------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
FDA Urges Pill to Combat Radiation
U.S. Changes Its Stance on Radiation Exposure Regimen
DOE Amends Rules on Nevada Nuclear Waste Site
Group: Taiwan Researching Missile
Suicide bombers trying chemical devices - officials
Livermore scientists track airborne toxins
Moscow, U.S. close to deal on nuclear-arms cuts
U.S. Seeks Deal on Arms Cuts by Summer
U.S. and Russia to Complete Talks on an Arms Control Pact
Bush About to Announce Withdrawal From ABM Treaty
New US uranium enrichment plant would need NRC okay
Nuclear Industry Faces Jitters
Critics: Nuclear Cleanup Falls Short
Nevada Nuke Waste Site Challenged
Congress May Create Panel to Close Military Bases
Bush Talk to Mark Attacks on 11th

MILITARY
Crowds Scuffle for Food in Kabul
Al-Qaeda announce surrender in Tora Bora: Afghan commander
Afghanistan's Next Leader
Eastern Alliance Sets Ultimatum for Al Qaeda Surrender
Witnesses Recount Taliban Dying While Held Captive
Team in Somalia May Be Planning U.S. Strikes
Milosevic Hears Genocide Allegations
Hopkins researchers' filter foils bioterror
FARC said to kill four kidnap victims
Authorities Find Ariz. Drug Tunnel
Iraq, Iran resuming talks on war captives
Israeli Missiles Injure Target and Kill Boys in West Bank
Hezbollah still terrorist
The Russian face in Riga
New Zealand Retires Air Force Jets
Bin Laden wife airs suicide strategy
Vieques Mayor Released From Prison
Dissident protests Russia, China ties to U.S. war
Group: Taiwan Researching Missile
Accepting Peace Prize, Annan Speaks of 'New Insecurity'
The U.N.'s Strangelove
U.S. acknowledges link between Gulf war, disease
The military's new generation

POLICE / PRISONERS
Computer Sciences Wins Defense Contract
Closer Look at Exports Urged
Judges not cleared for cases
More reassuring than alarming
Ex-LAPD Officer Sentenced to Prison
Officer gets 10 years for siccing dog on suspects
Executions in U.S. down by 13 in 2000
Death Penalty, Location Are Linked in Va. Study
Bush: Next Phase of War Focuses on 'Rogue States'
Tape of Bin Laden Discussing Attacks to be Released
Pope Says Self Defense Legitimate Against Terror
Suspect Is Indicted as 20th Hijacker

ENERGY AND OTHER
UK to change renewables rules to overcome planning
UK minister opens wind farm, gives OK for another
UK Kielder wind power court case delayed
Scottish to build 100 megawatt wind farm
Scientists Warn of Climate Change
WHO Lands in Africa to Fight Ebola
Irradiating Mail Has Downside
Activists Want Monitoring of UN Refugee Pact

ACTIVISTS
Mitchell Plan
Court Will Review Right to Secret Data
Spread of AIDS in Rural China Ignites Protests
Administration Lambasted on ABM Treaty Withdrawal



-------- NUCLEAR

FDA Urges Pill to Combat Radiation
Inexpensive Iodine Drug Known to Cut Risk of Thyroid Cancer From Fallout

By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22582-2001Dec10?language=printer

Spurred by fears of nuclear terrorism, the Food and Drug Administration yesterday called for widespread use of a cheap, readily available pill soon after an attack to protect people against thyroid cancer.

The FDA issued new guidelines for the use of a drug called potassium iodide. They break relatively little medical ground. But by emphasizing the proven usefulness of the drug in countering radioactive fallout, the FDA's action is likely to feed a growing discussion in the country about how broadly the drug should be stockpiled.

Authorities have known for decades that taking potassium iodide before or right after exposure to radioactive fallout can prevent some ill effects, especially in young children, who are most vulnerable to thyroid cancer.

The revised FDA guidelines use studies done after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster to recommend new dosage levels for various groups, replacing guidelines based on studies of the atomic bombings in Japan in 1945.

Only a handful of states maintain stockpiles of the drug. The Department of Health and Human Services is studying whether to add potassium iodide to a national stockpile it maintains of drugs and supplies to counter large-scale terror strikes.

Some groups, noting that the drug costs as little as 10 cents a dose in bulk, have called for even broader stockpiling -- for instance, in all schools and homes that could be affected by the bombing of a nuclear plant.

"All the studies I've seen have shown that it does provide protection, particularly for young children," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group. "Considering its price, it just seems like a no-brainer. We should have been doing this a long time ago."

He cautioned, however, that potassium iodide protects against only one type of radiation exposure and is no substitute for preventing attacks or for evacuating people after an attack.

Some state officials are skeptical of stockpiling the drug for the same reason, saying their main focus would be on moving people out of the path of a fallout plume and preventing contamination of the food supply. Alabama, Arizona, Maine and Tennessee are the only states with large stockpiles of potassium iodide.

A handful of states maintain smaller stockpiles, and many others have begun discussing the issue since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, realizing that nuclear plants could be prime targets. The FDA emphasized yesterday that potassium iodide should be taken within hours of a radiation release and this "requires a ready supply" of the drug.

The biology works this way: The one organ in the body that uses a lot of iodine is the thyroid gland, which produces substances that help regulate metabolism. Iodine is such an important nutrient that a form of it is routinely added to salt to help prevent deficiencies.

Iodine is not normally radioactive. However, one of the prime consequences of nuclear attack or accident would be the release of radioactive forms of the element into the air and possibly the food supply. The radioactive iodine could concentrate in the thyroid glands of exposed people, particularly fast-growing children, elevating their risk of thyroid cancer.

The absorption of radioactive iodine can be slowed, however, if exposed people quickly take a large dose of nonradioactive iodine -- "flooding" the thyroid gland with the safe form of the element. Potassium iodide pills are the preferred way to do this. The pills would ideally be taken by anyone who could be exposed to fallout within a few hours of a nuclear-plant bombing or other release of radioactivity.

The FDA emphasized yesterday that the benefits of potassium iodide in the midst of a radiation disaster are clear, and the risks minimal even if people overdose on the drug. Potassium iodide is not a prescription drug, and anybody who wants to can buy it, though most pharmacies don't stock the drug.

The new guidelines call for daily doses of potassium iodide at the following levels for those likely to be exposed to radioactive fallout:

• Infants less than 1 month old: 16 milligrams.

• Children aged 1 month to 3 years: 32 milligrams.

• Children 3 to 18 years old: 65 milligrams.

• Adults, including pregnant and lactating women, and adolescents over 150 pounds: 130 milligrams.

----

NUCLEAR SAFETY
U.S. Changes Its Stance on Radiation Exposure Regimen

New York Times
December 11, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD with ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/politics/11THYR.html?searchpv=nytToday

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - The government sharply changed its stance on drug treatment to prevent thyroid cancer after a nuclear emergency, saying children should be treated at far lower anticipated levels of radiation exposure than previously recommended.

The Food and Drug Administration issued new treatment guidelines today, emphasizing that the benefits of immediate therapy with the drug potassium iodide, also known by its chemical symbol, KI, far outweigh the rare instances of dangerous side effects, particularly in children, who are more likely than adults to develop thyroid cancer from radiation exposure. The drug, which is available over the counter, works by preventing the thyroid gland from taking up radioactive iodine, which can cause cancer.

The agency has been working on the new guidelines since long before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, but those attacks have added an urgency. Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say they have been waiting for the F.D.A. to finish its work so they can begin negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the drug in large quantities, which the commission plans to offer free to states that want to include its use in their emergency plans.

The drug agency stressed that the biggest benefit came from treatment with the drug as soon as an alert is issued, ideally before exposure occurs, a finding that sharply challenged the workability of existing emergency response plans in communities with nuclear plants. Many existing plans provide potassium iodide only for emergency workers.

Implicit in this conclusion was the idea that the drug, to be most effective, should be in communities near power plants, even in household medicine cabinets, so it can be given at the first warning of impending exposure.

"Although we don't make any specific recommendations in this regard, the implication from such a fact is that it needs to be available so they can take it when it's called for,"said Dr. David G. Orloff, the director of the F.D.A. division of metabolic and endocrine drug products.

"Any systems for ensuring availability of KI to the public should recognize the critical importance of KI administration in advance of exposure," the agency said in the new document, which it posted on its Web site today (fda.gov/cder/guidance/ 4825fnl.htm).

Early action is critical because it takes three to four hours for a dose of potassium iodide to affect the thyroid, flushing it with harmless iodine and preventing the absorption of radioactive iodine, officials said.

Public health experts have talked for years about how to make sure the drug is available promptly. Dr. Jacob Robbins, a scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health, said in an interview, "To me, the smart thing to do would be to have it in homes, in blister packs with adhesive backs."

The core conclusion in the document, which is the first revision of the agency's stance on the drug since 1982, was that KI should be available for immediate use to children in harm's way after a radiation release, because the great benefits of prompt treatment decline rapidly as treatment is delayed.

The agency sharply lowered the exposure threshold at which children should be given the drug and replaced two recommended dosages - one for infants under a year old, and one for everyone else - with a list of dosages tailored to age and weight.

It also sharply raised the level of radioactive exposure at which adults over 40 should take the drug, saying that some side effects were more likely in adults and the cancer-preventing benefits less likely.

The new recommendations repeat earlier warnings that people with iodine allergies, which they may recognize as allergies to shellfish, people with kidney failure and people on certain blood-pressure drugs like ACE inhibitors should not take KI. Such people are at risk for excessively high blood levels of potassium, which can cause heart problems.

Historically in the United States, people most at risk for thyroid cancer have included those who had radiation to the head, neck or chest. In the past, radiation was used to treat conditions like acne and enlarged tonsils in young people, a practice that was abandoned.

Since the Three Mile Island accident of March 1979, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reversed itself several times on whether states should have the drug on hand, but in the last two years it has set aside $800,000 to buy stockpiles.

New York State stockpiles KI for emergency workers, like fire and police personnel, and current plans call for administering the pills when the anticipated exposure is 25 rem (a measure of absorbed radiation). A spokesman for the state Emergency Management Office, Donald Maurer, said today that "when the F.D.A. comes out with something like this, we have to take a look at it."

Radioactive iodine is one of many products created when reactors split uranium to make heat. Released from a reactor, it can be absorbed directly by people, where it is naturally concentrated by the body in the thyroid, just as normal iodine is. Or it can settle on grass, where it is eaten by cows and concentrated in their milk; once the milk is drunk, the iodine again goes to the thyroid, where it gives off its radiation over the next few weeks. KI stops that by flooding the thyroid with normal iodine, leaving no room for any more.

-------

DOE Amends Rules on Nevada Nuclear Waste Site

By Eric Pianin and Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22799-2001Dec10?language=printer

The Department of Energy has changed the rules for a proposed permanent nuclear waste storage facility in Nevada so that the government no longer must prove that the site's underground rock formations would prevent radioactive contamination of the environment.

The new rule, which takes effect Friday, permits energy officials to rely on a combination of advanced storage containers and natural geological barriers to satisfy new, rigorous environmental standards for protecting ground water and the atmosphere from the release of dangerous levels of radioactive material.

DOE officials said yesterday they were justified in making the changes based on an extensive review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency, but Nevada's governor and attorney general accused the DOE of lowering standards to win approval for the long-debated Yucca Mountain storage site. They said they plan to challenge the new rules in court.

"The Department should not be evaluating the suitability of the site based on rules that were transparently reconfigured at the eleventh hour because DOE could not meet the statutory demands of Congress nor the scientific recommendations" of other agencies and groups, said Gov. Kenny Guinn (R) and state Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

They and other critics argued that under the changed rules, downgrading the importance of the geological barriers, the nuclear waste repository could be placed just as easily in the basement of DOE headquarters in Washington as in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

In ordering the DOE to begin studying Yucca Mountain as the repository site in 1982, Congress specified that decision should be based primarily on geological characteristics that would ensure that the nuclear waste would be safely isolated for thousands of years. But Congress authorized a subsequent review, and as the government has moved closer to a final decision, significant problems have turned up with the site.

These include earthquake fault lines and areas of loose rock that, instead of acting as a barrier, could actually channel water and spread radioactive material.

Now the DOE is considering an approach that would store the nuclear waste in pellet form in cylindrical casks in a series of parallel tunnels, in the hope that the combination of engineered and geological barriers would provide adequate protection from pollution and meet tough standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency last summer.

"We are basing the decision both on the science of the mountain and the engineered barriers that would be put in place," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department. "We believe we have to rely on both."

But Victor Gilinsky, a Cal Tech-trained physicist and a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged yesterday that the DOE's rule, published Nov. 14, "is a radical and imprudent departure from the current rule . . . and is inconsistent with Congress's mandate for safe and environmentally acceptable disposal of high-level radioactive waste."

In an affidavit he prepared for the state of Nevada, Gilinsky noted that the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act required that detailed geologic considerations "shall be primary criteria for the selection of sites" and that the law imposed separate performance requirements for each of the natural barriers.

"The new rule lumps all of the natural and engineered barriers together and applies only one overall requirement -- that the computer model estimates of the future radiation dose to a population some distance away from the Yucca Mountain site meet the licensing standard for 10,000 years," he said.

Gilinsky's affidavit and the threat of legal action by Nevada officials are the latest in a series of challenges to the administration's aggressive schedule, which calls for Abraham to recommend to President Bush this winter whether to formally designate Yucca Mountain as the site for 78,000 tons of radioactive waste. Abraham is certain to urge Bush to move ahead with the project, according to administration and industry sources.

Industry officials are pressing the administration to move ahead to remove spent reactor fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants because of the vulnerability of temporary storage facilities to terrorist attacks. Administration officials have predicted that the site could be opened as soon as 2010.

But the General Accounting Office, in a recently completed draft report, urged the administration to indefinitely postpone a decision because of uncertainties over the planning, design and cost estimates. The project is widely unpopular in Nevada and has drawn strong opposition from lawmakers and state officials, including Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D) and Guinn.

Some anti-nuclear activists argue that the DOE's new rule would permit Abraham to approve the Yucca Mountain site on the grounds that improved storage systems offset uncertainties about the site's geological sturdiness over the thousands of years that fuel would be in storage.

-------- asia

Group: Taiwan Researching Missile

By WILLIAM FOREMAN
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 11, 2001
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS7GB1K400

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - Taiwan is actively researching a ballistic missile that could strike China, a U.S. think tank says, a weapon that could radically alter the military balance in one of the world's most dangerous hotspots.

The medium-range missile could hit targets 620 miles away, according to the new RAND Corp. study, ``Taiwan's Foreign and Defense Policies: Features and Determinants.''

The Rand study - written by respected researchers Michael Swaine and James Mulvenon - was based on ``interviews in Taiwan'' with unidentified sources.

A Taiwanese Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition he not be named said Tuesday that the island was not researching such a weapon.

The RAND report said the United States would likely detect any testing or deployment of the missiles and could pressure Taiwan to stop the program.

``Policy-makers in Washington should be alerted to the possibility that the program is actually a 'card' to be dealt away in exchange for specific weapons systems or enhanced defense commitments,'' the study says.

Five decades ago, China and Taiwan split amid civil war, and Beijing has repeatedly threatened to attack if the self-ruled island - 100 miles off China's southeast coast - refuses eventual unification or seeks formal independence.

The Taiwanese military has long focused on maintaining a modern arsenal of defensive arms to stop a Chinese invasion. The island has shunned offensive weapons - such as medium-range missiles.

But some defense experts have argued that Taiwan should develop medium-range missiles as a deterrent to a first strike by China. The missiles could also help stop a second or third wave of attacks by Chinese forces.

However, other analysts have argued that if Taiwan was armed with offensive weapons, America and other nations would be less likely to assist the island in a war with China. By maintaining a purely defensive posture, Taiwan would be better able to win the sympathy of other countries if attacked by China, they say.

-------- depleted uranium

Suicide bombers trying chemical devices - officials

Reuters:
11/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13665

JERUSALEM - Israel's Health Ministry said on the weekend that hazardous materials were found in a device detonated by Palestinian suicide bombers last week and officials believe it was a crude attempt at a chemical weapon.

Boaz Lev, the ministry's director-general, told Reuters there were "traces of a variety of chemical compounds" found in the remains of a bomb tested in a police laboratory after last week's attacks in a Jerusalem cafe district.

"Whether this was deliberate or not, we don't know," Lev said.

"A variety of materials can be used. Your imagination can lead you to anything you want and unfortunately they (the bombers) have an imagination."

An Israeli official confirmed one of the bombs used in the Jerusalem attacks had been "immersed in some kind of chemical such as pesticide".

The official said Palestinian bombers had apparently recently experimented with their explosive devices in order "to maximise the effect" by spreading hazardous materials in the vicinity of the blast.

A police spokesman said: "Since 1994 we have known of a couple of incidents in which amounts of pesticides were found in the bombs." But he added it was only "very few cases".

Eleven people were killed in a double suicide bombing and a car bomb in central Jerusalem last Saturday in attacks claimed by the militant Islamic group Hamas in revenge for Israel's killing of Hamas's military leader.

Giving weight to the reports of an attempted chemical attack, hazardous materials experts were sent to the scene of a suicide bombing near Haifa on the weekend, in which at least eight people were hurt.

An Israeli security source said because chemical traces were found in the Jerusalem bombing, hazardous materials crews would be sent to all bomb blasts in future to check whether the devices contained chemicals.

Lev said, however, that officials were not overly concerned about the possibility of non-conventional bombs.

He said the bombs generally used by Palestinian attackers - which are packed with nails - were already deadly enough when detonated in crowded places.

Scores of people have been killed in suicide bombings in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that erupted in September 2000 after peace talks froze.

Over the past year, Arafat has repeatedly accused Israel of using depleted uranium weapons and poison gas against Palestinians. Israel has denied the allegations.

-------- terrorism

Livermore scientists track airborne toxins
PROGRAM ALLOWS EXPERTS TO WARN PEOPLE AND MOVE THEM OUT OF HARM'S WAY

BY GLENNDA CHUI
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/scitech/docs/center11.htm

In a tranquil gray room in Livermore, computers hum, Christmas lights twinkle and scientists wait for the next deadly thing that could waft through the air -- whether radiation, volcanic ash, toxic chemicals or germs spread by terrorists.

If the wind can blow it around, the experts here at the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center can track it, alerting people to move out of harm's way.

During the past two decades, this little-known center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has predicted the paths of radioactive releases from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, ash from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines and towering clouds of black smoke from mountains of old tires that caught fire in the Central Valley.

The Sept. 11 attacks have brought a new urgency to this work, said Jim Ellis, who directs the center: ``There's much more interest in it now.''

When the center opened, its primary job was to forecast the routes of radioactive releases, whether from power plant accidents or nuclear attack. Its first challenge was delivered two days before it was formally scheduled to open, with the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. ``We worked that around the clock for two weeks,'' Ellis said.

Today, NARAC is electronically connected to more than 20 facilities run by the departments of Energy and Defense, and it assists agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the event of an emergency.

There are hundreds of other computer models doing similar work, run by private companies, air pollution districts and other agencies, Ellis said.

But none is as sophisticated as the one in Livermore, which takes in detailed weather data from around the globe and feeds them into a three-dimensional model that portrays exactly how the layers of wind are blowing -- and how the winds will shift, if conditions change.

It makes adjustments for factors such as mountains that block wind to canyons that channel it. And it understands that wind is not a monolithic force, but consists of as many as 30 layers. Some blow along the surface of the ground; others are 15 miles up, where powerful rivers of air known as jet streams rush along at hundreds of miles per hour and powerfully influence weather.

The sheer number of available computer models could lead to confusion in the event of a major terrorist attack, because they might predict different paths for a deadly emission, Ellis said.

So, he said, there is now talk of creating a single, national computer model whose forecasts would be considered definitive. In the event of a release, workers in the field would use laptop computers to interact with the model, feeding it data and drawing on the expertise of people back at the lab to create the most accurate picture of what is happening in a disaster.

Model for germs

NARAC has also been developing a model to predict, in the event of a bioterrorist attack, how germs that have settled to the ground might be kicked up and re-suspended, exposing people to a second round of danger.

Because so many factors can influence the movement of microbes, such forecasting is difficult, Ellis said. Nevertheless, he anticipates that the new model will be ready to go by the end of next year, adding a layer of sophistication to the center's forecasts.

The center has roots in the 1960s, when scientists in the Department of Energy's now-defunct Plowshare Program were trying to figure out if nuclear explosions could be harnessed for peaceful projects -- say, excavating canals and harbors. This would have required predicting the path of the radioactive material lofted into the atmosphere by the explosion, said physicist Ronald L. Baskett, operations leader of the center, who wrote an account of its history two years ago in the lab newsletter.

The Plowshare Program never got off the ground. But the idea of tracking atmospheric releases seemed like a good one. So in the 1970s, scientists lobbied for the creation of a center for tracking all kinds of plumes.

Tracking plumes

NARAC has now been put on alert or responded to more than 160 incidents. It predicted the path of smoke from hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells and fields that had been torched by Iraqi troops during the Persian Gulf War. It forecast the spread of radioactive plumes from nuclear weapons tests conducted by China. And it stood by as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched spacecrafts to Jupiter and Saturn with radioactive generators on board, in the event that radiation particles were released during a launch accident.

