------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
Laden has no nuclear weapons: Taliban
Minotaur's Gawler find makes deep impression
A chamber of horrors so close to the 'Garden of Eden'
French Carrier Leaves for Indian Ocean
U.S. wants nuclear plant opened
U.S. Prepares for New Missile Defense Test
Russian Navy Chiefs Axed, Experts See Kursk Link
Too Early to Appoint Kursk Blame, Putin Says
Abraham: GAO's Yucca Mountain Report 'Fatally Flawed'
Ashcroft hits critics of anti-terror tactics

MILITARY
Alliance, Taliban Secretly Discuss Surrender
Russian plane delivers food aid to Afghanistan
'US troops not to stay long in Afghanistan'
Former Bond Trader Sentenced
Anthrax Cleanup at Senate Building
Germ Weapon Plans Found at a Scientist's House in Kabul
Colombia Outpost Helps Fight Drug War
Heady dreams of an easy victory in Iraq
U.S. to Press Iraq to Let U.N. Inspect for Banned Arms
Israel Tanks Surround West Bank Towns
Jerusalem Blasts Kill Eight, Injure More Than 130
Join the Club
Base-Closing Issue Delays Defense Bill

POLICE / PRISONERS
Some Detainees Turn to Hunger Strikes
Customs intensifies searches at airports
As Israelis languish in U.S. jails
Ashcroft Seeking to Free F.B.I. to Spy on Groups
Omar, Bin Laden going separate ways

ENERGY AND OTHER
Researchers find way to make brain cells
China Ends AIDS Silence, Mandela Calls for Drugs
Concern Grows Over Refugees
Micro-lending in a big way
Acute lesson in political science

ACTIVISTS
MLK On War
Japanese Official Fires Envoys



-------- NUCLEAR

Laden has no nuclear weapons: Taliban

Agence France Presse,
December 1, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=544380697

LAHORE: Neither Osama Bin Laden nor his Taliban protectors possess nuclear weapons, a senior Taliban official said on Friday, adding that if they did have such arms they would not hesitate to use them.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, said remarks attributed to bin Laden earlier this month that he had nuclear weapons were part of a conspiracy. He did not elaborate.

"Neither Osama nor the Taliban have such weapons," Zaeef told reporters in this eastern Pakistani city.

"If we had possessed them, we would not have waited to use them against the enemies which have caused such a mass scale destruction to our people." ( AFP )

-------- business

Minotaur's Gawler find makes deep impression

By BARRY FitzGERALD
Saturday 1 December 2001
http://www.theage.com.au/business/2001/12/01/FFXXUQ4UMUC.html

Minotaur Resources soared 21 per cent to $2.77 yesterday after drilling at its Mount Woods polymetallic discovery in South Australia's Gawler Craton confirmed major uranium mineralisation.

The presence of uranium more than 450 metres below ground, with a grade of up to 1.6 kilograms (worth about $30) a tonne, means comparison of Mount Woods with WMC's neighbouring $4.5 billion Olympic Dam copper/uranium/gold operation are more valid than ever.

Minotaur's discovery hole was announced on November 14, triggering a boom in its share price, and that of other Gawler Craton explorers. As impressive as the results from the first 450 metres of drilling were - including a 107-metre interval grading at 1.94 per cent copper and 0.65 grams of gold a tonne - the lack of uranium was a worry for Mount Woods' long-term potential.

Yesterday's released results mean that is no longer of great concern, making the decision to deepen the discovery hole especially rewarding.

Minotaur (19 per cent owner and operator) reported a 57-metre interval from 450-507 metres returned copper/gold/silver/rare earths and uranium in significant amounts.

A 17-metre interval between 450 and 467 metres returned an impressive 2.35 per cent copper, 1.07 grams of gold a tonne, 3.3 g/tonne silver, 0.66 per cent rare earths and 1.65 kilograms of uranium oxide.

"The appearance of high grades of rare earths and uranium from 450 metres depth is particularly significant," Minotaur said in a statement.

With the changes in the style of copper mineralisation at depth and the presence of rare earths, the presence of uranium supported a comparison with Olympic Dam, it said.

According to WMC's 1999 annual report, Olympic Dam has proved and probable reserves of 605 million tonnes grading 1.8 per cent copper, 0.5 g/tonne gold, 3.6 g/tonne silver and 0.5 kg/tonne of uranium.

Minotaur's share-price spike rubbed off on other junior explorers active in the Gawler. Gunson rose 4.4 cents to 37.4 cents and Grenfell was 2.5 cents higher at 13.5 cents.

Mount Woods is a joint venture with BHP Billiton, Normandy, Sons of Gwalia and Sabatica.


-------- depleted uranium

A chamber of horrors so close to the 'Garden of Eden'
Iraq: Depleted Uranium and sanctions - sickening story of a weapon of mass destruction

Saturday 01 Dec 2001
From Andy Kershaw
The Independent, London
http://uk.indymedia.org:8081//print.php3?article_id=17484

In Foreign Parts in Basra, Southern Iraq

I thought I had a strong stomach -- toughened by the minefields and foul frontline hospitals of Angola, by the handiwork of the death squads in Haiti and by the wholesale butchery of Rwanda. But I nearly lost my breakfast last week at the Basrah Maternity and Children's Hospital in southern Iraq.

Dr Amer, the hospital's director, had invited me into a room in which were displayed colour photographs of what, in cold medical language, are called "congenital anomalies", but what you and I would better understand as horrific birth deformities. The images of these babies were head-spinningly grotesque -- and thank God they didn't bring out the real thing, pickled in formaldehyde. At one point I had to grab hold of the back of a chair to support my legs.

I won't spare you the details. You should know because -- according to the Iraqis and in all likelihood the World Health Organisation, which is soon to publish its findings on the spiralling birth defects in southern Iraq -- we are responsible for these obscenities.

During the Gulf war, Britain and the United States pounded the city and its surroundings with 96,000 depleted-uranium shells. The wretched creatures in the photographs -- for they were scarcely human -- are the result, Dr Amer said.

He guided me past pictures of children born without eyes, without brains. Another had arrived in the world with only half a head, nothing above the eyes. Then there was a head with legs, babies without genitalia, a little girl born with her brain outside her skull and the whatever-it-was whose eyes were below the level of its nose.

Then the chair-grabbing moment -- a photograph of what I can only describe (inadequately) as a pair of buttocks with a face and two amphibian arms. Mercifully, none of these babies survived for long.

Depleted uranium has an incubation period in humans of five years. In the four years from 1991 (the end of the Gulf war) until 1994, the Basrah Maternity Hospital saw 11 congenital anomalies. Last year there were 221.

Then there is the alarming increase in cases of leukaemia among Basrah babies lucky enough to have been born with the full complement of limbs and features in the right place. The hospital treated 15 children with leukaemia in 1993. In 2000 it was 60. By the end of this year that figure again will be topped. And so it will go on. Forever.

(Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.1 billion years. Total disintegration occurs after 25 billion years, the age of the earth.)

In any other country, in which the vital drugs are available, 95 per cent of these infant leukaemia cases would be treated successfully. In Basrah, the figure is 20 per cent. Most heartbreakingly, many children on the road to recovery go into relapse part way through treatment when the sporadic and meagre supply of drugs runs out. And then they die.

By the United Nations' own admission 5,000 Iraqi children die every month because of a shortage of medicines created by sanctions imposed by ... the United Nations.

Tony Blair, on numerous occasions, has misled Parliament and the country (perhaps unwittingly) by saying that Saddam Hussein is free to buy all the medicines Iraq needs under the oil-for-food programme. This is not true. Oil for food amounts to just 60 cents (40p) per Iraqi per day and everything -- food, education, health care and rebuilding of infrastructure -- has to come out of that. There simply is not enough to go around.

And has Mr Blair heard of the UN Security Council 661 Committee? If he has, then he keeps quiet about it. The committee was certainly unknown to me until I toured the shabby hospitals of Basrah.

This committee, which meets in secret in New York and does not publish minutes, supervises sanctions on Iraq. President Saddam is not free to buy Iraq's non-military needs on the world market. The country's requirements have to be submitted to 661 and, often after bureaucratic delay, a judgement is handed down on what Iraq can and cannot buy. I have obtained a copy of recent 661 rulings and some of the decisions seem daft if not peevish. "Dual use" is the most common reason to refuse a purchase, meaning the item requested could be put to military use.

So how does the 661 committee expect Saddam Hussein to wage war with "beef extract powder and broth"? Does 661 expect him to turn on the Kurds again by spraying them with "malt extract"? Or to send his presidential guard back into Kuwait armed to the teeth with "pencils"? Pencils, you see, according to 661, contain graphite and therefore could be put to military use. (Tough on the eager schoolchildren of Basrah who have little with which to write).

Across town at the Basrah Teaching Hospital, the whimsical rulings of 661 are not so comical. Dr Jawad Al-Ali, the director of oncology, trained in the UK and a member of the Royal College of Physicians, talked of an "epidemic" of cancers in southern Iraq. "The number of cancer cases is doubling every year. So is the severity of the cancers, and there has been a big increase in cancer among the young," he said.

Last week he was struggling to treat 20 cancer patients with "a huge shortage of chemotherapy drugs" and just two days supply of morphine. "We are crippled," he said, "by Committee 661." The doctor applied for, but was denied, life-saving machinery -- deep X-ray equipment, blood component separators, even needles for biopsies. All, said 661, could have military use.

Tell that to Mofidah Sabah, the mother of four-year-old Yahia. The little boy has both leukaemia in relapse and neuroblastoma, a cancer behind the eye that has bulged and twisted his left eyeball in its socket. Ms Sabah travels miles every day to sit and cuddle her son on his grubby bed. If Yahia lived in Birmingham, his chances of survival would not be in much doubt. But not in Basrah. "I'm afraid he will not live very long," Dr Amer whispered.

Ms Sabah said: "I will leave everything to God, but I want God to revenge those who attacked us." Yahia's illness is not her first brush with tragedy. She lost 12 members of her family during an Allied bombing in 1991. Her husband, a soldier, fought in the Gulf war. He is still in the Iraqi army and has just been reposted, to Qurna, 50 miles north of Basra and among the contaminated former battlefields. Qurna, according to legend, was the site of the Garden of Eden.

-------- france

French Carrier Leaves for Indian Ocean

By REUTERS
December 1, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-france-carrier.html?searchpv=reuters

TOULON, France (Reuters) - France's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier left for the Indian Ocean on Saturday to support the U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan and its bid to capture Osama bin Laden and leaders of his al Qaeda network.

The Charles de Gaulle, which has recently undergone lengthy repairs, left the southern French port of Toulon carrying 20 combat and reconnaissance aircraft.

``Our mission is clear. The Taliban powers have collapsed and we are moving into a second phase -- to track and destroy the al Qaeda network and its chief,'' Admiral Jean-Louis Battet, head of the French navy, told a news conference on board the carrier.

Battet said the carrier would help prevent bin Laden's escape and that French planes would join bombing missions if necessary.

The Charles de Gaulle fleet, which includes three frigates and a nuclear submarine, is expected to arrive in the Indian Ocean by mid-December after exercises in the Mediterranean.

``It is an important moment for our sailors. Some 3,000 men are leaving their families with only 10 days' warning. They will spend Christmas at sea and who knows when they will return -- maybe in six months,'' Battet said.

Announcing the deployment in November, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said the carrier would lend a ``European dimension'' to the war being waged primarily by the United States with British support.

France's involvement in the campaign has mostly been limited to logistical and intelligence support although Tajikistan has agreed to let France station six promised Mirage 2000 fighter bombers at its airbases.

An advance party of 58 marines sent to help secure aid deliveries remains blocked in neighboring Uzbekistan.

-------- korea

U.S. wants nuclear plant opened

December 1, 2001
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011201-451244.htm

A day after North Korea rejected a call from President Bush to allow weapons inspectors into the country, the United States yesterday urged Pyongyang to start cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "now."

The State Department said a nuclear power plant in the Stalinist country cannot be completed unless there are "safeguards in place at certain stages in the construction."

"In order to keep the construction on schedule, they have to have those verification procedures in place," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday. "You have to start early. It's not a matter of showing up the day before the containment vessel arrives; it's a matter of working over a period of something like three years."

Although North Korea has made a commitment to cooperate with the IAEA, Mr. Boucher said it should do more to implement the agreement and allow access to weapons inspectors.

On Thursday, North Korea rejected Mr. Bush's Monday demand and threatened to take unspecified "necessary countermeasures."

The North Korean Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried on state-run Korea Central News Agency, also dismissed as "quite nonsensical" U.S. statements urging the communist state to do more to cooperate in measures against terrorism.

"The U.S. is unreasonably demanding the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) receive an 'inspection' just as a thief turns on the master with a club," said the statement.

It also said U.S. calls for arms inspections and criticism of North Korean human rights abuses and religious restrictions "goes to prove that some forces in the United States, in fact, do not want the dialogue for the solution of the problems."

Earlier this month, North Korea, eager to get off a U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism, signed two U.N. treaties designed to stem terrorism.

North Korea's representative to the United Nations, Ri Hyong Chol, signed the treaties on Nov. 12, Kwon Sei-young, a director at the Special Policy Bureau in South Korea's Foreign Ministry, was quoted by wire reports as saying.

Soon after signing the treaties Mr. Ri was replaced by another diplomat, Park Kil Yon, as the North's U.N. mission chief.

North Korea said earlier this month that it would sign the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the 1979 treaty against hostage-taking.

