry wants to bury 78,000 tons of used reactor fuel there.

Separately on Friday, a law firm hired by the Energy Department to help guide the project through its federal licensing process, announced it was withdrawing from the program. The department acknowledged recently that the firm, while advising on licensing, also had been lobbying Congress on behalf of the nuclear industry. The firm, Chicago-based Winston & Strawn, denied any conflict of interest.

The GAO report, a draft copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, concludes that the Energy Department "is not ready to make a site recommendation" on a waste dump with at least 293 unresolved technical issues.

The report said the general contractor for the project, Bechtel SAIC Co., told GAO investigators that some of the issues are not likely to be settled until 2006, long after the department plans to seek a license for the dump from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"Making a site recommendation at this time is premature," concludes the report by the GAO, which is the nonpartisan investigative agency of Congress. It said that the department is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening the waste repository by 2010 in any case.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, in a letter to the GAO, called the report's conclusions "fatally flawed" and maintained that "it was assembled to support a predetermined conclusion."

A department spokesman, Joe Davis, said that the department still plans to send a recommendation to the president this winter. "We believe we have enough information ... to decide whether the site is suitable for a long-term repository," said Davis.

The GAO review, first reported Friday by the Washington Post, had been requested by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., one of the most outspoken critics on Capitol Hill of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project.

Nevada officials - both Democrats and Republicans - have loudly opposed the dump, which has been a focus of controversy for years. They have accused the Energy Department of pushing to get the site built at the expense of a thorough scientific review.

Of the GAO findings, Reid said in an interview Friday: "It's a damning indictment of the whole process and it strikes at the heart of what they're trying to do scientifically."

"It's becoming increasingly obvious that the Yucca Mountain project is doomed to failure," said Nevada Republican Gov. Kenny Quick, whose state has built a $5.5 million war chest to fight the waste dump.

Federal project officials for several years have said they have found no "show stoppers" and called the Yucca Mountain site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas the most geologically and scientifically studied piece of land on earth.

Still, the future of the site is far from settled. Earlier this year, a scientific advisory board told the Energy Department it remains concerned about the design of the facility, worried about the intense heat the buried waste will generate. In response, a new, cooler design is being studied.

The GAO report said that the department, in fact, is considering a fallback proposal that envisions a temporary above-ground waste storage area if construction of the underground facility is delayed. Reid noted that President Bush, while campaigning for president in Nevada, said he would veto any legislation for a temporary storage facility in the state.

Congress in 1987 designated the Yucca Mountain site as the only location to be considered for long-term storage of the thousands of tons of highly radioactive used reactor fuel now kept at nuclear power plants in 31 states.

The Energy Department proposal calls for putting the waste in containers and keeping them in a repository 600 feet below the surface where the waste would remain highly radioactive for more than 10,000 years.

Currently there are about 40,000 tons of such waste at reactor sites. The waste site would have enough capacity for 78,000 tons.

AP writer Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

-------- us politics

Bush Defends Secret Tribunals for Terrorism Suspects

By Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36292-2001Nov29?language=printer

President Bush told federal prosecutors yesterday that secret military trials for some foreign terrorism suspects could help prevent U.S. legal protections from being used to undermine national security.

Bush is facing complaints from Capitol Hill that he is seizing too much power by establishing the military tribunals and installing himself as the sole arbiter of who will be tried under that system.

"We're an open society, but we're at war," Bush told a conference of U.S. attorneys. "The enemy has declared war on us, and we must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself. Foreign terrorists and agents must never again be allowed to use our freedoms against us."

Bush used his 18 minutes of remarks to offer a forceful defense of administration policies being challenged on the grounds that they abridge civil liberties. Bush put himself firmly behind the techniques of his Justice Department, which is using immigration laws to detain and question noncitizens, some of whom have peripheral and nonexistent ties to the Sept. 11 attacks.

The president declared that laws "are being enforced fairly and in full," adding, "We will act with fairness, and we will deliver justice, which is far more than the terrorists ever grant to their innocent victims."

Administration officials said Bush's fiery remarks were designed partly as a signal to lawmakers that when they attack Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, they are attacking the president.

Bush's executive order on military tribunals, signed Nov. 13, allows secret trials for foreigners who are charged with committing, threatening or aiding terrorist acts. He said yesterday that "non-U.S. citizens who plan and/or commit mass murder are more than criminal suspects."

"They are unlawful combatants who seek to destroy our country and our way of life," Bush said. "And if I determine that it is in the national security interest of our great land to try by military commission those who make war on America, then we will do so." The prosecutors applauded.

The Defense Department's General Counsel's Office, with help from the White House and the Justice Department, has been working through thorny legal and practical questions to develop tribunal procedures.

Until now, questions about the tribunals and civil liberties concerns raised by some members of Congress have been put to the attorney general. But the administration is now having the Defense Department take the lead on issues surrounding the tribunals, because the Pentagon will prosecute any cases.

The procedures being developed remain closely held. Appearing before an American Bar Association conference yesterday, Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes said the Pentagon's 6,000 lawyers were inundated with new issues after the terror attacks and the war in Afghanistan, but he said little about how the tribunals might be conducted.

"The regulations will flesh out a lot more what the legal authorities of the commissions will be," said White House National Security Council lawyer John Bellinger at the same legal gathering. He said that critics have been reading too much into the president's order and that he expects the tribunals to be used sparingly.

"They are still thinking their way through it," said one lawyer familiar with the legal issues.

Among the key issues is how to define the crimes themselves: Will the military have to prove specific war crimes by an al Qaeda member? Or will mere knowing membership and participation in a terror organization be sufficient for conviction?

Pentagon lawyers will have to devise ways to protect the safety of witnesses, judges and prosecutors from revenge from terrorist groups affiliated with the accused. Doing so may involve shielding some of their identities not only from the public, but also perhaps from the defendants themselves, something not done in civilian courts, lawyers familiar with the issues said. At the same time, they said, defendants must be given enough information to be able to challenge the evidence.

The Pentagon attorneys must also consider where tribunals would be held. For security reasons, government lawyers have considered conducting them aboard aircraft carriers, or at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

While the lawyers wrestle with questions of logistics, safety and fairness to defendants, it is the president who will decide the most basic issue: who will face tribunals.

Bush will decide whether tribunals will be used only to try people captured abroad, or whether they will also be used to try suspected terrorists apprehended here, something that has already raised concern among civil liberties groups. Bush may have to weigh constitutional concerns against the need to subject like cases and defendants to the same justice.

----

Powell Denies Rumors of a New War on Iraq
Secretary Seeks to Allay Fears in Arab World

Compiled by Our Staff
From Dispatches AP, Reuters
Friday, November 30, 2001
http://www.iht.com/articles/40522.htm

WASHINGTON Secretary of State Colin Powell, reacting to concern in the Arab world and among U.S. allies in Europe, said Thursday that speculation that the United States was preparing for an imminent attack on Iraq is unfounded.

"This suggestion out of the media right now that something is on the verge of happening has no particular underpinning substance to it," Secretary Powell said in an interview with a small group of reporters at the State Department.

"I think it is highly inappropriate and speculative and hypothetical of me to talk about a war that nobody has declared," he said.

Speculation about a U.S. attack on Iraq has increased since Monday when President George W. Bush appeared to hint that Washington was planning to expand its anti-terrorism war to include Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein.

General Powell, who met earlier Thursday with the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, said the United States was keenly aware of the concerns being expressed, especially in the Middle East.

"I don't know what people think is about to happen," he said in the interview. "We are in constant touch with our friends in the region."

After his meeting with Secretary Powell, Mr. Maher said that Egypt was satisfied that the United States understood the concerns about expanding the war on terrorism to Iraq.

"Among friends we had frank discussions about this matter and the secretary said that some friends and allies of the United States are advising caution. I think we have been heard," Mr. Maher said.

General Powell, standing next to Mr. Maher, said the United States and Egypt had a common position on Iraq but acknowledged that some U.S. allies were extremely nervous about the possibility that Washington might target Baghdad next after Afghanistan.

"We understand the cautions that some of our friends have given us with respect to possible future actions and we will stay in close touch and have consultations with our friends," Secretary Powell said.

But, he noted that many of the countries expressing concern, including Egypt, shared with the United States the belief that UN Security Council resolutions requiring Iraq to give up its weapons of mass destruction program had to be enforced.

Secretary Powell said that both the United States and Egypt have "a common understanding of the nature of that regime and what a danger that regime presents to the region and to the world."

"We all want to keep Iraq contained," he added.

On Monday, Mr. Bush demanded that Mr. Saddam accept the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq to prove that he is not trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Asked what would happen if Mr. Saddam did not allow inspectors in, Mr. Bush replied: "He'll find out."

That comment led to renewed fears that military action against Iraq is being planned.

Egypt's economic downturn, marked by a huge falloff of tourism, was among other concerns discussed Thursday by Mr. Maher and Secretary Powell. Secretary Powell did not say what he had in mind to help Egypt, but the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said later: "We would see if there is something we can do for them."

At the same time, Mr. Boucher confirmed that the administration plans to sell Egypt 53 advanced anti-ship Harpoon missiles to help Egypt protect shipping in the Suez Canal despite some objections in the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Boucher said there was nothing inconsistent in Egypt's paying for new weapons while the administration seeks ways to assist the country beyond the $2 billion a year in assistance it receives from the United States.

----

Egypt Minister Discusses Bush Policy

By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2001; 8:16 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36025-2001Nov29?language=printer

WASHINGTON -- Egypt's foreign minister said Thursday the Bush administration is shifting from a pro-Israel policy to a more balanced one.

Ahmed Maher, at a news conference, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "will not be happy with everything he hears" when he holds talks next week with President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Maher was upbeat about his own visit. "It was a success," he said. "I was met with a very positive atmosphere."

The minister praised Powell for calling Israel an occupier of Arab lands in a speech last week.

Also, Powell assured him he would try to accelerate U.S. aid payments to help Egypt's economy. Powell said he would consider Arab objections to any military attack on Iraq in the U.S.-led campaign against international terror.

Also on Thursday, the State Department confirmed it intended to sell Egypt 53 advanced Harpoon anti-ship missiles for $400 million.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the missiles would help Egypt protect shipping in the Suez Canal. Critics in Congress, taking note the missiles have a far greater range than the span of the canal, have questioned its potential impact on Israel.

Maher, meanwhile, condemned Sharon for "acts of oppression against the Palestinians" and said the prime minister was defying the United States in targeting militants for assassination.

Support for Israel in Congress is strong, the former ambassador to Washington said, but "we have enough friends to stand by us and to support a strong Egypt."

Maher then went on to say the United States has had a pro-Israel bias in its Middle East policy. But, he said, the Bush administration "has moved to a more evenhanded, just position."

"This is not something to the liking of Mr. Sharon," he said.

Earlier, Powell said he understood and was considering Arab objections to any U.S. military action against Iraq. He also promised to look for ways to help Egypt out of its economic slump.

"For now, this is nothing for us to disagree on," Powell said after a half-hour meeting with Maher, who reflected the worry of Arab governments that President Bush might strike Iraq over its refusal to admit U.N. weapons inspectors.

"I think he heard us," Maher said at a joint news conference at the entrance to the State Department.

Powell, at his side, said, "We understand the caution of some of our friends."

On Egypt's economic downturn, marked by a huge falloff in tourism, Powell did not say what he had in mind. "We would see if there is something we can do for them," spokesman Boucher said later.

On another front, Powell and Maher agreed Middle East peacemaking has taken on new momentum. Powell said it was up to Israel and the Palestinians, not the Bush administration, to set the pace.

As evening fell, Powell was host at an Iftar dinner for about 100 Muslims, mostly Americans, in a lavish State Department dining room. The Iftar meal ends Muslims' daytime fasting during the Islamic holy month Ramadan.

Powell singled out three "quiet heroes" of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. One was Imam El M. Pasha, the Muslim chaplain of New York City's police department. The others, also Muslims, are a police intelligence officer and a fire department emergency medical technician.

An African-American, Powell told them he knows what it means to be a member of a minority. "There remains much ignorance and confusion about Islam," he said and encouraged Muslims to explain their religion to Christians and Jews.


-------- MILITARY

THE ALLIES
Troops on Call

November 30, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/international/30TROO.html?searchpv=nytToday

Some nations' military commitments to the international fight against terrorism:

BRITAIN The second-largest contributor of personnel and equipment after the United States. Has deployed a dozen ships, including an aircraft carrier, an assault ship, a frigate, a destroyer and three nuclear submarines. Also, 15 aircraft in the region, for refueling and reconnaissance. There are 150 Royal Marines and British commandos north of Kabul.

GERMANY Up to 3,900 troops, including a unit to detect chemical, biological and radioactive contamination, another to evacuate wounded troops, Special Forces, transport aircraft and marines to help protect ship traffic.

CANADA Four ships in the North Arabian Sea, one transport plane operating in Europe, three C-130 transport aircraft and two maritime patrol planes awaiting orders, 1,000 infantry troops and Special Forces on standby.

AUSTRALIA Warships and aircraft with 150 Special Forces and 1,400 other troops. ITALY A thousand troops, including an armored regiment, explosives experts, fighter jets for reconnaissance, four warships, transport aircraft and experts and special vehicles to deal with nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons.

FRANCE Two thousand troops, including naval and air force personnel and intelligence officers in Afghanistan. Oil tanker and frigate in the Arabian Sea. Special ground forces, if requested. A 60-member advance party of French troops is in southern Uzbekistan. Also likely to send eight Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan.

NEW ZEALAND Special Forces, medics, engineers and transport for relief efforts.

TURKEY Ninety Special Forces troops trained in antiguerrilla mountain warfare.

JAPAN Up to 1,500 troops, a flotilla of warships and a small squadron of planes. Forces include three destroyers, two supply ships, a minesweeper, six transport planes and two multipurpose planes.

JORDAN A field hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif.