Here in the Bay Area, the center has simulated two types of terrorist attacks. One involved a truck explosion at the Bay Bridge toll plaza that released chlorine gas; the other, a release of sarin nerve gas from an airplane flying over San Francisco Bay.

For each of these scenarios, NARAC predicted the path of the plume and within minutes notified the Navy's command ship USS Coronado, so the ship's medical staff would know where to deploy emergency workers.

The center was quiet last week, as it is most of the time. Computer monitors were draped with festive holiday lights and tinsel. Two staff members stared at the screens and tapped at their keyboards.

Even in times of calm, Ellis said, the staff keeps busy -- planning responses to future disasters or analyzing past ones.

``We're like the fire department here -- polishing our trucks, ready to go for when it happens,'' he said. ``Fortunately, it doesn't happen often.''

Contact Glennda Chui at gchui@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5453.

-------- treaties

Moscow, U.S. close to deal on nuclear-arms cuts

December 11, 2001
By Tom Raum
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011211-8470536.htm

MOSCOW - Russia and the United States are near agreement on drastic cuts in long-range nuclear arsenals but remain at odds over a U.S. missile-defense shield, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the arms-reduction deal could be ready for the next summit between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, tentatively scheduled for next spring in Moscow.

But the disagreement over missile defense is so deep that Russia is bracing for a potential U.S. withdrawal from the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Mr. Ivanov told a joint news conference with Mr. Powell at the Kremlin.

"The positions of the sides remain unchanged," Mr. Ivanov said.

Despite the missile-defense impasse, both diplomats were upbeat about prospects for wrapping up a deal to reduce nuclear warheads.

Mr. Powell said he was taking to Mr. Bush a Russian recommendation on arms cuts that responded to the American president's announcement last month that the United States would cut its nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, from just under 6,000 warheads now to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Mr. Powell, who also met with Mr. Putin during his Moscow stay, did not disclose specifics. But a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on Mr. Powell's plane, said the Russian recommendation was in the same ballpark as the Bush announcement.

Mr. Ivanov said Russia prefers to see the reductions presented in treaty form. Mr. Bush has opposed such a move in the past, suggesting that the reductions should be put on less formal grounds.

But Mr. Powell told reporters that both countries "recognize the need for a codification of the new levels we're going to. It might be in the form of a treaty, or some other way of codifying it."

"With respect to what that agreed lower level will be, we're very close," Mr. Powell said.

Mr. Powell later flew to Germany and met with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. They discussed the makeup of the international peacekeeping force that would go into Afghanistan. Germany, Britain and Turkey all have offered to take major roles in the force.

At a joint news conference with Mr. Powell in Berlin, Mr. Schroeder praised the arms-control progress by the United States and Russia. "If this can be nailed down in the form of a treaty, better still," the German leader said.

In Moscow, Mr. Powell, Mr. Putin and Mr. Ivanov discussed the new violence in the Middle East, the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, trade and the conflict in Chechnya. But few issues seem as difficult for the two countries to resolve as the dispute over Mr. Bush's plan for a missile-defense shield.

Russia does not want to disturb the ABM Treaty, the Cold War-era pact that bars missile-defense systems like the one the Bush administration wants to build. Mr. Ivanov said Russia views the ABM pact as "the key element of the entire treaty system of providing strategic stability in the world."

----

U.S. Seeks Deal on Arms Cuts by Summer
Pact With Russia Could Be Reached Without an Agreement on Missile Defense

By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22585-2001Dec10?language=printer

BERLIN, Dec. 10 -- The Bush administration is aiming to reach a written agreement with Russia over deep cuts in nuclear weapons by the middle of next year even if the two sides fail to close a deal allowing the United States to proceed with testing of a missile defense system, U.S. officials said today.

After a meeting in Moscow between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Russian President Vladimir Putin, senior officials from both countries reported making progress toward an agreement reducing each side's long-range nuclear warheads by about two-thirds. They said the two governments intend to sign an agreement when President Bush visits the Russian capital, no later than next summer. No date for that trip has been set.

Though Russia did not announce precisely how far it was willing to cut into its nuclear stockpile, U.S. officials said they received a clear idea of Moscow's intended level during the private meetings today.

"With respect to what the agreed new lower level will be, we're very close," Powell said when asked by reporters whether he had been informed of the limit Russia would propose. "It's a matter of me reporting back to President Bush with what I heard today before being able to say anything more and make it public."

Putin told Bush last month that Moscow intended to reduce its arsenal by about two-thirds from its current level of about 6,000 warheads. Bush has already said he would cut the U.S. stockpile, with no more than 6,000 warheads, to between 1,700 and 2,200.

A deal over slashing offensive nuclear stockpiles would mark the first major strategic weapons agreement between Washington and Moscow in years. But it could come without comparable progress on Bush's top strategic priority: an understanding with Russia that would allow the United States to proceed with the testing of a missile defense system, which is now limited by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.

A senior State Department official said today that the United States would be willing to reach a written agreement on reducing the nuclear arsenals during Bush's visit to Moscow even if the two sides have not reached an understanding on missile defense. The U.S. willingness to put the agreement into writing comes in response to Russian requests.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, speaking at a news conference with Powell after the Kremlin meeting, said the ABM issue had been taken up at the talks "but the positions of the sides remain unchanged." The Russians have been more eager to reach an agreement on cutting offensive weapons than on missile defense.

The Bush administration has argued that the ABM Treaty should be scrapped so the United States can build a missile shield capable of defending against attacks from such "states of concern" as Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Russia, however, says the treaty remains essential to maintaining stability between the nuclear powers.

Powell acknowledged there were still "disagreements with regard to missile defense and the ABM Treaty and we will continue working on the whole strategic framework, both offense and defense, in the months ahead."

Russia has sought mutual reductions in both countries' nuclear stockpiles in large part because Moscow can no longer afford to maintain its existing arsenal. The Bush administration has also welcomed cuts in the number of warheads. Powell and Ivanov today spoke of the need for a written agreement on the proposed reductions and measures.

"The main thing is that there is an understanding expressed by both sides that these reductions need to be embodied in some form of treaty formalization, and during the negotiations we will decide what form it takes," Ivanov said.

----

U.S. and Russia to Complete Talks on an Arms Control Pact

December 11, 2001
By PATRICK E. TYLER
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/international/europe/11DIPL.html?searchpv=nytToday

MOSCOW, Dec. 10 - Russia and the United States said today that they had agreed to complete negotiations on a new strategic arms control accord that could codify a significant reduction in offensive weapons - to about 2,000 weapons each - even if they do not reach agreement on missile defenses.

After meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said for the first time that the accord might take the form of a treaty, something the Bush administration has resisted in its quest to act unilaterally in structuring the American nuclear arsenal for the future.

Secretary Powell and the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said at a Kremlin news conference that they were under instructions from both presidents to prepare the arms control accord and have it ready for signing when President Bush makes a state visit to Moscow in the middle of next year.

Both Secretary Powell and Mr. Ivanov agreed, by contrast, that they had made no progress on the thorny issue of missile defenses as the United States continues to press forward with plans for a series of tests next spring that would violate the terms of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

The envisioned accord on reducing nuclear arms would include significant provisions borrowed from the Start I and Start II treaties to ensure that each side was informed of the capabilities and deployments of the other side's nuclear forces, Secretary Powell said.

"Both of our presidents have charged us to finish this work as soon as possible," Secretary Powell said, "and find ways to formalize this agreement at lower levels of strategic offensive numbers and to try to get the work concluded in time" for a Moscow summit.

"Both of us recognize the need for there to be a codification of the new levels, and we will be discussing the form that will take," he added. "It might be the form of a treaty or some other way of codifying it."

Mr. Ivanov echoed those remarks, saying, "There is an understanding expressed by both sides that these reductions need to be imported into some treaty formulation and here in the negotiations, we will decide which form it will take."

Last month, after Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush met in Crawford, Tex., Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said pointedly that while the Russians had spoken of the need for a treaty, the American side had not.

Secretary Powell's remarks today suggested that a treaty might be necessary if any new accord that set limits on the size of the nuclear arsenals was to extend beyond the term in office of both leaders.

The announcement today appeared to affirm that Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin have moved well beyond the testy oratory that characterized the opening months of the Bush administration.

Moreover, Mr. Bush appears to have modified his initial approach to arms control after developing a personal relationship with Mr. Putin, a relationship that has been bolstered by cooperation with the Russians after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In the meetings in Moscow today, Secretary Powell said he expected to receive a detailed description from the Russians of strategic arms reductions Moscow was willing to make. The United States has said it will reduce its arsenal of about 6,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Mr. Putin has spoken of his desire to go as low as 1,500 warheads, which would save Moscow from having to make major investments in new strategic missiles to replace the Soviet-era multiple-warhead rockets reaching the end of their service life in the next decade.

A State Department official said that the Russians did not provide a numerical breakdown on how they planned to reduce their offensive nuclear forces today.

"Maybe they are still editing the draft," the official said, adding, "It is up to them to announce it when they want to but I don't think we have any concern about that." The administration knows, he said, that the numbers are going to be in the ballpark of the American reductions.

A State Department official traveling with Secretary Powell said the agreement on reductions in offensive weapons could go forward despite the deadlock over missile defenses.

The official indicated that Russian officials wanted the United States to engage in detailed discussions on each level of missile-defense testing, something that Washington fears would amount to giving Moscow a veto over tests if the Kremlin deems a particular test would violate, even nullify, the ABM treaty.

"We have always been willing to explain our testing program," the State Department official said, adding, "That is different than giving them approval for any particular test."

Mr. Ivanov said today that Russia "has never put any prerequisites or conditions with regard to the ABM treaty," which he said still represented "the key element of the whole treaty system of providing strategic stability in the world."

The Russian view that the ABM treaty is the cornerstone of strategic arms control is largely shared by Washington's allies in Europe.

While in Moscow, Secretary Powell also met with leaders of the Russian Parliament, whose members wanted to know whether the intensification of Russian-American relations during the antiterror campaign in Afghanistan would disappear after the United States achieved its objectives.

An American official who was present quoted Secretary Powell as replying that "what happened on Sept. 11 didn't start something, it accelerated" an improvement in relations that "President Bush wants to make permanent."

In his talks with Mr. Ivanov, Secretary Powell raised the sensitive issue of Russia's arms sales to Iran and Moscow's assistance in building the first nuclear power station in Iran at Bushehr.

The State Department official said Washington acknowledged Russia's right to make certain conventional arms sales to Iran, but was concerned about sales of sophisticated weaponry and nuclear assistance that might advance Iran's secret efforts to build nuclear weapons.

"Our problem is that the legitimate nuclear programs have been used as a cover for a whole lot of other transfers and training that we think is dangerous in a country that we see is trying to develop nuclear weapons," the American official said.

--------

Bush About to Announce Withdrawal From ABM Treaty

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Missile-Defense.html?searchpv=aponline

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will soon give Russia notice that the United States is withdrawing from the 1972 nuclear treaty that bans testing of missile defense systems, U.S. government officials said Tuesday.

He will announce the decision in the next several days, effectively invoking a clause in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that requires the United States and Russia to give six months' notice before abandoning the pact.

Initial White House plans called for announcing the decision Thursday, but officials cautioned that date could change. The four government officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

With the decision, Bush takes the first step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that he says will protect the United States and its allies, including Russia, from missiles fired by rogue nations.

Bush has said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks heightened the need for such a system.

Russia and many U.S. allies have warned Bush that withdrawing from the pact might trigger a nuclear arms race. Critics of the plan also question whether an effective system can be developed without enormous expense.

Conservative Republicans have urged Bush to scuttle the ABM, rejecting proposals to amend the pact or find loopholes allowing for tests.

The president defended his push for a missile shield during a national security speech Tuesday at the Citadel in South Carolina.

``Last week we conducted another promising test of our missile defense technology,'' Bush said. ``For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work. In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy.''

``America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century,'' he said.

According to Bush administration officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin had assured Bush during their October talks in Washington and Crawford, Texas, that U.S.-Russian relations would not suffer even if Bush pulled out of the treaty.

They said Bush's decision reflects a desire by the Pentagon to conduct tests in the next six months or so that would violate the ABM.

The decision came as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Moscow, said Russia and the United States are near agreement on drastic cuts in long-range nuclear arsenals, but remain at odds over a U.S. missile defense.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the arms-reduction deal could be ready for the next summit between Bush and Putin, tentatively scheduled for Moscow next spring.

But the U.S.-Russian disagreement over missile defense is so deep that Russia is bracing for the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Ivanov told a joint news conference with Powell at the Kremlin.

``The positions of the sides remain unchanged,'' Ivanov said.

Despite the missile-defense impasse, both Ivanov and Powell were upbeat about prospects for wrapping up a deal to reduce nuclear warheads.

Powell said he was taking Bush a Russian recommendation on arms cuts that responds to Bush's announcement last month that the United States would cut its nuclear arsenal over the next decade by two-thirds, from just under 6,000 warheads now to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Powell did not disclose specifics. But a senior State Department official, briefing reporters on Powell's plane, said the Russian recommendation was in the same ball park as the Bush announcement.

Ivanov said Russia prefers to see the reductions presented in treaty form. Bush has opposed such a move in the past, suggesting that the reductions should be put on less formal grounds.

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

New US uranium enrichment plant would need NRC okay

Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
December 11, 2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13648/story.htm

WASHINGTON - The U.S. subsidiary of European consortium Urenco Ltd. may file a preliminary application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in early 2002 to build a new $1 billion U.S. uranium enrichment facility, a company executive said yesterday.

The plant, estimated to cost $1 billion, would be only the second to operate in the United States, converting raw uranium to fuel used by nuclear power plants to make electricity. Urenco's plan would dovetail with the Bush administration's national energy policy for the U.S. to build more nuclear power plants.

If built, the Urenco plant would also stir competition in the U.S. enrichment market now dominated by USEC Inc. subsidiary United States Enrichment Corp. USEC's Paducah, Kentucky, plant supplies up to 70 percent of U.S. material.

Paducah has boilerplate capacity of about 11 million units of uranium annually - enough to power about 109 nuclear plants for a year. But yearly production often comes in below that figure, USEC said.

"We don't have domestic production capacity to meet all U.S. demand," said Charles Yulish, a USEC spokesman. "This is a competitive market."

It takes about 100,000 units to power typical 1,000 megawatt nuke plant for a year, according to the USEC website. There are 103 active U.S. nuclear plants, and a megawatt powers about 1,000 homes. Nuclear plants produce about 20 percent of all U.S. electricity.

Preliminary plans call for Urenco's plant, which has no designated site, to produce about 3 million units of uranium each year, said Peter Lenny, president of Urenco Inc., the U.S. arm of the British, Dutch and German consortium.

"This is in the very preliminary stage," Lenny said in a Reuters interview. "We are very optimistic that these applications and steps will be taken."

Urenco would partner with Duke Energy Corp. , Exelon Corp. and possible other firms to build the plant, he said.

Lenny, along with Urenco Ltd. Chief Executive Klaus Messer and executives from Exelon, met with NRC officials last week to discuss the approval process, Lenny said.

After an internal review, Urenco could make a preliminary filing with NRC in early 2002, with a site-specific application later in the year, he said. The plant could be operational within the next five years, he said.

NRC approval would likely take several years, an agency spokeswoman said. "It would take roughly three years from the date of the application to the date of the decision on whether or not to issue a license," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said.

NRC's review would focus on safety and environmental impact issues rather than market competition, she said.

FIRMS SEE BENEFIT OF COMPETITION

Duke said it will support the project because it will lead to more competitive suppliers.

"We do feel very strongly ... the need for (uranium enrichment) competition in the U.S.," said Tom Shiel, a Duke spokesman. Duke operates three nuclear plants with seven total reactor units that generate about 7,000 megawatts of electricity.

On Oct. 25, Duke and Exelon executives sent a letter to President George W. Bush stating that a group of U.S. firms is "actively seeking to deploy proven and competitive enrichment technology in the U.S."

USEC has brought anti-dumping charges against Urenco, charging the firm of flooding U.S. markets to suppress prices. The U.S. Department of Commerce could complete its findings on the case on Friday, USEC said.

The same Urenco consortium in 1998 shelved plans to build an enrichment plant in Louisiana because the NRC delayed its approval.

"It took seven years to get through the process and by that time conditions had changed dramatically," Lenny said.

Urenco does not expect a repeat of its earlier problem, Lenny said, because the NRC has a more progressive attitude toward site permitting.

The firm is considering all potential sites, but would prefer to locate the plant on an existing nuclear site, such as the ones in Kentucky and Ohio, he said.

SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES

USEC is the sole executive agent the U.S. government allows to purchase highly enriched uranium from dismantled Russian missiles in a 1993 swords-to-plowshares deal. USEC convert the uranium to low-power fuel and sells it to nuke plants.

USEC has bought about $2 billion worth of Russian weapons-grade uranium, about 5,481 warheads, according to USEC congressional testimony.

USEC's Paducah facility uses gaseous diffusion to boost the radioactive concentration of naturally occurring uranium to 5 percent. It changes uranium hexaflouride into U-235, which powers nuclear reactors.

NRC currently regulates Paducah, USEC said.

Four firms currently control the worldwide market for enriched uranium - USEC, Urenco, along with French-based Eurodif-Cogema and Russian-based Tenex.

(additional reporting by Tom Doggett).

----

Nuclear Industry Faces Jitters

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Jitters.html?searchpv=aponline

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) -- Diana Sidebotham attended her first public hearing as a critic of nuclear power when the Vermont Yankee plant's license application was pending in 1971.

Some 30 years and scores of such forums later, Sidebotham went to yet another one last week at a Brattleboro high school and encountered the biggest crowd she had ever seen at such an event -- more than 500 people.

Worries about nuclear power -- in particular, fears of a terrorist attack on a plant -- have taken on new urgency since Sept. 11.

``Now that a major disaster has occurred, people are beginning to understand that we are vulnerable,'' Sidebotham said.

The new fear is that terrorists will crash a jetliner into a nuclear plant, scattering radiation in a Chernobyl-like disaster.

Around the country since Sept. 11:

-- The Federal Aviation Administration ordered no-fly zones around the nation's nuclear plants for two weeks in October. When a student pilot flew a small plane into airspace near a former nuclear plant in Colorado, two F-16s were scrambled and escorted the aircraft to a landing.

-- National Guardsmen were posted in recent weeks at nuclear plants in several states, and many installations have added private security guards.

-- Governors are clamoring for the federal government to open a long-delayed high-level waste-disposal site and take spent fuel now stored in pools considered more vulnerable to attacks than the reactors themselves.

-- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is co-sponsoring legislation that would make nuclear plant security a federal responsibility.

-- A panel that advises Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland recommended the nation consider arming nuclear plants with air defense systems.

-- Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a doctor, reversed his earlier position and said he wants the state to stockpile potassium iodide, a drug that can protect against one form of radiation.

Defenders of nuclear power have given assurances about security at the nation's 103 reactors.

``There has been no credible threat against any nuclear facility in this country, and if there was, we would be equipped to deal with it,'' Nils Diaz, a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said last month in Florida.

A 1982 Argonne National Laboratory study said it would be possible for a large jetliner to breach a reactor containment vessel and spread radiation. There are also fears that a jet hitting the open-topped pools of highly radioactive waste could also cause a major release of radiation.

At last week's meeting in Brattleboro, Hubert Miller, an NRC regional administrator, said nuclear plants were not designed with an attack by a large passenger jet in mind. But he said the containment vessels that surround reactors are among the strongest buildings in the country.

He repeatedly told the crowd that security at Vermont Yankee is ``robust.''

Some in the audience were skeptical because just the week before, preliminary results were released from a drill Aug. 23 at Vermont Yankee in which the plant failed to repel a mock terrorist attack. Vermont Yankee received the lowest grade in the industry. Improvements have been made since then, officials assured the audience, but they would not give specifics.

In a measure of how jittery people are, a Brattleboro newspaper photographer was detained by Vernon police last month under a 1917 treason law for taking pictures of Vermont Yankee. Prosecutors declined to press charges.

The new wave of concern about nuclear power comes just as the industry's fortunes appeared to be improving. No new U.S. nuclear plant has been ordered since before the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.

But in the couple of years before Sept. 11, several utilities had won license extensions. Nuclear plants that are being sold in the newly deregulated electric market are fetching higher prices. And nuclear power has some supporters in the Bush administration, chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney.

However, the call for a new round of nuclear plant construction has been muted since the September attacks. Instead, the discussion has focused on how to protect reactors and how effective emergency evacuation plans would be in a disaster.

``In Vermont and throughout this country now there is very increased concern about the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to terrorist attacks and the huge consequences that an attack could bring forth,'' said Rep. Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent who organized the Brattleboro meeting and was amazed by the turnout in the town of 12,000.

Sidebotham recalled that when she and other nuclear opponents went before the NRC's predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, in 1971, ``Concerns were raised about the possibility of sabotage at a nuclear plant. It was very much pooh-poohed.''

But Sept. 11, Sidebotham said, ``made the incredible credible.''

Nuclear Regulatory Commission: www.nrc.gov Nuclear Energy Institute: www.nei.org Nuclear Control Institute: www.nci.org

-------- colorado

Critics: Nuclear Cleanup Falls Short

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rocky-Flats-Cleanup.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is spending $7 billion to decontaminate a former nuclear weapons plant in Colorado and turn it into a wildlife refuge. But critics said Tuesday that the cleanup will still leave the soil too polluted.