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

-------- missile defense

U.S. Prepares for New Missile Defense Test

December 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-missiles.html?searchpv=reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military on Saturday prepared for another attempt to shoot down a long-range missile warhead in space over the Pacific Ocean in a testing program opposed by Russia and China.

The $100 million test was to begin on Saturday night. A projectile fired from Kwajalein atoll in the western Pacific will attempt to destroy a dummy warhead launched from California in the fifth U.S. attempt to hit ``a bullet with a bullet'' in the anti-missile program.

The Pentagon expressed confidence that the test would be successful despite failures in two of the four prior attempts, saying past problems had been fixed.

The test was scheduled to begin during a four-hour period between 9 p.m. EST Saturday and 1 a.m. Sunday.

The dummy warhead would be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a rocket. About 20 minutes later, the ``kill vehicle'' projectile would be fired from about 4,800 miles away to seek and collide with the warhead.

About 10 minutes after that, the intercept would occur about 140 miles above the Pacific Ocean, with the warhead and weapon approaching each other at a combined speed of about 15,000 miles per hour.

The anti-missile program has put Washington at odds with Russia and China, with Moscow charging that such a national missile defense would violate the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) between the United States and former Soviet Union and lead to a new arms race.

LIMITED DEFENSE AGAINST 'ROGUE STATES'

Washington says the costly program is simply an effort to develop limited protection for the United States against any future long-range missile attack from ``rogue'' states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

The ABM treaty prohibits any national missile defense by the United States or Russia.

While the Bush administration stressed that the latest test did not violate the ABM treaty, the White House has vowed to eventually move beyond that pact if Moscow and Washington cannot reach agreement on the missile defense in talks that have been going on for more than a year.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Office, told reporters on Friday that ``we're pretty confident we fixed everything'' after two previous test failures.

``But this is rocket science, so there is some chance that we missed something. That's why we're testing,'' Kadish said.

In the tests, the kill vehicle weapon navigates by checking the pattern of the stars and must distinguish between the target warhead and a decoy balloon.

The two previous test failures that did not result in intercepts were due to a clogged cooling pipe on the kill vehicle and the failure of the weapon to separate from its booster rocket, the Pentagon said.

The United States and Russia have been discussing the missile defense controversy for months.

Despite agreeing to new and deep cuts in offensive nuclear missiles by both countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Bush failed to agree on the anti-missile program at a summit meeting in Texas earlier this month.

But they said discussions would continue on missile defense and the ABM pact.

-------- russia

Russian Navy Chiefs Axed, Experts See Kursk Link

December 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-navy.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia demoted three top navy commanders and sacked another eight admirals on Saturday in a clearout that some experts said was punishment for the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster in which 118 crew died.

Russia's navy chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov said Northern Fleet commander Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, its chief of staff, Vice-Admiral Mikhail Motsak, and its submarine fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Oleg Burtsev, had been demoted.

The punishments were handed out for ``serious failures in the organization of the military training activities of the fleet,'' Kuroyedov, who is close to President Vladimir Putin, said on state-run RTR television.

The moves came hours after Putin discussed a preliminary report into the Kursk tragedy with General Prosecutor Vladimir Ustinov, who is leading an investigation into the disaster.

An hour later they were joined by Kuroyedov, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the general staff. Putin told them to draw up suggestions ``not only on staffing decisions, but above all on a system of measures designed to improve the work of the fleet as a whole.''

``This is very important,'' independent defense analyst Alexander Golts said. ``Mr. Putin is moving in absolutely the right direction,'' he said, adding that Putin had used the prosecutor's office to justify his course of action.

The nuclear-powered Kursk sank in August 2000 during a training exercise in the Barents Sea. The loss of one of Russia's most modern craft was the worst naval disaster in modern Russian history and shocked the country.

Putin, who was roundly criticized for failing to break off his holidays to handle the crisis in person, vowed to raise the Kursk to give the dead a decent burial. Most of the vessel was salvaged on October 8 and more than 60 bodies have so far been recovered.

--------

Too Early to Appoint Kursk Blame, Putin Says

December 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-russia-kursk-putin.html?searchpv=reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday it was too early to tell what caused Russia's Kursk nuclear submarine to sink more than a year ago, or say who was to blame for the disaster that cost 118 lives.

Putin said a preliminary report by Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, who is leading the investigation into the Russian navy's worst submarine disaster, had failed to provide a definitive explanation of the tragedy.

The Russian leader made his comments during a Kremlin meeting with Ustinov, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, chief of the general staff General Anatoly Kvashnin and navy chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov.

``I would like to stress that the results (of the Ustinov report) are preliminary and still do not give an answer to the question -- what was the cause, and what happened,'' Putin said.

The Kursk sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea after two unexplained explosions on August 12, 2000. In an unprecedented $130 million salvage operation the submarine was raised from the seabed on October 8 and taken back to port.

Putin said it was Russia's moral duty to recover the Kursk and give a decent burial to those who lost their lives. A total of 69 bodies have been recovered from the Kursk, including 12 retrieved a year ago.

In October, a senior government official said the disaster had been caused by an explosion of one of the Kursk's torpedoes, but added it remained unclear why it had detonated on board.

The damaged bow section where the torpedo tubes were located was sawn off before the bulk of the Kursk was raised.

Putin said a collision with another ``unidentified underwater vessel'' was among the possible causes of the disaster being investigated. NATO countries including Britain and the United States have hotly denied that any of their submarines were involved in the loss of the Kursk.

The Kursk sank during major naval exercises, but Putin said that while Ustinov's report spread much light on the organization of the wargames, it did not point the finger of blame at individuals.

``I would like to stress that we cannot draw conclusions between the links of actions of specific persons and the grave consequences which followed,'' he said.

However, the president said he had asked Ivanov and his two military chiefs present to him draft proposals aimed at improving the way Russia's fleet worked.

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

-------- nevada

Abraham: GAO's Yucca Mountain Report 'Fatally Flawed'
Energy Secretary Still to Recommend Nuclear Waste Plan

By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41899-2001Nov30?language=printer

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham yesterday dismissed as "fatally flawed" a General Accounting Office report critical of his agency's handling of a proposed nuclear waste storage site in the Nevada desert, escalating tensions between the administration and the GAO over energy policy-making.

The draft report, first reported yesterday by The Washington Post, urges the Bush administration to postpone indefinitely a decision on building the site beneath Yucca Mountain, which would store nuclear wastes produced in the United States. It also raises serious questions about whether the project could be built as conceived.

Abraham is certain to urge President Bush to move ahead with the project this winter. 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.

Abraham said in a letter to Comptroller General David M. Walker yesterday that the GAO had been heavily influenced by the project's opponents -- including Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and virtually every other major politician in the state -- and that the premature disclosure of the report indicates it was written to "support a predetermined conclusion."

"While I have great respect for GAO, this kind of premature disclosure significantly, if not irreversibly, taints the work product of any inquiry by GAO or any other investigative body," Abraham said. "This is especially disturbing in that the draft report is fatally flawed."

Walker was out of town yesterday and couldn't be reached to comment. Jeffrey Nelligan, a GAO spokesman, said, "It's unfortunate the draft was leaked."

"We have sent the report to [the Energy Department], so we will wait to hear back what their comments are," he said.

In a separate development, the 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 Chicago-based Winston & Strawn, while advising on licensing, had been lobbying Congress on behalf of the nuclear industry. The firm has denied any conflict of interest.

This is the second high-profile dispute between the administration and the 80-year-old independent congressional research agency over sensitive energy-related issues. Last summer, the GAO threatened to sue the White House for the first time ever after Vice President Cheney refused to release records relating to the development of the administration's energy proposals to Congress.

At the time, Walker described the fight as a direct threat to the GAO's reason for being, a separation-of-powers issue that would determine whether the legislative branch could exercise the oversight role envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

But Walker put the lawsuit on hold after the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, noting that it would be inappropriate to tangle with an administration that was waging a war on terrorism.

Now Walker and other GAO officials are sharply criticizing a project that the administration has embraced as vital to Bush's plan to address the nation's long-term energy needs by expanding the use of nuclear power plants. The remote site beneath Yucca Mountain has been considered by Congress and the Energy Department for the past 20 years as the only possibility for storing all nuclear waste generated in the United States. The nuclear power industry has predicted the site could be opened by 2010.

However, the GAO report said that Bechtel had indicated it would take until January 2006 simply to complete the detailed research and cost estimates and to resolve hundreds of outstanding issues before it could designate the site and begin seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But Abraham intends to make his site designation recommendation to the president within the next several months, the White House said.

Scott Peterson, vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, said the GAO is misguided in assuming that the government simultaneously has to designate the site and complete the preparations for a license application under federal law.

"GAO appears to be lumping all decision-making into one process, and that's not the way it works," he said. "I don't think the GAO report will have a major impact" on administration deliberations.

-------- us politics

Ashcroft hits critics of anti-terror tactics

December 1, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011201-84566846.htm

Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday lashed out at critics of the Justice Department's aggressive anti-terrorist campaign, calling them "voices of negativism" who have sought unfairly to condemn the government.

"There have been a few voices who have criticized. Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they've had a chance to understand it at its best," said Mr. Ashcroft.

"But these voices of negativism cannot obscure the chorus of freedom that is the gathering force in the world today," he told U.S. attorneys from throughout the country gathered at an awards ceremony in Washington.

His comments were in response to a growing chorus of complaints from Congress, civil rights groups and the media about the Justice Department's use of sweeping investigative techniques and the detention of more than 600 people in a massive inquiry into the September 11 attacks on America.

Mr. Ashcroft said the Justice Department was "standing firm" in its commitment to defend the nation, noting that the United States is at war with terror.

"Our response has been to wage a deliberate campaign [of] arrest and detention of violators and suspected terrorists in order to protect American lives. We are removing suspected terrorists who violate the law from our streets. We have refocused our institutional priorities and resources," he said.

The attorney general said he did not know how many acts of terrorism have been prevented due to the department's aggressive campaign, but noted that there had been no new strikes since the September 11 attacks.

"Thanks to the vigilance of law enforcement, thanks to the patience of the American people, we know this: We have not suffered another major terrorist attack. The homefront has witnessed the opening battle in the war against terrorism, and America is victorious.

"We have trusted the American people to act responsibly and to face the threats, and that trust has paid off overwhelmingly in support of this great nation and our community, which must be secure," he said.

Mr. Ashcroft also said that the American public has been supportive of the department's actions, adding that the Justice Department would "never waver in its defense of the Constitution nor relent in its protection of the civil rights of Americans."

"The American spirit, which rose from the rabble of New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, knows no prejudice and it defies division by race, ethnicity or religion. The spirit which binds us and the values which define us will light our path as we identify and locate and incapacitate those who murder in the name of terror," he said.

Mr. Ashcroft said Justice Department officials, along with the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, also had forged "new relationships of cooperation with state and local officials," and had created task forces to integrate the resources of the law enforcement community throughout the country.


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Alliance, Taliban Secretly Discuss Surrender
Opposition Commanders Dispatched to South After Request for Negotiations

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41930-2001Nov30?language=printer

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 30 -- Ten days ago, as the Taliban's crumbling forces were regrouping in the southern city of Kandahar after being swept out of northern Afghanistan, cassette tapes and a handwritten letter were secretly delivered to top Northern Alliance officials here in the Afghan capital.

According to alliance officials, the message on the cassettes and in the letter was simple and direct: Some top Taliban leaders were ready to surrender, and they wanted to work out the details in person with two dozen specific alliance commanders whom they trusted.

The arrival of the cassettes and the letter launched a clandestine mission by at least a dozen alliance commanders -- all Pashtuns, the same ethnic group as the Taliban leaders. Some traveled by road from Kabul, others crossed the border from Quetta, Pakistan, and others made the journey east from Iran. They fanned out through the southern provinces of Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand, the last redoubts of the Taliban. And they opened secret talks that officials with the alliance, which controls about half of Afghanistan, hope will soon lead to a peaceful takeover of the last parts of the country under Taliban control.

"They were sent in at the request of the Taliban," said Wahidullah Sabawoon, the alliance's finance minister and a senior member of its leadership council. "These people were called upon because of traditional reasons -- they belong to the same clan or the same village."

"The Taliban sent the tapes with a written letter to the capital, saying they would not fight anymore," said Sabawoon, revealing in an interview the first details of the secret talks now underway. "You will hear soon the result of these negotiations." Sabawoon provided the names of more than a dozen commanders sent to the three provinces to launch the surrender talks.

A top Northern Alliance commander, Gen. Almas, confirmed the extent of the secret mission. "Yes, we can say it's the truth," he said. "Some of them have already had contact." He said about 20 to 30 commanders were involved, all of them natives of the areas to which they were dispatched.

Sabawoon and Almas said they hoped the talks would be completed by the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-December.

The alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, first told reporters on Monday that "a few" commanders "who are influential in that area" were in the largely Pashtun, Taliban-held provinces of the south, helping to coordinate activities against the Taliban. But the emergence of details about face-to-face talks between the opposing sides offered insight into how the alliance hopes to wrest control of the remaining Taliban-held areas without sending its forces south.

"As the first priority, we prefer negotiations," said Sabawoon, adding that "if the negotiations fail, we will have to fight."

The Northern Alliance front line has moved only incrementally in recent days. Since winning the surrender of local tribes once loyal to the Taliban in the town of Maidan Shahr, about 25 miles southwest of Kabul, the alliance has extended its control just about five miles farther along the road to Kandahar.