BELGIUM Two Airbus transport planes that have flown relief supplies to Tajikistan, a 50-person medical unit.

CZECH REPUBLIC Chemical warfare unit of 300 troops.

POLAND Offered Special Forces, if needed.

Sources: Associated Press, allied military officials.

-------

Today in History - Nov. 30

The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35652-2001Nov29?language=printer

Today is Friday, Nov. 30, the 334th day of 2001. There are 31 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Nov. 30, 1782, the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.

In 1981, the United States and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.

[It took them ten years to achieve a limited step in the right direction. Women Strike For Peace began protesting nuclear weapons 50 years ago. A vigil for global nuclear disarmament has been outside the White House for 20 years (http://prop1.org). A bill to abolish nuclear weapons has been consistently before the U.S. Congress for seven years (http://prop1.org/hr2503.htm). The World Court agreed with arguments made six years ago that it is illegal to threaten or use nuclear weapons. People were awakened to the real possibility of nuclear terrorism eleven weeks ago. Time's a'wasting. et - prop1@prop1.org]

-------- afghanistan

Captured Taliban lined up and shot

By Mark Baker,
Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in Quetta,
Friday, November 30, 2001
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/30/world/world1.html

Opposition forces battling Taliban resistance near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar are reported to have massacred up to 160 captured Taliban fighters in the presence of United States military personnel.

An opposition commander said the Taliban who refused to surrender last week during a battle to control the strategic town of Taktha Pul, east of Kandahar, were executed despite attempts by US special forces to intervene.

"We tried our best to persuade [the Taliban] to surrender before we attacked," the unnamed commander told Reuters. "We asked them many times, quoted the Koran and even offered them money.

"They replied with abuse, so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taliban that were captured. They were made to stand in a long line, and five or six of our fighters used light machine-guns on them."

He confirmed that seven or eight US military personnel, who had been travelling with the opposition forces as advisers and had been filming the battle, tried to stop the executions.

As opposition forces closed in on Kandahar, the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, appealed to his troops to join him in a fight to the death to defend their remaining territory around the city, the movement's spiritual heartland and last stronghold.

"I am sitting in a bunker like you to defend Islam," he said in a message believed to have been broadcast in the Kandahar region on Wednesday. "I am not scared of death, and you should not be scared of death.

"The real fight against the forces of infidels has started now. We were waiting for the American troops. Kill American troops and their agents wherever you find them."

The Taktha Pul executions come amid mounting international protests over the slaughter of hundreds of Taliban prisoners earlier this week when Northern Alliance troops, backed by US and British special forces, crushed a revolt in a fort outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The US suffered its first battlefield fatality of the war during the revolt, with the death of a CIA operative, Johnny Michael Spann, confirmed yesterday.

The two mass killings of Taliban prisoners have increased concerns about the brutal tactics of opposition forces and are likely to complicate allied efforts to persuade Taliban forces to surrender.

Alliance commanders say they now plan to send their forces south of Kabul towards Kandahar, a move that would increase the pressure on the Taliban but would be likely to anger Pakistan, a vital US ally already concerned by its advance across much of the country.

The CBS television network in the US reported growing signs that the Taliban were crumbling, with the defection of senior members, including the head of military intelligence and at least two government ministers, some of whom had crossed into Pakistan.

But as hundreds of US marines continued their build-up at an airfield base south-west of Kandahar, Taliban troops were reported to have regained territory east of the city that was captured by opposition fighters earlier this week. The Taliban also appeared to remain in control of the town of Spin Boldak.

Pentagon officials confirmed that they were now focusing the air campaign against caves and tunnels around Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad, where Osama bin Laden is suspected to be hiding.

----

US 'hero' may have triggered Mazar revolt

RASHMEE Z AHMED,
TIMES NEWS NETWORK,
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=2012523207

LONDON: The United Nations has joined human rights groups in demanding an urgent inquiry into the carnage at the Qala-i-Jhangi fort near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, even as new information is emerging about how it started and the two Pakistani Taliban reported to be the last men alive in the fort, until the violence finally subsided on Wednesday.

Even as the CIA saluted its slain colleague, the first American fatality in Afghanistan, "American hero" Johnny 'Mike' Spann, who died in the prison revolt, British journalists in Mazar-i-Sharif have begun reporting that Spann was less an innocent victim than the one who allegedly provoked the riot.

With allegations of "war crimes" against the US and UK coming in thick and fast for ignoring the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Commisioner, Mary Robinson, has echoed Kate Allen, director of the London-based Amnesty International in calling for an urgent inquiry.

Amnesty has said it is willing to send an observer to Afghanistan to monitor an inquiry.

On Wednesday night, the BBC's authoritative domestic television programme Newsnight interviewed Oliver August, correspondent for The Times, London, in Mazar-i-Sharif, who said that Spann and his CIA colleague, Dave, were thought to have set off the violence by aggressively interrogating foreign Taliban prisoners and asking, "Why did you come to Afghanistan?". August said their questions were answered by one prisoner jumping forward and announcing, "We're here to kill you".

The Guardian's Mazar-i-Sharif correspondent said the CIA "operatives had apparently failed on entering the fort to observe the first rule of espionage: keep a low profile".

The Times's August said Spann subsequently pulled his gun and his CIA colleague shot three prisoners dead in cold blood before losing control over the situation.

Spann was then "kicked, beaten and bitten to death," the journalists said, in an account of the ferocity of the violence that lasted four days, leaving more than 500 people dead and the fort littered with "bodies, shrapnel and shell casings".

Meanwhile, graphic reports are appearing of two Pakistani Taliban fighters' final stand in the fort, alongside comments from the Northern Alliance that the dead prisoners were the most hardline of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda recruits.

The revelations, which may be a public relations disaster in the making for the Pakistani establishment, say that the two men, who survived 72 hours of targeted American bombing and missile strikes, were heard speaking Urdu.

Long after hundreds of their comrades were dead, according to one newspaper, the pair, dressed in flimsy salwar-kameezes, remained hidden in a deep basement in the fort and it took several rockets to restore the fort to a "tomb-like silence".

In the aftermath of the bloodbath at Qala-I-Jhangi, the British press has focussed on graphic images, including what they are calling the blatant defiance of the rules of war. One photograph, plastered across several papers, allegedly shows a Northern Alliance fighter using a long metal spike to prise out a dead Taliban soldier's gold tooth. The Independent newspaper sardonically headlined its report, "How our Afghan Allies applied the Geneva Convention" in an indication that the US-led, UK-backed coalition may now be doomed to launch urgent rearguard action to quell public distaste about the conduct of Tony Blair's "just war for a just cause".

Amnesty International has highlighted public concern by demanding an investigation "into the proportionality of the response by the Northern Alliance, US and UK forces".

In a statement released here, it said the enquiry "should make urgent recommendations to ensure that other instances of surrender and holding of prisoners do not lead to similar disorders and loss of life".

----

The Castle of Death
What really happened in Qalai Janghi on Sunday, and in the bloody days that followed?

Justin Huggler tells the full, harrowing story
30 November 2001
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=107563

They were still carrying the bodies out yesterday. So many of them were strewn around the old fortress. We saw one go past whose foot had been half-torn off and was hanging from his leg by a shred of flesh. The expression on the face of the dead man was so clear that it was hard to believe he was dead until you saw the gaping red hole in the side of his forehead. The stench of rotting human flesh had become overpowering; at times, it was hard to breathe. But questions remained as they cleared away the bodies of slaughtered foreign Taliban fighters believed to be loyal to Osama bin Laden.

How did US and British special forces come to be involved in the massacre of at least 150 prisoners of war - and maybe as many as 400 - who should have been protected under the Geneva Convention? In terms of numbers, Qalai Janghi could be the worst massacre to have come to light in Afghanistan since the US bombing began. Why did the US quell a prison revolt by bombing the prison from the air? Did American and British special forces call in those air strikes from the ground? And why were the Taliban prisoners allowed to get their hands on an arsenal of weapons large enough to defend the fortress for three days?

Amid the stench of death yesterday, Ghaisuddin, one of the soldiers involved in the massacre at Qalai Janghi, told the story of how the fighting began.

From his first-hand account, those of the International Red Cross workers who were present at the fort when the fighting started, and other sources who asked not to be identified, it is now possible to piece together how the massacre came about. It was, if we are to believe those accounts, an extraordinary series of blunders.

The 400 or so prisoners, among them a large number of Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens, had surrendered after the fall of the city of Kunduz. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Taliban forces accepted the terms of a surrender apparently brokered by Mullah Fazil, the Taliban commander inside Kunduz, and gave themselves up to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the feared Uzbek warlord, whose men marched on Kunduz from the west. Bound to one another, the prisoners were taken in pick-up trucks to Qalai Janghi, the 19th-century mud-walled fortress that Dostum had used as his headquarters after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif to his Northern Alliance forces three weeks previously.

It was on Saturday that what started as the relatively peaceful surrender of the northern Afghan Taliban stronghold of Kunduz suddenly started to go out of control inside the fort. Before the eyes of Western reporters, two foreign Taliban prisoners, in the process of being registered by the Red Cross, detonated hand grenades, killing themselves and two senior aides to General Dostum and slightly injuring the ITN news reporter Andrea Catherwood.

It was not the first time that we had heard of bin Laden's "foreigners" committing suicide rather than be taken alive. The Northern Alliance claimed that a group of around 60 of them jumped into a river and drowned themselves. Another group were found kneeling in positions of prayer, each with a single bullet wound from behind. A Northern Alliance commander alleged that one of them had killed all of the others in a suicide pact before turning the gun on himself.

But there were always fears that the stories might have been invented to cover up Northern Alliance massacres of the foreign fighters. Nor was it the first time that surrendering Taliban had not been properly disarmed. Over the past few weeks, journalists in Afghanistan have watched repeatedly as Taliban who had surrendered were allowed to head into Northern Alliance-held towns, waving their Kalashnikovs and rocket-launchers triumphantly in the air. This time, however, defiance grew into mayhem, culminating in the scenes of trucks piled high with human bodies that we saw heading out of Qalai Janghi yesterday.

The next day, Sunday, the prisoners - many of them with their arms tied behind their backs - were being herded into a room for interrogation before two CIA agents. Did they fear retribution for the previous day's murder of the two Northern Alliance commanders? Or was it, as another account suggests, the mere sight of two Americans - from the foreign fighters' point of view, sworn enemies of bin Laden - that provoked the bloodbath that was to follow?

The incompetence of the Northern Alliance soldiers - who, guided by the US and British special forces, failed to search the prisoners properly and thus allowed them to smuggle in knives and grenades hidden in their clothes - must be seen as a key factor in the disaster. The men were also housed next to the fortress's well-stocked armoury.

Ghaisuddin says that after the two men killed themselves, the commanders in the fortress decided to search all the prisoners thoroughly. Here, two further disastrous errors of judgement came into play.

First, it appears that General Dostum, who had departed for the Kunduz front with most of his troops, had left only a small garrison to guard the prisoners in Qalai Janghi. Some sources said yesterday that there were as few as 50 men guarding up to 400 dangerous prisoners. Second, Qalai Janghi is not only a prison. The 100-year-old fort is General Dostum's main military base outside the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. It was, literally, an arsenal bristling with heavy-duty armaments.

On Sunday morning, a meeting at the fortress between the International Red Cross and local leaders got under way, while the prisoners were being processed. And then shots rang out. Ghaisuddin was on sentry duty at the gate to the inner courtyard when the revolt began. He says the soldiers had brought the prisoners out of the basement of the prison building, which lay in the centre of the courtyard, and into the open light in order to search them. Ghaisuddin says prisoners who had been searched and were found to be clean had their arms tied behind their backs above the elbow with their own black turbans - the state in which some of the bodies were found. "Suddenly the prisoners waiting to be searched attacked our men,'' says Ghaisuddin. "They had knives hidden in their clothes and they killed 14 of our men. We fought back, but even with a gun one man cannot fight off 40, and they just kept coming." This took place at about 11.15am local time.

Another Northern Alliance account suggests that the prisoners launched the battle when an Alliance general went to reassure the prisoners that they would be well treated.

"We tried to treat the prisoners humanely and they took advantage," General Dostum said on Wednesday as he surveyed the carnage. "I gave orders for them to be allowed to wash and pray, but they attacked us."

Another explanation is that the prisoners feared that they were about to be executed.

At this point, elsewhere in the fortress, Olivier Martin of the International Red Cross was in a meeting with General Dostum's deputy, General Fauzi, about gaining access to the prisoners. He describes hearing a few shots, but at first was not unduly alarmed. Gunfire is an almost continuous background noise in Afghanistan. Down in the courtyard, Ghaisuddin continues: "They took the Kalashnikovs from the soldiers they had killed and started firing. We had to flee." Next, Martin describes hearing rocket fire coming from the courtyard where the prisoners were being held. "General Fauzi left the room looking concerned and did not return,'' he says. "We decided we had to find somewhere to hide. We tried the basement but it had no exit route so we went up on the roof. There was incoming fire from the prisoners up there and we had to take shelter with some soldiers who were firing back at them."

Olivier Martin was not the only Westerner inside the fortress that day. At least one member of British Special Forces was already inside, along with the two CIA agents who were interrogating the Taliban prisoners.

A persistent explanation from a number of sources is that a handful of the prisoners were provoked into launching the rebellion by the sight of the two Americans questioning selected prisoners, possibly for information on the whereabouts of members of bin Laden's al Qaida organisation.

Whatever the reason, it is now clear that one of the CIA agents was beaten to death. A German TV crew at the fort filmed an American man in the compound speaking into a satellite phone borrowed from their reporter. He was saying: "I have seen hundreds of wounded and dead... I think one of us has fallen."