Legislation before Congress would officially designate the Rocky Flats site, 15 miles northwest of Denver, a wildlife refuge after cleanup is completed.

Rocky Flats is contaminated with tons of plutonium and other radioactive materials, in buildings and in the soil, after years of weapons work. The Energy Department and its civilian contractor will decide early next year how clean the site should become.

A report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research contends that the residual contamination levels being considered by the government are 40 times greater than what would be allowed if the land is used for something other than a wildlife refuge. ``We have no control over what will happen at Rocky Flats in the future,'' said LeRoy Moore, a member of a citizens' group in Boulder, Colo., that is monitoring the cleanup. About 2.5 million people live within 50 miles of the facility.

While the site stretches across more than 6,000 acres, less than 200 acres are contaminated. While much of the soil will be trucked away, acres will remain contaminated.

The report by IEER, a research group long involved in nuclear watchdog activities, contends that designating the area a wildlife refuge will allow the cleanup to be less stringent.

``We don't oppose the designation of this site as a wildlife refuge as a short-term way to keep the public off the site,'' said Arjun Mahkijani, a nuclear physicist who heads the institute in Takoma Park, Md. But he said cleanup standards should take into account other likely uses of the land, including farming or residential development, where people are more likely to become exposed.

Plutonium and other radioisotopes that will be left over in the soil would be expected to remain dangerous for thousands of years, he said. After the cleanup, the report said, the soil should be left with no more than 10 pico-curies of radioactivity per gram of soil, far cleaner than what the Energy Department has been considering.

Jeremy Karpatkin, a spokesman for the Energy Department's Rocky Flats project office, said no decision has been made on the level of residual contamination. Meeting the level sought by Makhijani, though, ``would involve spending hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily for very little risk reduction to the public,'' he said, even taking into account various uses for the land.

Preliminary analysis from the department concludes that soil contamination could be as high as 490 pico-curies. It could still fall within acceptable risk levels of no more than one additional cancer per 10,000 individuals if the land becomes a wildlife refuge.

The maximum contamination allowed would fall to 173 pico-curies if the land became ``rural residential,'' according to the DOE analysis cited by Rocky Flats officials.

Whatever the final standard, ``We will provide a safe and effective cleanup of Rocky Flats,'' said Karpatkin. The government already has spent nearly $3 billion on the cleanup, and will spend another $4 billion over the next five years, he said.

Makhijani said the use of wildlife designations is a way to cut cleanup costs at Rocky Flats and, possibly, at other contaminated weapons sites in South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Washington state.

``This is a foot in the door for relaxation of cleanup standards,'' he said.

-------- us nuc waste

Nevada Nuke Waste Site Challenged

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Nuclear-Waste.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nevada officials will ask the federal courts to block a decision on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, claiming the Energy Department has abandoned a congressional mandate that the site's natural geology must protect the public from radiation.

Instead, the Nevada officials say, the latest design for the waste burial ground, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, relies ``nearly 100 percent'' on engineered barriers to assure the waste's isolation.

The design amounts to ``a glorified waste package'' that could be deemed scientifically suitable ``even if sited on the shores of Lake Tahoe,'' Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

The salvo is only the latest in the increasingly bitter confrontation between Nevada officials and the Bush administration over the proposed nuclear repository. It is supposed to hold thousands of tons of used reactor fuel now kept at nuclear power plants in 31 states. If given the go-ahead, it is scheduled to open in 2010.

Early next year Abraham is expected to recommend to President Bush that the site be approved, although department officials emphasized Tuesday that no decision has been made by Abraham so far.

Robert Loux, the Nevada governor's top adviser on the nuclear waste site, said in an interview that Nevada will file a lawsuit next week, possibly Monday, and ask the court to block Abraham from making a recommendation.

The Nevada lawsuit will argue that the Energy Department has failed to follow the legal requirement that the waste site rely almost exclusively on its natural geology to safeguard the waste, including radioisotopes that will remain highly radioactive for more than 10,000 years.

Instead, the state argues, the Energy Department is incorporating numerous engineered barriers to counter shortcomings in the site's geology.

``The notion that geological features must be the primary form of containment is ... explicitly required'' by the 1982 law that is the basis for developing a nuclear waste repository, Guinn wrote.

Energy Department officials dismissed the state's latest threat of legal action and strongly defended the use of both geology and engineered barriers.

``We're not relying specifically on engineered barriers to meet the regulations. We are looking at the scientific evidence of both the geological and engineered barriers together to determine the site's suitability,'' said DOE spokesman Joe Davis.

``One doesn't outweigh the other. They both work hand in hand,'' said Davis. The department contends that Congress in 1992 cleared the way for use of a ``total system performance'' approach to safeguarding the waste.

But Loux said that Congress also envisioned that the site's geology ``be the primary barrier'' to isolate the waste and that the approach by the Energy Department ``does not even come close to being in compliance the law.''

In recent years, the scientists and engineers working on the Yucca Mountain project have incorporated more manmade protective devices.

For example, after concern was raised about the possible effect of water moving through the rocks, stronger and more corrosion-resistant canisters were added to the design. ``Drip shields'' were added to keep water from hitting the waste once the containers begin to disintegrate hundreds of years from now.

An alternative design spreads out the canisters to deal the impact of high temperatures on surrounding rocks.

These improvements only add to the site's safeguards and do not detract from the fact that ``the mountain performs pretty well'' in protecting the waste, says Marvin Fertel, a vice president for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association.

-------- us politics

Congress May Create Panel to Close Military Bases After '04 Elections

Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Washington Post
Helen Dewar
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22812-2001Dec10.html

Leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Armed Services committees are proposing a compromise to authorize a new round of military base closings but delay any action until after the 2004 presidential and congressional elections.

The proposal, designed to break an impasse that has been stalling the defense authorization bill for fiscal 2002, will go before House-Senate conferees over the next couple of days. Although such recommendations are normally approved, the issue is highly controversial, and the compromise's prospects are unclear.

The Pentagon earlier this year proposed creation of a commission to propose closing and realignment of obsolete bases starting in 2003. The Senate narrowly approved the proposal, but the House declined to act on it. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he would recommend a veto of the defense bill if a base-closing commission is not included.

The Pentagon and its congressional allies argued that, with the closing of outmoded facilities, billions of dollars could be saved for more urgent military needs. Critics contended that, with the nation at war and in recession, base closings should wait.

----

Bush Talk to Mark Attacks on 11th
President to Focus on Role of Military, Fight Against New Threats

By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22632-2001Dec10?language=printer

President Bush will mark the three-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks with an address today on the role of the military in a changed world, emphasizing the importance of meshing intelligence and technology to fight new threats.

In an effort to keep pressure on Iraq and North Korea, Bush plans to discuss the need to protect the nation from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The administration took the unusual step yesterday of e-mailing reporters the text of a national security speech Bush had delivered in 1999, when he was Texas governor and beginning his fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

That address, which focused on military transformation, included a warning about "the threat of biological, chemical and nuclear terrorism -- barbarism emboldened by technology," and noted that such weapons can be delivered "by everything from airplanes to cruise missiles, from shipping containers to suitcases."

To underscore the connection between the two speeches, Bush is returning to the site of the campaign appearance -- The Citadel, the formerly all-male military college in Charleston, S.C.

William J. Taylor, a retired Army colonel who is a professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, said Bush's campaign warning about terrorism could have been inspired by any of numerous widely available studies. "It was out there, so somebody briefed him and he said it and he was right," Taylor said. "Now, the people in the White House are trying to say, 'He told you so.' But you can't blame them for doing that. It is kind of uncanny."

Bush rarely discussed terrorism after the Citadel speech, and did not focus on the subject in presidential debates. But White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the Citadel speech, called "A Period of Consequences," contains "many of the seeds of the actions he has taken today to defend our country."

In that speech, Bush said, "Our first line of defense is a simple message: Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such attacks, our response will be devastating."

In his address to the nation on the night of Sept. 11, he echoed that: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

Bush will fly down to South Carolina after a solemn South Lawn ceremony at 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The White House orchestrated a global commemoration, "The World Will Always Remember," with events planned in more than 86 countries. Electronic billboards in Times Square will flash patriotic messages, and the U.S. and Russian national anthems will be played on the International Space Station.

Last night, Bush and first lady Laura Bush held a Hanukkah reception, and lit a menorah in the White House residence for what he said was the first time in U.S. history. Bush noted that 2001 had been "a year of much sadness in the United States, and for our friends in Israel."

"America and Israel have been through much together," Bush said. "This year we have grieved together. But as we watch the lighting of this second candle of Hanukkah, we're reminded of the ancient story of Israel's courage and of the power of faith to make the darkness bright."


-------- MILITARY

-------- afghanistan

Crowds Scuffle for Food in Kabul
As Winter Cold Deepens, Survival Is Daily Struggle

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22749-2001Dec10.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 -- A sea of people surged toward the barred steel fence, shouting and struggling and crushing each other in desperation. Soldiers beat them back with branches and belts, but their hunger was unstoppable.

In a schoolyard on the other side of the fence were three cargo trucks piled with sacks of wheat. The U.N. World Food Program has been distributing them this week to an estimated 1.3 million Kabul residents after determining that roughly two-thirds of the city's populace does not have enough to eat.

The crowds massing at 16 distribution sites today included war widows in patched veils and unemployed engineers in shabby tweed jackets. There were taxi drivers, teachers and former army officers, reduced to peddling soap or onions for a living.

"My husband was killed by a rocket last year. My children work loading carts, and sometimes I have to beg," said Zarim Gul, 35, who watched through a thick blue veil as her designated sack was heaved onto a wheelbarrow. "Usually we have only potato soup to eat, but we will try to make this last a month."

It has been almost a month since the Taliban Islamic militia abandoned Kabul, a change that has breathed life into the once-cowed capital and filled the air with once-banned music. But most inhabitants still face a grim daily struggle to survive, with the winter cold deepening by the day and little timely relief in sight.

U.N. relief officials have described Afghanistan as the worst humanitarian situation in the world, and Kabul, a city ruined by years of war and crammed with rural refugees from drought and civil conflict, is its most visible symbol.

Because the Taliban fired most public employees after capturing Kabul in 1996 and scared off the meager outside investment in the war-torn country, government agencies barely functioned and most industry shut down long ago. As a result, at least two-thirds of the city's 1.8 million inhabitants have no formal jobs. Virtually no buildings in Kabul have central heating, and many people spend much of their earnings on charcoal and firewood. Meat and milk are plentiful in the markets, but tens of thousands of people are forced to live on bread, potatoes and tea.

International relief agencies, which withdrew their foreign staffs in September and reduced their Kabul operations to a minimum during the U.S. bombing in October and November, are rushing to gear up again, hiring thousands of Afghan workers and trucking tons of food and supplies across the border from Pakistan.

Foreign donors have pledged millions of dollars in aid, and last week's agreement by Afghan political factions to set up an interim government and hold elections within 2 1/2 years should release a multibillion-dollar package of international relief and development assistance.

The United States' top relief official said today that fears of a countrywide famine appear to be lessening and that remote areas far from Kabul actually have begun to receive enough food aid to avert the catastrophe that was feared just a month or two ago.

"It was quite dire before, but since the end of November we've proved we can distribute from across the border into the villages and drive the death rates down and stabilize the situation," said Andrew S. Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. "As long as we get security in the remaining areas, we'll get hold of the situation."

The World Food Program is feeding 7 million Afghans nationwide, bringing more than 55,000 tons of food a month into the country. Two areas of continuing concern, Natsios said, are a displaced persons camp west of Mazar-e Sharif and a camp north of Herat for people fleeing drought. But earlier fears that many would starve this winter in mountainous central Afghanistan and the northern city of Kunduz have been lessened, he said, because food has been delivered to both places recently and more relief convoys are on the road.

But the immediate need here in Kabul is so dire and public frustration so high that relief officials cannot move fast enough to contain it. The World Food Program was unprepared for the aggressive mobs that have thronged the food distribution sites since Saturday, breaking down fences and attacking policemen and aid workers.

"We tried to control the situation, but it was impossible," said one relief official Sunday, after the distributions were suspended for a day to improve security. "People were beaten and punched. I saw two women staff members practically torn apart."

The distribution was more organized today, with soldiers guarding the walled school sites, but in several places unruly crowds broke through, and troops beat them with rifle butts and in one place resorted to shooting.

"There is more than enough wheat to go around, but people are hungry and they do not trust the system, so when they see an opportunity, they grab for it and a crush results," said Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for U.N. agencies here.

In one schoolyard, a jobless engineer named Gul Mohammed, waited patiently for his sack of wheat. Like many Kabul residents, he has not held a real job since the Taliban seized the capital.

"For us, these five years have been a living death," said Mohammed, 43, a father of seven. "The rich people all left, and the rest of us became poor. Now the doors are opening a bit, and we are starting to revive day by day. But if the world doesn't help us, conditions could become worse than the Taliban."

Away from the distribution sites, many destitute Kabul residents are silently enduring the harsh winter in frigid homes. Many are refugees who fled from fighting in rural areas between Taliban forces and the opposition Northern Alliance, and another 10,000 have returned to Kabul this month after fleeing the bombing by the United States. About 1,500 such families have been given sacks of coal and other supplies by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Macrorayan, a dilapidated middle-class apartment complex in central Kabul, was damaged by bombs aimed at a Taliban military base across the street. On Oct. 17, one bomb struck the apartment of Abdul Basir, 34, a jobless policeman, and a wall collapsed on his 3-year-old daughter Sweeta, killing her instantly.

Shivering in a neighbor's apartment this week, Basir and his wife Nazila, a former teacher, wept as they described Sweeta as a bright girl who loved to try on nail polish and sing.

Their own dreams had already been shattered, they said, when they lost their jobs under the Taliban. Basir, a police veteran, has sold vegetables to feed his family; his wife said she was beaten by Taliban police when she went out to fetch water once without wearing a veil.

But despite their fresh grief and cumulative hardships, the couple insisted that they did not blame anyone for Sweeta's death, and that they were grateful to the United States for liberating Afghanistan from Taliban rule.

"We lost our little girl, but we know those pilots did not do this deliberately," Basir said. "I appreciate the American attacks, because they saved our country from barbarism. "

Staff writer Marc Kaufman in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Al-Qaeda announce surrender in Tora Bora: Afghan commander

Tuesday December 11, 2001 8:22 PM
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011211/1/23649.html

Al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden agreed to surrender to militia forces after fierce fighting on the rugged Tora Bora mountain in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, a local commander said.

Haji Mohammad Zaman, one of the three leaders of local groups engaged in a week-long battle against the last al-Qaeda stronghold, told journalists of the surrender following several hours of fighting.

Zaman said the mostly foreign al-Qaeda fighters had agreed to come down from the mountain at 8:00 am (0330 GMT) Wednesday.

"Its finished," Zaman told journalists. "They told us: 'We don't want to fight with you, we surrender'."

It was not immediately clear how many out of the total al-Qaeda forces had surrendered, or whether bin Laden himself was among them.

The report could not be independently confirmed, but an AFP reporter saw that the al-Qaeda forces had lost most of their positions as the militia, backed by US air and ground support, advanced up the rugged mountainside, overrunning enemy positions.

Scores of US special forces troops were reported to have joined the militiamen on the ground overnight for the final battle to eliminate al-Qaeda as a military presence in Afghanistan.

As UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Kabul for talks with leaders who will run Afghanistan after December 22, the United States began marking the third month anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks at home and abroad -- and in outer space.

"We control all of the Melawa and Tora Bora area," military commander Hazrat Ali told reporters earlier, "except for one place," which he described as a "five by five kilometer" (three by three mile) region called Regan.

Asked whether bin Laden could also be in that area, Ali said he was certain "ninety percent he is in that Regan place".

Afghan soldiers on the front lines said US helicopters were involved in overnight air raids and one said he saw about 25 all-terrain vehicles full of US troops pass his position during the night.

They were heading toward Melawa mountain and although some returned during the night, others were still there, he said.

Another Afghan fighter said he saw about 10 US vehicles carrying 60 to 70 US troops during the night after his unit was advised by radio that the Americans were coming.

Most of Tuesday's shelling was concentrated on a wooded zone near the summit of Tora Bora mountain, an AFP reporter saw.

Explosions were heard and clouds of smoke rose from the summit amid the din of assault rifles, machine guns and mortars.

After a night of air and artillery strikes, three Soviet-made T-55 tanks were deployed on a hillside opposite the mountain and a fourth light tank was operating from a valley near Tora Bora village.

US military sources could not confirm the militia's claims, nor say for certain whether bin Laden was in the region, but said they had dropped one of the biggest conventional bombs in their arsenal -- a 7.5-tonne (15,000-pound) "daisy cutter" -- on one of the caves in the Tora Bora complex.

Brahimi met Tuesday in Kabul with foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and defense minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim "about a smooth transition of power" in Afghanistan, the UN envoy's spokesman Ahmed Fawzi told journalists.

A meeting was also possible with Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun royalist who will head the six-month interim administration that takes over on December 22 under an agreement reached by anti-Taliban Afghan groups last week in Bonn.

Karzai is in Kandahar, but said Monday that he expected to go to Kabul soon.

Among the thorniest issues on Brahimi's agenda is the deployment of an international security force in demilitarized Kabul, a key clause of the UN-brokered Bonn accord.

The ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which holds power in Kabul and will hold the key foreign affairs, defense and interior posts in the interim cabinet, insisted Monday that it would not withdraw all its soldiers from the Afghan capital.

It had pledged in the Bonn accord to demilitarize the city before the deployment of UN-mandated peacekeepers.

In the first clear sign of resistance to the proposed force, a top aide to Fahim also said the peacekeepers would not be allowed to patrol Kabul -- a task reserved for Afghan security forces.

"The question of security is of paramount importance for the new interim administration," Fawzi said when asked about the disagreement. "The four groups who were in Bonn, when they signed on to this agreement, made a specific request to the (UN) Security Council to consider early deployment of a security force."

Abdullah did not refer to the controversy when he met Brahimi, saying only: "We are all hopeful, optimistic for seeing a lasting peace and settlement for the conflict in Afghanistan."

----

Afghanistan's Next Leader
Karzai Warns U.S. Not to 'Walk Away,' Pledges Friendship

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23023-2001Dec10?language=printer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 -- Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun commander who has been named leader of Afghanistan's interim government, warned the United States today to never again "walk away from Afghanistan" and promised his country will be "a good friend, a trusted friend and an ally" in the fight against terrorism.

Karzai issued his warning during an interview here in Kandahar, the former citadel of Taliban power that fell Friday to his and other Pashtun militia groups backed by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces coordinating air support. Speaking at his new headquarters -- the sprawling former residence of Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader -- Karzai said he completely backs U.S. efforts to capture or kill members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in Afghanistan.

"We must finish them all, completely burn them out," he told reporters who drove in today from the Pakistani border along a road lined with the charred detritus of war.

Despite earlier efforts to arrange guarantees for Omar's safety -- which were opposed by the Bush administration -- Karzai tonight called the toppled Taliban leader "a fugitive, a criminal" and vowed to put him on trial, clearly realigning himself with U.S. policy.

"Omar has committed crimes, he's killed thousands of people, he's destroyed vineyards, he's butchered my country, he's brought terrorists here," Karzai said as the light from a single gas lamp flickered across his salt-and-pepper beard. "I want him tried."

Tribal elders, sporting elaborately embroidered turbans and tunics, filled the room. Many kissed Karzai's right hand, a Pashtun sign of respect. Several were among 1,800 anti-Taliban political prisoners whom Karzai had ordered released from jail since the fall of Kandahar.

With a bombed-out window and a broken air conditioner as a backdrop, the 43-year-old son of a prominent Afghan politician also pledged to push to disarm the Afghan people after two decades of near-continual warfare. "The gun has to stop ruling the country," said Karzai, whose father was assassinated two years ago.

The tableau of Karzai sitting in the antechamber of Omar's house, receiving homage from local dignitaries and making proclamations about the future, evoked the idea of rebirth for Afghanistan after so many years of bloodshed. Electricity has not been restored to this part of Kandahar, but it was in the air tonight at Omar's former residence.

Asked how things are going, Karzai's brother Ahmed, who has acted as his spokesman, shook his head: "So little time, too much to do."

Just days after Karzai was appointed leader of an interim government that will take power in Kabul on Dec. 22, he encountered his first crisis. Under a deal Karzai brokered with the Taliban, Naqibullah, a pro-Taliban commander, was supposed to assume control of Kandahar. That was preempted, however, when Gul Agha Shirzai, the exiled former governor of Kandahar, marched into the city early Friday and seized the governor's house and the foreign ministry.

In a series of meetings held to avoid an eruption of the factional fighting that brought Afghanistan to its knees in the 1990s, Karzai brokered a compromise, allowing Gul Agha to resume his former position and Naqibullah to become his deputy. Karzai said tonight the deal was "peanuts."

"We never had any problem," he added. "Naqibullah was very gracious, He never was a contender for anything."

Karzai and Gul Agha dined together tonight and met representatives of a municipal council. Speeches were given. Karzai called it "the first touch of democracy in Afghanistan."

"People debated things and asked for things," he said. "It was very good."

The affair was a way of installing Gul Agha as governor or, as Karzai said, "putting a new turban on the head of the new leader."