When Taliban officials sent feelers about meeting with alliance commanders to negotiate a surrender, the alliance officials were skeptical. They recalled a similar overture in Helmand province, where Taliban fighters offered to surrender but later ambushed and killed more than 100 Northern Alliance troops. Fears that the cassettes and letter could be a ploy led to a lengthy debate and a delay in dispatching the envoys.

Sabawoon said the alliance currently had no specific plan to send troops to Kandahar or the other southern provinces. And he said he and other leaders are aware that the alliance's supporters in Washington and other foreign capitals are concerned about the coalition, which has an ethnic base among the Tajiks and Uzbeks of the north, sending forces to the largely Pashtun south.

But Sabawoon added: "If these negotiations fail, we will have no other choice but to march toward Kandahar. And we will announce it to the United Nations and the world."

Kandahar is about a two-day drive from Kabul under the best of circumstances, and any attempt to move south might seriously stretch the alliance forces. But Sabawoon and Almas said the logistical difficulties could be overcome by moving troops from the western city of Herat and from central Afghanistan. Also, they said, the capture this week of Kunduz, which had been the Taliban's last northern stronghold, frees alliance forces for a possible march south.

If they move south, alliance officials said, they hope to work with local forces, specifically the anti-Taliban militias of Gul Agha Shirzai, a former Kandahar governor, and Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader and an official in the pre-Taliban government. Those forces are now battling the Taliban on the outskirts of Kandahar, although alliance security and intelligence officials said they are currently no match for the Taliban.

"These tribal forces that have risen against the Taliban don't have any capability of fighting them," Abdullah Jan Tawhidi, the alliance's deputy minister of security and intelligence, said in an interview.

Northern Alliance commanders Arif Khan and Ghulam Mohammed are said to have traveled to Kandahar and contacted those local Pashtun groups. Alliance commanders Abdul Baqi and Akhtar Jan have assumed the task of helping to organize the resistance at the border town of Spin Boldak.

"Wherever the Defense Ministry requests us to send our forces, we will go," Almas said. "But in my opinion, it is better to use the local forces."

The officials also said any move south would depend heavily on U.S. airstrikes, which played a huge role in weakening the Taliban in the north and enabling the alliance to sweep across the region.

"A war has two sides: the air war and on the ground," Sabawoon said. "It should be coordinated. The Americans will do the air war, and the ground is our job."

Almas said he believed the Taliban holdouts in Kandahar would eventually abandon the city, much the way they abandoned Kabul almost three weeks ago without a serious fight. "The intelligence reports I received say the Taliban are planning to leave the city and go to the mountains," Almas said. "It is hard to get there by car or by helicopter. . . . They are planning for the time being to plot guerrilla attacks."

Alliance officials said they believed the Taliban's leader, Mohammad Omar, would never surrender. "He's a military nut," Sabawoon said. "He'll either be killed or taken prisoner."

----

Russian plane delivers food aid to Afghanistan

The Times of India Online,
December 1, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=743219449

DUSHANBEW: A Russian Il-76 cargo plane carrying 37 tons of humanitarian aid for Afghanistan left Dushanbe on Saturday, Russian emergency officials said.

The plane was headed for Afghanistan's Bagram air field, said Mirzo Zieyev, a spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry office in Dushanbe said.

Saturday's flight opened a permanent air corridor between Tajikistan and Afghanistan that will allow for accelerated flights of humanitarian aid from Russia.

The next Russian aid flight, with 40 tons of supplies, was scheduled for Monday, Zieyev said. ( AP )

----

'US troops not to stay long in Afghanistan'

Times of India,
December 1, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=1840437568

ISLAMABAD: The United States has said it has no intention to station troops in Afghanistan on a long-term basis as its only interest in the country is to deal with al-Qaeda terrorist network and pave the way for a stable and broad-based government there.

The US, which is acting in self defence in Afghanistan, doesn't intend to station troops there on a long-term basis, US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld said.

Stating that the US will help in the creation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan, he said, however, it is for Afghans to decide about the government.

Asked about the achievement of the US objectives in Afghanistan, he said the situation is very complex as it has economic, financial, political and diplomatic aspects besides overt and covert military operations.

However, he said, measurable progress has been made but it will take some time to realise the goal.

Rumsfeld said the US is working to ensure that funds for terrorists are dried up and they are denied of any option.

He said the decision of many countries to block their borders for armed people from Afghanistan is bringing the intenational coalition closer to the goal of capturing the senior al-Qaeda leadership.

Agreeing that there was some disorder, including criminal activities, in various cities of Afghanistan, he said in a joint interview to Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television from his Pentagon office in Washington, that he was of the view that the change-over was most peaceful in the Afghan history.

About the possibility of UN or multinational peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said that no proposal has yet been materialised. One of such proposal is to have forces of coalition in Afghanistan for a reasonably short period time to allow things to settle down and people to disarm.

To a question, he said terrorist networks are being harboured by the countries which are on the list of terrorist states.

These states, he said, have chemical and biological weapons and some of them are also pursuing nuclear weapons programmes.

Rumsfeld said as terrorists can attack any place at any time using any kinds of weapons, it is necessary to eliminate their networks.

To another question, he said Pakistan is providing very important and significant contribution to the international coalition against terrorism.

-------- arms sales

Former Bond Trader Sentenced

By Amanda Riddle
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, December 1, 2001; 12:49 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42846-2001Dec1?language=printer

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A former Wall Street bond trader was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for conspiring to launder $350,000 in a case related to a weapons sting.

Kevin Ingram, a former senior investment banker with Deutsche Bank, agreed to launder money offered by undercover federal agents as proceeds from illegal arms sales. Richard Lubin, Ingram's lawyer, said his client never knew the money was from an arms deal.

"I made a horrible mistake and I did something wrong," Ingram, 43, of Jersey City, N.J., told the judge. "I'm very sorry about it."

Ingram could have received between three and four years in prison, but government prosecutors recommended the 18-month term because he agreed to testify against his co-defendants in the laundering case.

Prosecutor Rolando Garcia said Ingram's cooperation led Diaa Mohsen and Connecticut airplane broker Walter Kapij to also plead guilty to money laundering.

Mohsen, an Egyptian national, and Mohammad Malik, a Pakistani national, have pleaded guilty to trying to export anti-aircraft missiles, night-vision goggles, rifles and other weapons to undisclosed foreign buyers.

-------- biological weapons

Anthrax Cleanup at Senate Building

By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 01, 04:00 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=ANTHRAX%2dCONGRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) - Workers began pumping a deadly gas into the Hart Senate Office Building early Saturday in an operation designed to kill the remaining anthrax spores that forced the building's closing almost seven weeks ago.

``We waited until the humidity reached the optimum level, did our safety checks and then began spreading chlorine dioxide gas at 3 a.m.,'' said Lt. Dan Nichols, a Capitol Police spokesman. ``Everything is going fine. It just took a little longer than we thought.''

A hitch developed as final preparations were being made to introduce the poison. Experts said extremely high humidity was required for the operation, and they had to pump in steam from the building's heating system to increase the level.

The fumigation had been scheduled to begin Friday at 8 p.m. EST, but didn't get underway until seven hours later.

The block surrounding the building was cordoned off to give exclusive access for a $1 million laboratory bus to circle every 15 minutes and monitor the air for gas leaks. People living nearby were told there was no need to leave or otherwise disrupt their plans.

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said Friday it was unlikely that workers could remove every anthrax spore.

``There's no intention to open the building until everyone feels very comfortable that people working in there or visiting in there will be safe,'' he said. ``This is new territory for both the EPA and certainly for us. We haven't had this experience before as a country in how do you clean up a building like this.''

To prepare for the first-of-its-kind decontamination, crews sealed off Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office suite to fumigate it overnight, said Nichols. The intent was to kill anthrax bacteria that escaped Oct. 15 when an aide to the South Dakota Democrat opened a tainted letter.

The rest of the Hart building was not similarly sealed, although the adjacent Dirksen Senate Office Building, connected by hallways with Hart, and the Hart underground garage were shut down as a precaution against leakage of the toxic gas. Half the Senate's 100 members have offices in Hart.

As the decontamination occurs, the EPA laboratory bus will sniff the air around the building through vents in the roof or side. The air is fed through equipment that provides instant data on computer screens analyzed continuously by a four-person crew.

Some liquid chlorine dioxide was used in the suite beforehand. Rugs and some artwork were left in place to be gassed. Other senators' suites in the Hart building also need to be cleaned up, although officials so far do not believe the gas will be necessary in those areas.

It is the first instance in the United States in which chlorine dioxide gas is being used to kill anthrax.

The chlorine dioxide gas is mixed in a vessel outside the building, then pumped through chemically resistant plastic tubes to another device inside the suite that vents the gas, said Richard Rupert, the EPA's on-scene coordinator.

Crews also put test strips into the suite and, protected by face masks and air tanks, they plan to check Saturday after about 12 hours of spreading the gas.

Then the process is to be repeated but using another chemical, sodium bisulfite, pumped into the offices to break down the chlorine dioxide gas. The mixture separates into oxygen and an innocuous substance similar to table salt.

Cleanups using liquid or foam decontaminants have begun in some of 13 other senators' offices where traces of anthrax were found.

--------

THE EVIDENCE
Germ Weapon Plans Found at a Scientist's House in Kabul

December 1, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/international/asia/01KABU.html?searchpv=nytToday

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 30 - A group of armed men, reportedly Americans, dressed in gas masks, rubber gloves and boots, removed powdered chemicals this week from the home of a retired Pakistani nuclear scientist here, Afghan security guards at the house said today.

The guards, posted by the Northern Alliance, said the men had warned them to stay away from the house because the chemicals could be dangerous.

Diagrams and documents found there suggest that the scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, may have been working on a plan to drop cyanide or anthrax spores from high- altitude balloons. Copies of American military documents found there described anthrax vaccines and how the spores could be used as a weapon.

Mr. Mahmood and another Pakistani scientist, Chaudry Abdul Majeed, are under detention in Pakistan in connection with the discoveries in Kabul. Mr. Mahmood's family has insisted that he is innocent.

A workroom that had been littered with papers was empty today and appeared to have been swept or vacuumed.

Mahmad Ajan, a security official from the Northern Alliance who is guarding the house, said four men he believed were Americans had cleaned out the house three days ago.

"They had masks and they had rubber gloves and boots," he said. "They spoke English and had pistols."

Pentagon officials have said unspecified Americans have removed chemicals from 40 suspected Al Qaeda sites in Afghanistan for testing.

Mr. Ajan said a first group of strangers visited the house eight days ago. They did not wear protective gear and did not remove chemicals, he said. After the second group removed the chemicals three days ago, the guards were told to hire local people to finish cleaning the house, he said.

Several bags of chemicals remained in the yard this afternoon. On the ground next to the door leading to the street were two small plastic bags. Each appeared to hold two to three pounds of brown powder.

The outside of one of the bags said "Mahlobjan," a man's name; the number 436; and "second." A second bag had the numbers 999 - or 666 - printed on it, followed by a crescent moon, the symbol of Islam. There was also a small seal stamped on the corner of the bag, with an eagle in its center.

Mr. Mahmood and two other retired Pakistani nuclear scientists were detained for questioning in Pakistan in September and released after American intelligence officials questioned whether they were giving Al Qaeda nuclear secrets.

Pakistani officials said they rearrested Mr. Mahmood and Mr. Abdul Majeed this week after questions arose about the activity of a charity that Mr. Mahmood had established in Afghanistan.

Mr. Mahmood used the Kabul house as the office of the private relief organization, Ummah Tameer- e-Nau. He and Mr. Abdul Majeed worked for the organization, which Mr. Mahmood set up after he retired from the Pakistan Atomic Agency in 1998. Both men's families insist that they were involved only in aid work in Afghanistan.

The house offers evidence of both claims.

In the workroom, the only scraps of paper left behind after the cleaning were charts estimating the number of people who would be treated in one of the charity's new health centers. But in the yard was what appeared to be a three-foot-long experimental rocket.

The Northern Alliance security officials said they had never seen that type of rocket before. The words "Abu Omar special" were written on it, but Omar is a common Muslim name and it is not clear what the message referred to.

Residents of the neighborhood said Mr. Mahmood lived quietly with his family in his house and rarely mixed with people. His organizations gave food out to local residents on Muslim holidays, they said.

But several neighbors said they noticed armed men going in and out of Mr. Mahmood's charity office. A group of Arab volunteers who came to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban lived next door, but residents said they were not sure how much contact there was between the two groups.

After the American airstrikes began on Oct. 7, Mr. Mahmood's family left for Pakistan and other men moved into the house with the scientist, according to neighbors. One resident said they were Afghan Taliban supporters. Another said they were Pakistanis.

"I don't know definitely who they were," said Rulah, a driver who works for the British charity Save the Children, which has an office next to the scientist's home. "It is very difficult to know whether they were aid workers."

The alliance security officials who have been living in the house said they were nervous after seeing the strangers enter the house with so much protective gear. The two men said they had been told by their superiors to stay away from the chemicals, but they have received no medical treatment.

"I have lived here nine days," Mr. Ajan said, shrugging. "I guess I would be sick by now if there were anthrax."

-------- drug war

Colombia Outpost Helps Fight Drug War

December 1, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-Drug-War-Outpost.html

TRES ESQUINAS MILITARY BASE, Colombia (AP) -- Protruding above the jungle like a giant white golf ball on a tee, Washington's latest investment in the war on drugs scans the horizon for small planes ferrying cocaine over the Amazon.

The $13 million radar station was just inaugurated by President Andres Pastrana and the U.S. ambassador to Colombia and even given a blessing by a Roman Catholic priest. While skepticism about the drug war grows among some critics, so does this jungle outpost where the campaign is anchored.