The German crew reported on Sunday that one US "adviser" was killed. Another eyewitness said: "There were two American soldiers inside the fort, one of whom was disarmed and killed and another who was also in trouble. He was out of ammunition." This other man was called Dave. He is said to have shot dead three Taliban before escaping. It would be Wednesday before the CIA spokesman Bill Harlow named the dead agent as 32-year-old Johnnie "Mike" Spann.

What then ensued appears to be something of a shambles. British SAS troops and American Special Forces were deployed to the fortress in large numbers to help the Afghan soldiers who were being overwhelmed by the Taliban, but though the fighting broke out at 11.15am, it was no until well into the afternoon that the Special Forces arrived. In the meantime the Taliban prisoners of war were busy helping themselves to General Dostum's arms stash. They felt able to spurn several shipping containers full of old Second World War Russian machine-guns and stuck to the more up-to-date stuff. They got their hands on scores of rocket launchers, mortars, grenades and Kalashnikovs. The floor of Qalai Janghi is now littered with unexploded mortar shells and grenades that could go off at any moment. According to a source who asked not to be identified, when the Special Forces arrived it was clear that they had not been briefed at all on the conditions under which the prisoners were being held. Up to 400 highly dangerous prisoners were being held in hopelessly insecure conditions and SAS troops based in the same town did not even know the layout of the fortress where the prisoners were being held.

On Sunday, at about 3.30pm, the roar of US fighter jets could be heard, and at least four bombs were dropped from the air on the southern part of the fort. That night, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters in Washington that the prison was in the grip of "an uprising" started when "300 hard-core Taliban" prisoners "smuggled weapons into the prison".

Washington also confirmed that US forces had mounted air strikes on the fort using AC-130 gunships. Alex Perry, a reporter for Time magazine, told his editors from the scene on Sunday night he had seen 12 American and British SAS "running the show" ­ co-ordinating the air strikes from positions inside the fort. "They are also directing the commanders inside where to tell their men to attack"

The Special Forces had been with General Dostum for more than a month just before he captured Mazar-i-Sharif, triggering the collapse of the Taliban across Afghanistan. General Dostum boasted to another Northern Alliance commander down the satellite phone that he had Western military advisers with him who could get him any equipment or assistance from the US that he needed. It now seems certain that the Special Forces quickly provided the co-ordinates for US air strikes on the fortress that went on for about an hour. The Northern Alliance were meanwhile bringing in reinforcements

Later on Sunday night, the Pentagon confirmed that five US personnel had been injured in a "friendly fire" incident when a 500lb bomb went off course and ploughed into the fort's battlements, where Northern Alliance troops were posted, killing at least six of them. The injured Americans were airlifted out to a US military hospital in Germany. A gaping hole in the fort's 20ft outer walls showed where the bomb landed.

On Monday morning, those prisoners not killed by air strikes or by the pounding of the Northern Alliance, were reported to be holding out. A hard core of 100, 30 of them armed with rocket launchers, were holed up inside a crumbling tower. American bombing continued throughout the day and into the night. One hit the armoury and the ammunition store exploded in a burst of fireworks visible eight miles away in Mazar-i-Sharif. Surviving Taliban prisoners made at least two attempts to escape, but were killed as they fled.

Early on Tuesday morning, low-flying American AC-130 gunships pounded the citadel within the fort, but by dawn the Northern Alliance forces on the ground were still taking casualties. It seems that Taliban survivors of the air strikes were able to launch a small counterattack at 8am, despite continuing mortar rocket and gunfire from the Northern Alliance.

The bodies of 10 Northern Alliance soldiers were carried out on stretchers. By now the Alliance had lost at least 50 men with another 100 wounded.

At this stage, some 16 American and British special forces were on the scene again. The British arrived in the compound in two white Land Rovers. The SAS were wearing jeans, jumpers and Afghan-style head dress. The Americans were in khaki fatigues, black fleeces and some in black woolly hats or balaclavas. Some wore dark sunglasses. They took positions just outside the fort's main entrance although, according to one source, "they did not appear to be joining the action to put down the rebellion themselves". Instead, it seems that they were calling in air strikes.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, only three of the prisoners ­ armed with a machine-gun and a Kalashnikov ­ were still alive. Asked to surrender, they shouted: "You are American people. We won't surrender to you."

The Northern Alliance ­ on the advice of the US Special Forces and the SAS ­ poured oil into the basement of the building and set fire to it, forcing those remaining prisoners holed up in the lower parts of the fort to move upstairs. The Northern Alliance troops then drove a huge Russian-made tank through the gates of the fortress, crushing the corpses of Pakistani and Arab fighters lying in the courtyard. The tank fired off four rounds aimed at the small building where the remaining Taliban fighters were holding out. The distance was no more than 20 metres, and the building was reduced to rubble in seconds. The three prisoners were dead.

During the three-day stand-off, General Dostum's men repeatedly claimed that the battle was over only to venture into the cauldron of death that the fort's inner courtyard had become and be greeted with a hail of bullets.

Even yesterday, as the Red Cross cleared away the bodies, re-captured Taliban survivors, still armed with concealed weapons, were firing out of the basement and killed one of those trying to recover the bodies. British and US special forces were in action in the fortress again.

Perhaps, even now, the extraordinary, terrible drama of the bloodbath at Qalai Janghi is not yet quite completed. But the end must be very near indeed.

Meanwhile, it will be a long time before the world fully takes in what it all means. When the war in Afghanistan began, we were told the foreign Taliban intended to fight to the death, and many feared a massacre or a bloodbath in Kunduz. But, in the end, bin Laden's warriors staged their last battle in the fortress at Qalai Janghi. If the accounts of the Northern Alliance soldiers are to be believed, 400 defeated men managed to force the United States into taking part in the massacre of prisoners of war.

-------- arms sales

Powell defends missile deal with Egypt

November 30, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011130-41390440.htm

The Bush administration said yesterday it plans to follow through with the sale of sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Egypt despite congressional concerns that it could threaten Israel's military advantage in the region.

In addition, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the administration is trying to "accelerate economic cooperation" with Egypt to help it solve the nation's recent financial problems.

The State Department said the $400 million sale of more than 50 seaborne Harpoon missiles would help Egypt protect the Suez Canal, which would be of "value to shipping generally and to U.S. warships that use this channel."

"The sale of Harpoons is part of an ongoing, long-standing cooperation we've had with the Egyptian military," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters. "This is a follow-on to a system that they already have.

"There are a variety of reasons for that sale," he said. "We've discussed it with members of Congress, and we'll continue to discuss it with [them]."

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and staunch supporter of Israel, expressed concern this week that the sale might jeopardize Israel's military dominance in the Middle East and argued that Egypt faced no external threat.

Visiting Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said yesterday he was confident his country had enough friends in Washington and the sale would go through.

Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel, getting some $1.3 billion a year.

Mr. Powell announced Washington's intention to help Cairo deal with its economic woes in response to reporters' questions after a meeting yesterday with Mr. Maher at the State Department.

"We are aware that Egypt is having some financial and economic difficulty now, with the drop in tourism, and we are looking at ways that we can accelerate some of our economic cooperation and other programs," he said. "We want to be as responsive as we can."

In spite of a decade of economic reforms to develop an export-driven economy, Egypt ran a trade deficit of $9.35 billion in the last fiscal year, according to the Egyptian central bank. Its recent data showed that exports totaled $7.1 billion, of which $2.6 billion came from oil, while imports totaled $16.4 billion.

Revenue losses by the country's tourism industry and the Suez Canal are expected to increase further as a result of Egypt's foreign currency troubles.

Earlier this week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that boosting exports was a matter of "life and death" for his country's economy. Mr. Maher said Egypt's problems are a "fallout of an international situation" rather than domestic circumstances.

"Tourism has diminished by almost 60 percent," he complained at a Brookings Institution discussion Wednesday at the National Press Club. "Some insurance companies, for a reason that remains a mystery to us, have declared Egypt a war zone and have raised the premiums of their insurance.

"So we have been suffering from these fallouts of the terrorist acts that took place here in the United States, and we are asking our American friends to help us shoulder this difficulty, not by new money, but showing flexibility in the way our economic cooperation goes," he said.

At the start of their meeting yesterday, Mr. Powell and Mr. Maher signed a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty that would provide for cooperation between the United States and Egypt in fighting terrorism, drug trafficking and financial crime.

Mr. Powell said the pact, initially signed in 1998 but not ratified by the Senate and the Egyptian parliament until this year, was "another sign of how close we are in working together on such matters as legal assistance and the war against terrorism."

---

Egypt's story

November 30, 2001
Embassy Row
James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011130-73679088.htm

A delegation of Egyptian business executives is trying to correct an impression in Washington that Egypt is failing in its support for the war against terrorism.

"If you are battling terrorism and if anyone tells you that Egypt is not with you, that is ridiculous," Hamed Fahmy, founder of the Allied Corp. of Egypt, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times yesterday.

Mr. Fahmy and other executives representing the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt emphasized that Egypt has long been a target of terrorism from some of the same extremists linked to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

He noted that Ayman Zawahiri, a top lieutenant to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, is the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. The group is also a key component in bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

Zawahiri fled Egypt and sought refuge for a while in Switzerland, Mr. Fahmy said.

"I cannot get a resident visa in Switzerland, but they gave him political asylum," he said.

Terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists in Egypt have claimed 1,000 lives in the last decade.

Mr. Fahmy, president of TransCentury Associates developers Anis Aclimandos, and Hisham A. Fahmy, the chamber's executive director, have been making the rounds of administration officials, members of Congress, think-tank experts and reporters since they arrived in Washington on Sunday.

Mr. Aclimandos dismissed press reports that implied Egypt was being critical of the war on terrorism.

"If you look at the facts, Egypt took quick action. I would rather have somebody take action rather than give me lip service," he said.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was one of the first Arab leaders to strongly condemn the September 11 attacks and offer assistance to the United States.

The three also noted that earlier criticism of the war in the Egyptian press has changed since the rout of the Taliban. Al Akhbar, one of Egypt's leading newspapers, recently printed a large front-page photograph of a smiling U.S. Marine surrounded by Afghan children.

Egypt has suffered economically from the attacks on America, especially its tourist industry. Five million visitors last year boosted tourism to $4.5 billion. The Egyptian pound has also lost 15 percent of its value.

"It has died since September 11," Hisham A. Fahmy said of tourism.

They also tried to explain Egypt's cautious response to President Bush's warning to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"We have to live in the area we are in and deal with our neighbors," Mr. Aclimandos said. "But if it is proven that terrorists have a safe haven in Iraq I don't think Egypt would hesitate to join a coalition against him. We all know he's crazy."

--------

U.S. Military Aid Arrives in Manila

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Philippines-US-Military.html?searchpv=aponline

MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- A C-130 transport plane, part of a U.S. military aid package for the Philippines, arrived Friday carrying equipment to help troops battling a Muslim extremist group holding an American missionary couple.

The plane, flown from Georgia by U.S. and Filipino pilots, was handed over to the Philippines at a ceremony with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Villamor Air Base outside Manila.

The plane and its cargo are part of promised American help to the Philippines in its battle against the Abu Sayyaf rebel group, which has been linked in the past to Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

U.S. charge d'affaires Robert Fitts, who attended the ceremony, said the plane also carried 16,000 pounds of military hardware, including rifles, for the Philippine army and air force.

The Philippine military has had only one operational C-130 aircraft used extensively to transport troops and deliver relief goods to disaster areas.

Fitts also said the United States military plans to conduct more training for a Light Reaction Company for the Philippine military. The first group to get such training has seen action on Basilan island against the Abu Sayyaf, which is holding hostage Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., and a Philippine nurse.

Last month, about 25 U.S. military advisers spent two weeks in the Philippines to observe how the United States can help against the Abu Sayyaf.

President Bush promised Arroyo about $100 million in military and security aid for 2001-02 when she visited the United States two weeks ago.

Philippine defense officials said other U.S. military hardware also in the pipeline includes a Cyclone-class patrol boat, 30,000 M-16 rifles and 100 army trucks and about eight Huey helicopters plus funds to upgrade them for one of Asia's poorest militaries.

On Saturday, the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate USS Vandergrift will make a four-day port call at the Subic Bay Freeport, a former U.S. naval base west of Manila.

The ship, with 218 officers and men, will come from Singapore and leave Manila for an undisclosed destination on Tuesday, said Elmer Cato, spokesman for a presidential commission on the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement.

Cato said the visit is a routine call and was not connected to the military operation to rescue the Abu Sayyaf hostages or the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, which is strongly supported by the Arroyo administration.

The Subic port, about 50 miles west of Manila, was converted into an industrial and tourism estate after the U.S. Navy left in 1992.

-------- biological weapons

Ames Strain Of Anthrax Limited to Few Labs

By Steve Fainaru and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36408-2001Nov29?language=printer

Since the mid-1980s, the U.S. Army laboratory that is the main custodian of the virulent strain of anthrax used in the recent terrorist attacks distributed the bacteria to just five labs in the United States, Canada and England, according to government documents and interviews.

Two of the labs -- both in the private sector -- received the strain this spring, only a few months before letters tainted with anthrax spores were mailed to New York and Washington, the records show.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post, offer the first official accounting of how the microbes, known as the Ames strain, were originally disseminated. They show that the distribution of Ames was much narrower than recently thought, and a top anthrax researcher said the strain may be limited to a dozen labs.

The five original labs also provide a starting point for investigators trying to determine how the Ames strain fell into the hands of a terrorist or terrorists.

Col. Arthur Friedlander, senior military research scientist at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., said the Ames strain was distributed by the military for research purposes under strict controls to "legitimate workers in the field."

FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said yesterday that the agency's anthrax probe had moved "way beyond" the short list of labs that received the Ames strain from Fort Detrick. A government official who asked not to be named said the five labs were used to guide investigators trying to trace the movements of the strain to other researchers and institutions.

Transfer records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act show that USAMRIID, which is located in Frederick, shared the Ames strain last March with scientists at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, an Albuquerque research institute, and in May and June with the Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus, Ohio, corporation involved in anthrax vaccine research.