Gul Agha's first reign in Kandahar was marked by corruption and chaos, and his return has troubled many Afghans. But Karzai said he is not wary of what came before.

"Two things are very different from the past," he said. "One, Afghans have suffered. We saw Afghans butchered by the Taliban and saw how the Taliban became terrorists as well. We won't repeat those mistakes.

"Second, the international community recognizes that Afghanistan needs to be rebuilt. There is a stark recognition that Afghanistan must return to better times."

In that vein, Karzai said, the United States must not repeat the same mistake it made 12 years ago when, after helping dislodge the Soviet occupation, it abandoned Afghanistan to its neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, and the radical Islam practiced by such influential foreign fighters as bin Laden.

"Things went wrong in Afghanistan because the United States walked away," he said. "So don't walk away again."

Karzai said he planned to head to Kabul, the capital, in two days to prepare to assume power. While he was in Shawali Kot, his wartime headquarters 20 miles north of Kandahar, he said, he wrote a letter of thanks to President Bush. "I thanked him for his help and for liberating us from this horrible force," he said, "and then I reassured him that we would very, very earnestly work to destroy terrorism in Afghanistan."

Karzai, who has a slight tic on the left side of his face, a resonant voice and a penchant for calling women "madam," was not totally ready for the international limelight focused on him by arriving reporters. "I'm going to see if my turban is all right," he said as two photographers snapped away. "Is it okay?"

"I haven't touched my beard in months now so I don't look my best," he added, stroking his beard, scraggly after two months living mostly in mountainous Uruzgan province, where he led a revolt against the Taliban.

Reporters and photographers who traveled to Kandahar had to negotiate their way out of Pakistan, which has all but blocked access to the city, and then travel 60 miles to the former Taliban stronghold.

First stop was the border town of Spin Boldak, one of Asia's smuggling centers and a main source of revenue for the Taliban government. Rival tribes there have armed compounds and the streets bristle with guns. Pickups packed with young men in camouflage and turbans, wielding rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Soviet-made heavy machine guns, cruise the streets. In one compound, a fortified parking lot surrounded by mud walls, eight men were introduced to reporters and each was called "the commander."

"I have been fighting for 23 years, 28 years, 40 years, I don't know," said Kush Nekaka, one of the commanders, a diminutive 58-year-old with a devilish grin floating from under a bushy gray beard. "Look at this," he said, pointing to the wooden left leg of the man to one side. "Look at that," he said, grabbing the plastic knee of the man to his left. "We are tired of war." Asked about competition in the town between two Pashtun tribes, the Achekzais and the Noorzais, he laughed. "That's not war," he said, "that's natural."

Along the road, signs of war and political change emerged at every turn. Three weeks ago, only the white flag of the Taliban flapped from houses and warehouses. Today, the red, black and green flag of Afghanistan's exiled king was everywhere -- on pickup trucks, flying tattered from tractors carrying branches, wrapped around the neck of a camel leading a convoy of nomads, atop the passport office of what used to be the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan and on the dashboard of Basha Khan, the brother of Gul Agha, who led the reporters to Kandahar.

Deeper into the country, the landscape widened into desolate loneliness. Enormous khaki-colored hills faded to red as the sun descended.

Evidence of the withering U.S. air campaign dotted the road. Pickup trucks, splattered with blood, lay gutted in ditches. The force of one U.S. attack had turned a tractor-trailer into a giant mangled insect and tossed the cab and engine hundreds of feet in the air over a levee, leaving the cargo far behind. At Takhteh Pol, 25 miles southeast of Kandahar and the first place in this region to be captured by opposition fighters, a shiny Soviet-built tank watched over the road.

At the Kandahar airport, the scene of perhaps the fiercest fighting, scores of fighters prepared their end-of-day breakfast atop open-air fires. The soldiers said that despite the fighting, they were observing the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, fasting during the day and eating only after the sun went down.

The airport appeared gutted. Airplane fins lay on the runway. The only thing untouched was a marvelously fragrant rose bed at the traffic circle in front of the terminal.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has begun collecting bodies from the streets of Kandahar, and 100 graves have been dug, a spokesman in Kabul told the Associated Press.

With several bandoliers of machine-gun bullets across his chest, Sayed Abdul Khaliq cut an imposing figure. Khaliq, about 6 feet 4 and with hair so dirty it had turned to dreadlocks naturally, said the fighting at the airport had been fierce.

"They were Arabs and they fought hard," he said.

Basha Khan, Gul Agha's brother, had said earlier that at least 40 foreign fighters were killed near the airport. He said Gul Agha's fighters were divided among 10 pickup trucks, each carrying about 10 men. They attacked in the trucks, firing rocket-propelled grenades from the vehicles and then jumping off to launch infantry attacks.

Despite the bloodshed, Khaliq expressed satisfaction with the outcome and his role in it: "I am staying in the army," he said. "I am going to become a commander."

--------

Eastern Alliance Sets Ultimatum for Al Qaeda Surrender

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Fighting.html

TORA BORA, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan tribal fighters backed by intense U.S. airstrikes overran some al-Qaida cave hide-outs at Tora Bora on Tuesday and set a deadline for the surrender of a group of fleeing members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

After making a last stand on a wind-swept mountain top, hundreds of foreign fighters tried to escape a relentless tribal advance but were trapped by shelling in a rocky canyon. Some pleaded for mercy and said by radio that they were ready to give up. During the assault overnight, U.S. special forces were seen heading for the front.

Mohammed Zaman, defense chief for the tribal eastern alliance, declared a cease-fire and demanded that the al-Qaida force walk out of the Tora Bora and Milawa valleys in eastern Afghanistan by 8 a.m. Wednesday (10:30 p.m. EST Tuesday) or face a new attack. He said they must submit to international prosecution.

The whereabouts of bin Laden, who U.S. officials suspected was in Tora Bora, remained unclear. Another tribal commander claimed local intelligence officers spotted the Saudi-born dissident with al-Qaida troops in the area Monday, but no independent verification was possible. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the best indications point to the area, although admitted the reports are ``not very reliable.''

``I don't know if he is dead or alive. Tomorrow we may know,'' Zaman said of bin Laden.

Tuesday's advance on Tora Bora coincided with the three-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States that Washington says were masterminded by bin Laden. Washington has posted a $25 million reward for him.

It was unclear how much of the extensive cave complex at Tora Bora had been captured and whether any al-Qaida personnel were still hiding within. It was also far from certain whether all al-Qaida forces around Tora Bora would surrender. In the past, forces loyal to bin Laden have vowed to fight to the death.

Zaman agreed to the truce after a radio conversation with a number of al-Qaida fighters in the Afghan Pashtun language, monitored in part by an interpreter working for The Associated Press. It was followed by a face-to-face meeting between his officers and al-Qaida commanders.

The al-Qaida fighters ``called me, they said, 'Please don't fight us, we want to surrender,''' Zaman said.

Zaman said the al-Qaida members agreed to surrender in small groups, but he was skeptical if all would disarm peacefully.

``We'll give them to the United Nations. I asked them whether there were any women and children. They said they were only young men,'' Zaman said. ``Tonight we will make a plan to get them out.''

The contact came after Hazrat Ali, a senior commander with the tribal eastern alliance, said his forces had taken one of two peaks on Enzeri Zur mountain. Hundreds of al-Qaida fighters -- mainly Arab and foreign Muslims -- had made a stand there after being flushed from their cave shelters overnight by massive U.S. bombing and raids by U.S. troops.

Shelling and machine-gun fire echoed across the valleys as B-52s and U.S. surveillance aircraft circled above. U.S. helicopters were also sighted.

Afghan troops said dozens of heavily armed U.S. soldiers were seen headed to the front late Monday and that small arms fire was heard during the night. The Americans returned before dawn Tuesday to a camp in the nearby village of Pacir.

``We were successful. We captured a lot of caves,'' Ali said as his troops staged mop-up operations. ``The largest ones were full of documents and personal belongings.

Ali said fleeing al-Qaida troops had been trying to head south to escape into Pakistan. Other commanders said retreating fighters might head along the Kharoti Pass, a high and often snowbound track through the 15,400-foot White Mountains that leads south into Pakistan.

Pakistan intelligence officials said their country has blocked all possible escape routes for bin Laden or his men by deploying 4,000 troops along a 25-mile stretch of border in the White Mountains and enhancing aerial surveillance.

Eastern alliance forces launched a three-pronged assault against al-Qaida defenders on Monday following days of intense U.S. bombing, including 15,000-pound ``daisy cutter'' bombs used to attack caves and underground command centers.

By Tuesday morning, the assault transformed what had been al-Qaida's main base in Afghanistan into a scene of devastation.

One hilltop overlooking the battlefield had been flattened. Trees were reduced to ashes and the ground was littered with shrapnel and bits of cluster bombs. Stone buildings and bomb shelters were destroyed. Mountainside caves that sheltered fighters from airstrikes for weeks were abandoned.

A sniper nest on top of a ridge contained three dead al-Qaida fighters, their bodies shredded by heavy machine gun fire. Outside an al-Qaida gun training center, paper targets from the National Rifle Association littered the ground complete with names and scores written in Arabic.

Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, U.S. Marines stepped up their hunt for fleeing Taliban fighters by widening their operations near the city of Kandahar.

The Marines began Tuesday searching for weapons at checkpoints in the south. ``If we see weapons, we collect them and identify them'' by serial number, then destroy them, said Capt. David Romley. He did not say how many weapons, if any, had been seized so far. Taliban fighters who surrender their arms will be allowed to go free; those who resist will be killed, he said.

Although U.S. officials have described Tora Bora as bin Laden's most likely hiding place, they also have said he and fugitive Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar could be sheltering somewhere around Kandahar.

The Taliban surrendered Kandahar on Friday to tribal forces.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency reported that residents of Kandahar buried at least 50 bodies of Arabs fighters killed in U.S. strikes near the airport. The report could not be verified.

Marines from a base in the desert 70 miles southwest of Kandahar moved closer to the city Monday to move more quickly against any Taliban and al-Qaida movements.

In other developments:

-- U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, for talks with leaders of rival political factions ahead of the Dec. 22 inauguration of an interim administration.

-- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Britain will take the lead role in overseeing the peacekeeping force for Afghanistan.

-- In Kabul, hungry crowds jostled for sacks of wheat being handed out by the U.N. World Food Program.

--------

PRISONERS
Witnesses Recount Taliban Dying While Held Captive

December 11, 2001
By CARLOTTA GALL
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/international/asia/11JAIL.html

SHIBARGHAN, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 - Dozens of Taliban prisoners died after surrendering to Northern Alliance forces, asphyxiated in the shipping containers used to transport them to prison, witnesses say.

The deaths occurred as the prisoners, many of them foreign fighters for the Taliban, were brought from the town of Kunduz to the prison here, a journey that took two or three days for some.

Colonel General Jurabek, the Northern Alliance commander in charge of some 3,000 prisoners being held here, said Saturday that 43 prisoners had died in half a dozen containers on the way, either from injuries or asphyxiation. Three others died from their wounds after arrival, and had been given a Muslim burial at the town of Dasht-i-Laili, he said.

But the number of deaths may be much higher. Several Pakistani prisoners interviewed in the prison have said that dozens of people died in their containers during the journey here. Omar, a pale and slight youth, who clutched a blanket round his head and shoulders, said through the bars of his prison wing that all but seven people in his container had died from lack of air. He estimated that more than 100 had died. Another Pakistani said 13 had died in his container and that the survivors had taken turns to breathe through a hole in the metal wall.

One prisoner, Ibrahim, a 30-year- old Pakistani mechanic interviewed in the presence of General Jurabek, said he thought some 35 people had died in his container en route from Kunduz. "No oxygen, no oxygen," he said urgently in English. The general corrected him and said only five or six had died.

Faced with transporting thousands of potentially dangerous prisoners even while a prisoner uprising in the Qala Jangi fort near Mazar-i- Sharif was under way, the Northern Alliance packed many of the detained into the sealed shipping containers for the journey from Kunduz, the last Taliban stronghold in the north, to this town, the hometown of Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Shipping containers line the roads of Afghanistan and are frequently used not only to hold and transport prisoners, but to use as shops where items of all sorts are for sale. The uprising at the Qala Jangi fort, in which some 230 prisoners and one C.I.A. officer died, and the sheer logistics of detaining and transporting more than 4,000 prisoners - many of them foreign fighters for the Taliban - have overwhelmed the new authorities in the north, who are still confronting pockets of Taliban resistance.

One witness, a local driver who declined to be interviewed but spoke to Afghan acquaintances, said he had seen soldiers unloading many dead bodies from a container by the road not far from here.

General Jurabek, who oversees the largest detention center for Taliban prisoners in northern Afghanistan, watched from his upstairs room in the gatehouse of the prison as a container packed with prisoners was backed into the prison courtyard below. Fifty-five more Taliban prisoners were arriving from the town of Balkh.

"I am here 24 hours a day," he said. "If I was not here the prisoners would be eating each other"

General Jurabek does appear to have brought order to the chaotic scenes of a week earlier, when thousands of dirty, hungry and hostile prisoners milled in the central courtyard and guards fingered their guns nervously. Among those prisoners were up to 100 who were wounded, and more than 80 men who had survived the battle in the fort.

It was considered a success - and a significant improvement on the widespread revenge killings of previous offensives in Afghanistan's 22 years of civil war - that the Northern Alliance negotiated for the Taliban to surrender Kunduz, their last stronghold in the north, without a fight. But the enormous number of prisoners posed its own problems. At Qala Jangi, more than 100 Northern Alliance soldiers and officers died in the uprising, which took six days to quell.

More prisoners are arriving each day at the prison here. After several days of barring journalists on security grounds, the authorities have now opened the prison gates to foreign visitors. The prisoners have been registered and questioned, and the badly wounded have been transferred to a newly secured wing of the local hospital. New kitchens and barrels of drinking water have been set up for them.

They are kept in three wings around a central courtyard, approximately 40 men to a room off a broad central corridor. On Saturday, they approached the bars at the end of the corridor to the courtyard to talk to their guards and to journalists. The mood was calm as a line of prisoners was allowed out with plastic bowls to collect rations of rice and bread. A bag of rubber galoshes lay in the corridor for those prisoners who were without shoes. Prisoners are also receiving re-education.

"Day by day we are explaining to them that no one will hurt them and that we will treat the injured," said General Jurabek, a Soviet-trained officer. "I explained to them that Osama bin Laden is a vile hard-line terrorist and Mullah Muhammad Omar too, because they wanted to destroy all of Afghanistan," he said. "And the prisoners are changing their minds now."

Yet there remains a feeling of desperation among some of the prisoners. Eleven men from Uzbekistan survived the battle at Qala Jangi but now fear that they will be deported home, where they would face brutal treatment and even death under the harsh system run by President Islam Karimov. "They are going to send us back to Uzbekistan, and there we will not survive prison," said one, Abdul Jabar, 26, close to tears. "We are all educated. We don't want to be returned home."

Another prisoner, an Iraqi from Baghdad, Ali Abdul Matalib, 30, said he had been trying to smuggle himself from Kunduz to Russia and then Europe when he got caught up in the war. "I had nothing to do with this," he said, leaning through the bars. "This was between the Taliban and America. I am just afraid for my future. I just want to get to Europe."

The other Arabs, some 40 who survived the battle in Qala Jangi, would not consent to be interviewed and remain set in their opinions, General Jurabek said. "When we mention America they spit on us," he said. "And when we say their own country will serve the death sentence on them, they say `Thanks be to God.' "

-------- africa

Team in Somalia May Be Planning U.S. Strikes

By Steve Vogel and Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22722-2001Dec10?language=printer

A five-member U.S. government delegation visited western Somalia on Sunday to meet with local warlords and Ethiopian military officers in what regional analysts said appeared to be a scouting mission for possible strikes against terrorist targets in the country.

The meeting, in the western town of Baidoa, was reported by a radio station in Mogadishu, the Somali capital 150 miles to the southeast, and was confirmed yesterday by Western aid workers who operate in Baidoa.

"They didn't stop to talk to us, but we saw them there," said one humanitarian worker. "They were in civilian clothes. They saw the Somali leadership and the Ethiopians, who were in uniform."

A Defense Department official said no U.S. military personnel were involved in the visit, but the official added he could not exclude the possibility that other government agencies might have been involved. Bill Harlow, the chief CIA spokesman, refused to comment.

U.S. military planners said the Bush administration has begun to look at Somalia as a possible future venue for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. U.S. officials charge that Somalia harbors members of al Qaeda, the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden, and there are fears that al Qaeda militants being driven from Afghanistan could try to take refuge there.

"People mention Somalia for obvious reasons," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told reporters at the Pentagon yesterday, though he appeared unaware of reports of Sunday's visit to the country by the U.S. officials. "It's a country virtually without a government, a country that has a certain al Qaeda presence already."

Afghan fighters backed by U.S. airstrikes are advancing on al Qaeda positions in fortified caves in eastern Afghanistan, and Wolfowitz said the United States is stepping up surveillance of "possible escape routes, possible sanctuaries."

The effort includes a force of U.S. and allied warships in the Arabian Sea that for the last month has been questioning and, in some cases, boarding ships coming out of Pakistan. "We're using everything we've got," a Navy official said. "Every ship we have out there is participating in this in some sense."

U.S. submarines and P-3 aircraft are working with surface ships to monitor sea traffic, officials said. The United States has 30 to 40 ships in the area. The carrier USS John C. Stennis is expected in the region soon, which will give the United States an additional carrier battle group in the area before the carrier USS Carl Vinson is sent home.

The interdiction force includes British, French, Italian, Canadian and Australian ships. France maintains a large naval base on the Gulf of Aden in Djibouti, which is on Somalia's northern border.

On average, about 30 to 40 boats, ranging from large ships to small ones, are challenged each day, and a much smaller number are searched, but no ship has been detained, officials said.

Last Thursday, U.S. forces intercepted a large container ship suspected of carrying senior al Qaeda leaders in waters south of Pakistan. A contingent of Marines and U.S. Navy SEALS from the USS Shreveport boarded the ship by helicopter and went through dozens of containers. "They boarded, searched and didn't find anything," said a Navy official.

The reason for the visit by the U.S. officials to Somalia was unclear. The Reuters news service quoted sources in Somalia as saying the five officials were meeting with local warlords and Ethiopian officers to discuss possible cooperation should the war on terrorism focus on Somalia.

"They were discussing whether they [the warlords] know of any terrorist bases in south and southwest Somalia," one of the sources said.

The sources said the Americans met with leaders of the Rahanwein Resistance Army, a faction opposed to Somalia's fledgling government, Reuters reported, as well as with four officers of the Ethiopian army, which has been actively backing the anti-government factions.

There have been no known U.S. military visits to Somalia since 1994, when the Clinton administration withdrew U.S. military personnel from the country following the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers in a clash with militias in Mogadishu the year before.

Wolfowitz cautioned against speculation that the United States is shifting its war aims outside of Afghanistan. "Our focus is on Afghanistan, and there's a great danger if we don't keep that focus, if we start spreading our net too wide, that we will lose the focus," Wolfowitz said.

U.S. officials and experts they are consulting say Somalia, a lawless state that has been without a central government since 1991, makes a relatively poor candidate for military strikes. Intense aerial reconnaissance has failed to produce hard physical targets such as terrorist training camps, said one U.S. specialist on the region.

The Islamist organization al-Ittihad al-Islamiya, which the Bush administration said has ties to al Qaeda, "is not very visible at all" since being thrashed by Ethiopian forces four years ago, a regional security expert said.

Given the absence of hard targets, the likeliest U.S. action in Somalia would be "extraction" of suspected terrorists, according to U.S. sources.

By one count, American investigators have identified roughly a dozen al Qaeda figures believed to have been inside Somalia recently. "And they may have been snatched already," said one source. "This is a moving target."

Such abductions could be carried out by American forces. But analysts called that option unlikely. Analysts said U.S. policymakers can avoid the expense and risk of engaging U.S. forces by using proxies. Ethiopia, which shares a long border and has a history of rivalry with Somalia, has already fought al-Ittihad, and it has publicly volunteered what it called evidence that its neighbor harbors Islamic extremists. Analysts said local militias might also be put to use.

In an apparently unrelated development yesterday, Kenyan police announced they had arrested a possible suspect in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Acting on a tip forwarded in October by the U.S. mission in Nairobi, police detained a man thought to be Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, one of two men alleged to have purchased the truck packed with TNT and detonated outside the embassy on Aug. 7, 1998.

But the identity of the suspect was uncertain, according to embassy and police spokesmen. Local Islamic activists said the man arrested in Mandera, on the border with Somalia, was in his sixties, or roughly a generation older than Swedan.

Vick reported from Nairobi. Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report.

-------- balkans

Milosevic Hears Genocide Allegations

By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 11, 07:01 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=warcrimes&SLUG=WAR-CRIMES-MILOSEVIC

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Slobodan Milosevic refused on Tuesday to plead to genocide charges that allege he presided over the killing or expulsion of Muslims and Croats in the Bosnian war.

As in previous indictments, the U.N. war crimes tribunal entered a plea of innocent on his behalf.

``This miserable text is the ultimate absurdity. I should be given credit for peace in Bosnia, not war,'' Milosevic said when asked if he were guilty or innocent.