Tres Esquinas sprawls alongside a roiling brown river in southern Colombia within striking distance of drug labs and plantations that are guarded and taxed by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Built in the 1930s, the base was long a sleepy outpost to defend Colombia's from attack by Peru. Now, its runways are paved and expanded, long enough to handle jet fighters and Hercules transport planes.

A large dock is being completed for U.S.-donated patrol boats that prowl the rivers that are the highways for rebels and drug smugglers in this roadless region. Banks of computers watched by U.S. and Colombian intelligence officers in a hangar-like building compile data from satellites and reconnaissance planes.

During Thursday's inauguration ceremonies, U.S. and Colombian officials gave an upbeat assessment of the war on drugs. They were also treated to a loud demonstration of the kind of firepower Washington is providing under a $1.3 billion aid package approved last year.

Patrol boats bristling with machine guns and grenade launchers zipped in formations along the muddy Orteguaza River, blasting away at the jungle on the opposite bank. Helicopters and warplanes shredded the jungle with bombs, rockets and machine guns while soldiers lobbed mortar rounds from gun pits.

The added firepower and U.S. Green Beret training of Colombian troops is providing security for raids on drug labs and aerial fumigation runs over illegal plots of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

For some, the drug war is a dud.

Human rights activists fear the U.S. support will embolden the military to abuse people's rights, or lead to direct U.S. troop involvement in this South American country's 37-year-old civil war.

Environmentalists say the herbicides being used to wipe out coca fields may harm humans and upset fragile and diverse Amazonian ecosystems.

Still other critics say the world's drug supply won't ever be reduced until demand for narcotics is curtailed in consumer nations like the United States.

With American lawmakers echoing those concerns, the U.S. Congress appears ready to slash about $100 million from the Bush administration's $731 million follow-up request to last year's aid plan.

At Tres Esquinas, Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, the commander of Colombia's southern forces, brushes aside the criticism.

``We are winning this war,'' he said over a lunch of catfish at an officer's club overlooking the Orteguaza.

Montoya rattled off statistics he said showed progress, including the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of coca and the combat deaths at the hands of the U.S.-trained troops of 166 ``drug traffickers'' from the rebels and their paramilitary foes.

``We show up at a laboratory, and who do you think there is protecting it? The guerrillas are,'' he said.

Montoya said his men have also destroyed more than 600 cocaine labs and intercepted thousands of gallons of drug-processing chemicals, helping push up the price of semi-processed cocaine here by 30 percent. U.S. officials, however, have not reported changes in the price or availability of cocaine in the United States.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson insisted progress is ``accelerating,'' and she said the U.S.-trained troops ``have not had a single human rights complaint against them.''

She predicted spraying will double next year with the scheduled arrival soon of dozens more helicopters and crop dusters from the United States.

Even if the offensive meets its own stated goals, that would mean only a 50 percent reduction in cocaine production in Colombia over five years' time.

A carved wooden sign beside a barracks at Tres Esquinas reminds the soldiers that this war will be long. ``God grants victory to perseverance,'' it says.

-------- iraq

Commentary
Heady dreams of an easy victory in Iraq

Steve Chapman
December 1, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011201-82952444.htm

Take a people tired of being tyrannized, add an opposition force determined to overthrow the government, blend with a handful of B-52s, bake for a few weeks and there you have it - victory. The United States used this recipe with startling results in Afghanistan, and a cadre of hawks insists it will work just as well in Iraq.

Their reasoning is like saying that if you can cook yourself breakfast, you would have no trouble making Thanksgiving dinner for 30. The Taliban turned out to be a flimsy opponent whose defeat required only minimal exertion. But the reason Saddam Hussein is still around to annoy us is that he is exceptionally tenacious and durable.

With sufficient time, resolve and bloodshed, the United States might be able to bring down his regime. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that the most strenuous and time-consuming part of the war will be the victory parade.

The Bush administration, which earlier resisted demands to go after Saddam, sounds as though it's reconsidering. This week, the president himself addressed the Iraqi dictator by declaring, "If you develop weapons of mass destruction that you want to terrorize the world, you'll be held accountable." Asked what that might mean, he replied, "He'll find out."

The advocates of a wider war imagine that Saddam's government would collapse under serious military pressure. They risk the mistake made by the first President Bush and his aides back in 1991, which was assuming that they could unseat him without marching to Baghdad. The idea that losing a war would destroy Saddam was reasonable back then. Today, it amounts to wishful thinking of the most irresponsible kind.

In Afghanistan, we had the advantage of fighting an enemy that was barely a government and had hardly a friend in the world. Neighboring countries like Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Russia quickly agreed to help. Even our archnemesis Iran cooperated in the effort to eliminate the Taliban. But such cooperation would be hard to come by in a war against Iraq.

Saudi Arabia would probably refuse to allow us to fly missions from its air bases. Iran, fearful of being next on our list of targets, would actively resist our efforts. The Arab world would take about three seconds to unite against us.

We might find the world united against us. "Europe would have many very, very serious questions about that," says German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, which is how diplomats say "Fuhgeddaboudit." Even the ever-loyal British reject the idea.

The apparent plan is to channel arms, money and training to opposition groups inside Iraq. Then, when they're ready to stage a military offensive, we would mercilessly pound the government's forces from the air. A few victories would follow, the population would rise against their oppressors, and soon Saddam would be hanging from a lamppost.

Are these people serious? The opposition coalition in Iraq is a pale facsimile of the Northern Alliance, and the Iraqi army is a formidable military foe. Saddam Hussein can field some 400,000 troops and a couple of thousand tanks. Among his assets are 100,000 members of the elite Republican Guards, which held together under weeks of U.S. pummeling during the Persian Gulf war.

Saddam's soldiers are not likely to bolt at the first whiff of gunpowder. They've shown they will fight - with a good deal more resolve and killing power than anything the Taliban could muster. If the Iraqi military and people didn't turn on Saddam in 1991, after he had been routed in a war he brought on himself, why would they do it now?

Softening his forces up enough to give our allies a chance to win would require the most ambitious bombing campaign since Vietnam. University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, author of the book "Bombing to Win," thinks the air war might take as long as a year - which may be a lot longer than the American people would support. Even then, the opposition would eventually face the prospect of bloody street-by-street fighting in urban areas, where U.S. air power would be little help.

The cheap, easy plan for toppling Saddam brings to mind a cheap, easy plan we had for toppling Fidel Castro - which produced the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle. The hawks are so busy assuring us of smooth sailing that they never face the crucial question: What if things go wrong?

Do we deploy hundreds of thousands of U.S. ground troops to occupy Iraq by force? Or do we abandon the opposition to its fate, walk away and accept a humiliating defeat? At that point, we may wish we'd focused on containing Saddam rather than destroying him.

We were lucky to dislodge the Taliban with so little effort. But Las Vegas is full of busted gamblers who expected to be lucky every time.

Steve Chapman is a nationally syndicated columnist.

--------

U.S. to Press Iraq to Let U.N. Inspect for Banned Arms

December 1, 2001
New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/international/middleeast/01DIPL.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - A top State Department official said today that the United States was on "a roll" in its campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan and that President Bush intended to use the momentum to force Iraq to open its borders to United Nations inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, a senior administration official said that Mr. Bush's aides were looking at options involving the building up of opposition groups to President Saddam Hussein, but that such an initiative would take time to develop because "there isn't a ready-made opposition" now.

In an interview, Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, suggested that military action against Iraq was not imminent and would come, if it did, at a "place and time of our choosing."

In a separate interview, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said "there isn't any sense of timing" about when to force the inspection issue with Iraq. "Right now, getting Al Qaeda is more important," she said, referring to the campaign to destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

"The fact is that we have Iraq on the radar screen," Ms. Rice said. "it was dangerous before Sept. 11 and it's dangerous now. But we are really very focused right now on phase I, on Afghanistan, and worrying about Al Qaeda cells wherever they might be."

The remarks from the senior officials were part of what has been a steady drumbeat of bellicose comments toward Iraq this week, including remarks by Mr. Bush that have cheered many conservatives and worried some European and Arab allies. A number of European leaders this week called on Mr. Bush not to pursue a precipitate military course against Iraq.

In the interview, Mr. Armitage said the administration was sensitive to concerns among the European and Arab allies that forcing a military confrontation with Iraq could sunder the antiterror coalition and possibly harm efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Other Arab leaders have also warned that a wider war in the Middle East will incite the imagery of a Western assault on Muslim countries.

Mr. Bush's comments on Monday - that Mr. Hussein would find out the cost of continuing to refuse United Nations inspections - reintroduced an issue that had been dormant for some time. It also raised questions as to whether he was broadening the American military mandate in the antiterror campaign to address the long-festering conflict with Iraq. But there was also speculation in diplomatic circles that he was trying to assuage influential figures in both the Republican and Democratic parties who have been calling for an aggressive policy aimed at toppling the Iraqi leader.

In the interview, Mr. Armitage said the president was engaged in a calculated effort to resurrect the issue of Mr. Hussein's compliance with United Nations resolutions that require him to submit to inspections. "The United States is on, thus far, a roll in Afghanistan," Mr. Armitage said, adding that "the president has put together a very mighty coalition" that he is intent on holding together. On the strength of the successes so far, he said, "the president made a statement" that was intended as a "signal to Saddam Hussein how he can lessen the pressure, and that is, `Let the weapons inspectors back in.' "

Asked why the administration had decided to raise an issue that had lain largely dormant in the United Nations Security Council for several years, Mr. Armitage said, "The president said it, so that's that - it's back." He added, "I don't think there is any question that an Iraq with weapons of mass destruction is a threat to its neighbors and ultimately to ourselves, and so we will do what we need to do to obviate that threat."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Thursday that reports that "something is on the verge of happening" militarily against Iraq "has no particular underpinning substance to it." Speaking to reporters at the State Department, he added,

A senior administration official said that there is no new intelligence indicating a higher level of threat from Mr. Hussein, but that "we know that he is the only modern leader who has used weapons of mass destruction, both against his own people and Iran."

That official said Mr. Bush's Iraq policy was focused on three elements: carry out a "smart sanctions" regime to address concerns for the people of Iraq while stanching the flow of dangerous technology to Baghdad; "looking at how we might use military power more effectively"; " and "looking at options involving opposition."

Since Sept. 11, the pressure to formulate a plan of action against Iraq has increased from members of Congress and other influential experts. R. James Woolsey, the former director of central intelligence, was enlisted by the Pentagon and Justice Department to fly to London to interview witnesses about possible Iraqi connections to the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

"If anyone, Jim Woolsey or anyone else, can find the evidence of an Al Qaeda connection with Saddam Hussein, no one in this administration would be disappointed at all," Mr. Armitage said.

Known for his bluntness and his close relationship with Secretary Powell, Mr. Armitage also signaled a willingness by the administration to re-examine Russia's growing arms sales relationship with Iran as well as Moscow's program to complete the first civilian nuclear power station in Iran.

While Washington remains concerned about the proliferation of some weapons and technology to Iran, Mr. Armitage said Iran's "peaceful use of nuclear power" could be tolerated as long as the safeguards to protect against the diversion of nuclear materials "are appropriate and are all inclusive."

-------- israel

Israel Tanks Surround West Bank Towns

DECEMBER 01, 08:35 EST
By JAMIE TARABAY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?SLUG=ISRAEL%2dPALESTINIANS

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian-controlled towns in the West Bank on Saturday in retaliation for a suicide bus bombing on Thursday that killed three Israelis and the Palestinian bomber, Israeli army and Palestinian security officials said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is visiting the United States, ordered the steps in response to the bus bombing, an Israeli military source said on condition of on anonymity.

The move came as U.S. envoy retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni said he would stay in the region ``as long as it takes'' to secure a truce.

Zinni met Saturday with Palestinian Cabinet Minister Nabil Shaath at the Erez Crossing into the Gaza Strip. He was taken on a tour of central Gaza, including a visit to a Palestinian navy installation bombed by Israeli warplanes in May.

After meeting with Shaath, Zinni was joining Palestinian security chiefs for the traditional sundown Iftar meal, which ends the daytime fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Shaath said.

``He's taking time to discover for himself what is happening on the ground,'' Shaath told the AP.

Four tanks sat in the middle of Haifa Street at the entrance to Jenin in the West Bank, while seven tanks entered the nearby Palestinian-controlled town of Burkin, some parked in between houses, said Col. Turki Abu Ali, a Palestinian security force leader in Jenin.

Tanks also blocked the Palestinian village of al-Jabriat, near Jenin, he told the AP from the scene.

The Israeli army denied it was in Palestinian-controlled territory.

``We're not entering the towns, we're enforcing the closure,'' the army spokesman said.

The army said it was separating Burkin from Jenin because the perpetrators of this week's attacks came from Burkin.

The blockade was also tightened around the West Bank town of Nablus late Friday night.

In all, seven Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks since Zinni's arrival Monday. Seven Palestinians were also killed - three were shot dead by Israeli troops in separate incidents, the four others were assailants.

After meeting with Israeli President Moshe Katsav in Jerusalem on Friday, Zinni said he would stick with his mission of reviving a truce deal and restarting peace talks. ``I want to say that I, in the most strongest sense, condemn this violence,'' Zinni said, referring to Thursday's bus bombing. ``The groups that do this are clearly trying to make my mission fail. ... I am determined not to let that happen.

``I'm not committed to work for words. I'm committed to work for actions on the ground. ... And I will be here as long as it takes to make that happen.''