No records were available before 1997, when a new federal law required researchers to report the transfer of dangerous pathogens to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But USAMRIID officials said the other labs to receive Ames were the Defence Research Establishment Suffield, a Canadian biodefense institute that received Ames in 1998; the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, a test facility in the Utah desert that received the bacteria in 1992; and the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down, a biodefense institute near Salisbury, England, which received the Ames strain in the mid-1980s.

"This is not a cavalier thing that one does," Friedlander said. "When anyone isolates strains, they are shared through the scientific community. That's how research gets done. It follows a long tradition of collaboration with people that we are well familiar with."

The Ames strain, a virulent form of anthrax bacteria, is named for the Iowa city in which it was originally isolated. It was used in suspected terrorist attacks that have killed five people and infected 13 in Florida, New York, Connecticut and the District, according to investigators.

When the anthrax attacks began in early October, many experts believed that the Ames strain, because of its use in vaccine studies, had been distributed to thousands of researchers worldwide. But that number has been reduced considerably in recent weeks. Friedlander estimated yesterday that the labs in possession of virulent anthrax strains, including Ames, probably numbered "no more than a dozen."

In addition to the five labs that received Ames from USAMRIID, others known to have the Ames strain are Martin E. Hugh-Jones, an anthrax researcher at Louisiana State University, and a lab at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Jones recently said he received the Ames strain in the late 1990s from microbiologist Peter Turnbull, then at Porton Down. Turnbull, confirming the transaction in an interview last week, said Porton Down shared Ames with "very few" researchers, whom he declined to name.

Scientists have identified USAMRIID as the primary distributor of Ames. Much of the history of that distribution since the 1980s is spelled out in a few dozen pages of transfer forms that scientists are required to fill out whenever certain kinds of dangerous microbes change hands.

The records document the delivery of Ames bacteria to at least 10 establishments, but only five received Ames in a virulent form that make people sick.

The first agency reported to have received the Ames strain from Fort Detrick was the Chemical Defence Establishment, which used the bacteria to test vaccines for troops.

Porton Down scientists previously acknowledged sharing the bacteria with the agency's public health branch, the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research. CAMR officials in turn have acknowledged distributing the bacteria to a small number of private researchers.

Fort Detrick's documents record several exchanges of Ames bacteria between USAMRIID and the Dugway Proving Ground, the Pentagon's primary chemical and biological defense testing center, which is located in Utah's Great Salt Lake Desert.

Dugway, the site of several biological weapons tests in the 1950s and 1960s, has continued to use live anthrax spores in experiments that test the durability of military equipment under a simulated biological attack.

Michael Cast, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Developmental Test Command, which oversees Dugway, said the agency could not comment on specific biological agents in its possession. But he described the security measures at the West Desert Test Center, where Dugway scientists test everything from protective suits to armored vehicles, as "very stringent."

In 1998, the Canadian government requested the Ames strain for its Defence Research Establishment Suffield, Ottawa's counterpart to Fort Detrick. According to documents prepared by DRES scientists, Ames was one of 11 strains of Bacillus anthracis bacteria given to Canada by USAMRIID. Among the others was Vollum 1B, the strain used by the Pentagon in its biological weapons program in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Canadians studied Ames in experiments that tested the effectiveness of antibiotics against various bacterial strains, documents showed.

DRES chief scientist Kent Harding said the anthrax spores were closely guarded against theft. "We're talking several locked doors and 24-7 monitoring," he said.

Two research agencies received virulent Ames bacteria from Fort Detrick this year, in shipments that predate the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Battelle Corp., a major government contractor that manages Energy Department laboratories and operates the Chemical and Biological Information Analysis Center for the Defense Department, was planning to use the strain in developing vaccines.

Spokeswoman Katy Delaney said she could not comment on Battelle's anthrax research, but she said officials were unaware of security problems at its facilities. "We know of no instances of safety or security breaches in our biodefense research," Delaney said.

The records also show that USAMRIID shared Ames with the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center last March. The center operates a Pentagon-funded lab that evaluates potential treatments and protections against biological weapons.

A university spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the research. "As a matter of prudence, we do not discuss which specific organisms we have in our labs," said Sam Giammo, director of public affairs for the Health Science Center.

While initial tests have suggested that the anthrax spores used in the terrorist attacks were of the Ames strain, further genetic testing is needed to establish conclusive proof. Some scientists have suggested the terrorists' strain could be an "Ames-like" variation, unknown until now.

"The evidence suggests it's the same strain," Friedlander said. "But there is the possibility that it is not."

The new documents shed little light on the early history of the Ames strain, which remains somewhat murky despite the recent attention.

The U.S. biological weapons program had been officially dismantled for more than a decade when Fort Detrick received the strain around 1980 from Department of Agriculture researchers in Ames, Iowa. At the time, interest in anthrax was intensifying because of reports that the Soviet Union was secretly developing biological weapons.

"We were requesting strains from different labs, and we received this strain. It wasn't named Ames then," Friedlander said.

Fort Detrick researchers were drawn to the novel strain because it appeared more resistant to vaccines, he said. A vaccine that could protect against Ames would offer the highest protection for troops exposed to deadly germs on the battlefield.

The fact that few labs appear to have worked with Ames could narrow the search for the person or group behind the deadly attacks, Friedlander suggested.

"The world of anthrax researchers is quite small. There isn't a large group of people working with fully virulent strains," he said. "Obviously, if there were 1,000 labs it would be a different order of magnitude than if there were only a handful."

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.

----

Experts Sure Iraq Has Bio-Weapons

By Dafna Linzer
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, November 29, 2001; 5:47 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35282-2001Nov29?language=printer

NEW YORK -- International experts are certain that Saddam Hussein has a biological weapons program but without weapons inspectors on the ground, there is no way to know whether Iraq is resuscitating nuclear or chemical capabilities.

By the time Iraq halted U.N. weapons inspections in 1998, inspectors believed the country's nuclear facilities had been destroyed and chemical materials dumped.

But that was three years ago, and even then, inspectors were convinced that Iraq - which had invaded neighboring Kuwait and fired missiles at Israel and Saudi Arabia - was hiding the truth about its biological weapons program and its plans to build an atomic bomb.

"The biological dossier was the one that raised the largest question mark, and with every year that passes, it is all the more worrisome," said Hans Blix, director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission for Iraq.

The Bush administration officials in recent days have accused Iraq of developing a germ warfare program.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice called the Iraqi president "a threat to his own people, a threat to the region, and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Asked Monday about Iraq and potential military targets beyond the Afghanistan war, President Bush said: "If they develop weapons of mass destruction that will be used to terrorize nations, they will be held accountable."

Richard Butler, an Australian who ran the U.N. inspection program until it was forced out of Iraq in 1998, criticized the White House's stance and called for a tougher line in dealing with Iraq.

"I fail utterly to understand when the president of the United States says 'If we find they're developing weapons, we'll take action.' It's well established that they have weapons of mass destruction. The question is how much longer the U.N. Security Council will allow this to go on," Butler said.

Security Council resolutions enacted after the 1991 Persian Gulf War mandated that Iraq "unconditionally accept the destruction, removal or rendering harmless," of all chemical and biological weapons, components and manufacturing facilities, and all ballistic missiles capable of reaching beyond Iraq's borders.

The resolutions called for on-site searches of all facilities by U.N. inspectors and members of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which used to be run by Blix.

By the end of the Gulf War, IAEA assessments indicated Saddam was six months away from building an atomic bomb. Inspectors discovered that the oil-rich nation had imported thousands of pounds of uranium, some of which was already refined for weapons use, and had considered two types of nuclear delivery systems.

Over the next six years, inspectors took custody of the uranium, destroyed facilities and chemicals, dismantled over 40 missiles and confiscated thousands of documents and plans.

At the end of 1998, the IAEA wrote that it had "no indications to suggest Iraq was successful in its attempt to produce nuclear weapons," or that there remains "any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical significance."

Butler's findings, which centered on the biological, chemical and missile capabilities, were not as definitive. Iraq had used chemical weapons twice in the 1980s against its Kurdish population and during the Iran-Iraq war.

"I entered a final report showing that not all their weapons of mass destruction had been accounted for," Butler said.

It was Iraq's refusal to cooperate with Butler's team that prompted punishing U.S. and British airstrikes in December 1998. As a result, Iraq would not let weapons inspectors back in to the country and has argued that it has fulfilled its U.N. obligations.

In an Oct. 5 report to the Security Council, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that "for nearly three years, the agency has not been in a position to implement its mandate in Iraq. As a consequence, it is not able at present to provide any assurances that Iraq is in compliance with its obligations."

-------- chemical weapons

Chemical Weapons Linked to bin Laden

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 30, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Attacks-Chemical-Weapons.html?searchpv=aponline
also
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40507-2001Nov30.html

MILAN, Italy (AP) -- The men spoke in code of a mysterious ``drug'' they wanted to try on people. One referred repeatedly to the substance as ``tomato cans'' and said he wanted to see what effect it would have on someone breathing it in.

The conversation between suspected members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was cryptic, but authorities in Italy think they know what the men were talking about: obtaining cyanide, a poison used to make deadly chemical weapons.

A tape of the conversation, recorded in March, is part of evidence gathered in an investigation into an apparent plan for chemical attacks by groups linked to bin Laden, raising fears that they intended to use unconventional weapons to inflict casualties on a large scale.

Suspicion emerged last December when German authorities arrested four suspected terrorists in a raid on two apartments in Frankfurt, Italian prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso told The Associated Press last week.

German authorities seized conventional arms and explosives in the raid and found a manual on how to make chemical weapons, Dambruoso said.

The four suspects in Germany were accused of plotting to bomb an outdoor market in Strasbourg, France, at the end of 2000. Several of them had been in contact with Essid Sami Ben Khemais, later identified by Italian authorities as a top al-Qaida operative in Europe who headed a terrorist cell in Milan, Italy. Italian investigators said there is also evidence that the Milan cell was linked to chemical weapons.

An Italian investigative report, part of which Dambruoso allowed the AP to review, contains excerpts from wiretapped conversations among members of the Milan cell, including Ben Khemais. Italian, Spanish and French prosecutors have identified Ben Khemais as a top al-Qaida operative who helped supervise operations throughout Europe.

In one phone call, excerpts of which were among the material reviewed by AP, Ben Khemais spoke of an unspecified ``drug,'' also referring to it as ``tomato cans,'' according to the report.

``I'd like to learn how to use the drug and see the effect on someone breathing it,'' he said in the taped conversation.

Italian authorities say they believe the phrase ``tomato cans'' -- which was repeated many times throughout several conversations -- was code for cyanide, an easily obtainable poison that can be used as a chemical weapon. Dambruoso would not say what specific evidence authorities have that the weapon being discussed was cyanide.

``Do we have hard evidence they possess chemical weapons? No. Is it very possible they have them? Yes,'' Dambruoso said.

The conversations were recorded in March, a month before Italian police arrested Ben Khemais and four other suspected members of the group, all Tunisian. The five are expected to be brought to trial in December.

Bin Laden has hinted that his group has chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons. U.S. officials have said al-Qaida probably has crude chemical or biological weapons but not a nuclear bomb.

``This is a real threat, and it has to be treated as such,'' said Walter Purdy, a board member of the Terrorism Research Center in Washington.

Journalists in Afghanistan have found documents relating to deadly chemicals and bacteria in houses abandoned by al-Qaida in the capital, Kabul. And in neighboring Pakistan, investigators have interrogated two nuclear scientists about whether they helped bin Laden make chemical weapons with anthrax.

Purdy said it's uncertain if any al-Qaida cells have developed the ability to deliver the chemicals in a way that would produce mass casualties.

But the bin Laden-chemical weapons connection is growing.

``I can't tell you that they have this particular biological or chemical weapon, but I know that they have the capability and some of those people in the Europe theater were very interested in procuring devices you would need to actually launch an attack,'' Purdy said.

-------- israel

After the bloodbath: how Sharon wove a web of lies

Friday, November 30, 2001
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0111/30/world/world13.html

As a Belgian court decides whether Ariel Sharon should stand trial for war crimes, Julie Flint uncovers secret documents that detail Israel's involvement in the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Shatila.

It is September 19, 1982, the day after the Lebanese Forces militia left Beirut's Palestinian camps after a 38-hour orgy of killing, and it is finally possible to see what the Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps claimed they had been unable to see: streets carpeted with bodies; men, women and children shot and hacked to death; pregnant women eviscerated.

In Christian East Beirut, Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Rafael Eitan, the commander of the Northern District, Major-General Amir Drori, and a senior Mossad officer, Menahem Navot, meet the deputy chief of staff of the Lebanese Forces, Antoine Breidi ("Toto"), and Joseph abu Khalil. What ensues is a cynical damage-limitation conference in which senior officers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) uttered not one word of reproach for a massacre in which militiamen trained, armed and sent into the camps by them killed at least 900 civilians.

Eitan: "Everybody points an accusing finger at Israel and the outcome might be that the IDF will be forced to withdraw from Beirut. Therefore some of you have to explain the subject and immediately. The formula should be that they [the Lebanese Forces] took part in an assignment and that whatever occurred was out of their control."

Drori: "On this occasion you should mention also what happened at Damour [a Christian village where fighters including Palestinians killed 200 civilians in 1976]. Also to mention the fact that this is not your policy. You could mention that in the places that they entered there were battles between rival sides inside the camps and not only with the Phalangists [the Lebanese Forces' political umbrella]."

Khalil: "You tell us and we will carry it out."

And so it goes on - a web of evasions and untruths concocted by the IDF, which sent 200 Lebanese militiamen into Sabra and Shatila on September 16 to "mop up" 2000 "terrorists" who Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defence minister, claimed had remained there after the Palestine Liberation Organisation's evacuation from Beirut. The encounter shows the intimacy between the IDF and the Lebanese Forces, even after the massacre, and the virtual incorporation of the Lebanese Forces into the IDF structure.