For more than an hour, he sat impassively, often looking around the courtroom, as the indictment was read in his native Serbian language.

The indictment charges that Milosevic ``exercised effective control or substantial influence'' over the political officials and military officers who committed ``the widespread killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats.''

Thousands were held in detention ``calculated to bring about the partial physical destruction of those groups, namely through starvation, contaminated water, forced labor, inadequate medical care and constant physical and psychological assault,'' the indictment said.

Taken together, the lengthy list of criminal acts during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war constitute genocide - a planned and carefully executed scheme to liquidate or deport the entire non-Serb population of parts of Bosnia, the prosecutors say.

It was the third and final indictment against Milosevic for his 13 years as Yugoslavia's president, during which he is accused of instigating and conducting a decade of ethnic war.

Milosevic has persistently rejected the legitimacy of the U.N. court and has refused to cooperate, alleging it is a political tool of the NATO alliance.

``The responsibility for the war in Bosnia lies with the (Western) powers and their agents, not in Bosnia and not with Serbs, Serb people or Serb policy,'' Milosevic said before Judge Richard May cut him short.

The Bosnia indictment is the first to charge him with genocide, and is the most serious challenge since Serbian authorities transferred him to The Hague for trial on June 28.

The 38-page document links Milosevic to dozens of execution sites, scores of detention facilities where inmates were beaten and sexually assaulted, and the killing of more than 8,600 Bosnians.

Milosevic has been charged with 29 counts of genocide, complicity to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war - every crime in the tribunal's statute.

To substantiate their case, prosecutors hope to call other members of what they call a ``joint criminal enterprise'' responsible for the ethnic cleansing of the region in an attempt to form a Serb state.

Two leading Serb political officials awaiting trial on genocide charges, Biljana Plavsic and Momcilo Krajisnik, could provide incriminating evidence against Milosevic.

Later Tuesday, prosecutors were to request that three separate indictments against the defendant be joined into a comprehensive Milosevic file, spanning more than a decade of Balkan bloodshed and 66 charges of war crimes.

Joining the indictments would shorten the length of the trial and eliminate duplicate testimony and overlapping evidence. But it also would delay the start of the first trial, for Kosovo, which had been scheduled for Feb. 12.

The former head of state appeared alone on the defendant's side of the courtroom because he refused to appoint defense attorneys.

Prosecutors gained their first genocide conviction in August. In a case that could be a precedent in the Milosevic trial, Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison for deeds committed by his subordinates. Some 15,000 troops under his command killed up to 8,000 men and boys in the summer of 1995.

Though he was not convicted for directly killing anyone, he was found guilty of ``command responsibility.'' In a direct reference to Krstic's superiors, including Milosevic, the tribunal concluded that ``someone else probably decided to order the execution.''

-------- biological weapons

Hopkins researchers' filter foils bioterror

ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011211-41550040.htm

A year ago, before most Americans worried about bioterrorism, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel began developing a filtration system to destroy airborne biological agents in ventilation systems.

Preliminary tests on the system have been excellent, said lead investigator Richard Potember.

The chemist came up with the idea of combining traditional High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters with newer technology to neutralize airborne pathogens such as spores, bacteria and viruses. The system is intended to prevent the spread of infection through ventilation systems in government facilities, office buildings and subways.

The new technology uses free radicals - molecules with unpaired electrons that "steal" electrons from other molecules to pair up. A combination of ozone, water, ultraviolet lights and a metal matrix kills the pathogens.

Mr. Potember and his fellow researchers, including co-investigator and physical chemist Wayne Bryden, built a heating and air conditioning system to test the process. Biologists at the laboratory provided solutions that imitate pathogens like anthrax and smallpox.

"We are getting 100 percent kill with the bacteria and viruses," Mr. Potember said. "Anthrax is somewhat hard to kill because it's a spore, and spores can live in the dirt for a long period of time."

But, he added, most of the spores are large enough to be caught by the typical HEPA filter.

"We only have to kill the few remaining spores that get through," Mr. Potember said.

Mr. Potember is applying for a patent and seeking federal funding for research on the new system, which has been funded so far only by the laboratory.

Mr. Potember and Mr. Bryden said obtaining federal money to continue research is difficult, and current events make it even more complicated.

Biodefense "is a hot topic right now. Really, it is in everyone's thinking," Mr. Bryden said. "But that's a good thing and a bad thing, because with a lot more interest in this area, there are a lot more people going after these pots of federal money."

Mr. Bryden said he is optimistic that the promising preliminary test results will help the research win federal support.

Mr. Potember said the system also could have other applications, such as preventing secondary infections like staphylococcus in hospitals.

-------- colombia

FARC said to kill four kidnap victims

December 11, 2001
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011211-514080.htm

BOGOTA, Colombia - Four kidnap victims held by Colombia's largest guerrilla group were killed by their captors yesterday, authorities said.

The four were among more than 20 people kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Sunday from a luxury hotel in the town of Jardin, 260 miles northwest of Bogota.

The Marxist rebels killed one hotel employee who refused to go with them, said a military spokesman.

The guerrillas took their victims toward the mountains in Antioquia province before releasing all but six, the spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

-------- drug war

Authorities Find Ariz. Drug Tunnel

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Drug-Tunnel.html

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Federal authorities found an 85-foot tunnel under the U.S.-Mexican border Tuesday and said they believed it had been used to smuggle $21 million worth of cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

Authorities said they had seized all the drugs -- 956 pounds of cocaine and 839 pounds of marijuana -- since smugglers began using the tunnel in late summer, Customs Agent Vince Iglio said. Two people were arrested last month.

The tunnel stretched from underneath a home in Nogales, 55 miles south of Tucson, to a concrete wash on the Mexican side of the border. Iglio said the opening on the Mexican side was covered by a steel utility plate and resealed with cement each time it was used.

The 4-foot-high tunnel, shored up throughout with lumber like a mine, was ``one of the most complicated we've seen,'' Iglio said. It was strung with electricity and tracks had been laid inside.

In a bedroom of the Nogales home, authorities found a mechanic's dolly with a long rope attached. In a corner of the room, under carpeting and wooden flooring, was a 30-foot vertical shaft leading to the tunnel.

The occupant of the home has not been found, Iglio said. The home's owner does not live there and isn't believed to be involved in the drug smuggling.

The city of Nogales plans to excavate and seal the tunnel, he said.

Iglio compared the new tunnel to a concrete-lined, electrified 300-foot tunnel found in 1990. That tunnel ran about 30 feet under the border between a home in Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a warehouse in Douglas, with secret entrances on both sides and a hydraulic lift.

The tunnel was the eighth discovered in Nogales since 1995 but the first in the city to run directly beneath the border. The others have led into sewer lines that feed into a canal system that flows from Mexico into Nogales.

-------- iraq

Iraq, Iran resuming talks on war captives

World Scene
December 11, 2001
Washington Times
Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011211-56729356.htm

BAGHDAD - Iraq and Iran will resume talks on captives from their 1980-88 war, one of the main sticking points to normalization, after the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, an Iraqi paper said yesterday.

"The two parties have agreed to resume talks on prisoners-of-war after Eid al-Fitr," Nabd al-Shabab reported. Eid al-Fitr is the Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan, scheduled for Dec. 16.

According to the weekly, Iraq has obtained "documents on the fate of 97 percent of Iraqi prisoners held in prisons in Iran."

-------- israel

Israeli Missiles Injure Target and Kill Boys in West Bank

New York Times
December 11, 2001
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/international/middleeast/11MIDE.html

EBRON, West Bank, Dec. 10 - Two Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car that was stopped at a busy intersection here today, wounding their intended target but killing two boys, one 2 years old and the other 13.

The Israeli Army said it was trying to kill Muhammad Sidir, 24, whom it accused of masterminding attacks against Israelis as a local leader of the extremist group Islamic Jihad.

One missile slammed into the road about 20 feet in front of Mr. Sidir, witnesses said, and the second struck his car and exploded in a fiery blast. Riding with Mr. Sidir were his uncle, Muhammad Ibrahim Himouni, and his 2-year-old cousin, Burhan.

Burhan was dismembered by the explosion, witnesses and hospital officials said, and his father was in critical condition tonight. Hospital officials said that Mr. Himouni, 58, had lost one leg and that he might lose the other in surgery.

The other boy who was killed, Shadi Arafi, was riding in a taxi when shrapnel struck him. At least five other people were wounded in the attack, including two brothers ages 8 and 10, hospital officials said.

As she sat outside the operating room tonight awaiting word of her husband, Zahra Muhammad Sidir, Burhan's mother, said she had had no idea that the Israelis considered her nephew a wanted man when she dispatched him to pick up dessert for tonight's meal. "If I knew he was wanted, do you think I would send my husband and child with him?" she asked with tears in her eyes.

Mr. Sidir, the target of the attack, was wounded by shrapnel in the face and eyes, and he received first- and second-degree burns on his face and body, said Dr. Ghandi Tamimi, a hospital official here. He said Mr. Sidir was in stable condition but in possible danger of losing his eyes.

After initial treatment, Mr. Sidir was whisked out of the hospital by Palestinian security forces and his whereabouts tonight were unknown, other officials here said.

Israel has conducted a series of military strikes since suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa more than a week ago killed 26 people. Most of the strikes were at buildings and vehicles symbolizing Yasir Arafat's authority, in what officials called an effort to isolate and intimidate the Palestinian leader while the Israeli government was rallying international backing to persuade him to crack down on militants.

[The latest Israeli attack came early Tuesday, when helicopter gunships destroyed a Palestinian security headquarters in the northern Gaza Strip, Reuters reported, quoting Palestinian security officials.]

Since the suicide attacks, the Bush administration has refrained from publicly criticizing the Israeli government for its military operations.

Arieh Mekel, a spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said of the boys' deaths, "This is really very sad." But he noted that after last week's suicide bombings, "the world understands much better what is going on, that we are victims of terror and must fight back."

In a statement tonight, the Israeli army said that it "makes every effort to prevent the loss of life of innocent civilians and deeply regrets such loss of life."

Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian information minister, issued a statement calling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "a child killer who does not respect the sanctity of life." He held Mr. Sharon "personally and directly responsible" for any violence that might result from today's attack.

On Nov. 22, five Palestinian boys on their way to school in the Gaza Strip were killed by an explosion. Israeli officials said an initial investigation suggested that the explosive had been planted by Israeli forces in hopes of killing Palestinian gunmen who fired on a nearby settlement and military post.

During more than 14 months of conflict, Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians it accused of terrorism with targeted military operations like the one today. It calls the policy a form of active self-defense.

Palestinians call the Israeli tactic a policy of extra-judicial assassination and a provocation to further violence. The militant group Hamas said it carried out the suicide bombings last week in reprisal for the helicopter slaying on Nov. 23 of its senior military leader in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud.

In its statement, the Israeli Army said Muhammad Sidir was jailed by Israel from 1999 to 2000. It said he was "responsible for several cells that were preparing suicide bombings." It also said he was "at the head of an infrastructure responsible for shooting attacks," including one near here on July 12 in which an Israeli was killed and one in Jerusalem on Nov. 4. In that attack, a Palestinian from Hebron emptied the clip of an M-16 semiautomatic into a bus, killing two teenagers.

Most Israelis support the seek- and-kill policy, although most also think it has no effect on terrorism except perhaps to increase it. A poll reported on Friday by the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth found that 74 percent of Israelis backed the policy, but only 22 percent thought it decreased terrorism. Twice as many - 45 percent - thought it increased terrorism, while 31 percent said it had no link at all to terrorism. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Hebron, an ancient city south of Jerusalem that is divided between Palestinians and a small enclave of Jewish settlers, has been a flashpoint in this conflict. It is under Israeli blockade, and was reached tonight through an adjoining Israeli settlement. Every other road into the city appeared to have been blocked by ditches or berms of stones and earth thrown up by the Israeli Army.

Burhan Himouni was still in diapers but already walking, his mother said. He was thrilled to go for a ride with his uncle when she asked him to run out today to pick up qatayef, a kind of pancake. Stuffed with nuts or cheese and dipped in syrup, it is served as dessert at the traditional meal to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The three left in a Mitsubishi Lancer at about 2:15. Five minutes later and a few blocks away, the car stopped for a red light . Two helicopters hovered overhead and to the left, and two more straight ahead. The pair in front fired, witnesses said.

Zahra Muhammad Sidir heard a powerful explosion. "I had a feeling that my family was hurt," she said. She began running toward the scene.

Muhammed Natsheh, 45, was about 30 feet from the car as he left a grocery store carrying spinach, cheese and qatayef. "Suddenly I heard a strong explosion and felt something on my head," he said. "I put my hand on my head. I was bleeding." He broke into a run, then heard the second explosion. When he looked back, he said, he saw one car "totally burned" and half a dozen more damaged.

Wayal Himouni, a 32-year-old construction worker, said the helicopters hovered over the scene for about five minutes.

"The head of the boy was in the street," said Mr. Himouni, who said that he discovered later that he was a distant relative. "His legs were in different places. We collected his body."

Zahra Muhammad Sidir said her son's third birthday was to be March 27. "Can you think of a crime uglier than this?" she asked. "A targeted person? My son?"

-------- lebanon

Hezbollah still terrorist

December 11, 2001
Washington Times
James Morrison Embassy Row
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011211-98680952.htm

No matter how much the Lebanese prime minister wants to argue that Hezbollah is a legitimate resistance group, the United States still considers it a terrorist organization, said the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon.

Ambassador Vincent Battle told a Lebanese television station over the weekend that the United States believes Hezbollah meets President Bush's definition of a terrorist organization with "global reach," which could make the group a target in the war against terrorism.

"Hezbollah is on the list of terrorist organizations because it is considered an organization that carries out terrorist acts and is capable of staging them on a vast global reach," Mr. Battle said.

"Hezbollah has to give up terrorism, and this is not a complicated formula. If you want to call these activities resistance, then it is an error for resistance fighters to use terrorist methods and call them 'resistance.'

"We concede that Hezbollah has become an effective political force [in Lebanon], but our problem with Hezbollah is that it is an organization that shelters terrorists."

Mr. Battle accused Hezbollah of training anti-Israeli groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Hezbollah, which took credit for forcing Israel to end its occupation of southern Lebanon, still attacks Israeli civilian and military targets along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.

-------- nato

The Russian face in Riga

Sarah Means
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20011211-40287191.htm

RIGA, Latvia -- We let the aging, musty van with orange curtains rock us from side to side as we made our way toward Latvia's snow-dusted military base of Adazi. The base is a tribute to Latvia's push to make its tiny armed forces - the Latvian army boasts a force of 2,740 - interoperable with those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The small force represents Latvia's new face, but Russia's occupation is far from forgotten here. Inside the van, we breathe diesel fumes and musty, frozen air, a trademark in the former Soviet republic, a riding companion says. Add to that the odor of balsamic, vodka, cigarette smoke and wet wool . . . that is the smell of Latvia, or perhaps the memory of the Soviet Union. It is a memory many are trying to forget, but more than 50 years of Russia's control have not been erased in 10 years of independence.

Almost half of the population speaks Russian as its mother tongue. Russian Orthodox cathedrals etch their ornate spires against the cold sky. Russian is still on signs, and in the sweet, sad notes of violin and oboe and drum played by street musicians on dark, wet cobblestone streets. Perhaps the Russian face in Riga is why the people of Latvia know, more than any other potential NATO member, the importance of joining NATO. Of the nine potential new members - Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Macedonia - Latvia has experienced the most tense relationship with Russia. For Latvia, the insurance policy that NATO could provide against a Soviet threat, or the memory of that threat, means securing the progress that the country has made since its independence.

"NATO still is a guarantor of independence and sovereignty of its member states. It's not merely about territory, about borders, but it is also about the way of life people have chosen," said State Secretary of Defense Edgaars Rinkevics in an interview. For Latvia, Russia's presence across the border presents not so much a physical threat as an emotional one.

"A society is secure if it feels secure," Urbalis Vaidotas, Lithuania's young international relations director for the Ministry of Defense said during a panel here on Baltic membership in NATO. Without membership, Mr. Rinkevics said later, "There wouldn't be a kind of insurance. The things we are doing probably may disappear. It's not about a fact. It's about perception."

For Latvia, this may not be about just the perceptions of the people within the country, but of the Western institutions without. For many Eastern European countries hoping to be invited to join NATO in Prague in November, NATO membership is seen as the ticket to European Union membership, economic stability and political clout. To that end, the Eastern European hopefuls for the next round of NATO membership point to the advantages now being enjoyed by their neighbors that were admitted in 1999: Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland.

"After Poland joined NATO, there was no type of game space available any more between Russia on the one hand and Poland on the other," Mr. Rinkevics said. "Relations improved. Investors put in more investments after 1999."

With the establishment of the new Russia-North Atlantic Council, that "game space" has come to the fore. Reality or perception, Latvians are not yet ready to trust Mr. Putin.

Latvia stands on the edge of a crossroads faced by the entire alliance itself. As Latvia seeks to define its reasons for joining NATO in a post-Cold War era, it must recognize the new role NATO is playing since the September 11 attacks - a role more political than military. This role will be redefined by the alliance's ability to encourage democratic values in its new members.

To get there, it will need the aid of countries whose apathy or animosity have historically put barriers to the inclusion of Eastern European countries, and which have a challenging history with Latvia in particular: Germany and Russia. German and Russian forces in turn have invaded and occupied Latvia since the 900s. Russia's protests of NATO's potential inclusion of any of its former republics and Germany's unwillingness to upset Moscow are now being tempered by new international support for at least five, and up to seven members to be invited next year.

As a testimony to show how far the former occupiers have come, German and Russian representatives sat shoulder to shoulder in a panel on the contribution of NATO membership to regional stability and security. Markus Meckel, a member of Germany's ruling SPD faction and vice president of the NATO parliamentary assembly, openly advocated the ascension of all three Baltic countries, as well as Slovakia and Slovenia, and said German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping was working to gain support for the same. Andrei Fedorov, director of the Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, disagreed, arguing that "NATO was like an old lady wearing modern cosmetics" whose day had passed, and that Russia did not need Latvia to soften its relations with the West. As the Bush-Putin courtship heats up, he may be right. But as former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt aptly pointed out, the litmus test of the end of the Cold War should be the inclusion of all three Baltic nations into NATO.

Back on Riga's winter streets, a Russian journalist recommends balsamic - a "medicine" drunk like vodka here - as his favored salve for post-Soviet wounds. Here's to a NATO-integrated Latvia, where balsamic is no longer needed.

Sarah Means is an editorial writer for The Washington Times. E-mail: means@washingtontimes.com.

-------- new zealand

New Zealand Retires Air Force Jets

By RAY LILLEY
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 11, 00:41 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=AUSANT&STORYID=APIS7GAPP280

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Jet fighters from New Zealand's air force streaked over the country's main cities Tuesday in a final farewell before its combat squadrons disband after 85 years of service.

Scrapped by the Labor coalition government, and with controversy still swirling over the decision, the Vietnam-era Skyhawk planes completed their final passes with engines roaring.

Only the capital, Wellington, missed out because high winds and driving rain forced cancellation.

Elsewhere, people crowded into streets for a last look at the fighter-bombers, which have never fired a shot in combat.

The fighter and associated training squadrons will be disbanded formally on Thursday and their 34 jets offered for sale.

In March the government said that in light of New Zealand's ``benign strategic environment,'' it was disbanding the air force's combat wing, cutting the country's fleet of navy frigates to two, and refocusing the army to meet peacekeeping roles.

Australia and other allies warned at the time there would be ``international consequences'' for the government in reducing the strike capabilities of its armed forces.

The air force said Tuesday that 23 the country's 28 front-line jet pilots are taking jobs with foreign air forces, with many going to Australia and Britain.

``There are other people after our skills ... and other air forces have a need for us, particularly the big ones,'' said Lt. Simon Rae, a Skyhawk pilot.

The opposition National Party, describing it as ``a black week'' for the air force, has promised to reinstate the combat wing if it wins back control of the government.

But Labor, supported by coalition partner The Alliance and by the left-leaning Green Party, has placed its emphasis on the army, committing more than $410 million for equipment to help it participate in international peacekeeping.

-------- propaganda wars

Bin Laden wife airs suicide strategy

By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011211-6611060.htm

It would be a bizarre chapter of the Osama bin Laden endgame: Tales of another television scheme are rattling their way up the media food chain.

The terrorist hopes to die on live TV according to his estranged wife, Sabiha, who made her claims Dec. 8 during an interview with TV 6, a Moscow-based independent network.

"His elder sons will kill him, and that will be the signal for a new wave of terror. The targets this time would be the Capitol in Washington, Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris," she said, claiming that Qatar-based network Al Jazeera would broadcast the death.

These revelations were picked up yesterday by the Internet's Drudge Report and provided titillating fodder for talk radio and print. "Bin Laden's son will kill him on TV," heralded Britain's Mirror newspaper while Scotland's Daily Record billed it "Osama suicide pact."

"Media commentators said the claims were startlingly vulgar but could perhaps be eerily consistent with the Saudi dissident's understanding of the Internet and the satellite TV age," observed the India Times, which linked "Bin Laden's desire to die in the flickering blue light of more than a billion television sets" with the televised September 11 terrorist attacks.

Indeed, providing credible coverage of violence and propaganda in the past three months has taxed journalistic ethics of print and broadcast news organizations, though video footage of a dead suicide bomber in Israel - body aflame - was seen on prime time news Sunday.