The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the bus blast near the Israeli town of Hadera. It identified the bomber as 32-year-old Samer Abu Suleiman from a village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Abu Suleiman detonated explosives belted to his body after boarding the bus.

Sharon said he held Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat directly responsible for the latest wave of attacks on Israelis. Israel says Arafat is doing little to rein in militants.

The Palestinian leadership said in a statement that it condemned attacks on civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinians, and pledged to arrest those who violate a Palestinian Authority decision to honor a cease-fire.

The Palestinian leadership accused Israel of escalating the conflict with the aim of sabotaging the Zinni mission.

--------

Jerusalem Blasts Kill Eight, Injure More Than 130

By REUTERS
December 1, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-mideast.html?searchpv=reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A double Palestinian suicide bombing and a car bomb minutes later killed eight people and wounded more than 130 on Saturday on a crowded street in the heart of a Jerusalem cafe district, Israeli police said.

The blasts, which hurled victims into the air and were described by an Israeli spokesman as the biggest attack in Jerusalem in years, dealt a fresh blow to a new U.S. mission to end 14 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

President Bush demanded that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat bring those responsible for the attacks to justice and ''act swiftly and decisively against the organizations that support them.''

``Now more than ever, Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must demonstrate through their actions and not merely their words their commitment to fight terror,'' Bush said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's White House meeting with Bush was brought forward to Sunday from Monday to enable the premier to fly home early from the United States to tackle the crisis, Israeli political sources said.

Israel said it held Arafat directly responsible for the attacks. The Palestinian Authority condemned the bombings, which it said were intended to foil peace efforts, and vowed to investigate who was behind the attacks.

Police said at least eight people were killed excluding two Palestinian suicide bombers who detonated their explosives within moments of one another on a crowded pedestrian mall. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Witnesses said the first blast shook the crowded Ben Yehuda pedestrian street, full of restaurants and cafes and the site of several previous attacks, just before midnight (2200 GMT). Police said the bombs were packed with nails.

``People flew into the air and there are many people covered in blood,'' said a woman who gave her name only as Liron.

Minutes later, a bomb exploded in a car about 50 yards away as about 20 people tried to move it because it was blocking a road needed by ambulances to rush the injured to hospital, the witnesses said.

Another witness, Yossi Mizrahi, said: ``I saw people without arms. I saw a person with their stomach hanging open. I saw a 10-year-old-boy breathe his last breath. I can't believe anybody would do anything like this.''

Bystanders ran from the scene weeping. Others were left sobbing and trembling. Some bystanders chanted ``Death to Arabs.''

A woman called Ilana said one bomber wore a red shirt and jeans. ``He stood and just blew up,'' she said.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said 132 people were hurt, including 11 people who were critically injured.

ZINNI DEMANDS URGENT ACTION FROM ARAFAT

U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni, who has been holding talks in the region since Monday, said in a tough statement that he had telephoned Arafat after the blasts and urged him to find and put on trial those responsible.

``I condemn in the strongest possible terms the vicious and evil terrorist attack in Jerusalem tonight,'' he said.

He vowed to continue working for implementation of a cease-fire and a truce-to-talks plan but said this could be done only if the Palestinian Authority made a ``comprehensive and sustained effort'' to rein in militants.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said, ``As head of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat bears direct responsibility for what happened today in Jerusalem.''

Pazner later told CNN television: ``Israel will certainly react ... When blood is running in the streets of Jerusalem, Israel will not remain inactive.''

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement denying any responsibility for the attack, the worst in Jerusalem since a suicide bomber killed 15 people in August when he blew himself up in a pizzeria near the scene of Saturday's violence.

``The Palestinian leadership condemns fully the explosion,'' the Authority said in a statement. ``The Palestinian leadership...is committed to following up who stands behind this attack.''

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said Arafat had received a telephone call from U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell and that the two had discussed the attack, its likely impact and Zinni's peace mission which began last Monday.

SURGE IN VIOLENCE

Violence has surged since just before Zinni's mission began.

Israel killed Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, a military leader of the Islamic movement Hamas, in a missile strike on November 23 and an explosive device left by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip killed five Palestinian boys a day earlier.

Six Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks this week, including three who were killed by a man who blew himself up on a bus in northern Israel on Thursday.

Arafat's Palestinian Authority condemned those attacks.

Sharon went ahead with his planned visit to the United States on Thursday despite the earlier bloodshed. He visited the site of the toppled World Trade Center in New York on Friday and called for U.S. pressure on Arafat to rein in militants.

At least 731 Palestinians and 196 Israelis had been killed before Saturday's attacks in violence which erupted in September 2000, shortly after peace talks stalled.

Earlier on Saturday, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, one of them an 11-year-old boy, after surrounding the West Bank city of Jenin.

Israeli forces ringed Jenin and Nablus, also in the West Bank, in an overnight operation following the Palestinian suicide bombing earlier this week. Palestinian security sources said the West Bank town of Tulkarm was also surrounded later.

-------- nato

CORRESPONDENT
Join the Club

December 1, 2001
By BILL KELLER
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/opinion/01KELL.html?searchpv=nytToday

Next year, unless President Bush has a drastic change of heart, the United States will enlarge the American-led military alliance in Europe by as many as seven countries and extend its boundary to within an hour's tank drive of St. Petersburg. This may seem like an awfully ungrateful way to treat our new friend Russia, so quick to our side after Sept. 11, but the terror attacks have actually made this enlargement of the NATO family more right than ever.

In fact, if he is not too distracted by fighting a war abroad and shredding civil liberties at home, Mr. Bush has a chance to accomplish three grand purposes in a single feat of political choreography: consolidating the gains of free-market democracy, drawing Russia closer to Europe, and rejuvenating our most important alliance.

The illustrious skeptics of further NATO expansion have ranged across the foreign-policy mainstream, and include opinion writers for this newspaper. They have argued that shoving our mutual defense pact up against Russia's border will inflame resentment in Russia and undermine reformers who want to work with the West. There is also a unilateralist camp that sees a bigger NATO as bringing a new burden of obligations and constraints. We'll get to why they're all wrong in a second.

But first, for readers who just can't find time to keep up with those pesky think-tank issue papers, here's the story so far. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was hatched in the ruins of World War II, to prevent anything like that from happening again. The tired but honest joke is that NATO was created to keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down. When the cold war ended, a lot of countries that had been Soviet captives began clamoring to join NATO, seeking both the protection of America's might and the validation of their own status as civilized countries. Two years ago President Clinton persuaded the clubhouse to admit Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Assured that these newcomers would not play host to American bases or nuclear weapons, Russia took it with a grumble.

Whether the new Bush administration would continue the enlargement of NATO was, at first, not clear. Mr. Bush had shown no passion for alliances. The next round of candidates includes no countries that excite as many American voters as Poland does, no celebrities of the stature of Vaclav Havel. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, the three former Soviet republics along the Baltic Sea, are admirably scrappy little democracies, but did America really want to commit its arsenal to defending the Duchy of Grand Fenwick? Our military was not enthusiastic.

To the surprise of many, Mr. Bush answered the doubters in a stirring Europhile speech that could have come from Madeleine Albright. Visiting Poland in June he emphatically endorsed NATO membership for all of Europe's new democracies, "from the Baltic to the Black Sea." Now the word in Washington is that by spring the administration will tell Congress it wants NATO invitations for all three Baltics, for Slovenia and probably Slovakia. Bulgaria and Romania are closer calls.

It is fair to ask whether Kmart parents, as Colin Powell calls the families that provide most of our military enlistees, will like committing their sons and daughters to defend Estonia. One could ask the same about Luxembourg or Iceland or other states that enjoy NATO protection because they were there at the beginning. Membership has never been about acreage, population or the size of your army (Iceland has none) but about your commitment to democracy, human rights, open borders and free markets. Those things flourish best in societies that feel secure. The military obligations of NATO are serious, but they are mainly deterrent - the promise of protection lessens temptation. The heart of the founding treaty is Article 5, which obliges all members to rally to the defense when any member is attacked. Care to guess how many times it has been invoked in the half-century of NATO? Once, on Sept. 12 of this year.

The war against terror has enhanced the cause for expansion in several ways.

First, it has given President Vladimir Putin of Russia a common cause with the West, and he is not inclined to rock the bandwagon by making aggressive noises about the Baltic republics. Mr. Putin says somewhat elliptically (and his ambassadors tell Western leaders more directly) that Russia can live with it.

Yes, Mr. Putin does have a problem with his military. The only land route to the Baltic Fleet headquarters in Kaliningrad runs through Lithuania, and while that fleet is now a sorry collection of rustbuckets, it has symbolic weight. But appeasing the Russian military is Mr. Putin's job, not ours, and he seems to think he has it in hand. Henry Kissinger, who in his most recent book said allowing the Baltics into NATO was "too inflammatory," tells me that after listening to Mr. Putin he has changed his mind. One down.

Last week NATO's secretary general, Lord Robertson, was in Moscow negotiating exactly what Russia should get out of this deal. It is an important question, and one that should not be answered impetuously.

Ignore the talk of Russia becoming a member of NATO. Russia has no real interest in joining an alliance whose supreme military commander is an American. And among the current members, even those countries that are inclined to trust Russia don't want to be obliged to defend it from, say, China. But orienting Russia more toward NATO is clearly good for everyone.

President Clinton's people spent considerable effort concocting a structure that would have Russia cooperating more closely with NATO on things like peacekeeping, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, but the Russians walked out in a spat over Kosovo. They will come back if Mr. Putin gets something he can present to skeptical countrymen as new and worthy of Russia's stature.

Russia should have a real voice when it decides to partner with NATO, but not a veto that stops the alliance from operating without Russia. Even more important is to create not just a new bureaucracy but genuine, on-the-ground, military-to- military activities. There is nothing that builds trust over time like Russian and Western troops working side by side as they did in Bosnia. Finally, if the president wants any partnership with Russia to outlast Mr. Putin, he should get over his sophomoric disdain for treaties.

Mr. Putin will not concede the point, but including the Baltics in NATO is good for Russia. The Balts do not trust their Russian neighbors. Ten years ago last January, I watched Lithuanians being crushed to death under Soviet tanks that were sent to suppress their demand for independence - and this was under the benign Mikhail Gorbachev. After independence, the republics sometimes treated their Russian residents vengefully. But with NATO membership requiring decent standards of civil rights, the republics have lowered barriers to citizenship for ethnic Russians. Once these states feel fully protected they can be friendlier, becoming a useful commercial bridge to the West for the western parts of Russia.

The civilizing effects of alliance are not just for Estonians and Russians, by the way. The counsel of European allies since Sept. 11 has helped temper our impulse to lash out at Iraq or Syria and prodded us back into the Middle East peace process. Spain has applied familial pressure to drop the idea of military tribunals, by refusing to extradite suspects. And Europe is wisely imploring us not to scrap the 1972 ABM treaty. Thank you, Europe.

But our NATO allies have done nothing to slow America's purpose at war. Thus has Sept. 11 demolished the unilateralist argument by demonstrating that when America perceives its interests at stake it does not have to call for NATO.

Once you've assembled the neo- NATO, what do you do with it?

Mr. Putin - echoing Mr. Gorbachev - says that NATO should evolve from a military alliance into something more purely political. That would be a mistake, for two reasons. First, the promise of military security is the main reason anyone joins. And second, in a fledgling free society the one constituency you most want integrated into a democracy support group is the military.

A better use for NATO is to project its values - and, sometimes, its force - into regions where its interests are less immediate: fighting terror, keeping the peace, or coaching armies in the fine points of civilian rule. Sept. 11 drove home the truth that threats can come from far afield, which is why so many Europeans have been willing to offer not just moral cover but soldiers and weapons for the fight in Afghanistan.

The United States has treated these offers dismissively, thereby missing an opportunity. Expanding NATO is a good step. Now Mr. Bush has to show he's interested in leading it.

-------- us

Base-Closing Issue Delays Defense Bill

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41964-2001Nov30?language=printer

Congressional negotiators have hit an impasse over the Pentagon's proposal for a new round of military base closings, delaying action on critical defense legislation and raising the possibility of a veto fight with the Bush administration.

At issue is a recommendation to create a commission -- as Congress did in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 -- to compile a list of bases to be closed or realigned, starting in 2003. As in the earlier cases, the president and Congress could accept or reject the list but not change it.

This all-or-nothing approach has made it easier to win approval for base closings. But they remain highly sensitive because of community pressure on lawmakers, especially House members, who face voters every two years; senators are elected every six years.

The Senate narrowly approved the commission proposal as part of its version of the fiscal 2002 defense authorization bill, which sets the policy framework for the defense spending bill that is also working its way through Congress. But the House refused to include the proposal in its version of the legislation.

Although the Senate vote came after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults in New York and Washington, the attacks hardened resistance to the idea in the House, said Rep. Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), chairman of the House subcommittee on military installations.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has pushed hard for the proposal and, in a letter last month, said he would "join other senior advisers to the president in recommending that he veto" the legislation if it did not include the base-closing authority.

Since the two houses began trying to reconcile their bills, negotiators have stuck by their earlier positions on the base-closing issue while resolving most other issues that had been in dispute.

"Both sides are dug in. . . . There has been an impasse for some time," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a member of the Senate negotiating team and a strong advocate of more base closings.

"All the debate so far has been BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure Commission] or no BRAC," Saxton said.

In an attempt to break the deadlock, several sources said, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) plans to offer a possible compromise next week. Although they said they did not know details, sources said the proposal may offer the best -- and perhaps only -- chance for a middle-ground solution.