Two almost identical reports of this meeting - one identified as "a transcript of a conversation recorded by an aide to the commander of the Northern District"; the other as "Minutes of Mossad (4222) of a meeting between Israeli chief of staff and General Drori with Toto" - are among a stack of documents delivered to lawyers seeking to bring Sharon, now Israel's Prime Minister, to trial in Belgium for war crimes committed in Lebanon 19 years ago when he had overall responsibility for the IDF.

The documents, obtained by The Guardian, cover the period between June and November 1982 - from a meeting in which "the cabinet has decided to have the Lebanese army and the Phalangists participate in the entering of Beirut" to the testimony to Israel's Kahan commission of inquiry of a senior military intelligence officer, Colonel Elkana Harnof. Michael Verhaeghe, one of three lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case against Sharon, has little doubt about the documents' authenticity. They arrived anonymously in June, within 10 days of the suit being lodged.

"The documents give a very detailed account of a number of events which would be very difficult to fabricate - especially in that very short period of time," Verhaeghe says. Investigations by The Guardian in Israel and Lebanon have confirmed the identity of the intelligence officers named in the documents as well as the dates, times and locations of some of the meetings, those who attended them and some of their content.

The lawyers say the documents' importance lies in recurring evidence that the IDF had "command responsibility" for the Lebanese Forces before, during and after the massacre. Thus, according to a summary of a meeting in which "the capture of Beirut" was discussed with Lebanese Forces leaders on July 13, Eitan "explained that the IDF would provide all the necessary support: artillery, air, etc as if they were regular IDF units".

Chibli Mallat, one of Verhaeghe's colleagues, says: "Under the established law of command responsibility - also known as indirect responsibility - this is water-tight evidence of the conscious and effective chain of command."

In February 1983 the Kahan commission found that no Israeli was "directly responsible" for the massacre, but determined that Sharon bore "personal responsibility". It ruled that he was negligent in ignoring the possibility of bloodshed in the camps after the assassination of the Lebanese Forces' leader, president-elect Bashir Gemayel, on September 14 - a massacre that Sharon publicly, and erroneously, blamed on Palestinians. Sharon resigned his defence portfolio, but stayed in the cabinet.

As the first PLO fighters left Beirut on August 21 he met Bashir and Pierre Gemayel, patriarch of the Gemayel family, to demand a new strike against the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. Minutes of the meeting quote Sharon as saying: "A question was raised before, what would happen to the Palestinian camps once the terrorists withdraw ... You've got to act ... So that there be no terrorists you've got to clean the camps." Pierre Gemayel prevaricated: "We are in the midst of a political process of presidential elections ... Bashir is the nominee ... It is very important that calm is kept." Sharon: "What would you do about the camps?" Bashir: "We are planning a real zoo."

Giving evidence to Kahan, Sharon said no-one imagined the Lebanese Forces would carry out a massacre in the camps. This claim is contradicted by numerous testimonies in the documents in Belgium - among them Sharon's own complaint to Bashir Gemayel, minuted 10 weeks before the massacre, that "it is incumbent that we prevent several ugly things which have occurred - murders, rapes and stealing by some of your men".

In the same month, in a meeting with United States diplomats at the home of Lebanon's military intelligence chief, Johnny Abdo, Sharon proposed that the PLO fighters in Beirut be given "refuge" in Israel. According to the report of the meeting, he said "... rest assured that they would be more secure in our hands!"

Echoing Sharon's concerns, according to excerpts from testimony to Kahan on October 22, the Mossad chief, Yitzhak Hoffi, says the Phalangists "talk about solving the Palestinian problem with a hand gesture whose meaning is physical elimination ... I don't think anybody had any doubts about this ... They raised the issue of Lebanon being unable to survive as long as this size of population existed there."

Mallat is determined to press for conviction. "I have a very profound belief that it is difficult to have peace in the Middle East without minimal accountability, certainly for the largest crimes. We need a day of reckoning for the outstanding crime against humanity committed in Sabra and Shatila.''

-------- japan

Ex-Axis Powers Recast Foreign Military Roles

By Kathryn Tolbert and Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A34
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36400-2001Nov29?language=printer

TOKYO -- Flying the Rising Sun flag, a destroyer, a minesweeper and a supply ship left Japanese naval bases Sunday headed for the Indian Ocean. Twenty-four hours later, a German reconnaissance unit left its home base to help plan patrols that German warships will conduct on seas between the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

With these and other missions, the two major powers that went down in defeat in World War II are accelerating their half-century-old but still highly charged task of becoming "normal countries," states free of postwar restrictions. This recasting of their sense of place in world affairs may prove to rank among the more important legacies of Sept. 11.

Neither Japan nor Germany is rushing into Afghanistan. Each is cautiously providing support, mostly logistical, from a distance. But their quick engagement could signal the beginnings of more muscular foreign policies that match the two countries' standing as the world's second- and third-largest economies.

"Now the feeling is totally different," said George Hisaeda, deputy press secretary of Japan's Foreign Ministry. "We can discuss sending our troops openly. It will certainly help people acclimatize to the idea of a wartime dispatch of our forces so there won't be so much allergy to it."

"We have reached the end of the postwar period in German history," said Volkmar Schultz, a member of the foreign relations committee, in an interview at the Reichstag Parliament building where graffiti scrawled by Soviet troops in 1945 remain on the walls. "We cannot automatically run away from military action. Since Sept. 11, most of the political class in Germany accepts this as an unavoidable fact."

After quelling a parliamentary revolt by some members of the Greens party -- the junior partner in his coalition government -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder committed 3,900 troops to the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Few if any German soldiers are likely to see combat, but Germans still feel they've passed old limits.

"There truly is a new historic dimension," President Johannes Rau said in an interview. "Among Germans, there is still very, very much anxiety. . . . This is a new reality for many."

But Schroeder appears to have pulled the public along with him. A survey by the Wahlen research group for ZDF television showed 59 percent of Germans favored the military deployment and 36 percent opposed it.

So with little fanfare, three German transport planes left for the U.S. air base at Incirlik in Turkey on Monday to provide support for operations in Afghanistan. Off the east coast of Africa, two German frigates and escort vessels will soon patrol international waters in conjunction with the navies of the United States and France.

In Japan on Sunday, the supply ship Towada, the minesweeper Uraga and the destroyer Sawagiri left to join three other warships sent earlier this month to monitor shipping lanes. The Japanese force will transport supplies to and from bases on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and drop off tents and blankets for Afghan refugees.

Ten years ago, neither the German nor Japanese governments could muster even logistical support for the Persian Gulf War effort. Instead, each preferred to write large checks as their expression of their commitment to the cause.

At that time, Oskar Lafontaine, then leader of Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, said that asking Germans to participate in military action was "like offering brandy chocolates to a reformed alcoholic."

That remark captured the legacy of World War II in the psyche of the first postwar generation. Forty-five years after the war, despite real democratic advances and close security ties with the United States, the former Axis powers were not to be fully trusted.

But Germany, in the decade since it reunited, has slowly reconciled itself to military responsibilities, first in a peacekeeping role in the Balkans and then, critically, during the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. German warplanes, however, dropped no ordnance and instead flew reconnaissance missions in support of allied air operations. Its neighbors have generally welcomed this new assertiveness.

In Japan, the mere discussion of sending forces to the Persian Gulf 10 years ago was taboo. The Japanese legislature rejected a bill that would have allowed a very limited mobilization of the military for non-combat operations.

The national consensus that backs the current Indian Ocean deployment marks a new stage for Japan, whose post-World War II constitution rejects the threat or use of force to settle international disputes. It also says that air, sea and land forces "will never be maintained."

But Japan has slowly been stretching its interpretation of the constitution since 1950, when the United States, motivated by fears of communism, approved its rearming after the outbreak of the Korean War. Japan's cautious role in U.N. peacekeeping missions during the past 10 years also helped change public opinion toward the use of the military.

After Sept. 11, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pushed for and won passage of an anti-terrorism law permitting Japan to transport fuel and supplies, provide medical services and help with search-and-rescue operations in the Afghan conflict. This new law again pushes the limits of the constitution; under its authority, the three vessels sailed on Sunday.

Only a few dozens protesters gathered at the Japanese ports with anti-war banners as the ships departed following patriotic speeches from politicians and tearful families waving goodbye.

But in a demonstration that not all of the old restrictions have been cast off, Japan decided against deploying a destroyer with an Aegis missile-hunting system after some lawmakers argued that to do so would violate the constitution.

The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Howard H. Baker Jr., expressed disappointment that Japan decided not to send the destroyer, but said, "We can get along without it. It does not diminish my admiration for taking such a forward-leaning position . . . given their background."

Former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto said at a recent news conference that "in looking at the Japanese constitution, it does spell out clearly that Japan is not to resort to military power in any kind of conflict between two nations. However, the Japanese constitution never assumed that the day would come when we have to fight against terrorism."

The public has let the constitutional issues slide as it welcomes Japan's assertiveness. Politicians and officials cite a Japanese form of Gulf War trauma as one of the reasons for that change.

The fact that Japan contributed $13 billion to that campaign but was not formally thanked is a still bitter memory. "We were treated almost like dirt," said a former diplomat.

As in Germany, there is a generation shift, with many of those people who had an aversion to anything military having retired or died.

While other European countries have generally supported Germany's changing role, Japan's Asian neighbors have been quick to detect rising militarism in Tokyo or insufficient reflection on the past. But after Sept. 11, they did not object to the new role for the Self-Defense Forces. Still, many Japanese say the country's ability to act remains more constrained than Germany's.

"Germany is a member of NATO, so that when the America is attacked, Germany acts in the name of collective defense," said governing party lawmaker Shigeru Ishiba."Under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, America protects Japan but Japan does not protect America."

The leader of Japan's opposition Liberal Party, Ichiro Ozawa, said the government should change the constitution and codify Japan's right to fight alongside its allies. But he fell back on the past to make his point.

"But why hasn't the government done this?" he asked in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. "Obviously, nobody wants to take responsibility. The Koizumi administration took full advantage of the global anti-terrorism sentiment to sneak . . . deployment through the back door and set a precedent. This mentality and strategy are an exact echo of the situation in Japan before World War II."

Finn reported from Berlin.

-------- philippines

U.S. Military Aid Arrives in Manila

By Oliver Teves
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 3:38 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40466-2001Nov30?language=printer

MANILA, Philippines -- A C-130 transport plane, part of a U.S. military aid package for the Philippines, arrived Friday carrying equipment to help troops battling a Muslim extremist group holding an American missionary couple.

The plane, flown from Georgia by U.S. and Filipino pilots, was handed over to the Philippines at a ceremony with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at Villamor Air Base outside Manila.

The plane and its cargo are part of promised American help to the Philippines in its battle against the Abu Sayyaf rebel group, which has been linked in the past to Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

U.S. charge d'affaires Robert Fitts, who attended the ceremony, said the plane also carried 16,000 pounds of military hardware, including rifles, for the Philippine army and air force.

The Philippine military has had only one operational C-130 aircraft used extensively to transport troops and deliver relief goods to disaster areas.

Fitts also said the United States military plans to conduct more training for a Light Reaction Company for the Philippine military. The first group to get such training has seen action on Basilan island against the Abu Sayyaf, which is holding hostage Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., and a Philippine nurse.

Last month, about 25 U.S. military advisers spent two weeks in the Philippines to observe how the United States can help against the Abu Sayyaf.

President Bush promised Arroyo about $100 million in military and security aid for 2001-02 when she visited the United States two weeks ago.

Philippine defense officials said other U.S. military hardware also in the pipeline includes a Cyclone-class patrol boat, 30,000 M-16 rifles and 100 army trucks and about eight Huey helicopters plus funds to upgrade them for one of Asia's poorest militaries.

On Saturday, the U.S. Navy guided missile frigate USS Vandergrift will make a four-day port call at the Subic Bay Freeport, a former U.S. naval base west of Manila.

The ship, with 218 officers and men, will come from Singapore and leave Manila for an undisclosed destination on Tuesday, said Elmer Cato, spokesman for a presidential commission on the bilateral Visiting Forces Agreement.

Cato said the visit is a routine call and was not connected to the military operation to rescue the Abu Sayyaf hostages or the U.S. operation in Afghanistan, which is strongly supported by the Arroyo administration.

The Subic port, about 50 miles west of Manila, was converted into an industrial and tourism estate after the U.S. Navy left in 1992.

-------- propaganda wars

53 journalists killed in 2001

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2001
Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=280407115

VIENNA: Governments must do more to bring to justice those who prey on journalists, the International Press Institute said on Friday, expressing alarm over the slayings of 53 journalists so far this year.

Ten journalists were killed in Colombia, eight in Afghanistan and three each in Palestinian-held areas and in the Philippines, the Vienna-based press freedom watchdog organisation said. Journalists were killed in 23 other countries, IPI said.

Last year, 56 journalists were killed, the group said.

IPI director Johann P Fritz said the recent killings in Afghanistan were prompting more news organisations to pool information on potentially dangerous assignments and adopt common safety guidelines in an effort to reduce the risks.

Governments must be held accountable to make sure intentional slayings are thoroughly investigated and the killers brought to justice, he said.

"There is always the danger of accidental death or of being caught in the cross-fire when covering conflict," Fritz said. "But even well-trained and experienced journalists will continue to die as long as soldiers, paramilitaries, terrorists, bandits and other groups believe they can kill journalists with impunity."

Central and South America remains the most dangerous region for journalists to work, the IPI said, citing the deaths of at least 20 reporters or photographers since January 1.

The 10 journalists slain in Colombia were killed by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug traffickers. Two journalists were killed in Mexico near the US border, where traffickers continue to pose a serious threat to reporters covering corruption and crime, IPI said.