And while networks analyzed the latest incriminating bin Laden video yesterday, none was ready to address questions posed by his possible suicide before TV cameras: Would they air the video footage if it were available?

"It's too early to even think about this terrible theory," said one broadcast network spokeswoman. "I heard it on the radio this morning and just wanted to turn to Christmas music. Personally, I don't think anyone would air it."

Two other networks also offered no comment. "We're not going to touch that one right now," said another spokesman.

"The media used to worry about showing Timothy McVeigh's execution," said Michael Harrison of Talker's Magazine, an industry analysis of talk radio. "Now this. We never would have encountered this kind of outrageous, sensational idea before 9-11."

"Bin Laden would not succeed in making any kind of statement if he died on the air. He'd probably end up entertaining millions instead. It would have zero impact on our psyches and zero impact on bin Laden's cause," Mr. Harrison said. "What's important is that he would be dead. And if he's dead, he's done."

According to press reports, the Al Jazeera network knows nothing about the plan. The estranged bin Laden spouse who made the original claim is reported to be 45, the mother of three of the terrorist's 19 children and "abandoned him after he took another wife aged 17."

As for Russia's TV 6, the network is seen by an estimated 80 million viewers in 300 cities and is best known for "Behind the Glass," Russia's provocative version of the reality series "Big Brother," broadcast from a set in a Red Square hotel.

Though half of all Russian viewers tuned in, the series caught much flak. A communist member of the Duma said the show "was done to disgrace Russia" while a Muslim leader declared, "We are trying to turn sweaty idiots into TV stars."

Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.

-------- puerto rico

Vieques Mayor Released From Prison

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The mayor of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques was released from a federal detention center Tuesday after serving a 120-day sentence for trespassing on military lands to protest U.S. Navy bombing on the island.

The sentence given to Damaso Serrano was the longest handed down by the federal courts in San Juan against a first-time offender arrested during Vieques protests.

``I feel strengthened and I will continue to fight to get the Navy out of Vieques,'' said Serrano as he was greeted by about 100 well-wishers outside the federal detention center in suburban Guaynabo.

In August, U.S. District Court Judge Jesus Castellanos argued that Serrano, as the island's leader, was inciting others to commit crimes by trespassing on Navy lands during bombing exercises in late April.

Serrano, a 53-year-old Vietnam veteran, was elected mayor of the island's 9,100 residents last year. He is a member of Gov. Sila Maria Calderon's anti-U.S. statehood party. Calderon has also pushed for an end to the bombing.

The Navy's bombing range covers 900 acres on the island's eastern tip, about 10 miles from civilian areas.

Anti-Navy protest erupted in Vieques after a civilian guard was killed by off-target bombs in 1999. The Navy has used inert ammunition since then. U.S. President George W. Bush has promised to end the maneuvers by 2003, but many in Puerto Rico wonder whether the U.S. war in Afghanistan will cause him to back off from that commitment.

-------- russia

Dissident protests Russia, China ties to U.S. war

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011211-82919472.htm

Russia and China should not be involved in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism because their participation undermines American values, a former Soviet dissident said yesterday.

Vladimir Bukovsky, who was imprisoned by the Soviet government for human-rights activity and who later worked to expose communism's crimes, said Russia today is moving away from democracy and is being run by ex-communists and former secret political police officials with little commitment to democracy.

"The United States does not need Russia or China aboard on this coalition," Mr. Bukovsky said in an interview. "It only complicates [the United States´] own problems, their own definitions. It's already murky. You can't define terrorism. It's like a war on poverty and war on illiteracy. It sounds like a Soviet-style campaign."

By adding Russia and China to the anti-terrorism coalition, the United States will make it harder to fight the problem, he said.

Russia has used the campaign against terrorism to step up its own war against the breakaway region of Chechnya, while China has increased its crackdown on Muslims in western Xinjiang province.

Uzbekistan, where U.S. troops are based, also has a very repressive, Soviet-style government. "They kill their [political] opponents. I mean the Russians do too, but [the Uzbeks] are really from the Middle Ages," Mr. Bukovsky said.

"Do you really need allies like that?" he asked. "I can't understand that."

Aligning with Russia, China and other repressive governments is "betraying your own principles," Mr. Bukovsky said.

The battle against terrorism is more like the Cold War conflict than one that can be helped by such coalitions, he added.

"The objective is to further your style of life, your principles, your moral values - that was the objective in the Cold War," he said. "So if you give that up in exchange for some kind of coalition, you already lose."

There has been no contribution to the military effort by either Russia or China, he said.

Mr. Bukovsky, who lives in Britain, is in Washington to receive an award today from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

He is one of two recipients of the Truman-Reagan Freedom Medal, which this year marks the 10th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican, is the second recipient.

The bipartisan foundation was set up several years ago to remember the 100 million people estimated to have died at the hands of communist governments around the world since 1917.

The recent warming of ties between Russia and the United States has not helped efforts to further democracy in Russia, Mr. Bukovsky said.

"Under [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Russia is trying to go back" to a Soviet-style setup, he added.

Democratic reform in Russia has stalled because reformers "didn't try hard enough" to institutionalize post-communist changes, he said.

Mr. Bukovsky added that not enough has been done in Russia to remember the victims of communism.

A stone from a Gulag prison labor camp - the symbol of communist repression - was placed in the center of Lubyanka Square, once the headquarters of the Soviet secret police, in the early 1990s.

"All the nomenklatura have remained in power," he said, referring to the ruling elite of the Soviet Union.

After 1993, Mr. Yeltsin "became a hostage" to the power ministries - the Russian military and the former KGB political police, he said.

Mr. Putin, a former KGB officer, was put in power to "re-instate" the Soviet-style system, according to Mr. Bukovsky.

"They have succeeded remarkably," he said, noting that in many ex-Soviet republics "the Communists are back in power."

Additionally, Russia's media freedom also has been curbed, and several recent legal cases of espionage and political persecution show that freedom is eroding under Mr. Putin, Mr. Bukovsky said.

"For the first time in 10 years we have political prisoners," he said.

-------- taiwan

Group: Taiwan Researching Missile

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-China-Missiles.html?searchpv=aponline

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan is actively researching a ballistic missile that could strike China, a U.S. think tank says, a weapon that could radically alter the military balance in one of the world's most dangerous hotspots.

The medium-range missile could hit targets 620 miles away, according to the new RAND Corp. study, ``Taiwan's Foreign and Defense Policies: Features and Determinants.''

The Rand study -- written by respected researchers Michael Swaine and James Mulvenon -- was based on ``interviews in Taiwan'' with unidentified sources.

A Taiwanese Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition he not be named said Tuesday that the island was not researching such a weapon.

The RAND report said the United States would likely detect any testing or deployment of the missiles and could pressure Taiwan to stop the program.

``Policy-makers in Washington should be alerted to the possibility that the program is actually a 'card' to be dealt away in exchange for specific weapons systems or enhanced defense commitments,'' the study says.

Five decades ago, China and Taiwan split amid civil war, and Beijing has repeatedly threatened to attack if the self-ruled island -- 100 miles off China's southeast coast -- refuses eventual unification or seeks formal independence.

The Taiwanese military has long focused on maintaining a modern arsenal of defensive arms to stop a Chinese invasion. The island has shunned offensive weapons -- such as medium-range missiles.

But some defense experts have argued that Taiwan should develop medium-range missiles as a deterrent to a first strike by China. The missiles could also help stop a second or third wave of attacks by Chinese forces.

However, other analysts have argued that if Taiwan was armed with offensive weapons, America and other nations would be less likely to assist the island in a war with China. By maintaining a purely defensive posture, Taiwan would be better able to win the sympathy of other countries if attacked by China, they say.

-------- un

Accepting Peace Prize, Annan Speaks of 'New Insecurity'

Washington Post
From News Services
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22981-2001Dec10?language=printer

OSLO, Dec. 10 -- Declaring that the world has entered a new era that began with the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan accepted the centennial Nobel Peace Prize today with an appeal for renewed efforts to fight poverty, ignorance and disease.

"We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire," Annan said. "If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better and we see further, we will realize that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status."

Annan said the attacks were proof that the new threats transcended borders and traditional notions of national sovereignty.

"Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another," Annan said. "What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations."

Annan collected the prize -- a gold medal, $950,000 and a diploma -- at a ceremony in Oslo's City Hall, which was guarded by hundreds of police while fighter jets flew patrols above the city.

The Nobel committee said the prize, the latest in more than a dozen for U.N. agencies or affiliated people, rewarded work for a "better organized and more peaceful world." It praised Annan for bringing "new life" to the world body.

Annan, a career U.N. official who became secretary general in 1997, shared the prize with the United Nations as a whole.

Annan outlined three priorities for the organization: eradicating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting democracy.

"We must focus, as never before, on improving the conditions of individual men and women," he said. "The sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights."

Annan said the prize money would be used for a new U.N. project, yet to be decided.

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the prize, more than 20 Peace Prize laureates, including East Timorese freedom fighter Jose Ramos-Horta and South Africa's Bishop Desmond Tutu, participated in the ceremonies.

Meanwhile, 12 scientists, researchers and economists joined author V.S. Naipaul to collect their Nobel Prizes from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at the Concert Hall in Stockholm.

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The U.N.'s Strangelove

December 11, 2001
Embassy Row - James Morrison
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20011211-98680952.htm

Ambassador E. Michael Southwick sometimes feels like Dr. Strangelove when he is dealing with the United Nations.

At a forum on the United Nations yesterday, Mr. Southwick referred to the satirical 1964 Stanley Kubrick movie, "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb," when he tried to explain the United States' rocky relationship with the world body that some critics consider anti-American. Mr. Southwick, deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, has been working with U.N. issues for the past four years.

"I feel a bit like Dr. Strangelove and his relationship with the bomb," he said. "You can know and love the U.N. at the same time and still be an American."

Mr. Southwick said, "The United States is sometimes represented as the U.N.'s harshest critic."

However, he added that the United States has been "one of its biggest supporters," despite disagreement about waste, bureaucracy and its occasional anti-American and anti-Israeli attitudes.

"The U.N. is the best place to get things done. They have the big tent," he said, referring to the global representation where diplomats and world leaders frequently meet in informal gatherings.

Speaking about the Bush administration, Mr. Southwick noted that critics expected President Bush to become an isolationist. However, Mr. Bush has displayed a "hard-headed multi-lateralism," he said.

"I can't say it is an embrace, but it is more forthcoming than many thought," he added.

Mr. Southwick delivered the administration's view of the United Nations at a forum to observe the organization's 100th birthday, on the same day that both the United Nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan received the Nobel Peace Prize.

South African Ambassador Sheila Sisulu praised the United Nations for its opposition to apartheid and its expulsion of the old South African regime. She also said it allowed the African National Congress, then a radical outlawed organization, to enjoy "observer status" at the General Assembly, which let it to lobby world leaders.

"We owe our liberation, in large measure, to the United Nations," she said. Norwegian Ambassador to the United States Knut Vollebaek, whose country awards the peace prize, said the award is presented to those who work for peace, even if they have not achieved it.

"The most striking example of this can be found in the Middle East," he said, referring to the prizes awarded to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978, and to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1994.

Speaking of the award to Mr. Annan and the United Nations, Mr. Vollebaek said, "I can hardly think of more appropriate recipients of the prize for this anniversary award ceremony."

-------- us

U.S. acknowledges link between Gulf war, disease

ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011211-20903557.htm

Soldiers who served in the Gulf war were nearly twice as likely as other military personnel to develop Lou Gehrig's disease, the government reported yesterday, the first time it has acknowledged a link between service in the Gulf and a specific disease.

The Veterans Administration said it immediately would offer disability and survivor benefits to veterans who served in the Persian Gulf during the conflict a decade ago.

"The hazards of the modern-day battlefield are more than bullet wounds and saber cuts," said Anthony Principi, secretary of Veterans Affairs.

The results released yesterday have not yet been reviewed by other scientists or published in an academic journal, but officials said they were releasing them to prevent further delay in compensating victims of the progressive, fatal disease.

"They need help now, and we will offer them that help," Mr. Principi said.

The study compared nearly 700,000 military personnel who served in the Gulf war between August 1990 and July 1991 with 1.8 million personnel who were not deployed to the region. It found that those who were deployed to the Gulf were nearly twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurological disorder often called Lou Gehrig's disease.

Among Gulf war veterans, the rate of disease was 6.7 persons per million. Among other military personnel, it was 3.5 per million.

The rate was not uniform among all personnel. Those who served in the Air Force were 2.7 times as likely to contract the disease, and those in the Army were twice as likely. Disease rates among Marine and Navy veterans were not statistically different from personnel not in the Gulf.

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The military's new generation

December 11, 2001
Gary Anderson
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2001121117630.htm

Williamson Murray, one of the author-editors of "The Dynamics of Military Revolution,1300-2050," visited the newly appointed director of one of the military services' innovation labs in 1995. The purpose of Mr. Murray's visit was to offer advice and assistance in implementing successful innovation. The director airily dismissed his offer explaining that emerging technology had rendered history irrelevant. Three years later, the director had retired and his innovations (some of them quite good) had collapsed in shambles. This thoughtful book is a potential tool for future innovators to use in avoiding the mistakes of the past while navigating their way through the stormy waters of military revolutions.

The book is a series of essays on revolutions in military affairs (RMAs) in the past seven centuries with book-end introductory and conclusion essays by MacGregor Knox and Mr. Murray that nicely frame the arguments in between. One primary theme of the book is that RMAs have a strong relationship to social and economic revolutions that precede them. Another theme is that RMAs are never permanent. Battlefield success in one conflict is usually mimicked by the conflict's victims in the next. A third resonating theme is that technology is only one aspect of RMAs and often the most fleeting.

Finally, the book stresses that the most successful, lasting innovations have been the ones that stress decentralization of command and control in war. All of these themes run counter to the conventional wisdom that calls for top-down, technology-driven centralized decision-making in formulating the military transformation that has become a buzzword in Washington in the last few years.

The book's chapters include essays on the English RMA in the 14th century, the French experience in the 17th century and the wars of the Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, the wars of German unification, British naval supremacy, World War I, and World War II. Each stresses that successful RMAs were only achieved by a combination of technology, organizational concepts, tactics and sociological advances. In most examples, technology is a strong contributing enabler, but in none is it a stand-alone factor. Quite the opposite is true. The most fleeting advantage of any RMA is the one in which technology is the largest factor, that being the sea power revolution led by Great Britain in the 19th century. Every British development was quickly mirrored by its rivals, which matched its technology if not in industrial capacity.

Both author-editors have impressive academic and publishing credentials. Mr. Murray is a recognized expert in military innovation and has done much of the research underpinning the ideas of Andrew Marshall and his Office of Net Assessment. He has advocated a balanced mix of technology, tactics and organizational innovation in pursuing an American RMA in the 21st century. Other contributors include notable thinkers such as John Lynn, Dennis Showater and Holger Herwig. Perhaps the weakest essay is Jonathan Bailey's treatment of World War I, which emphasizes the contribution of indirect artillery fire at the expense of other factors that get relatively short shrift. In reality, World War I represented an RMA gone terribly wrong. It represents a cautionary tale of a hellish mix of technology and national passion that resulted in the slaughter of a generation of European youth to no positive end. Mr. Bailey's point in the essay seems to be that artillery could have been better employed by both sides. While this is undoubtedly true, its narrow scope does not fit with the wider aspirations of the book that are generally realized by the other contributors.

If the concluding essay has a hero, it is Mr. Marshall who has argued for balance in seeking an American RMA. The primary villain is retired Adm. William Owens who has argued strongly for an RMA built around technology managed in Washington by technocrats in computer-lined command bunkers.

Mr. Knox and Mr. Murray argue convincingly that history does not support this approach. The question posed by the author-editors is whether today's emerging class of military professional is up to the challenge of creating a successful RMA. They openly question whether the current generation of senior officers is worthy of their predecessors who led the American military establishment out of the morass of defeat in Vietnam to the triumph of Desert Storm. The question of whether there are Colin Powells and Al Grays waiting in the wings remains open. For the good of the nation, we can only hope that there are.

This book went to print before the events of September 11. Consequently, the new kind of war thrust on the American people on that black Tuesday were not considered, but Mr. Knox and Mr. Murray touch on some issues that will be key, such as the exploitation of nontraditional resources like cultural intelligence. This is an important little book. It deserves to be widely read.

Gary Anderson is a retired Marine Corps officer who regularly writes on military affairs.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS

Computer Sciences Wins Defense Contract

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22977-2001Dec10.html

Computer Sciences Corp. will help train law enforcement officers to combat cybercrime as part of a new contract, worth up to $86 million, with the Department of Defense, the company plans to announce today.

Under the eight-year contract, the El Segundo, Calif., technology company, which has an 8,000-employee presence in the Washington-Maryland-Virginia region, will help the Defense Department's Computer Investigations Training Program develop cybercrime investigation courses. Originally, the agency's proposal called only for training of military officials, but after the September terrorist attacks the proposal was expanded to training of all law enforcement agencies, the company said. The size of the contract grew from between $45 million and $50 million to more than $86 million.

Today's law enforcement officers "cannot do their job without knowing about the electronic crime scene," said Greg Redfern, director of the training program.

The national homeland security agenda calls for preparing for all types of attacks, including cyberterrorism, said Redfern. "In light of 9/11 there was going to be a lot of attention on cybersecurity, cybercrime, and I wanted to think ahead, to respond," he said.

Law enforcement officers will be trained to search for and seize various forms of digital technology -- from computer hard drives to handheld devices to pagers to fax machines. The training also includes mock trials that allow them to practice testifying on digital data they collect, the company said.

"Virtually every crime scene you walk into will have some of this present," said Chris Steinbach, director of service delivery for CSC. "There is probably an inadequate amount of law enforcement in the world that have been trained."

Federal agencies currently spend about $10 million a year training law enforcement personnel to fight cybercrimes, said French Caldwell, research director for Gartner Group Inc. For the country's 600,000 law enforcement agents and 16,000 law enforcement agencies, average cybercrime spending is about $625 per agency or $17 per person, according to the research group.

And most of that is focused on the FBI and the Secret Service, the group said. With the CSC contract, spending will more than double, but that's still not enough, Caldwell said. "There has been a serious underfunding of cybercrime competencies in government," he said.

The research group estimates that it will cost $160 million to $190 million to train enough law enforcement personnel to adequately investigate and detect cybercrime, noting that even the beefed-up CSC contract falls short.

"It's more than just tracking viruses," Caldwell said. With cybercrime training, law enforcement can track the social network of terrorist groups and the movement of money, he said. But more needs to be done to train prosecutors and judges, he said.

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Closer Look at Exports Urged
Customs Lists Items of Potential Use to Terrorists

By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23018-2001Dec10?language=printer

Concerned that the nation's own products could be used by terrorists to carry out a new round of attacks, U.S. Customs Service officials yesterday asked American businesses to scrutinize more closely overseas orders for technology, weapons and equipment.

Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said the agency has compiled a "shopping list for terrorist organizations" of about 100 items that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction or to help terrorists evade detection or capture. In addition to seeking assistance from businesses, the Customs Service and other government agencies are bolstering enforcement of export laws.

"It will take a vigorous effort from everyone, including government and the private sector, to shield America from being targeted by its own technology," Bonner said.

Describing concerns that al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations are seeking to develop crude nuclear weapons, he said: "It would be the ultimate irony if they were able to obtain equipment or technology from the United States."

Many items on the list have legitimate uses, Bonner said, but could wreak havoc if they wound up in the wrong hands. Customs agents yesterday began meeting with hundreds of manufacturers, businesses and distributors, urging them to alert the government of suspicious activities. Bonner said firms should be especially wary of first-time customers, clients offering large sums of cash or prospective buyers willing to pay far above market price to obtain sensitive materials or technology.

Bonner said the targeted dual-use items include chemicals such as thiodiglycol, which has a benign use in producing dyes and inks but also can be used to make mustard gas, and krytrons, high-speed timing devices that can be used in photocopiers and lasers but also to trigger nuclear warheads. Over the years, Customs agents have prevented such products from reaching nations such as Iran and Iraq, he said.

The Customs Service is working with the State and Commerce departments in the enforcement effort, Bonner said.

The push comes at a time when resources at the Customs Service are stretched thin. Roughly 8,000 inspectors and canine enforcement officers are responsible for checking passengers, vehicles and cargo shipments at more than 300 entry points into the United States. Another 2,700 agents have investigative duties such as export control.

Bonner acknowledged that "there is a certain amount of robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of deploying services," and said that he was concerned the new effort could cause delays in some fraud investigations. He said the challenge was to maintain "the same level of intensity" in fulfilling the Customs Service's other responsibilities.

But heightened homeland security efforts, he noted, have had benefits beyond combating terrorism. By popping open more car trunks and looking inside more trucks, the Customs Service has slowed down the flow of drugs into the United States along the southwest border, Bonner said. Drug seizures this October were 30 percent higher than in October 2000, he said.

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Judges not cleared for cases

By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011211-76824616.htm

Secrecy imposed on immigration hearings for September 11 terror suspects is so tight that nearly half the Justice Department's 220 immigration judges lack the security clearance needed to hear the "special" cases.