"It is a unique compromise worthy of consideration," said Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), ranking Republican on the armed services panel.

Some compromises that have been floated recently include a delay in implementation of the closings, a base-by-base study before a commission is created and a procedure under which some bases would be put off-limits for closure, said sources close to the talks.

Without a genuine compromise, McCain suggested Congress may have no choice but to approve the legislation without any BRAC provisions and leave it to President Bush to sign or veto the measure. If he vetoes the bill, McCain said he believes Congress would add the commission to the legislation and send it back.

But such a strategy could put Bush in the awkward position of vetoing one and maybe even two defense bills while the nation is at war in Afghanistan.

The defense appropriations bill is already under a veto threat if Democrats succeed in adding homeland security funds that exceed budget limits and the $40 billion approved by Congress after the September attacks.

Both the war and economic slowdown have figured in arguments over additional base closings. Opponents contend that recession and war create the worst possible time to threaten a disruption in base operations. Proponents say the closings of obsolete facilities would free up money for more essential military operations and contend that no bases are likely to be closed until after the recession is over.

The administration has estimated it has a surplus base capacity of 23 percent and believes it could save $3 billion a year by eliminating it. It figures $14.5 billion has been saved with the closing or realignment of 97 major bases, along with many smaller ones, since 1988.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Some Detainees Turn to Hunger Strikes

By Peter Slevin and George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42089-2001Nov30?language=printer

Malek Mohammed Seif, an aspiring jet pilot imprisoned in Arizona in the FBI's terrorist investigation, is refusing food to protest his continued detention. On the East Coast, two detainees ended hunger strikes this week. In Missouri, jailed Egyptian airline mechanic Osama Elfar stopped eating and filed a federal lawsuit.

"I have to know why I am here. It is my right to know," Elfar said this week from jail, where he was awaiting deportation. After seven days on a water diet, Elfar received word yesterday that he will be put aboard a flight to Egypt next week, his lawyer said.

While precise figures are impossible to obtain, the Immigration and Naturalization Service acknowledges that at least 14 people have waged hunger strikes in recent weeks, including some arrested in the government's Sept. 11 anti-terror sweep. Relatives of a U.S. citizen arrested in Evansville, Ind., say that another hunger strike was held last month by eight prisoners frustrated by a lack of information and access to lawyers.

The number of protests, which have lasted from four to 12 days by INS count, is small in comparison with the hundreds of people who have been detained in the anti-terror campaign. But advocates say they reflect frustration with the Bush administration's practice of detaining individuals for indeterminate periods without always informing them of their legal status or the progress of their cases.

Since Sept. 11, U.S. authorities have used immigration violations -- often overlooked before the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center -- to hold individuals who they suspect may have information and, they say, to deter additional terrorism. An FBI affidavit used in many cases contends that the detainee "may have possible links" to terrorist organizations or "may possess knowledge useful to the investigation."

Many detainees are left unsure how long they will be behind bars.

"They have been waiting and waiting and waiting, and no one seems to give them a correct answer. This is simply an act of desperation," said New Jersey attorney Sohail Mohammed, who represents eight foreign detainees in New Jersey, at least one of whom conducted a hunger strike last month. "The least they were looking for from the hunger strike was an answer from a responsible official."

INS spokesman Russ Bergeron said the agency considers that 14 detainees declared themselves as on hunger strikes, but officials are uncertain how many were among the more than 1,100 people detained after Sept. 11. He would not discuss individual cases, but said detainees who may be important to the criminal investigation cannot be freed until the FBI has cleared them, and are not entitled to updates about their status.

Bergeron explained that files compiled by local FBI agents must be "reviewed against the entire body of information developed in connection with the investigation."

"The American people expect that we will not allow any person to leave this country until it has been absolutely ascertained with as much certainty as humanly possible that the individual is not linked to this crime or to terrorism," Bergeron said.

Elfar, who turned 30 in jail last month, was arrested within two weeks of the Sept. 11 hijackings. Authorities who questioned him discovered that he had overstayed his 1996 student visa.

He allowed FBI agents to search his apartment, where they confiscated records and seized his computer, which have been returned to him. He also submitted to an FBI lie detector test and was told he passed, his lawyer said.

An immigration judge gave Elfar a deportation date of Nov. 23, but the day came and went without indications from U.S. authorities about his fate. Sometimes, a delay can be caused by difficulties in arranging a flight at government expense. But Elfar said he "was ready to pay my own expenses, but they don't let me."

Eight Indiana men who went on hunger strikes owe their release after two weeks to a persistent federal prosecutor who carried the case up the chain of command, said Chicago defense attorney Kenneth L. Cunniff. The men, all from Evansville, called to one another in Arabic to coordinate their strike, said Mary Frances Baugh, the mother-in-law of detainee Tarek Albasti.

The INS has no record of a hunger strike by the men, Bergeron said. The agency does not count a food protest as a strike unless detainees have gone at least 72 hours with no food. He said inmates sometimes "turn down the meal and go to the snack bar and buy a half-dozen Twinkies and eat that instead."

In New Jersey last month, at least a half-dozen detainees initiated a food protest because they felt the INS was not giving them sufficient information on their cases. Bergeron said INS records reflect that "it is possible that some detainees may have skipped some meals, but no detainees went 72 hours without eating."

Seif has refused food in Phoenix since Oct. 25, according to defense attorney Thomas M. Hoidal. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said Seif has lost 28 pounds. The INS does not consider Seif's action a hunger strike, perhaps because he ingests fluids.

"I'm trying to talk him into eating. I don't need him to be a martyr in my jail with his own agenda," said Arpaio, known for confining inmates in desert tents and requiring them to wear pink underwear. "If he becomes incompetent, we'll just have to force-feed him. I don't want this guy to die in my jail."

The INS says it monitors inmates on hunger strikes and is prepared to take medical steps when necessary.

Seif, accused of lying on federal forms, is frustrated that he has not been granted bail before his scheduled Dec. 18 trial, Hoidal said. An East African, he received pilot training at two Arizona flight schools during the mid-1990s, and sought work as a commuter airline pilot but failed the instrument tests. He remained in Arizona on refugee status, Hoidal said.

Questioned by the FBI, Seif acknowledged meeting suspected hijacker Hani Hanjour at a dinner party in Tempe, Ariz., and seeing him at a local mosque where they worshiped. He was questioned in France, where, he insists, he told authorities all he knows, and voluntarily returned to the United States in September for further interrogation. He said he was told he would not be arrested.

Eleanor Acer, a New York immigration specialist, said hunger strikes have been waged by detainees in years past to address "an underlying sense of injustice" about everything from lengthy confinements to the high price of detention center phone calls.

"In a lot of ways, immigration detainees are powerless," said Acer, director of asylum programs at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "The sense of injustice they feel when they believe they're being treated unfairly leaves them with little option."

----

Customs intensifies searches at airports

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 1, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011201-61013411.htm

The U.S. Customs Service yesterday began conducting intensified examinations of baggage and passengers arriving on international air carriers that do not provide the agency with information about their passengers before arrival in this country.

"International flights pose a national security risk to the United States if the air carriers do not provide customs with comprehensive and accurate data about their passengers prior to arrival," said Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner.

"As a result, customs is exercising its authority under the law to conduct 100 percent examinations of all people and luggage disembarking these particular flights," he said.

Since 1988, Mr. Bonner said the Customs Service has operated a program called the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) in partnership with air carriers. APIS includes electronic information about inbound passengers before their arrival in this country.

Customs has used this data to target suspect or high-risk passengers, while facilitating the flow of law-abiding travelers through the clearance process.

Mr. Bonner said that over the years, the vast majority of air carriers have voluntarily provided this information to the Customs Service. As of Nov. 1, the agency was receiving advance data on 85 percent of incoming air passengers. Some air carriers did not participate in the program.

On Nov. 19, President Bush signed into law the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, a provision of which made it mandatory for all international air carriers to participate in the APIS program. The law gave carriers 60 days to comply.

On the same day the law was signed, Mr. Bonner sent a letter to air carriers not participating in APIS, encouraging them to begin providing information - given the events of September 11. He said in the letter that the 100 percent inspections would begin today.

----

As Israelis languish in U.S. jails,
Jewish activists wondering why

By Michael J. Jordan,
Chicago Jewish News,
December 1, 2001
http://www.chicagojewishnews.com/features.jsp#12796

The revelation that dozens of Israelis have been thrown in jail since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has some American Jewish leaders wondering if this is a new government attempt at "even- handedness."

Most of the 50 or so Israelis reportedly jailed in Cleveland, St. Louis, Kansas City, Houston and San Diego are men in their 20s.

No one refutes the likelihood that they violated visa regulations, but some have been in jail for over a month for what normally would be considered petty infractions.

That leaves Jewish activists wondering if the U.S. Department of Justice is straining to show "even-handedness" in its investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks to appease Arabs concerned that Washington is targeting only Arab and Muslim suspects.

Several Arab states are vital partners in the U.S.-led coalition to hunt down the Sept. 11 perpetrators.

Nevertheless, Israeli officials say they do not believe Israelis have been singled out, and are treating the incarcerations as a consular issue rather than a political one.

"Israelis who break the law must understand there will be consequences for their actions," said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. "America is justifiably looking much more closely at foreign visitors, and Israelis who are here illegally or doing something in contrast to their visa specifications should not consider themselves immune just because of the friendly relations between the two countries."

Israeli officials say they sent advisories to their citizens in the United States after Sept. 11, warning them to have their papers in order.

Still, that wasn't enough to reassure some American Jewish leaders, who note that visa violations typically do not result in jail time.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft refuses to disclose the names of detainees, but Israelis are believed to be the largest single national group arrested in a nationwide crackdown that has netted at least 554 on visa violations -- and 55 charged with a direct link to the attacks -- since Sept. 11.

Reports of the arrests seem to have seeped out beginning two weeks ago, and some believed that as many as 150 Israelis had been arrested.

When he read about the Israelis in news reports last week, "I couldn't see the connection. Why would Israelis even be suspected of terrorist activities here?" asked Leon Levy, president of the American Sephardi Federation and former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "It's very confusing. I know I'm only speculating, but it may be about giving a sense of balance between Arabs and Jews."

The Zionist Organization of America this week said it was crafting a letter to the Justice Department complaining that the large-scale arrests of Israelis "play into the hands of anti- Semites" because of the canard that Israel orchestrated the suicide attacks and that 4,000 Jews were warned not to come to their jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

"Why aren't we also arresting people from Finland, Denmark or Sweden? There is no evidence, historically or presently, that anyone from Israel has ever been involved with terrorism against America," ZOA President Morton Klein said. "Clearly, America is bending over backward to make it seem as if we are not targeting Middle Easterners, although the evidence shows clearly that it was Islamic militants who perpetrated this heinous crime."

Malcolm Hoenlein, the Conference of Presidents' executive vice chairman, urged caution in reacting to the arrests.

"There could be a real problem here but we don't know yet," Hoenlein said. "In situations like that, you have to be careful about the allegations you make. We and others are still looking into it, trying to ascertain the facts."

Ashcroft, in a news conference Tuesday, defended his actions.

"While I am aware of various charges being made by organizations and individuals about the actions of the Justice Department, I have yet to be informed of a single lawsuit filed against the government charging a violation of someone's civil rights as a result of this investigation," Ashcroft said.

"I would hope that those who make allegations about something as serious as a violation of an individual's civil rights would not do so lightly or without specificity or without facts. This does a disservice to our entire justice system."

There actually have been two separate situations involving Israelis.

The first involved five Israeli men spotted clowning around Sept. 11 along the New Jersey riverfront, taking photographs against a backdrop of the burning World Trade Centers.

The men worked for a moving company and happened to have box cutters -- one of the weapons used on the hijacked flights -- in their truck.

The men were imprisoned in Brooklyn, where one reportedly failed a polygraph test when discussing his Israeli army service.

The men were never charged with a crime, but complained that they were treated like criminals and even intentionally placed with Arab inmates, who beat them up. After two months in jail, the five were quietly deported to Israel last week.

The Anti-Defamation League took the incident seriously, but not the suggestion that Israelis are being unfairly singled out.

"There's a war, a change of scenery, and the fact that Semitic-looking people are caught in the web of ethnic profiling is an unfortunate consequence of the new reality," the national director of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, said. "My only concern is that once Israelis are arrested and detained, there needs to be sensitivity not to put them together with Arabs or Muslims, because their safety may be in danger."

Then there are the dozens of Israelis arrested nationwide, some of whom apparently aroused suspicion because they worked for a company selling trinkets that may have hired other young men from the Middle East.

Regev, however, sought to put the events in perspective.

"Israelis, better than most, can understand the problems involved with dealing with terrorism, and I think Israelis can appreciate the enormous pressure American authorities were under in the weeks following Sept. 11," he said.

While not commenting specifically on the Israelis, a spokesman for the Justice Department told The New York Times, "We are taking every step we can to prevent future terrorist attacks. We are conducting the largest investigation in U.S. history, and we are leaving no stone unturned."

Yet the secrecy surrounding the detainees' identities and the refusal to disclose the charges, if any, are fanning suspicion about the arrests. Some wonder if the Justice Department is arresting almost anyone just to create the semblance of progress in the Sept. 11 investigation.

Some Jewish activists say they are concerned not only about the Israeli detainees, but with all those held.

"In Judaism, we don't believe in collective guilt," said Rabbi Avi Weiss, national president of AMCHA -- Coalition for Jewish Concerns. "If they've overstayed a visa or some other infraction, deport them. But it's un- American to hold people without charging them. Maybe a day or two, but weeks or a month or two? It's really unpardonable. It's contrary to what America stands for."