"Alarmingly, the murder of journalists has become the preferred method of censorship for extremists, organised criminals and corrupt officials who seek to prevent the media from exposing their activities," Fritz said.

Fifteen journalists were slain in Asia, including the eight killed in Afghanistan and the three slain in the Philippines; two were killed in Bangladesh and one each in Indonesia and China.

In Europe, 11 journalists have been killed so far this year, including the slaying of a Spanish newspaper executive by Basque terrorists, the killing of an investigative reporter in Northern Ireland and the murder of a French journalist covering militant separatists in Corsica.

The European victims included Kerem Lawton, an Associated Press Television News producer killed in Kosovo in March when a shell slammed into his vehicle as he was covering border fighting between ethnic Albanian rebels and Macedonian government forces.

Four journalists, three from the Palestinian territories, have been killed so far this year in the Middle East, and a prominent journalist was killed in Kuwait as she sat in her car at a traffic light.

Africa's death toll, meanwhile, dropped significantly this year to three - down from nine journalist deaths last year and 19 in 1999. Two of the three killed this year were covering a pro-democracy march in Algeria when they were slain.

IPI listed two American journalists in its 2001 death toll: William Biggart, a free-lance news photographer killed covering the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, and Robert Stevens, a photo editor for the Sun tabloid who died October 5 after inhaling anthrax contained in a letter mailed to the newspaper's Florida offices. ( AP )

-------- puerto rico

Vieques

Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough,
November 30, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011130-17154205.htm

Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, is not ruling out the possibility that the next East Coast carrier battle group can deploy at the highest readiness rating (C-1), even without live-fire training on the island of Vieques. But he is warning the job will be tough.

The carrier USS John F. Kennedy battle group is scheduled to deploy this spring. Adm. Clark has asked Navy Secretary Gordon England to break from current practice and let the ships, and a Marine expeditionary unit, practice with live ammo on the Puerto Rican island in January.

"Vieques training without live ordnance would not, of itself, preclude the ships of the JFK BG and Wasp ARG from attainting C-1 ratings in all mission areas (dependent on completion of scheduled training events)," Adm. Clark said in a letter to Congress.

But the admiral added, "Regarding specific mission areas, conducting strike warfare and amphibious warfare training utilizing close air support and supporting arms coordination with live ordnance will best prepare deploying forces for potential combat, something that presently can only be done on Vieques."

Adm. Clark's petition to reopen Vieques to real bullets was seconded by Gen. James Jones, Marine commandant. They cited the open-ended war on terrorism, which could find sailors and Marines engaged in combat in a variety of locations.

President Clinton banned the use of real ordnance as a compromise with protesters who want the 40-year-old range closed. President Bush then ordered the Navy to leave the island by 2003.

Adm. Clark wrote "there are currently no alternative locations that would provide a higher level of combat readiness than Vieques" prior to the JFK's deployment. "We are deploying forces as ready as available facilities will allow."

-------- us

Navy supremacy

Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough,
November 30, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011130-17154205.htm

The Air Force and Army may think otherwise, but in the opinion of one senior Navy admiral it is carrier aviation that is key to victory in Afghanistan.

"Clearly," Vice Adm. John Nathman writes in an internal message to commanders, "we have been America's main battery in this war and because of our strength and guts we are winning."

Adm. Nathman commands Navy air forces in the Pacific and has a big say in how all Navy aviators are trained. Two of his carriers, the Kitty Hawk and Carl Vinson, are mounting air strikes on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And the USS John Stennis left San Diego 21/2 months earlier than originally scheduled to join the armada later this year.

"Because it is our duty, the Navy, its fleet and flattops, will stay until this violent and lethal war is won," the admiral wrote in his Nov. 26 message titled "Fly, Fight, Lead."

The four military services have worked remarkably well together since the campaign began Oct. 7. But Navy officers tell us Adm. Nathman is expressing in a message what some don't dare say in "mixed" Pentagon company: that carriers are showing their full worth off the coast of Afghanistan, delivering the bulk of tactical strikes while the Air Force still searches for a nearby land base.

Some Air Force brass have preached for years that the Pentagon can cut Army troops and Navy carriers in favor of air power. Afghanistan, say carrier advocates, proves otherwise.

Cmdr. Jack Papp, Adm. Nathman's spokesman, said the message is the admiral's "assessment of where we as a naval aviation force has been, where we are today and his vision for where we are headed. He wanted to recognize the superb job our naval aviation force is doing and the important role they are playing in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan."

Indeed, Adm. Nathman's message is part pep talk, part status report. "We have made incredible progress in flight training in the last three years from a system that was almost broken to one that is whole," he writes.

The admiral credits a program called "Naval Aviation Production Process" that reduced the time it takes to convert a civilian into a carrier aviator - the "street-to-fleet" transformation.

Naval aviation has suffered from shortages of munitions, equipment and flying hours. The Navy inspector general issued a blistering report that said non-deployed air units were in particularly bad shape.

Adm. Nathman sees improvements. "Our deployed readiness is good and our efforts in this war reflect it," he said. "Our non-deployed readiness is not as good as it could be."

Still, he wrote, "We have significant manning challenges in naval aviation If we are to improve our opportunities, we must reduce this challenge.

"We have seen much improved retention of our enlisted men and women and many of our aviators have been pulling their resignation and retirement letters," he added.

A naval aviator told us he was struck by several of the admiral's points. Said the aviator, "We have embarked on a long war that, at this stage, is being waged primarily by carrier-based Navy. It's probably safe to assume that wherever phase two takes us, the Navy will continue to bear the lion's share. None of this will be easy because deployments are likely to be longer and more often for some unknown period of time."

Who's the 911 force?

The U.S. Marine Corps was upset by a speech given at Fort Bragg, N.C., last week by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The defense secretary told a gathering of soldiers at the Army base, "The world knows why when the president dials 911 it rings right here in Fayetteville." The base, home to both special-forces troops and the front-line airborne paratroop units, is located near Fayetteville, N.C.

The Marines' problem with Mr. Rumsfeld's remark is that they consider the U.S. Marine Corps to be America's "911 Force" - the first troops the president calls on in an emergency requiring military force. The Marines even have put out brochures identifying themselves as the 911 force.

New code word

U.S. intelligence agencies are considering adoption of a new code word to identify secret information: "Homesec," derived from homeland security. The code word, if adopted, would be used to mark classified documents, such as Top Secret-Homsec, or Secret-Homsec. The code would join several other classification categories currently used by the U.S. government to identify its intelligence products. They include such past code words as "Gamma" and "Umbra," both used to identify information derived from communications intelligence, and "Moray," a code word for intelligence that came from human agents.

Intelligence officials said the purpose of adopting the Homsec classification would be to create a new category of information specifically geared toward improving cooperation among agencies in the battle against international terrorism. Currently, there are intelligence restrictions that limit the sharing of intelligence with law enforcement agencies. Homsec intelligence would seek to fix the problem, we are told.

Short takes

•When special operations forces began ground combat in Afghanistan, we provided the official Pentagon definition of "direct action" - the phrase for special operations forces targeting and killing the enemy.

Now, with the Marine Corps establishing a base this week inside Afghanistan, we are providing the official Defense Department description of a "forward operating base."

The definition reads: "An airfield used to support tactical operations without establishing full support facilities. The base may be used for an extended time period. Supported by a main operating base will be required to provide backup support for a forward operating base. Also called FOB."

•We found this quote on the Internet: "It is God's job to forgive Osama bin Laden. It is the Army's job to arrange a face-to-face meeting."

•Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio Republican, is trying to make his tax-relief bill for reservists part of the stalled economic-stimulus package.

The bill would give tax deductions for non-reimbursed travel expenses for Guard and Reserve members. It is backed by the Reserve Officers Association of the United States and has bipartisan support in the Senate.

The hang-up: whether the House and the White House will go along with a bill that will cost $709 million over 10 years.

•Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough are Pentagon reporters. Mr. Gertz can be reached at 202/636-3274 or by e-mail at bgertz@WashingtonTimes.com. Mr. Scarborough can be reached at 202/636-3208 or by e-mail at RScarborough@WashingtonTimes.com.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Journalists assaulted in L.A. protest settle with police

Friday, November 30, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11302001/reu_45732.asp

LOS ANGELES - Seven journalists who were either clubbed with police batons or hit by rubber bullets during protests at the 2000 Democratic National Convention have reached a settlement with police and the Los Angeles City Council, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Thursday.

Key points of the settlement include the Los Angeles Police (LAPD) agreeing that the media has a right to cover public protests and can remain in place to observe, photograph, and film events - even when police issue orders to disperse.

The seven journalists were injured on Aug. 14, 2000, when the LAPD attempted to disperse a crowd of several thousand antiglobalization protesters gathered outside the city's Staples Center, site of the Democratic Convention which formally chose Al Gore as the party's presidential candidate.

Some journalists reported being hit by rubber bullets; others said they were clubbed with police batons when they declined to move from the area. One journalist - freelance cameraman Jeffrey Kleinman, who was working for NBC - said he was clubbed by an officer who told the news crew to move. Kleinman was then shot in the abdomen by a rubber bullet and hit three more times in the back and shoulder.

The ACLU, who brought the case on behalf of the journalists, said all seven were clearly displaying their media credentials. The journalists also received small but undisclosed financial payments for injuries they sustained.

"We are very pleased with the settlement agreement,'' said Peter Eliasberg of the ACLU in Los Angeles. "A free press is a fundamental requirement to a free and democratic society. This agreement helps ensure this right will be respected.''

----

Police Sentenced in S. Africa

WORLD In Brief
Associated Press
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A37
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36748-2001Nov29?language=printer

PRETORIA, South Africa -- A policeman who set dogs on black men was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison, and three others received four-year sentences for the same attack.

The four policemen pleaded guilty last week to assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm. They told the Pretoria High Court that such attacks were standard practice in "training sessions" with police dogs.

The attack, which took place in 1998 and was videotaped and broadcast on state television, showed the policemen setting their dogs on three Mozambicans, punching them and yelling racial slurs.

Judge Willie van der Merwe sentenced the ringleader, Jacobus Petrus Smith, 31, to five years in prison plus two years suspended. Smith said he would appeal.

Defense witnesses had testified that illegal immigrants -- like the Mozambicans -- were often targeted by police in the so-called dog practice sessions because they were unlikely to complain to the authorities.

----

Questions for Mr. Ashcroft

EDITORIAL • November 30, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20011130-38979.htm

Ever since the September 11 attacks, President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have provided the American people with strong and courageous leadership in the war on terrorism. This newspaper supports many anti-terrorism changes made by the administration, including removing the statute of limitations for certain terrorism-related offenses; updating federal wiretap law to reflect new technological realities by permitting law-enforcement authorities to wiretap multiple telephones used by a suspect; and extending the amount of time that law enforcement can detain illegal aliens who are suspected terrorists before charging them with a crime.

But now, despite the best of intentions, Mr. Ashcroft is taking a series of "anti-terrorism" steps that simultaneously raise civil liberties concerns and threaten to squander resources on marginal problems - while allowing more serious threats to go unchecked. In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff vigorously defended the administration's policy of detaining hundreds of people for petty crimes and violations of U.S. immigration law. Mr. Chertoff suggested this is necessary in order to combat al Qaeda "sleeper cells" in the United States. But the administration's approach could actually make the anti-terrorism effort more difficult. The Washington Post, in a front-page story earlier this week, quoted eight former senior FBI officials who expressed concern that the bureau has become so focused on "preventing terrorist acts by rounding up suspects early on" that it will inevitably force investigations to be shut down prematurely.

A former FBI executive assistant director, Oliver "Buck" Revell, expressed similar concerns about the bureau's new investigative tactics in an interview with The Washington Times. Mr. Revell questioned the Department of Justice's plan to conduct interviews with 5,000 men ages 18 to 33 from certain Middle Eastern countries who entered the United States after Jan. 1, 2000. First, he said, the plan is poorly targeted. Instead of trying to interview people from certain countries, it would make much more sense to focus the investigation on men who went to the same schools or lived in the same villages as known al Qaeda members. The way the interviews are being conducted now, Mr. Revell added, the agency is likely to squander resources on questioning men with little or no involvement in any terrorist activity. Second, he said, by targeting individuals from Arab and Muslim countries, the federal government creates the perception that it is engaged in racial profiling - something that is likely to deter such persons from coming forward with information that could actually help apprehend terrorists.

On the positive side, in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Chertoff offered the most vigorous case yet for some of the new security measures. One is the proposal to allow the government a limited right to listen in on telephone conversations between terrorist suspects and their attorneys. Mr. Chertoff explained that, of the 158,000 inmates in federal prisons, this provision would only apply to 16 persons, 12 of them suspected bin Laden operatives. He read at length from an al Qaeda manual explaining how incarcerated terrorists could use telephone conversations with friends and attorneys to continue their dirty work from jail. In this context, it may not be unreasonable to give the government some limited authority to monitor these conversations.

All of that said, the administration must do a much better job of explaining to Congress and the American public the need for the tough new security measures it wants to implement. When it can't do so - as in the case of the 5,000 interviews noted above - these flawed policies, including the noxious proposal for military tribunals, should be deep-sixed, and right away.

----

D.C. cameras bring woes others avoided

By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 30, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011130-94217145.htm

Other jurisdictions using photo-radar cameras to ticket speeders have avoided some of the problems and criticisms the District has incurred in its automated speeding-fine program.

For example, in Portland and Beaverton, Ore., photo-radar cameras take snapshots of vehicles' license plates - front and back - and of drivers to ensure positive identification. In the District's program, only the rear license plate is photographed.

In addition, Portland and Beaverton police use marked police vehicles and post signs identifying camera-enforcement zones. The District uses unmarked cars and doesn't identify enforcement zones.

Most important, Portland and Beaverton officers are required to appear in court to support speeding-camera tickets. The District relies on the cameras' photos in traffic adjudication.