"We have 112 immigration judges with security clearances of secret or above, out of 220 judges overall," Rick Kenney, spokesman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said in an interview yesterday.

Mr. Kenney said cases have been heard under the new security procedures at some of the 52 regional immigration courts, but even Chief Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy, who implemented the procedure, would not estimate the number.

"There is no way to tell how many cases are being heard that way, because we are not counting them," Mr. Kenney said.

Organizations wanting to defend accused foreigners were so frustrated by the lack of information that a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit here last week to penetrate the secrecy.

"Most aliens just happened to get caught in the net. They don't know anything at all," said James Zogby, of the Arab American Institute. "Visa violators and terror suspects are simply not the same thing."

"This is the challenge," said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which seeks to match volunteer lawyers with inmates.

"You can imagine that's somewhat difficult when you can't find out who is detained and whether or not they are represented by counsel," she said. "I'm in despair wondering who is representing these folks."

Justice Department officials up to and including Attorney General John Ashcroft insist detainees awaiting immigration hearings have access to telephones and lists of legal aid groups.

Many aspects of immigration court secrecy have been debated since Judge Creppy issued orders carrying out Mr. Ashcroft's anti-terrorism directive. But the extent to which judges of the immigration court are shut out of cases was not widely known even among lawyers who specialize in the field.

Judge Creppy's order detailed how computers and files should be coded so that neither the substance of the case nor the fact that there would be a hearing shows up on computers or through automated telephone services.

Public requests for information by case number receive a "Warning Warning" notice, and computers alert court clerks "whenever anyone else attempts to enter the ANSIR record," according to the order, which uses the acronym for the Automated Nationwide System for Immigration Review. ANSIR contains similar safeguards to protect identities in immigration cases where battered children or battered spouses are involved.

So many judges lack security clearance, Mr. Kenney said, because "in the past, there haven't been many cases involving classified information."

"There wasn't a crying need for all immigration judges to be cleared," he said.

Judge Creppy said yesterday, "If necessary, and as the need arises, we will obtain more security clearances."

The new prospect that some cases "may ultimately involve classified evidence" keeps the 108 immigration judges who lack clearance from conducting hearings on what the Justice Department designates as "cases requiring special procedures." That category may be requested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, from which the court is independent, or by the Justice Department, to which both organizations belong.

"No visitors, no family and no press," Judge Creppy directed in his order implementing the extraordinary procedures.

"You should instruct all courtroom personnel that they are not to discuss the case with anyone," he said of hearings that previously could be opened to the public.

"Normally, cases are open, but there are exceptions on a case-by-case basis," Mr. Kenney said.

However, the "respondents" whose deportation is at stake - plus their attorneys when they have one - are present, along with security officers, stenographers and other court employees.

Immigration lawyers cannot be required to have security clearances, Mr. Kenney said. "We can't require clearance for anyone who doesn't work for us," he said.

However, he pointed out that lawyers and their clients in cases designated as special are entitled only to see unclassified summaries of the information when "secret evidence" is involved. A Senate bill is pending that would nullify even that requirement.

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[This is a good time to remind readers that articles and reports archived in NucNews often don't reflect the thinking of the archivists, but are included for their information and shock value. If you wish to respond to this editorial, write the Washington Times Letters to the Editor: mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com]

More reassuring than alarming

Bruce Fein
December 11, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011211-88375368.htm

Last week's Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of President George Bush's order authorizing military commissions to try

aliens suspected of war crimes and Justice Department law enforcement initiatives should reassure more than alarm.

The Democrat-controlled committee's attacks seemed puny; and, its theatrically selected witnesses performed no better than Tallulah Bankhead in "Cleopatra." According to critic Robert Benchly, the Queen barged down the Nile and sank. On the other hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft, when Lincolnesque statesmanship should be the lodestar, lapsed into a Savonarola or John Knox preaching executive branch infallibility.

Senators or witnesses charged or insinuated that military commissions without congressional authority skated the brink of unconstitutionality or smacked of an imperial presidency. President Bush's executive order allegedly trampled on congressional prerogatives in the trial of war crimes in violation of the Constitution's separation of powers.

But in Ex Parte Quirin (1942), the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected an identical claim. The justices, moreover, were no reactionary band of Republican appointees. Eight of the nine were Franklin Roosevelt selections; the one centrist justice appointed by President Herbert Hoover, Owen Roberts, climbed to fame prosecuting Republican Teapot Dome villains. Additionally, the court's concern for civil liberties in wartime was demonstrated the following year in holding unconstitutional a compulsory flag salute in public schools. In other words, Ex Parte Quirin cannot be dismissed as a World War II aberration that time and reason have overtaken.

Writing for the court in that case involving the trials of Nazi saboteurs by a military commission summoned by President Roosevelt, Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone explained: "An important incident to the conduct of war is the adoption of measures by military command not only to repel and defeat the enemy, but to seize and subject to disciplinary measures those enemies who in their attempt to thwart or impede our military effort have violated the law of war."

Furthermore, the chief justice emphasized, Congress had endorsed military commissions in various statutes regulating war and the armed forces. One, for example, declared that "the provisions of these articles conferring jurisdiction upon courts martial shall not be construed as depriving military commissions of concurrent jurisdiction in respect of offenders or offenses that by statute or by the law of war may be triable by such military commissions." Another empowered the president to prescribe pretrial, trial and post-trial procedures, including modes of proof, for military commissions. Accordingly, Stone reasoned, Congress had sanctioned military commissions, which had been fixtures in American military practice from the Revolutionary War onward.

The court was untroubled by the declination of Congress to define war crimes by sharp metes and bounds. The chief justice amplified: "Congress had the choice of crystallizing in permanent form and in minute detail every offense against the law of war, or of adopting the system of common law applied by military tribunals so far as it should be recognized and deemed applicable by the courts. It chose the latter course."

More than a decade after Ex Parte Quirin, Congress overhauled our system of military justice. But the legislative branch retained undisturbed provisions (now codified at sections 821 and 836 of title 10, U.S. Code) which the Supreme Court had held ratified the constitutionality of military commissions. And in the ensuing half-century, Congress has sung the same constitutional libretto. In other words, President Bush's military commission order fits its congressionally blessed FDR predecessor like a glove. Congress has already approved; and, not a congressional finger was raised by the Senate Judiciary Committee urging revocation of that authorization.

The most tear-stained civil liberties scene was as follows. An alien detained for a minor but admitted immigration law violation enjoyed only 15 minutes per week of telephone time (plus customary face-to-face opportunities) to consult with attorneys or speak to family or friends. Fifteen minutes, however, would seem ample time to communicate plight or maltreatment and uncurtain a legal rescue mission with even prolix or convoluted prose. Committee witnesses further decried immigration or criminal law detentions for illegal conduct that formerly had been either ignored or placed in the caboose of the Justice Department's enforcement priorities. But neither citizen nor alien is crowned with a civil right to transgress nonpriority crimes or prohibitions. Priorities legitimately change with altered circumstances or public policy concerns.

Indeed, a few of the al Qaeda September 11 war criminals, despite their illegal immigration status, had been left to roam at large. Had they been detained, the September 11 horror might have been thwarted or mitigated. In sum, unlike the death mourners for Little Nell in "The Old Curiosity Shop," the Judiciary Committee crowd seemed unweepful over abbreviated telephone access "hardship" born by immigrants lawfully detained.

The American Civil Liberties Union hammered that the FBI's questioning of 5,000 Arab Muslim aliens was unfairly or unconstitutionally coercive.

According to the high-octave organization, the neglect of the Justice Department to provide a handbook enumerating legal tactics that could frustrate investigative or enforcement actions made the interviews involuntary. The ACLU further complained over encouragement of cooperation from interviewees by FBI hinting at lenient treatment in the event they themselves were scofflaws. But that type of reciprocity is a staple of law enforcement generally. Cooperation is routinely invoked to soften punishment or to downgrade the seriousness of a prosecution. And the Supreme Court in Bordenkircher vs. Hayes (1978) even found irreproachable the practice of indicting suspects for greater crimes if they refused to plead guilty to lesser offenses.

In sum, nothing that President Bush or Attorney General Ashcroft have done even nicks our sacred constitutional order. Eternal vigilance, however, is the price of liberty. We should never cease sniffing for government abuses.

Bruce Fein is general counsel for the Center for Law and Accountability, a public interest law group headquartered in Virginia.

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Ex-LAPD Officer Sentenced to Prison

DECEMBER 11, 2001
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=NATIONAL&STORYID=APIS7GB1C2O0

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A former police officer was sentenced to five months in prison for violating a man's civil rights by falsely arresting him and claiming he was carrying a concealed weapon.

Edward Patrick Ruiz was also sentenced Monday to five months of house arrest.

Ruiz, 37, pleaded guilty last year to violating the rights of Victor Jerome Tyson when he and former Officer Jon Paul Taylor arrested him on a misdemeanor concealed weapon charge in April 1995. At the time Ruiz was Taylor's Los Angeles Police Department training officer.

Ruiz testified that he falsely told a supervisory officer he had seen Tyson throw away a revolver as he and Taylor approached him. He also admitted he filed a false police report.

Tyson was tried on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon but his case was dismissed after prosecutors discovered inconsistencies in the officers' testimony.

A Los Angeles Police Department Board of Rights panel found Ruiz guilty of lying and suspended him for 22 days. He left the force after entering his guilty plea in August 2000.

Taylor, who also pleaded guilty to violating Tyson's civil rights, was sentenced in November 2000 to two years probation and ordered to provide 200 hours of community service. He left the Police Department in 1997.

----

Officer gets 10 years for siccing dog on suspects

By Arlo Wagner
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20011211-81100828.htm

A former Prince George's County, Md. police officer was sentenced in federal court yesterday to 10 years in prison for violating the civil rights of a burglary suspect by releasing her police dog on him six years ago.

Critics were pleased at the maximum sentence until they learned that Stephanie C. Mohr, 31, may not go to prison for at least six months while her attorneys appeal the trial verdict and sentencing to the 4th U.S. District Court of Appeals in Richmond.

"There's an arrogance that permeates police in America," said Mauri Saalakhan, director of the Peace and Justice Foundation, claiming that all police charged with crimes are released on bond or personal recognizance.

About 50 demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt before the sentencing. They and their signs urged that Mohr receive a stiff sentence, and that other Prince George's County police be charged and convicted.

The signs carried slogans that proclaimed "Bigots with Badges," "We Want Justice Now" and "Human rights in PG."

The People's Coalition for Police Accountability listed a "dirty dozen" county officers, including 10 men, Mohr and another woman, accused of assaulting suspects without cause or because of race. Five of the suspects were killed.

Judge Deborah K. Chasanow imposed the sentence on Mohr and continued the officer on personal recognizance during a 41/2-hour hearing yesterday in U.S. District Court. Ten years was the maximum by law, but the judge could have imposed more years because of extenuating circumstances.

"I find the defendant's testimony was false," Judge Chasanow said of two trials for Mohr and three other officers in March and August.

"A canine can be a dangerous weapon," the judge said, responding to the claim that a dangerous weapon was wrongfully used in arresting Jorge Herrera-Cruz of El Salvador and Ricardo G. Mendez, 34, of Mexico at about 4:20 a.m. on Sept. 21, 1995.

On surveillance because of a series of burglaries, police found the two men on the roof of a printing shop in Takoma Park. Mohr, then a police officer for two years, released her dog, Valk, after the men came down from the roof.

Witnesses' testimonies differed in some respects. Mohr said she released Valk after she saw Mendez make a sudden movement.

Police Sgt. Anthony Delozier, 40, who eventually was acquitted, testified that he had asked Takoma Park Police Sgt. Dennis W. Bonn if Mohr's dog "could get a bite," and Bonn said, "Yes."

It was learned later that the men were homeless, and that Mendez had been previously convicted of dealing drugs and deported twice from the United States.

Bonn subsequently retired. He was charged as an accessory after the fact. After testifying in the trials, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Perhaps a key in Mohr's appeal is that Judge Chasanow allowed witnesses of two other incidents involving the officer and her dog in her second trial. In 1998, Mohr was accused of threatening to sic her dog on a black homeowner while police looked for a fugitive. In 1997, her dog chewed on a 15-year-old boy as police sought a burglar.

Usually, evidence of other unassociated incidents or crimes is not allowed in the trial of another crime. Testimonies of those incidents had not been permitted in Mohr's first trial.

Prosecution for a third trial of Mohr could be difficult. Attorneys said both Mendez and Herrera-Cruz have returned to their homelands. Herrera-Cruz has since died, said Kimberley Propeack, attorney for CASA of Maryland, a community assistance program for Hispanics.

"Jorge died," Miss Propeack said. "We have to remember her victims His relatives said he was devastated by the way he was treated."

Yesterday, defense attorneys David Simpson and Fred Bennett sought a lesser sentence because of Bonn's 15-month term; because Mohr was following her police training during the arrest; because of her previous good behavior; because of rearing her son, who is now 2 years old; and because of difficulties in getting a job in the future. She lives in Bowie with her fiancee and their son.

The adopted daughter of an Army nurse and a National Security Agency father, Mohr was on the National Honor Society when she graduated from Glen Burnie, Md., High School. She then got a B.A. degree in sociology at Towson State College and wanted to get into police work, Mr. Simpson said.

Mr. Simpson said five criminals fired 30 shots at Mohr in July 1994 as she patrolled an apartment complex. One shot grazed the back of her head. Those criminals were captured, convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail.

"None of this was done willfully or maliciously," Mohr read from a statement as she began to cry. "Thanks for your time and consideration."

"We believe she should do every day and every second of her time," said Jonathan Hutto of Amnesty International.

-------- death penalty

Executions in U.S. down by 13 in 2000

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 11, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011211-26347450.htm

Fourteen states executed 85 prisoners in 2000, 13 fewer than in 1999, the Justice Department said yesterday.

The executed prisoners, including 83 men and 2 women, spent an average of 11 years and 5 months on death row, 6 months less than those executed in 1999, according to a report released by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).

According to the report, those executed included 43 whites, 35 blacks, 6 Hispanics and 1 American Indian. Eighty of the executions were by lethal injection and 5 by electrocution. Twenty-one states authorized lethal injections in 1990, which increased to 36 states by 2000.

Texas executed 40 persons in 2000, Oklahoma 11, Virginia 8, Florida 6, Missouri 5, Alabama 4, Arizona 3 and Arkansas 2. Six other states, including California, each executed one person in 2000.

At year-end 2000, 37 of 38 states with capital punishment and the federal government held 3,539 men and 54 women on death row, the report said. California had the most (586), followed by Texas (450), Florida (371) and Pennsylvania (238). The federal system has 18 inmates on death row.

Between 1990 and 2000, the number of inmates sentenced to death increased 52 percent, a period in which prison populations nationwide grew by 79 percent.

One hundred percent of death-row inmates convicted prior to Dec. 31, 2000, had committed murder and most had a prior criminal record, according to available data. Sixty-four percent had a prior felony conviction and 8 percent had been convicted of a prior homicide.

Among the 6,588 persons under sentence of death since the Supreme Court reaffirmed the death penalty in 1976, about 10 percent have been executed. Thirty-five percent had the death sentence commuted, overturned on appeal or died while incarcerated.

The average term served prior to execution since 1977 is 121 months; for those executed in 2000, the elapsed time from sentence to execution was 137 months. Just over 1 percent of death-row inmates had served more than 20 years at the end of 2000.

Justice department officials said that from Jan. 1, 1977, through Dec. 31, 2000, there were 683 executions in 31 states. Sixty-five percent of those executions were in five states: Texas (239), Virginia (81), Florida (50), Missouri (46) and Oklahoma (30).

Among the 683 executed since 1977, 518 were by lethal injection, 149 by electrocution, 11 by lethal gas, three by hanging (two in Washington state and one in Delaware) and two by firing squad (both in Utah).

----

Death Penalty, Location Are Linked in Va. Study

Execution Sought Most Often in Suburbs

By Brooke A. Masters
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22698-2001Dec10?language=printer

The city or county where a murder occurs outweighs race or the specific facts of the crime in determining whether a killer faces execution in Virginia, according to a study of capital punishment released yesterday by the investigative arm of the General Assembly.

Suburban prosecutors are significantly more likely to seek capital murder indictments and ask juries for a death sentence than their counterparts in rural and urban areas, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission concluded after a year-long study. Defendants who killed women were six times as likely to be indicted for capital murder.

"Whether a defendant charged with a capital-eligible crime actually faces the death penalty is more related to the type of jurisdiction in which the crime was committed than the actual circumstances of the murder," said Wayne Turnage, lead author of the study.

The General Assembly requested the study when Virginia, which has executed more people than any state except Texas, was drawing criticism for an allegedly cursory death row appeals process. DNA testing had also just shown that Earl Washington Jr., who once came within days of the electric chair, was innocent of the crime that sent him to death row.

Del. John A. "Jack" Rollison III (R-Prince William), a commission member, said the results concerned him. "Can you tell me that justice is served equally throughout the commonwealth?" he asked. " . . . I don't know if it is equal application of justice."

However, Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) found comfort in another result of the study: that the race of the defendant and victim does not appear to influence whether a defendant is sent to death row.

"I find [the study] reassuring to me on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion," he said. "Social values in communities can fluctuate."

The regional disparities found in Virginia are frequently raised in other states. Prosecutors in urban jurisdictions, particularly those with large minority populations, often are more reluctant to seek the death penalty because they feel their juries do not support it.

In Maryland, eight of the 11 men on death row are from suburban Baltimore County, even though the urban jurisdictions of Baltimore and Prince George's County account for a much larger share of homicides. Similarly, District residents voted against local capital punishment, and a Washington jury recently rebuffed the first effort to seek the federal death penalty in the case of a drug kingpin.

The Virginia study concluded that prosecutors in medium-density jurisdictions, such as Prince William County and Danville, sought the death penalty in 45 percent of possibly capital cases, compared with 16 percent in urban areas such as Richmond and Norfolk and 34 percent in rural areas.

Although 215 defendants were charged with crimes that could have carried the death penalty between 1995 and 1999, just 24, or 11 percent, were sent to death row, the study found. Prosecutors had the largest role in the winnowing process -- their decisions trimmed the list by 70 percent. Juries and judges did the rest.

The study also found that:

• One in four defense lawyers who handled a capital case in the past five years had been disciplined by the state bar, though none for work on capital cases.

• Virginia's strict rules on procedure mean that the appeals courts did not consider one-third of death row inmates' claims on the merits, ruling instead that they had been raised too late.

• Prosecutors sought the death penalty in 44 percent of all murder-rape cases but 26 percent of murder-robbery cases.

The Virginia commission was not charged with looking at whether innocent men have been executed or are on death row.

Spokesmen for Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) and the Virginia Supreme Court declined to comment on the report.

But Deputy Virginia Attorney General E. Montgomery Tucker sent an eight-page letter to the commission detailing what he called errors of fact and law and complaining that the report was giving too much credence to individual judges who have criticized the death penalty.

Some death penalty critics argued that the study's statewide focus might have obscured racial disparities that show up only in certain areas.

Blacks make up 20 percent of the state's population but 51 percent of people sent to death row. However, the study found that prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty against white defendants, largely because urban prosecutors -- who see many black defendants -- are more reluctant to seek the death penalty.

Defense lawyer Steve Benjamin said he believes that the dearth of urban death penalty prosecutions masks an anti-black bias in some majority-white jurisdictions.

The intensely anticipated study drew praise from groups on both sides of the death penalty debate for trying to tackle the issue systematically and factually.

But Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney Linda D. Curtis, chairman of the state prosecutors association, warned against trying to standardize the capital process. "No two cases are identical. No two defendants can have the same background," she said.

Prosecutors may exercise their discretion in several ways: by seeking an indictment on a charge less than capital murder, by agreeing to a plea that spares the defendant's life or by not asking the jury to consider the death penalty. The report did not specify which prosecutors were most or least likely to seek the death penalty.

The commission also did not look at the quality of defense lawyers, jury selection and bias and whether the economic status of the defendant plays a role.

"We need to study the system from A to Z, and this study only covers a couple of letters," said Henry Heller, of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

-------- terrorism

Bush: Next Phase of War Focuses on 'Rogue States'

December 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-bush.html?searchpv=reuters

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - President Bush said on Tuesday the next priority in the U.S. war on terrorism was to prevent ''rogue states'' from spreading nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Speaking on Sept. 11's three-month anniversary, Bush said the U.S. armed forces must transform themselves into a more agile force to confront the new threats posed by terrorism following the attacks on Washington and New York.

He also argued that the United States must move beyond the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty so it can develop a missile defense system, telling cheering cadets at the Citadel, the South Carolina military college, the treaty was ``written in a different era, for a different enemy.''

A White House official said a formal announcement that Washington may withdraw from the 1972 treaty could come soon.

``America's next priority to prevent mass terror is to protect against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them,'' Bush said. ``I wish I could report to the American people that this threat does not exist -- that our enemy is content with car bombs and box cutters -- but I cannot.''

Mapping out his post-Sept. 11 vision for a more agile, mobile military, Bush held up the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan as a possible model for future wars, citing techniques like coordinating airstrikes with intelligence from small numbers of troops on the ground as well as the use of new hardware like the unmanned ``Predator'' spy plane.

``America is required once again to change the way our military thinks and fights, and starting on Oct. 7, the enemy in Afghanistan got the first glimpse of a new American military that cannot and will not be evaded,'' Bush said.