Levy, too, was critical.

"If there is no evidence after a month of incarceration, there has to be some explaining to do," he said. "We're still a nation of laws.''

----

LIBERTY AND SECURITY
Ashcroft Seeking to Free F.B.I. to Spy on Groups

By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
December 1, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/national/01BURE.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the F.B.I.'s spying on religious and political organizations in the United States, senior government officials said today.

The proposal would loosen one of the most fundamental restrictions on the conduct of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and would be another step by the Bush administration to modify civil-liberties protections as a means of defending the country against terrorists, the senior officials said.

The attorney general's surveillance guidelines were imposed on the F.B.I. in the 1970's after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and the disclosures that the F.B.I. had run a widespread domestic surveillance program, called Cointelpro, to monitor antiwar militants, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others, while Mr. Hoover was director.

Since then, the guidelines have defined the F.B.I.'s operational conduct in investigations of domestic and overseas groups that operate in the United States.

Some officials who oppose the change said the rules had largely kept the F.B.I. out of politically motivated investigations, protecting the bureau from embarrassment and lawsuits. But others, including senior Justice Department officials, said the rules were outmoded and geared to obsolete investigative methods and had at times hobbled F.B.I. counterterrorism efforts.

Mr. Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, favor the change, the officials said. Most of the opposition comes from career officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said today that no final decision had been reached on the revised guidelines.

"As part of the attorney general's reorganization," said Susan Dryden, the spokeswoman, "we are conducting a comprehensive review of all guidelines, policies and procedures. All of these are still under review."

An F.B.I. spokesman said the bureau's approach to terrorism was also under review.

"Director Mueller's view is that everything should be on the table for review," the spokesman, John Collingwood, said. "He is more than willing to embrace change when doing so makes us a more effective component. A healthy review process doesn't come at the expense of the historic protections inherent in our system."

The attorney general is free to revise the guidelines, but Justice Department officials said it was unclear how heavily they would be revised. There are two sets of guidelines, for domestic and foreign groups, and most of the discussion has centered on the largely classified rules for investigations of foreign groups.

The relaxation of the guidelines would follow administration measures to establish military tribunals to try foreigners accused of terrorism; to seek out and question 5,000 immigrants, most of them Muslims, who have entered the United States since January 2000; and to arrest more than 1,200 people, nearly all of whom are unconnected to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and hold hundreds of them in jail.

Today, Mr. Ashcroft defended his initiatives in an impassioned speech to United States attorneys.

"Our efforts have been deliberate, they've been coordinated, they've been carefully crafted to not only protect America but to respect the Constitution and the rights enshrined therein," Mr. Ashcroft said.

"Still," he added, "there have been a few voices who have criticized. Some have sought to condemn us with faulty facts or without facts at all. Others have simply rushed to judgment, almost eagerly assuming the worst of their government before they've had a chance to understand it at its best."

Under the current surveillance guidelines, the F.B.I. cannot send undercover agents to investigate groups that gather at places like mosques or churches unless investigators first find probable cause, or evidence leading them to believe that someone in the group may have broken the law. Full investigations of this sort cannot take place without the attorney general's consent.

Since Sept. 11, investigators have said, Islamic militants have sometimes met at mosques - apparently knowing that the religious institutions are usually off limits to F.B.I. surveillance squads. Some officials are now saying they need broader authority to conduct surveillance of potential terrorists, no matter where they are.

Senior career F.B.I. officials complained that they had not been consulted about the proposed change - a criticism they have expressed about other Bush administration counterterrorism measures. When the Justice Department decided to use military tribunals to try accused terrorists, and to interview thousands of Muslim men in the United States, the officials said they were not consulted.

Justice Department officials noted that Mr. Mueller had endorsed the administration's proposals, adding that the complaints were largely from older F.B.I. officials who were resistant to change and unwilling to take the aggressive steps needed to root out terror in the United States. Other officials said the Justice Department had consulted with F.B.I. lawyers and some operational managers about the change.

But in a series of recent interviews, several senior career officials at the F.B.I. said it would be a serious mistake to weaken the guidelines, and they were upset that the department had not clearly described the proposed changes.

"People are furious right now - very, very angry," one of them said. "They just assume they know everything. When you don't consult with anybody, it sends the message that you assume you know everything. And they don't know everything."

Still, some complaints seem to stem from the F.B.I.'s shifting status under Mr. Ashcroft. Weakened by a series of problems that predated the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. has been forced to follow orders from the Justice Department - a change that many law enforcement experts thought was long overdue. In the past, the bureau leadership had far more independence and authority to make its own decisions.

Several senior officials are leaving the F.B.I., including Thomas J. Pickard, the deputy director. He was the senior official in charge of the investigation of the attacks and was among top F.B.I. officials who were opposed to another decision of the Bush administration, the public announcements of Oct. 12 and Oct. 29 that placed the country on the highest state of alert in response to vague but credible threats of a possible second terrorist attack. Mr. Pickard is said to have been opposed to publicizing threats that were too vague to provide any precautionary advice.

Many F.B.I. officials regard the administration's plan to establish military tribunals as an extreme step that diminishes the F.B.I.'s role because it creates a separate prosecutorial system run by the military.

"The only thing I have seen about the tribunals is what I have seen in the newspapers," a senior official complained.

Another official said many senior law enforcement officials shared his concern about the tribunals. "I believe in the rule of law, and I believe if we have a case to make against someone, we should make it in a federal courtroom in the United States," he said.

Several senior F.B.I. officials said the tribunal system should be reserved for senior Al Qaeda members apprehended by the military in Afghanistan or other foreign countries.

Few were involved in deliberations that led to the directive Mr. Ashcroft issued this month to interview immigrant men living legally in the United States. F.B.I. officials have complained that the interview plan was begun before its ramifications were fully understood.

"None of this was thought through, a senior official said. "They just announced it, and left it to others to figure out how to do it."

The arrests and detentions of more than 1,200 people since Sept. 11 have also aroused concerns at the F.B.I. Officials noted that the investigations had found no conspirators in the United States who aided the hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks and only a handful of people who were considered Al Qaeda members.

"This came out of the White House, and Ashcroft's office," a senior official said. "There are tons of things coming out of there these days where there is absolutely no consultation with the bureau."

Some at the F.B.I. have been openly skeptical about claims that some of the 1,200 people arrested were Al Qaeda members and that the strategy of making widespread arrests had disrupted or thwarted planned attacks.

"It's just not the case," an official said. "We have 10 or 12 people we think are Al Qaeda people, and that's it. And for some of them, it's based only on conjecture and suspicion."

-------- terrorism

Omar, Bin Laden going separate ways

The Times of India Online,
December 1, 2001
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=975545406

ISLAMABAD: They were comrades in arms, enigmatic figures who incarnated the threat of global terrorism. But with the world now closing in, Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar appear to be going their own ways.

Nobody can say for certain where the two men are hiding as they try to elude pursuing US-led forces. But the suspected terrorist mastermind and his Taliban protector clearly have different fugitive styles.

Omar, the reclusive supreme leader of the Islamic militia, claims to be standing firm in their southern spiritual stronghold of Kandahar, rallying his scattered troops and vowing a fight to the death.

Bin Laden has kept a low profile, making public remarks only twice since the September 11 attacks on the United States, once in a tape distributed for broadcast and once in an interview with a Pakistani journalist. A one-time honored "guest" and major financial backer of the Taliban, the Saudi millionaire turned militant appears to be on his own as he flees US wrath for the carnage wrought in New York and Washington.

After a series of confusing statements, the Taliban now say with some consistency that they have no idea where Bin Laden is. Moreover, they say he has dropped out of contact.

"There is no relation now. There is no communication," Omar's spokesman Syed Tayyab Agha told foreign journalists at a press conference 10 days ago in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak.

The diverging paths of the two men have not been lost on the Americans who see the disintegration of the Taliban regime as key to pinning down Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday called Omar a "dead-ender" who "is determined to try to re-energize Taliban, to get the Taliban fighters to consolidate somewhere and to kill people."

He said the austere Sunni cleric and his fundamentalist troops were trying to either hang on to Kandahar or, if they can't do that, to "get in the mountains and wait their time and come back."

Bin Laden, on the other hand, "is in a secure location somewhere attempting to deal with his network in whatever way he does," Rumsfeld said.

"Bin Laden clearly has a different interest," he said. "He uses Afghanistan as a lily pad, a place to be, a place to go out and kill other people around the world, to manage his al-Qaeda network." US officials believe the 44-year-old Bin Laden may be hiding out either in the mountains around Kandahar or in a elaborate complex of caves in eastern Afghanistan near the city of Jalalabad.

If the two men now find themselves uncomfortably in the cross-hairs of the powerful US military, they got there by very different routes. Bin Laden is the scion of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate who died in a helicopter crash and left him 80 million dollars when he was 11. Omar, said to be in his late 30s, was brought up in religious schools.

They fought alongside one another in the jihad, or holy war, launched against the Soviets who occupied Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

When Bin Laden was stripped of his Saudi citizenship for his criticism of the royal family and the Americans, he came to Afghanistan and reportedly contributed arms, cash and men to the Taliban.

He turned up in Kandahar in 1997 and cemented his friendship with Omar, whose refusal to give him up to the Americans sparked the massive US-led military offensive that toppled his regime.

The Saudi militant, who walks with a cane, and the one-eyed Omar are said to be extremely close. Bin Laden says he has a "spiritual relationship" with the Taliban chief but denies he is married to one of Omar's daughters.

While the US-led offensive has split the fortunes of the two men, they are both speaking of a common destiny in the martyr's death that might await them both.

Omar has called on all his troops to fight to the last. He is also more prone these days to pepper his pronouncements with Bin Laden-like warnings of a "big" plan for "the destruction of America."

Bin Laden has said he was resigned to the fact the Americans would get him sooner or later. He has reportedly asked his lieutenants to kill him before he can be captured. ( AFP )


-------- OTHER

-------- genetics

Researchers find way to make brain cells

Around the Nation
December 1, 2001 •
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011201-67935400.htm

Two separate teams of international researchers said yesterday they had found reliable ways to coax human embryonic stem cells into becoming brain cells.

Their work is a step forward in the busy but contentious field of stem-cell research, which scientists say holds the promise of treating a range of diseases from brain damage to diabetes, but which critics say kills human embryos.

Both teams, writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, said they coaxed the stem cells into becoming the three types of brain cells - astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and mature neurons.

They transplanted the cells into the brains of newborn mice and saw them spread throughout the brains, take up residence and begin to work.

-------- health

China Ends AIDS Silence, Mandela Calls for Drugs

December 1, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-aids-world-safrica.html

LONDON (Reuters) - A veil of secrecy still shrouds AIDS in some countries 20 years after it first reared its head but on Saturday China, the latest convert to openness, marked World AIDS Day by airing a shocking TV drama on the disease.

In South Africa, where more people live with HIV/AIDS than in any other country and the government is widely criticized for its ambiguous stance, former president Nelson Mandela called for victims to be given access to drugs that fight the disease.

``Nothing threatens us more today than HIV/AIDS...AIDS is a scourge threatening to undo all the gains we made in our generations of struggle,'' said Mandela, who headed the country's first post-apartheid government.

Close to five million people, or one in nine of the population, are affected in South Africa by the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, or the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome that it invariably leads to.

World AIDS Day was marked by pressure groups and governments alike, and included calls by a group of Indian prostitutes for their profession to be legalized. In the Seychelles, the government announced it would offer free antiretroviral drugs.

In 16 countries, more than one 10th of people aged 15-49 are infected with HIV. Worldwide, more than 40 million people live with HIV or AIDS, including 4.5 million children.

Twenty years after scientists in the United States reported first clinical evidence of the disease, there is no still cure.

ABOUT-TURN IN CHINA

While the Chinese infection rates do not compare with the devastating statistics from Africa, Beijing has made a dramatic about-turn in recent months.

The world's most populous country was jolted into action after HIV infections surged 67.4 percent to 3,541 in the first half of 2001.

``This year the government has really stepped up its fight against AIDS because of the global situation,'' said AIDS expert Zhang Konglai, a professor at the Peking Union Medical College.

China's first television drama on AIDS, which had a potential audience of 92 percent of China's population of 1.3 billion through state-owned China Central Television, was partly a scare tactic.

But it also contained more subtle messages about a disease which threatens to escalate into a major epidemic in a country where there is still widespread ignorance about it.

The United Nations says China could have 10 million HIV/AIDS sufferers by 2010 unless it acts decisively.

Mandela, 83, cuddled infected and dying children at a shanty home and answered questions from black and white children.

Africa's most respected statesman insisted repeatedly in his answers to their questions that the government should provide drugs to prolong the lives of people already infected with HIV.

His forthright comments contrasted sharply with current president Thabo Mbeki's ambiguous stance on the issue.

``For those who are HIV-positive, we must ensure that they get the proper treatment and drugs which are going to help them resist the pandemic,'' Mandela said.

The country's foremost AIDS lobby group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), welcomed Mandela's comments as ``a subtle message to Mbeki.''

``This comment would not have been made without realizing it is in contrast with what Mr. Mbeki has been saying,'' said TAC national secretary Mark Heywood. Mbeki has repeatedly voiced the view that anti-AIDS drugs are expensive, dangerous and unproven.

DRUGS FOR AFRICA

U.S. drug giant Pfizer Inc said it would sign agreements with six African countries in the next three months to provide its antifungal drug Diflucan free to AIDS sufferers.