Meanwhile, National City and Campbell, Calif., which had photo-radar programs similar to the District's, have been forced to drop the programs because of a lack of community and government support.

"We no longer use photo-radar. We did have it in the late 1980s and early 1990s," said officer David Dehaan, who works in traffic enforcement in Campbell, Calif.

Officer Dehaan said the program lost support from the community and that the legislature refused to support it after residents began complaining about the fairness of the program. He also said residents didn't see how traffic safety could be improved if the city could not assess points to speeders using the cameras. The city legislature agreed.

National City officials said they were forced to abandon their program eight years ago for the same reasons. Both cities' photo-radar programs were run similarly to the District's. Both programs had cameras that took pictures of only a car's rear plates - not the driver - and both did not require officers to appear in court.

"State law in Oregon requires us to use marked vehicles, and the sign can be no closer than 100 yards and no further than 400," said Pat Nelson, manager of the Portland-Beaverton photo-radar program.

"Anytime someone pleads innocent and asks for a trial the officer has to appear and give testimony," said Mr. Nelson, who was a policeman for 32 years.

Portland and Beaverton received authority from the Oregon Legislative Assembly to do photo-radar in 1995. Their program vendor, like the District's, is run by Affiliated Computer Services. They were required to do a two-year study before implementing the enforcement.

The District was not required to do a study. Metropolitan Police Department officials said they conducted analysis of streets and neighborhoods where speeding and red-light running were consistent problems. Streets with rampant violations of traffic laws were targeted during the monthlong warning period and also during enforcement.

The Washington Times reported a number of errors that occurred in the District's photo-radar program in the last month. George Brill, 58, owner of a Germantown-based plumbing company received a ticket for going 27 mph in a 25 mph zone.

"That ticket was voided because the officer improperly set the threshold for the road on the [radar camera]," said D.C. police spokesman Kevin P. Morison.

Eastover Auto Supply told The Times that tickets with inaccurate posted speed limits were being issued on Malcolm X Avenue on Sept. 29 and Oct. 27. The camera was set for a 25 mph zone, but the speed limit on Malcolm X Avenue is 30 mph.

Mr. Morison said D.C. police reviewed the limits on Malcolm X Avenue and "verified that the speed limit was incorrectly programmed into the camera's computer." He said the department was in the process of voiding those tickets.

A ticket received from Robert Bouchard of McLean said, "He was going 54 mph on SE/SW Freeway where the speed limit was 35 mph." But it was discovered that the officer was ticketing in the wrong location on the highway. The limit is 40 mph where the officer monitoring the camera was stationed.

Mr. Morison said that ticket would be re-evaluated and sent again, because Mr. Bouchard was speeding in both zones. Mr. Bouchard, 72, said, "Any errors on a ticket should make it voidable."

"These kinds of errors are a matter of not paying attention to detail," Mr. Nelson said.

He said the errors hurt the program and are compounded by the program's ability to dish out 600 or more tickets per day on he same road.

"In this program, with the number of tickets issued per day, it can always be argued that if one error is found there could be hundreds of others," Mr. Nelson said.

Sgt. Dave Pearson of the Fort Collins, Colo., Police Department said that argument is "right on the money." He said officers should not be allowed to set the threshold or the speed limit on the photo-radar devices because of the mistakes that can occur.

"I think what you all have is a training issue, not a system problem," Sgt. Pearson said.

Fort Collins' speed-camera program is run exactly like Portland's and Beaverton's. The camera's threshold is set before an officer gets in the car. Speed limits are set by a code system in the computer's software.

"All our officers do is put in the code for the street they are on, and the computer automatically sets the limit and the appropriate threshold," Sgt. Pearson said.

The Fort Collins program vendor is Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. - a competitor of ACS.

"Our contract is up next year. ACS and Redflex are currently bidding on our new contract," Sgt. Pearson said.

Fort Collins has been operating speed cameras for six years with only one vehicle. Their contract with Redflex is a flat-fee monthly contract. The flat-fee contract eliminates the idea of a cash cow, Sgt. Pearson said. The District is negotiating a flat-fee contract with ACS. There has been no indication from officials when that contract will be finished.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

GENERATING RENEWABLE ENERGY ON PUBLIC LANDS ENCOURAGED

November 29, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-29-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Calling it a "noble" mission, Interior Department Secrectary Gale Norton said the Bush administration is seeking to increase the generation of renewable energy on public lands.

Speaking at a "roll-up-our-sleeves" conference entitled "Opportunities to Expand Renewable Energy on Public Lands" Wednesday at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington, Norton said the use of public lands for solar, geothermal and wind power is necessary.

"Our shared mission is both simple and noble," she told about 200 government officials, renewable energy business people and environmentalists. "We must explore ways to better capture the sun's light, the sky's winds, the land's bounty, and the earth's heat to provide energy security for America's families."

The Department of Energy cohosted the working session and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will join Norton in making recommendations to the president and vice president about ways to increase renewable energy production on public lands.

"Today we seek the best ideas for reducing delays and bottlenecks in producing renewable energy." Panels on renewable energy technologies were chaired by leaders in the fields of geothermal, wind, solar, biomass and hydropower energy.

Norton said the Interior Department produces approximately 40 percent of the nation's geothermal energy.

Renewable energy is already in use for Interior Department operations. More than 600 solar powered facilities, 40 solar hot water systems, 30 wind turbines, 15 geothermal heating and cooling systems, and 6 wind farms are generating electricity. Each year the department uses 200,000 gallons of biofuels in vehicle and marine fleets and operates 1,200 alternative fuel vehicles.

-------- energy

NEW DEVICE COULD AID PRODUCTION OF ELECTRICITY

November 30, 2001
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-30-09.html

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, A new semiconductor technology could allow efficient, affordable production of electricity from a variety of energy sources without a turbine or similar generator, says the research team responsible.

Many scientists have worked to convert heat to electricity without the moving parts of a generator. Among other advantages, such a device would be almost silent, vibration free, and low in maintenance costs.

But until now, the efficiency of such devices has been a problem. The amount of electricity they produce from a given amount of energy has been low.

The new device is two times more efficient than its closest commercial competitor.

"That such good results were obtained in the first generation of the new device technology ... indicates that the general approach has great promise for improved performance in more mature implementations," write the researchers, associate professor Peter Hagelstein of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Dr. Yan Kucherov of ENECO, Inc.

The new technology could turn waste heat from automobiles into electricity to augment or replace a vehicle's electrical and air conditioning systems. It could also boost the efficiency of stationary electric power plants.

The technology is based on thermionics, launched a century old ago with the basic vacuum tube, a device that consisted of two parallel conductive plates separated by a vacuum gap. In this high temperature tube, electrons boiled off one plate, traversed the gap and then were absorbed into a colder plate.

The conversion of heat to electricity "occurs as the electrons transport 'uphill' against an electric field in the gap region," said Hagelstein.

These early vacuum gap designs had high manufacturing costs and operating temperatures - above 1,000° Celsius (about 2,000° Fahrenheit) - which has limited the technology to nuclear powered converters in space probes, satellites and special military systems.

The new technology replaces the traditional vacuum gap with a multi-layer semiconductor structure. Hagelstein and Kucherov demonstrated two basic physical mechanisms that allow the technology to be implemented.

"Solid state thermal to electric energy conversion converts energy due to how electrons transport in the conductor, a process that generates no pollution," Hagelstein said. He noted, however, that some of the materials used in the present generation of devices are toxic, which will affect the eventual disposal of the devices.

The researchers presented their work at a poster session on Tuesday during the Materials Research Society's fall meeting in Boston.

----

Utility Seeks Operations Transfer

By Karen Gaudette
Associated Press Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; 8:39 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41874-2001Nov30.html

SAN FRANCISCO -- California's largest utility asked federal regulators Friday for permission to transfer its power plants and transmission systems to three newly created, federally controlled companies.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. filed the request in six separate applications - about 20,000 pages - with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spokesman Ron Low said Friday.

The plan has drawn heated criticism from consumer advocates, state officials and the head of the state's Public Utilities Commission who accused PG&E of trying to remove its power plants from state regulation.

PG&E, which owes billions of dollars to creditors, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection April 6, blaming its woes on a state rate freeze that left it unable to collect the full price of electricity from its customers for months.

Low said the filing is part of the utility's plan to emerge from bankruptcy and that it filed in conjunction with proceedings because federal approval could take up to 10 months. Transferring the assets would require federal regulatory approval.

The plan - originally outlined Sept. 20 when PG&E and its parent corporation jointly filed a plan of reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court - proposes PG&E Corp. form a natural gas transmission company, an electrical transmission company and a company that would own PG&E's hydroelectric assets and nuclear power plant.

The three companies would be under the corporate umbrella of parent company PG&E Corp. and would be operated separately from the utility.

PG&E would split from its parent, then borrow against the assets of the three companies to raise about $13.2 billion to pay creditors without raising customer rates, Low said. The utility cannot borrow as much money against its assets under current state regulations, he said.

Loretta Lynch, president of the state's Public Utilities Commission, accused the utility of attempting to remove its power plants from state regulation so that it would be free to charge the going price for its electricity, rather than a rate set by the state.

"The bankruptcy court hasn't even ruled on PG&E's filing, so to go to FERC is very premature," said Terrie Prosper, a PUC spokeswoman. "I think it's another ploy to get what they want faster and to usurp the bankruptcy court's authority."

-------- health

Commonwealth backs plan for $10 million traditional medicine hub

Friday, November 30, 2001
By Reuters
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2001/11/11302001/reu_45734.asp

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Commonwealth health ministers on Thursday backed Malaysia to begin developing a $10 million information hub on indigenous and traditional medicines.

The Malaysian government plans to build the hub over the next two to five years in partnership with the private sector and other countries in the 54-nation grouping of mainly former British colonies.

"(The proposal) was not designed as a commercial enterprise. It was very much a portal to harness the information technology for humankind and for people in the Commonwealth,'' Malaysian Health Minister Chua Jui Meng told reporters.

Ministers said in a final communique they wanted their London-based secretariat to engage with the Malaysian government and to write a detailed proposal on traditional and complementary medicine (TCM) by next May. The proposal would cover intellectual property rights of indigenous traditional healers and governance and future funding of the project, the communique said.

"This is intended to be the world's leading information resource in the field,'' a paper prepared by the Commonwealth said, as health ministers and delegates from 32 countries wound up a triennial health conference in Christchurch.

Chua Jui Meng said the hub - which would include information on TCM education, research, products, and government rules - would be set up as a corporate vehicle, but its goal was to promote traditional cures such as herbal medicines, which he said was an $80 billion industry in 2000.

The World Health Organization says traditional or complementary medicines are based on the theory, beliefs, and experiences of different indigenous groups that are developed and handed down through generations. Malaysia defines traditional medicine as healing by means other than the practice of surgery or medicine by registered doctors.

Ministers also agreed to work towards a code of practice preventing the "aggressive'' cross-border recruitment of nurses, doctors, and other health-care workers. Several countries at the meeting complained that they were losing too many of their trained health workers to richer countries such as the United States and Britain.

----

Smallpox Vaccine Plan Called Lacking
CDC Head Says $600 Million More Is Needed

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 30, 2001; Page A39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36178-2001Nov29?language=printer

Implementing a federal plan to administer smallpox vaccine in the event of a bioterrorist attack would cost about $600 million more than the just-negotiated $500 million purchase price of the vaccine, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.

All told, Jeffrey P. Koplan said his agency needs an emergency infusion of nearly $3 billion to prepare for a biological assault. Koplan's estimate, provided in a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee's health subcommittee, puts him at odds with his boss and other Bush administration officials who requested half that amount for bioterrorism projects such as stockpiling vaccines, upgrading laboratories and expanding health surveillance nationwide.

Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said his agency is beginning several research projects on diseases such as smallpox that could cost up to $200 million -- money the administration did not budget.

The testimony by two high-ranking public health leaders drew into stark contrast the growing divide over how the nation should prepare for biological attacks. As part of a broad economic package, the White House and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson have requested $1.5 billion for bioterrorism countermeasures.

But an array of lawmakers, experts and even the two health officials say the proposal falls short, especially in the area of modernizing local and state health departments.

"The administration is trying to do this on the cheap," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who called the hearing. "The White House is not recognizing what really needs to be done, so we're going to have to do the job."

Harkin and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have proposed spending $4 billion on bioterrorism, which would include huge increases in food safety programs. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) have a similar plan that would cost $3.2 billion.

HHS spokesman William Pierce played down the remarks of the two agency chiefs as "wish lists" and said Thompson remains committed to his original request.

But Koplan, asked if the projects could wait, replied: "We're facing risks now."

The biggest philosophical split -- even within HHS -- is around the question of how much money to give state and local governments.

Thompson requested about $300 million for grants to hospitals, local health departments and state labs. Koplan said yesterday it would cost between $600 million and $700 million to train medical workers across the country on how to administer the smallpox vaccine and about $1 billion to modernize state and local health departments.

He noted that only half the nation's public health departments have direct, secure Internet access and that only nine states and two cities receive federal money for terrorism preparedness.

The American Public Health Association is lobbying for $1 billion for its members. It noted that investigations into the anthrax attacks and hoaxes have cost state health departments $250 million.

With the new, all-too-real threat of a biological attack, Koplan said the CDC needs to tighten security and expand lab capacity. Since the terrorist attacks, the agency has tested more than 5,400 specimens and dispatched 500 specialists to conduct investigations. Fauci said government researchers are already conducting experiments on diluting the old smallpox vaccine so it can be used for more people, and will be involved in clinical trials of a new vaccine. The institute plans to build a second lab capable of handling dangerous microbes most likely to be used in a biological attack and expects to do research on other vaccines and treatments.

"We could adequately spend up to $200 million," he said.

Harkin and Specter criticized comments by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge that significantly more money for public health and food safety could be added in next year's budget.

Said Specter: "That, simply stated, is too late."