The program will be extended beyond South Africa to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, Namibia and Swaziland.

Pope John Paul, leader of the world's Roman Catholics, said people with AIDS should not feel alone in their suffering and called for greater awareness of the causes and consequences.

Under John Paul, the Vatican has been unbending in its opposition to all forms of artificial contraception, including condoms which are seen by many health experts as a key tool in the battle against AIDS.

The church has always preached abstinence from extra-marital sex as the best way to prevent transmission of the virus.

But in devoutly Catholic Portugal, which has the highest infection rate in the European Union, the church put AIDS prevention before moral stricture, urging couples to have blood tests before beginning a stable relationship, ``in marriage or otherwise.''

Meanwhile, a group of prostitutes in Calcutta urged authorities to legalize their profession, saying it would improve access to medical facilities and reduce the incidence of AIDS. A recent U.N.-funded report said an ``explosive'' AIDS epidemic had hit Asian sex workers.

-------- human rights

Concern Grows Over Refugees
Aid Groups Protest Forced Returns, Lack of Foreign Security

By Peter Baker and Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42321-2001Nov30?language=printer

Relief agencies voiced new concerns yesterday about the plight of Afghanistan's refugees, protesting the forced return of Afghans from neighboring countries and warning that the absence of an international security force in the war-torn country could prevent aid workers from feeding hundreds of thousands of hungry people.

U.N. officials in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said the Iranian government has pushed "several thousand people" into western Afghanistan against their will, while Pakistani authorities have deported about 300 refugees from North-West Frontier Province. The U.N. leadership registered a protest with Tehran, singling out Iran both because of the greater numbers coming from there and because Pakistan has cooperated in dealing with the refugee problem elsewhere along the border.

"They have been pushed into Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities," said Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "This is a great concern to us because it is a major violation of the Geneva Convention."

Hassan said the Afghans "are randomly rounded up in neighborhoods in the capital city or villages and towns around the border area, then taken to a detention center and put back on trucks without any recourse."

For years Iran has been prodding its 1.5 million to 2 million Afghan refugees to return home, often resorting to deportation. However, the Iranian government signed an agreement with the United Nations last year ruling out roundups to dump refugees over the border.

The return of Afghans who had fled because of their country's long civil war or the U.S.-led bombing campaign that began Oct. 7 has complicated the efforts of relief groups rushing to reestablish operations following the sudden retreat of the Taliban from northern Afghanistan. But refugee agencies said they were especially alarmed by the involuntary repatriations and termed the practice a human rights abuse.

The deportations are part of a broader movement of people into and out of Afghanistan as the war shifts from north to south. While 45,000 Afghan refugees have returned from Iran since September, thousands of Afghans in the south are attempting to leave the country to escape fighting near the city of Kandahar.

Relief agencies have largely been shut out of that region, leaving many Afghans at risk of starvation or disease this winter. But the agencies have been able to resume some activities in parts of the country where the Northern Alliance has expelled the Taliban.

A U.N. team returned to the western city of Herat yesterday for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and found its offices intact, said a spokesman, Khaled Mansour. Offices had previously been discovered looted in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif.

Officials reported that life in Herat had begun to normalize, with some schools reopening, radio and television resuming transmission and repair work continuing at the airport.

Still, life is not calm everywhere. Banditry and general disorder continued to hobble relief efforts in Mazar-e Sharif, as well as in Kunduz, the last Taliban city to fall in the north. There, the offices and warehouse of the International Organization for Migration remain occupied by Northern Alliance forces, and all of the organization's operations have been suspended.

Some aid workers had hoped international peacekeeping troops could help provide security for relief convoys, but U.S. military officials have delayed their approval of such a force because of the continuing military operations against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, wrote to President Bush yesterday to warn that spreading lawlessness is jeopardizing crucial aid shipments. He called the U.S. decision opposing the presence of peacekeepers "disturbing."

"The U.S. and its allies cannot afford to win the military battle and lose the humanitarian campaign," said Bacon, who was a Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton administration. "We have the ability to triumph on both fronts, and we must."

Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said Afghans recognize that an international presence is now preferable to a strictly Afghan security force. "There needs to be more concerted effort to figure out how to secure peace and stability behind Northern Alliance lines," he said.

According to Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the lack of security is significantly limiting the amount of food that can be distributed once it is trucked into Afghanistan. He said the primary bottleneck is at Mazar-e Sharif, and that the lawlessness there is affecting efforts to get food into the sections of northwest Afghanistan where drought and hunger are most severe.

"We have to deal with security if we are going to complete our mission," Natsios said. He said different approaches are "under active debate" in the administration.

Despite the difficulties, some agencies, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, have begun distributing blankets, cooking sets and other items to needy people in Mazar-e Sharif. And the World Food Program reported that it had shipped 56,000 tons of food to Afghanistan during November, exceeding its target by 4,000 tons. The agency said the shipments should feed 6 million Afghans for a month, but aid workers are especially worried about rugged, inaccessible mountain communities that might never receive the food.

Briefing reporters in Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the urgent humanitarian situation is not necessarily a reason for international peacekeepers to be deployed but that it could justify heightened efforts by Afghan militia groups to provide security for aid workers.

"It does not matter if that stability is provided by peacekeeping forces. What matters is that it is relatively safe," Rumsfeld said. "And to the extent that the opposition forces in those areas are capable of and willing to provide that kind of security, then the aid workers are happy to come in."

Baker reported from Kabul. Staff writer Marc Kaufman contributed to this report.

-------- imf / world bank

Micro-lending in a big way

EDITORIAL •
December 1, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011201-88631725.htm

The directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank wrapped up a meeting last weekend with a call for more funds for their respective behemoth institutions. Before considering more handouts, it's time the United States began seriously reconsidering how it awards the lion's share of its aid and started directing taxpayer money where it is best spent.

Grass-roots, micro-lending institutions are most effective in getting funds to individuals and away from governments, where U.S. aid is often "taxed" through graft. This reorientation of U.S. aid won't occur overnight, and surely foreign governments, especially corrupt administrations that have been able to perpetuate their power by receiving foreign aid, will protest. But as the United States increasingly aids smaller, non-governmental organizations rather than the bureaucratic giants, the world will have little choice but to accept America's new approach to international giving.

In doing so, it is crucial that Americans also realign their philosophy towards global poverty reduction. In wake of the September 11 tragedy, this goal has never looked so attractive. But unfortunately, U.S. aid alone can't trounce the bad government policies that perpetuate poverty around the world. Micro-lending, however, which provides small amounts of credit to the poor to launch very small businesses, helps not only to transform lives, but gradually empowers populations. And an empowered population is better able to hold its government accountable.

Naturally, a micro-loan that allows a poor farmer to buy a tractor, or an urban laborer to buy three sewing machines and hire two workers doesn't sound as awe inspiring as a big-ticket pipeline or highway project. But these types of grass-roots initiatives often have the most profound, if incremental, impact. "When you work with that type of aid infrastructure, the poor are more directly affected and poverty is more likely to be alleviated," said Ian Vazquez, director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute.

The irksome problem for the IMF and World Bank is that they can't justify their expansive budgets with these kinds of low-cost projects. And after these institutions' lack of transparency and effectiveness initially came to light, the debate on foreign aid began increasingly shifting towards the small organizations that focus on grass-roots and micro-credit projects, said Kay Treakle, managing director of the Bank Information Center, which monitors the impact of multilateral lending. "That kind of got derailed when the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank and all these institutions said: 'Oh wait! We can be more accountable. We can be more transparent.' "

The international banks have sought to highlight their micro-enterprise projects as one of their main pursuits, when, in fact, these initiatives are a tiny portion of their overall expenditure. They "often trot out micro-lending as one of the main things they do in order to justify funding for other projects," said Mr. Vazquez.

Grameen Bank, a micro-lender in Bangladesh, is often held out as a promising model for this type of initiative. And Oxfam International, an international network of organizations that are based in the United Kingdom, is actively involved in grass-roots development. In Latin America, the Foundation for International Community Assistance, or Finca, has also been active in micro-lending. The administration should increasingly direct funding to these types of organizations.

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill correctly stated last week: "It's time for us to become determined and purposeful about making a difference in living conditions by increasing real economic development and not just more giving." Certainly, global prosperity is in the national interest, now more than ever. And this must start by giving person to person.

----

Commentary
Acute lesson in political science

Michelle Malkin
December 1, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011201-83189992.htm

A week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, four Muslim students claimed that their public college professor called them "Nazis," "murderers" and "terrorists." The media ate up the story. Muslim activists rallied. School officials panicked.

The college administration kicked the political science professor - Kenneth Hearlson of Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Calif. - off campus without a hearing, placed him on paid leave and then launched an investigation that remains unfinished.

Now, 11 weeks later, the Muslim students' story is unraveling. But the professor is still sitting at home, barred from teaching because he upset some hypersensitive young people with overactive imaginations. Here's what the fuming Muslim students said happened two months ago:

C.C. Abdelmuti, a 20-year-old student in the group, told the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 22 that Mr. Hearlson "accused us of killing 5,000 people."

"He was saying lots of horrible things," added Zayneb Saidi in the same article. "'You're terrorists, murderers and rapists.'"

Also quoted in the Sept. 22 piece: Mooath Saidi, an 18-year-old sophomore and Zayneb's brother, who claimed Mr. Hearlson said: "'It was you who flew the planes into the World Trade Center. You are a terrorist.'" He needs to get fired, if not prosecuted, for what he did."

Mr. Abdelmuti was quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education on Sept. 25: "He was telling class that Muslims shouldn't be trusted and shouldn't have any rights."

Mooath Saidi repeated his assertions in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 30: "He pointed at me and called me a terrorist. I stand by what I have believed from day one. He should be fired."

Mooath Saidi again reiterated his allegations to the Orange County Register on Nov. 14: "He pointed in my direction and said, 'You drove two planes into the World Trade Center. You killed 5,000 people. You are a terrorist.'"

Mr. Hearlson acknowledges that the weekly lecture he gave during his Sept. 18 introductory government course was impassioned. He is, after all, a passionate man - a 57-year-old conservative former Marine who grew up poor in rural Kansas, became a born-again Christian and began teaching nearly two decades ago. Mr. Hearlson "pushes hot buttons to make students think," he told me, but he says he has never made personal attacks against anyone during class. "I just tell the truth."

The evidence supports Mr. Hearlson, not the hysterical Muslim students.

A transcript of the taped discussion reveals that Mr. Hearlson never accused any of his students of being terrorists. He did criticize the Clinton administration's half-hearted attempt to retaliate against Osama bin Laden in 1998 ("he didn't make much of an attempt to get him"). And he unabashedly praised the resurgence of patriotism and religion after the attacks ("I've never seen so many flags in my lifetime. God all of a sudden came alive in America, didn't he?").

Mr. Hearlson also repeatedly asked why Arab states refused to condemn terrorism against the United States and Israel unequivocally. And challenging the politically correct mantra that all Muslims are peaceful, he mentioned an incident in which Muslim students plastered hate flyers across his campus last year. "I am not going to lie to you," he told the class, "I am not going to tell you they were nice people."

The only other time during the lecture that Mr. Hearlson used the word "you" came when he discussed Arab attacks on Israel dating back to 1948. When a student questioned what he meant, Mr. Hearlson clarified that he was referring to Arab nations, not any student personally. Even a New York Times reporter concluded after hearing the taped discussion that "while Mr. Hearlson's criticism of Muslim nations was unrelenting, the claims of personal attacks were exaggerated or fabricated."

Alan Charles Kors, president of the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which supports Mr. Hearlson, says: "This is a case that should concern not only the citizens of California, but all individuals who care about liberty and academic freedom." He's right.

If higher education is an enlightened search for truth, these misguided Muslim students have chosen a dead end paved with lies. They want Mr. Hearlson "prosecuted" and "taught a lesson" for offending them. It is the students who need to be schooled. In the United States, we don't punish professors for speaking their minds.

Michelle Malkin is a nationally syndicated columnist.


-------- activists

MLK On War

Saturday, December 1, 2001
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42422-2001Nov30?language=printer

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons are as topical today as when he preached them 40 years ago, Mervyn A. Warren writes in his book "King Came Preaching." Warren quotes these excerpts on contemporary themes:

"In the terrible midnight of war, men have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace, but the church has often disappointed them. What more pathetically reveals the irrelevancy of the church in present-day world affairs than its witness regarding war? In a world gone mad with arms buildup, chauvinistic passions and imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or remained appallingly silent. . . . A weary world, pleading desperately for peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war." ...

----

[I include this under "activists" because it is noteworthy that Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka fined herself one month's salary while punishing those who worked for her for corruption. Very few politicians have that much intelligence. et]

Japanese Official Fires Envoys

WORLD In Brief
Saturday, December 1, 2001; Page A22
Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42492-2001Nov30?language=printer

TOKYO -- Announcing the results of a corruption probe in her own ministry, Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said she fired two diplomats and disciplined 326 others, including herself.

Tanaka said at a news conference that 328 ministry officials were found to have appropriated more than $1.6 million in government money for personal spending over 6 1/2 years. Although she assumed control of the ministry in April, long after much of the alleged misconduct occurred, Tanaka said she would take a one-month salary cut.

Tanaka said a consul general serving in India and another in Brazil were fired after admitting to spending about $30,000 each for personal use. They were ordered to return the money. Three other diplomats who admitted pocketing $2,400 each were suspended for 15 days. The remaining officials were subjected to penalties ranging from a warning to a 20 percent pay cut for three months.


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