-------- activists

URGENT

Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001
From: Karin Westdyk <mailbox@eclectart.com>

On Tuesday, the House voted to renew Price Anderson with no debate and no recorded vote. Democrats and Republicans alike caved in to pressures of nuclear industry lobbyists in allowing this flawed legislation to pass. Senate will be next and likely very soon. Copy/paste the message below, or write your own. Then go to http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html to get your Senators emails. If you can, send out to other senators as well. (Will take less than 1 hour to do all.)

I strongly urge you to vote NO on the renewal of the Price-Anderson Act. The action to be taken on this legislation must receive the discussion and debate it deserves, especially in view of recent breaches in our security. Rushing through renewal of this legislation is a bad idea. Please go to http://www.petitiononline.com/repealpa/ to view over 3,600 signatures of Americans who do not want this legislation renewed. If nuclear reactors are "inherently safe," as the industry claims, they should not need subsidized insurance? No other industry enjoys this unprecedented federal protection from liability.

Include name and address at end

----

ACTION ALERT -
CITIZEN INSPECTION
12/15/01 Los Alamos

Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001
From: Greg Mello <gmello@lasg.org>

Dear Friends,

We have rescheduled our Citizen Inspection and tour of Los Alamos National Laboratory for Saturday, December 15th beginning at 9:30 a.m. and ending at 1:00 p.m. We will meet at the De Vargas Mall North, in front of the Chamber of Commerce, and carpool/caravan to Los Alamos. There will be an evening lecture and discussion at 7:00 p.m., at the Unitarian Church, on the corner of Galisteo and Barcelona streets, to include topics on biological weapons, nuclear waste disposal, and security at the lab. On the tour, we will be viewing facilities and sites at the lab, including the nuclear waste landfill, the plutonium facilities (current and planned), possible biological weapons lab sites, and other key facilities.

This is not a civil resistance acitivity. It is mean to serve as an informed review of security concerns present at LANL.

Please call the office at 505-982-7747 for details and to RSVP.

Looking forward to seeing you,

Greg, Lydia, April and Blake

Los Alamos Study Group 212 East Marcy Street, #10 Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-982-7747 voice 505-982-8502 fax gmello@lasg.org

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Order Now: Arms Trade Resource Center Reports

Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001
From: Arms Trade Resource Center -
Frida Berrigan - BerrigaF@newschool.edu

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." Ambrose Bierce

Dear Friends,

As the season for gift giving approaches in these tumultuous times, one of the most precious gifts seems to be knowledge, information, insight, analysis, ideas. And here at the Arms Trade Resource Center, we have plenty to offer.

Our storage shelves are bursting with reports and issue briefs on everything from National Missile Defense (still a hot topic with Congress allocating $8.3 billion for 2002) to the arms trade (never more important that right now when the Bush administration is opening up its arsenal to countries like Pakistan and Indonesia again). We have brand new reports like "Indonesia at the Crossroads," released in October 2001, and classic reports like our 1995 analysis of U.S. weapons sales to regions of conflict, "Weapons at War."

Below you'll find a complete list of our publications and the way you can order them as stocking stuffers for everyone on your gift list.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Frida Berrigan World Policy Institute 66 Fifth Ave, 9th floor New York, NY 10011 212-229-5808 ext. 112

Visit our report page at http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports.html scroll to the bottom for online ordering

Indonesia at the Crossroads: U.S. Weapons Sales and Military Training (October 2001) by Frida Berrigan.

Star Wars Revisited (June 2001) by Michelle Ciarrocca and William D. Hartung.

The New Business of War: Small Arms and the Proliferation of Conflict (March 2001) by William D. Hartung.

Deadly Legacy Update: U.S. Arms and Training Programs in Africa (March 2001) by William D. Hartung and Dena Montague.

Profiling the Small Arms Industry (November 2000) by Frida Berrigan and Michelle Ciarrocca.

Nuclear Missile Deception: Corruption and Conflicts of Interest in the NMD Test Program (July 2000) by William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca.

Tangled Web: The Marketing of Missile Defense, 1994-2000 (June 2000) by William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca.

Beyond the School of the Americas: Military Training Programs Here and Abroad (May 2000) by Frida Berrigan.

Corporate Welfare for Weapons Makers: The Hidden Costs of Spending on Defense and Foreign Aid (August 1999) by William D. Hartung.

The Costs of NATO Expansion Revisited: From the Costs of Modernization to the Costs of War (April 1999) by William D. Hartung.

The Military Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies (November 1998) by William D. Hartung.

U.S. Weapons at War, 1995, by William D. Hartung. From Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, it has been an article of faith for American policy makers that U.S. weapons exports are only made to responsible allies who use these systems for legitimate defense purposes. This report puts that thesis to the test by documenting U.S. weapons deliveries to 50 current ethnic and territorial conflicts. Contrary to conventional wisdom in Washington, U.S.- supplied weaponry is at the center of many of today's most dangerous and intractable conflicts.

U.S. Arms Transfers to Indonesia 1975-1997: Who's Influencing Whom?, March 1997, by William D. Hartung and Jennifer Washburn. An examination of the $1.1 billion dollars in U.S. weapons sales that have been delivered to Indonesia since the Suharto regime's invasion of East Timor in 1975. At a time when Indonesian business donations to the 1996 presidential election campaign are being closely scrutinized, this report provides a detailed look at the extensive role that the U.S. arms industry has played in influencing U.S. policy toward the Suharto regime.

Welfare for Weapons Dealers 1998: The Hidden Costs of NATO Expansion, March, 1998, by William D. Hartung. This new release reveals how NATO expansion will cost billions more than the Clinton Adminstration admits. It also provides details on how Boeing and Lockheed Martin have been lobbying for the widest possible expansion of NATO and increased taxpayer subsidies to pay for military sales to East and Central Europe. Finally, this report provides updated figures on the total value of U.S. government subsidies for arms exports, which were originally detailed in our 1996 Welfare for Weapons Dealers report.

Welfare for Weapons Dealers: The Hidden Costs of the Arms Trade, 1996, by William D. Hartung. This report provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the billions of dollars in federal subsidies devoted to helping major defense companies like Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas to promote and sell weapons abroad. The report details how an array of government agencies -- including, the Pentagon, the Department of State, and the Department of Commerce - use taxpayer dollars to help private U.S. weapons firms promote, market, and finance foreign arms exports for profit.

Peddling Arms, Peddling Influence: Exposing the Arms Export Lobby, October. 1996, with a special April 1997 Press Release Update including the complete 1995/96 election data by William D. Hartung. An analysis of political campaign spending by the top 25 U.S. weapons exporting companies in the 1995/96 election cycle, and how that money influenced the outcome of a number of important votes related to U.S. arms sales.

Conflicting Values, Diminishing Returns: The Hidden Costs of the Arms Trade, 1994, by William, D. Hartung.

And Weapons for All, by William D. Hartung, published by Harper Collins, 1994. This comprehensive book details how America's multibillion dollar arms trade warps our foreign policy and subverts democracy at home. "An impressively researched and powerful critique of how conventional arms exports over the last quarter century have become an increasingly important tool of U.S. foreign and economic policy," writes the Washington Post Book World. --> PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS BOOK IS OUT OF PRINT AT THIS TIME.

----

Students walk out to protest Pennsylvania takeover plans

November 30, 2001 (AP)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011130-30515367.htm

PHILADELPHIA - Hundreds of high school students walked out of class yesterday protesting a planned state takeover of their school district and Gov. Mark Schweiker's plan to privatize dozens of the worst-performing schools.

The largest exodus was from Strawberry Mansion High School, where up to 500 students left at 9:30 a.m., district spokesman Paul Hanson said.They were dispersed by police, he said.

"They're not looking out for our best interest. It's a struggle at our school already and they're making it worse," said Shereen Davis, 15, a William Penn High School sophomore. She was among dozens of students protesting at City Hall after leaving school.

State and city education officials are negotiating a sweeping reform plan for the school district, which is struggling with dismal test scores, a teacher shortage, a $216 million budget deficit and crumbling buildings.

Mr. Schweiker and Mayor John F. Street are trying to reach agreement by today's deadline. After that, the state could take control of Pennsylvania's largest school system.

"The fact that we're still talking, we consider that progress," said Schweiker spokesman Steve Aaron.

Activists have complained about Mr. Schweiker's proposal to hire private companies, such as Edison Schools Inc., to run 60 schools.

A group called the Coalition to Keep Our Public Schools Public filed a lawsuit yesterday asking the state Supreme Court to block Mr. Schweiker's plan and declare the state takeover law unconstitutional.

----

TAKE ACTION: EarthNet Special Report

From: "Ilene LaLand" <ilene1111@earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 19:33:05 -0500
http://actionnetwork.org/ct/DdzsAp51uc-t/stop_the_energy_scam

Breaking news from the environmental front compelled us to file this special report. We're sorry for the double-duty EartNet this week. We'll go back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

--Zachariah Silk, EarthNet Editor mailto:earthnet@envirocitizen.org

Special Shadow Congress

EarthNet correctly reported that the Senate leadership announced earlier this week it would not take up the Bush Energy Plan this session. However, proponents of this oily plan found a way to slide it in under the leadership's nose.

Through a slick move the House energy bill (HR 4), which contains all of Bush's requests, has been added as an amendment to a railroad bill (of all things!) that will be voted on Monday Dec. 3. HR 4 focuses on fossil and nuclear fuels and gives 38 billion taxpayer dollars to these polluting industries. The bill also includes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other pristine natural areas. The bill does very little to promote conservation, efficiency and renewable energy resources. The vote will probably happen Monday at 5pm EST!

Don't let the hundreds of letters you've sent asking for a sensible energy policy go to waste. Stop this slick scam. Tell your Senator to vote No on the HR 4 amendment!

----

To stop a nuclear terrorist the West must give up its nuclear weapons

By JONATHAN POWER
November 30, 2001
http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/2001/11.04_NukeTerror.html

LONDON - There are no points awarded for having seen this truck coming down the road. I first wrote about the likelihood of a group with no address getting its hands on a nuclear weapon in my column in the International Herald Tribune in 1975.

Likewise, those liberals who worried out loud for years about Afghanistan first being armed and then left to rot by the West or pointed out the dangers of letting the structures of the Soviet Union collapse without sufficient economic aid to ease the transition in a sensible and organised way, have gained precious little kudos with public opinion at large.

We are compelled to stand aside whilst the hardliners call the shots. If they go wrong and provoke a coup d'etat in Saudi Arabia or cause Pakistan's nuclear weapons to fall into the wrong hands or leave a residue of Arab hatred far deeper than existed before September 11th that combines to push Yasser Arafat aside in Palestine and supplants him with a militant leadership which will stop at nothing to destroy Israel, we will have had as much influence on the course of events as Bertrand Russell did languishing in jail for conscientiously objecting to the madness of the First World War.

But stop. I want to say one thing that I hope the conservatives might listen to because it is in their own interests as much as it is everyone else's. It is one minute to midnight but as long as it is true, as the CIA believes that it is as of this moment, that no terrorist group has yet manufactured a nuclear weapon there is still something that can be done. It is not to build an anti-missile defence, because as William Perry, the former U.S. secretary of defence argues in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, a terrorist group is not going to use ballistic missiles to deliver its weapons. Neither is it to go to war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein has as much interest as does the West in keeping the ultimate weapon out of the hands of uncontrollable, free-lance, terrorist groups that could decide from one day to the next that he is an apostate too.

It is to do more of what the Bush administration has already started to do - and which the Clinton administration miserably and unforgivably failed to do, so insouciant was the ex draft dodger about the danger of nuclear weapons- which is to unilaterally start to nuclear disarm. And then with the money saved launch a mammoth search operation to uncover and safeguard every bit of fissile material in the world.

At the summit with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, earlier this month President George Bush made the right first step. He announced a mammoth cut in nuclear weapons and asked the Russians to match it without a laborious treaty process. This indeed is the only way it can be done when time is so short. But the logic of his nuclear unilateralism needs to be followed through. If, indeed, as Mr Bush argues, Russia and the U.S. are no longer enemies, why do they need to point nuclear weapons at each other? The U.S. does not point them at Canada.

Let us get to the point. They are dangerous because an accidental or unauthorised launch is always possible and, as General George Lee Butler, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command in charge of America's nuclear forces, has argued, they are not needed because in reality they are not useable. And above all they destroy the most powerful argument against proliferation: that they are too dangerous for other nations to possess.

But what to do about those that already have got them? Let us not be so pessimistic. As Mr Perry reminds us, since the end of the Cold War four nations - Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and South Africa - have given up their sizable arsenals and two others, Argentina and Brazil, have terminated their nuclear weapons programs. North Korea for its part has agreed to a nuclear freeze.

China in all likelihood would give up its nuclear weapons if Britain and France did. India probably would if China did and Pakistan would then be in no position to hold out. Israel would probably be the hardest nut to crack but if this move is combined with a massive effort by the U.S. to settle the Palestinian issue, which we know from Camp David is within the realms of the possible once Arafat knows the Israeli prime minister is strong enough to deliver on a deal (which Ehud Barak manifestly wasn't), then Israel can be prevailed upon to nuclear disarm too.

The money - and the energies - liberated must be spent on funding the cash-starved Russian nuclear industry both to disarm and to take better care of its fissile material, for that is clearly where the black market originates. Beyond that the missing material has to be tracked down before the clock hits midnight. Every sane nation has to be enlisted to mount the greatest police operation the world has ever seen. The combination of moral sanction set by a heroic, but nonetheless self-interested, example and the combined thoroughness of the world's police forces might yet save New York's Grand Central Station from a nuclear bomb left in a suitcase.

I can be reached by phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com

The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
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Phone + 46 - 46 - 145909 Fax + 46 - 46 - 144512
http://www.transnational.org E-mail: tff@transnational.org
Contact the webmaster at: comments@transnational.org


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