With the Taliban driven from power by Afghan forces aided by U.S. airstrikes and limited U.S. ground forces, Bush also offered a glimpse at the next phase of the war on terrorism, saying terrorists must not be allowed to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

He cited unspecified ``rogue states'' as the most likely sources of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and said they would be treated as enemies if they aided terrorists.

``We cannot accept and we will not accept states that harbor, finance, train or equip the agents of terror,'' Bush said. ``Those nations that violate this principle will be regarded as hostile regimes. They have been warned. They are being watched, and they will be held to account,'' Bush added.

BUSH WARNS OF THREATS

Bush began the day on Tuesday with a White House ceremony, marking the three-month anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A Marine band played the national anthem at 8:46 a.m., the exact moment the first hijacked jetliner smashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

As a presidential candidate visiting the Citadel in 1999, Bush delivered a similar address on the U.S. military and the need to protect the United States from terror attacks.

``In September 1999, I said here at the Citadel that America was entering a period of consequences that would be defined by the threat of terror and that we faced a challenge of military transformation,'' Bush said on Tuesday.

``That threat has now revealed itself, and that challenge is now the military and moral necessity of our time.''

Bush also used Tuesday's address to make the case for a missile defense system, which the ABM treaty bars the United States from developing and deploying.

``We must move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,'' Bush said. ``America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century.''

According to congressional sources, administration officials have told U.S. Senate staff that Washington expects to give formal notice in January of a required six-month withdrawal period from the treaty.

Bush believes the United States must develop a multibillion-dollar land, sea, air and possibly space-based system in order to protect the country and its allies from incoming missiles from ``rogue'' state like North Korea and Iraq.

Russia, the other major nuclear power, has vehemently opposed such a system and argued in favor of retaining the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of arms control. In recent months -- especially since the Sept. 11 attacks -- Moscow has shown more willingness to work with Washington on the issue.

------

Tape of Bin Laden Discussing Attacks to be Released
White House May Add English Subtitles to Avoid Charges of Doctoring Arabic in Garbled Sections

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22744-2001Dec10?language=printer

The White House plans to release a tape of Osama bin Laden discussing the World Trade Center attack later this week and is studying whether subtitles should be added to translate the Arabic to avoid charges that the soundtrack was doctored, senior administration officials said.

The 40-minute videotape, in which bin Laden discussed his advance knowledge and responsibility for the attacks, was made by an amateur hoping to document an al Qaeda dinner last month honoring an older mullah, officials said. The tape's sound "is spotty and garbled and one part is taped over," according to one official who has seen segments of the tape and been shown the transcript.

On the tape, bin Laden praises God that both towers collapsed when he had only expected more limited destruction, according to officials who have seen the tape or read a transcript.

As the group sits on the floor eating from bowls and being served from silver trays, bin Ladin jokes that his own press aide, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, had no advance knowledge of the attacks and rushed to tell him when news reports first came in.

Bin Laden also tells the group he knew Mohamed Atta was in charge of the hijacking group and that some of the "brothers" who conducted the operation did not know the nature of the work they were tasked to do, according to the official. Bin Laden says on the dinner tape, "They were only told at the time they boarded the planes," the official said.

President Bush said the portions of the tape he saw reinforced his will to pursue bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. "For those who see this tape, they'll realize that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, he has no conscience and no soul, that he represents the worst of civilization."

Intelligence officials, who recently obtained the tape in a private home in Jalalabad, have checked it with experts inside and outside the U.S. government. Last week the officials told the White House they considered it authentic.

Since that time there has been an internal debate about when and how to release it. Some have argued it could be used to counter overseas critics in the Muslim world who want evidence made public of bin Laden's role in the Sept. 11 attacks that took the lives of nearly 3,300 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Others worry that the tape's release could jeopardize the chance of acquiring additional evidence of bin Laden's guilt.

Part of the concern centers on the fact that the tape's Arabic soundtrack is unintelligible at times. Accompanying it with a separate English language transcript would raise "questions as to its authenticity," one official said. Arab language experts, including bin Laden supporters in the Middle East, would question "where in the videotape the U.S. says bin Laden said particular statements in the transcript," the official said.

Subtitles added to the videotape, one official said yesterday, would show the English translation of the Arabic that is spoken directly by bin Laden.

A White House official said the administration is evaluating either subtitles or a voice-over translation that could be placed on the videotape. Using a voice-over, however, would cover over the Arabic being spoken, an official said.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, watched the tape yesterday with an English transcript and a translator. He said it showed bin Laden's "culpability in planning and foreknowledge of events so clearly that I don't know how a reasonable person could defend him. The gloating and bragging about what they did on September 11 was disgusting."

----

Pope Says Self Defense Legitimate Against Terror

Tue, Dec 11 2001
Reuters
By Philip Pullella
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/011211/08/international-attack-pope-dc

VATICAN CITY - Pope John Paul, in his clearest words ever on terrorism, said on Tuesday that while the international community had a right to defend itself against attacks, an entire nation could not be singled out for blame.

Although he did not specifically mention the United States or Afghanistan, he clearly was referring to the international situation and his concern that innocent people are caught up in attempts to punish terrorists and thwart future attacks.

In his message for the Catholic Church's World Day of Peace, he also condemned as a "patent falsehood" claims by terrorist groups that they act on behalf of the poor and the oppressed and rejected the concept of killing in the name of God or religion.

He urged forgiveness as the long-term exit from the terrorism tunnel but the 16-page document also condemned the "death wish that feeds" terrorist organizations, saying it sprang from hatred and "fanatic fundamentalism."

The annual message, released this year exactly three months after the September 11 attacks against the United States, is traditionally sent by Vatican embassies around the world to heads of state, government and international organizations.

The Pope said the attacks against the United States had stirred "the depths of my heart" like the evil caused by the Nazi and communist totalitarianism of his youth in Poland.

Self defense against terror attacks was legitimate, but the offended parties had to be careful to single out individuals responsible rather than entire groups or religions for blame.

"There exists therefore a right to defend oneself against terrorism, a right which, as always, must be exercised with respect for moral and legal limits in the choice of ends and means," he said.

"The guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation, ethnic group or religion to which the terrorists may belong," he said.

The United States and its allies have been waging a war in Afghanistan to oust hard-line Taliban rulers for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the militant Islamic leader blamed for the attacks.

At a news conference, Vatican officials could not be drawn on whether the Pope was urging Washington to stop the campaign or keep it from spreading to other countries.

"The Pope sees the situation through the eyes of afflicted populations...not the destiny of a government or its policy or objectives, but rather the civilian population," said Monsignor Frank Dewane of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department.

"YOU SHALL NOT KILL IN GOD'S NAME"

The Pope, who next month will host an international summit of religious leaders to pray for peace in the Italian city of Assisi, said: "You shall not kill in God's name."

"Consequently, no religious leader can condone terrorism, and much less preach it," he said, repeating the Church's teaching that a war on religious grounds is unacceptable.

"It is a profanation of religion to declare oneself a terrorist in the name of God," he said.

He said Jewish, Christian and Islamic leaders should now "take the lead in publicly condemning terrorism and in denying terrorists any form of religious or moral legitimacy."

International cooperation to fight terrorism had to include political and economic steps to relieve oppression, he added.

"The recruitment of terrorists in fact is easier in situations where rights are trampled upon and injustices tolerated over a long period of time," he said.

But he sternly said the terrorist claim to be acting on behalf of the poor is a patent falsehood."

However difficult, forgiveness was the only lasting solution.

"Forgiveness in fact always involves an apparent short-term loss for a real long-term gain. Violence is the exact opposite; opting as it does for an apparent short-term gain, it involves a real and permanent loss," he said.

----

Accused of 'Conspiring' With Al Qaeda, Suspect Is Indicted as 20th Hijacker

New York Times
December 11, 2001
By DAVID JOHNSTON
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/national/11CND-INQU.html

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 - A man whom authorities suspect to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks was indicted today on six terrorism charges by a federal grand jury in Virginia. It is the first case in which anyone in the United States has been accused of complicity in the hijackings.

The indictment accused Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, "with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11." Four of the six counts carry a maximum sentence of death.

Mr. bin Laden and several of his deputies are listed as unindicted co-conspirators.

Mr. Moussaoui was arrested on Aug. 17 on immigration charges after officials at a flight school where he was enrolled as a student alerted authorities to what they regarded as suspicious behavior. He has been held in New York as a material witness in the investigation of the attacks - as a man who investigators believed was preparing to take part in the hijackings. He is to be arraigned on Jan. 2 in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, just outside Washington.

The indictment said Mr. Moussaoui entered the United States after Ramzi Bin al Shibh, another man thought to be an intended hijacker, was refused entry into the United States on four separate occasions. Mr. al Shibh then became Mr. Moussaoui's financier, transferring thousands of dollars to Mr. Moussaoui for flight training. That was the most direct connection mentioned in the indictment tying Mr. Moussaoui to the hijackers.

Much of the evidence in the indictment has been previously reported in news accounts, but the document provides rich new detail about the chronology of Mr. Moussaoui's movements in the United States along with those of the hijackers. Nothing in the indictment suggests that Mr. Moussaoui had any direct personal contact with any of the 19 hijackers.

In announcing the indictment at a news conference today at the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft said, "Al-Qaeda will now meet the justice it abhors and the judgment it fears."

The indictment identified Osama bin Laden and 22 others as unindicted co-conspirators. Among them are Mr. bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri; all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers and Al Qaeda's finance manager, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi.


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

UK to change renewables rules to overcome planning

Reuters:
11/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13651

LONDON - Britain's energy minister yesterday said he will introduce new rules which will revive renewable energy projects that have failed to get planning permission.

"These new rules will unlock around 100 renewable energy projects, currently blocked by planning constraints, to drive forward a significant expansion in the production of green energy," said Brian Wilson at the opening of a wind farm in Wales.

"Many of these projects will be wind based," he added.

Under the new rules renewable energy schemes which have failed to get planning permission but which have a Non Fossil Fuel Obligation (NFFO) will be allowed to retain the NFFO and move the location of the project. A failure to obtain planning permission under existing legislation has meant an end to the project.

An official at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) told Reuters the new rules were expected to be introduced "very soon, probably around Christmas time."

NFFO was a mechanism by which the government obliged public electricity suppliers to secure specified amount of generating capacity from renewable technologies.

No new NFFO contracts are being awarded because the mechanism has been replaced by the Renewables Obligation which requires suppliers to supply 10 percent of their electricity from green sources by 2010.

The government hopes this will create a one billion pound market for renewable energy by 2010, but difficulty in obtaining planning permission has long been a problem for many green schemes, particuarly wind farms.

Britain currently only generates 2.8 percent of its power from renewable resources like wind, solar and hydro power and increasing green power forms a key part of the government's plan of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, blamed by many scientists for contributing to global warming.

----

UK minister opens wind farm, gives OK for another

Reuters:
11/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13650

LONDON - Britain's energy minister opened a small wind farm in Wales yesterday and announced the go-ahead for a much larger one to be built.

"The launch of these windfarms should mark the start of a new period of expansion for wind energy in this country," Brian Wilson said as he opened the 3.6 megawatt (MW) Parc Cynog wind farm in South Wales.

The minister said he was also giving consent for a 58.5 MW wind project to be built at Cefn Croes in Ceredigion. The 35 million pound ($50.16 million) development will be able to supply electricity to 35,000 homes.

"This development is equivalent to one third of the wind turbine capacity currently operating in Wales...and will put Wales right at the forefront of the renewables expansion which I am anxious to promote throughout the UK," Wilson said in a statement.

Earlier yesterday Scottish and Southern Energy said it planned to build a 100 MW wind farm in southern Scotland which will cost 60 million pounds ($85.98 million).

Britain generates only 2.8 percent of its electricity from renewable energy such as wind, solar or hydro power. The government wants this to rise to 10 percent by 2010 in a bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions which many scientists believe contribute to global warming.

The government hopes its Renewables Obligation - which will require electricity suppliers to source more power from green schemes - will create a one billion pound market for renewable power within ten years. Yesterday Wilson also annouced he will bring in new rules to help restart renewable energy schemes blocked by planning obstacles.

----

UK Kielder wind power court case delayed

Reuters:
11/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13649

LONDON - British wind power company Ecogen said yesterday its request for a review of a government move to stop it building an onshore wind farm in northern England has been delayed by four days until the end of the week.

Ecogen will go to London's High Court on December 14 to seek a judicial review of a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) decision earlier this year to block the 80-megawatt wind project at Kielder in Northumberland because of objections from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

"It has been delayed until Friday," Ecogen's managing director Tim Kirby told Reuters. "We don't know what to expect, but we could get a decision on the day."

Ecogen will ask for a judicial review on the grounds that the DTI decision did not follow the correct procedures in reaching its decision, Kirby said.

The MoD was concerned that the project's tall turbines could get in the way of low-altitude training for fighter pilots.

The government is relying on the expansion of wind power to boost the use of green energy and to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, cited by many scientists as a key contributor to global warming.

----

Scottish to build 100 megawatt wind farm

Reuters:
11/12/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13652

LONDON - Scottish and Southern Energy said yesterday it is planning to build a 100 megawatt wind farm in southern Scotland which will involve an investment of 60 million pounds ($85.98 million).

The site, east of the town of Girvan, will have between 50 and 70 turbines which the company says will be largely obsured by the surrounding hills.

Wind farms often face planning problems because local people object to their visual impact on the landscape.

The project will be able to power 60,000 homes with green energy and is part of Scottish and Southern's plans to invest 450 million pounds in renewable energy.

Britain generates only about three percent of its power from green sources but the government wants to raise this to 10 percent by 2010 to cut greenhouse gas emissions which many scientists say are a major cause of global warming.

From next year, electricity suppliers will be obliged to buy three percent of their power from renewable sources.

-------- environment

Scientists Warn of Climate Change

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Global-Warming.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists said Tuesday the earth's gradual warming from pollutants in the atmosphere could someday trigger climate changes so abrupt that people and ecosystems may have trouble adapting.

A report by the National Research Council likened the climatic effect of global warming to increasing pressure from a finger flipping on a light switch. Over time, regional climates have changed by as much as 18 degrees Fahrenheit in just 10 years, researchers said.

Expected future warming also might bring ``short-lived or local coolings, floods or droughts, and other unexpected changes,'' said the report's lead author, Richard B. Alley, a Pennsylvania State University geosciences professor.

Carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels is the most prevalent of the so-called greenhouse gases, whose growing concentration in the atmosphere is thought to be warming the earth. Many scientists have said they believe the warming, if not stopped, will cause severe climate changes over the next century.

Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies for the libertarian Cato Institute, said it is not enough for a report to come out ``speculating about unknowables.''

``It looks like warming is occurring and it is industrially induced. But it's been far less dramatic than the computer models say should have occurred by now,'' he said.

Two scientists said Monday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco that Antarctica's largest glaciers are rapidly thinning, and in the last 10 years have lost up to 150 feet of thickness in some places, enough to raise global sea levels by 0.015 inch.

Last month, the government reported a sharp increase of 3.1 percent in U.S. emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in 2000, the biggest such jump since the mid-1990s, due to economic growth, more use of fossil fuels in colder weather and a drought impeding hydroelectric power generation.

At the same time negotiators from 165 countries were wrapping up the first international treaty to fight global warming. The treaty agreed upon in Morocco but rejected by the Bush administration calls on about 40 industrialized nations to limit carbon emissions or cut them to below 1990 levels.

A report prepared by the National Academy of Sciences for the White House concluded in June that global warming was a real problem that is getting worse. President Bush had expressed skepticism and requested the report to sort out the science.

The council, part of the National Academy of Sciences which advises Congress on scientific issues, said in its report Tuesday that people should neither be fatalistic nor complacent about climate change risks.

``Because climate change will likely continue in the coming decades, denying the likelihood or downplaying the relevance of past abrupt events could be costly,'' it said.

-------- health

WHO Lands in Africa to Fight Ebola

By SERGE MABIKA
Associated Press Writer
DECEMBER 11, 09:34 ET
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?FRONTID=AFRICA&STORYID=APIS7GB1IR00

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (AP) - A World Health Organization team arrived Tuesday in the Central African nation of Gabon to help contain an outbreak of the Ebola virus that has killed at least 11 people.

The five-member team - which includes experts from France and the United States - arrived in the capital, Libreville, in the morning and was expected to travel to the affected region in the remote northeastern province of Ogooue Ivindo, near the border with Republic of Congo.

The team will help local authorities isolate and treat victims, as well as distribute protective equipment like gloves and masks to prevent contact with the bodily fluids of patients, WHO officials said.

Gabon's government first reported it suspected an outbreak last Tuesday, after an unusual number of dead primates were found in the region at the same time that local villagers starting falling ill.

On Sunday, WHO officials confirmed the disease was Ebola, which has similar symptoms to other, less deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

Details of the outbreak remained sketchy Tuesday. All the deaths reported so far appeared to have occurred last week, and the toll could rise as experts get a better idea of the extent of the outbreak.

Provincial health director Dr. Prosper Abessolo-Mengue declined to say how many people were infected, saying tests were still being conducted. While a quarantine has not been imposed on the region, local authorities are monitoring movement to and from the area, he said.

Ogooue Ivindo is one of the most thinly populated regions in Gabon, with isolated, tiny villages surrounded by dense jungle. Ebola last struck the region in 1996-97, killing 45 of the 60 people infected.

``People were very afraid because of what happened in 1997,'' Abessolo-Mengue said. ``But now as we regularly speak to them, and we regularly tell them what we are doing ... the fear has subsided.''

The current outbreak has been pinpointed to the villages of Leahonene and Endemba, he said. The dead include 10 members of an extended family and a nurse who treated at least one of them.

This is the first documented outbreak of Ebola since last year, when 224 people - including health workers - died from the virus in Uganda.

Ebola is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50 to 90 percent of all clinically ill cases. But it usually kills its victims faster than it can spread, burning out before it can reach too far.

While researchers do not know what causes outbreaks, the virus is believed to be carried by some animals and insects. The disease could then make the jump into a human victim, who spreads it in a community.

The virus is passed through contact with bodily fluids, such as mucus, saliva and blood, but is not airborne. It incubates for four to 10 days before flu-like symptoms set in.

Eventually, the virus causes severe internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. There is no cure, but patients treated early for dehydration have a good chance of survival.

WHO says more than 800 people have died of the disease since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a nearby region of Zaire, now Congo.

--------

Irradiating Mail Has Downside

December 11, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Sanitizing-Mail-Businesses.html?searchpv=aponline

BOSTON (AP) -- For many companies, the U.S. Postal Service's plans to irradiate mail might be an inconvenience. For Ed McCabe's, they could have been a disaster.

``Even the radiation on (checked) luggage going on an airplane can fog a film,'' said McCabe, whose Mystic Photo Lab in Mystic, Conn., is one of three large mail-in film-processing companies in the country. ``I knew this radiation would be more powerful than that.''

Experts say radiation used to kill anthrax wouldn't damage the vast majority of objects sent through the mail. But there are exceptions: film might be exposed, prescription drugs weakened or food essentially cooked.

``When the word came out that the Postal Service was considering this approach, it got our attention,'' said Blair Jackson, a spokesman for Irving, Tex.-based Advance PCS, which sends 10 million prescriptions through the mail each year.

Those fears, however, have generally evaporated -- largely because the Postal Service has made it clear it has no intention of irradiating the enormous amount of corporate mail that comes from so-called ``known senders.''

Mystic, Advance PCS and other companies say they've met with postal officials to make sure their products avoid the machines, which the Post Office plans to set up over the next 18 months. Some companies also say they're redesigning mailing material to ensure the packages they receive don't arouse suspicion.

Postal Service spokesman Jerry Kreienkamp says separating the mail of corporate bulk-mailers, which should not need to be irradiated, is one of the easier challenges.

``The contents are known, the preparation is known, we know how much of it there is,'' he said. ``That's the bulk of the mail we deal with. It's not the stuff you drop off at the mailbox.''

San Diego-based Titan Corp. (news/quote), which has sold eight irradiation devices to the Post Office, says testing has shown credit cards, compact discs, videotapes and most other products are safe. But spokesman Wil Williams says companies sending film, sensitive electronics and ``living'' products such as seeds or lab samples should talk to the Post Office about making sure their products avoid the process.

Some prescription drugs could also be rendered less effective, though not actually dangerous, by high radiation doses, said both Williams and Food and Drug Administration spokesman Brad Stone.

Irradiated food, meanwhile, would be safe -- safer than usual -- Williams said, but might taste funny from a kind of overcooking effect.

Large food shippers such as Omaha Steaks and Wisconsin Cheeseman say irradiation of mail hasn't been a worry because they use UPS and FedEx. Several smaller food shippers who use the Postal Service say they aren't worried either.

``We haven't really changed our plans on how we're sending out our product,'' says Carolyn Thomas of Thomas Orchards in Kimberly, Ore. ``I don't think anybody's worried about it.''

For now, the Postal Service is only irradiating mail addressed to the federal government in Washington, D.C., and mail that piled up in the New Jersey and Washington post offices where anthrax was found.

But even as it expands the practice, the focus will likely be on high-risk mail; for instance, envelopes without return addresses mailed at corner boxes. Companies and people whose correspondence is clearly labeled and bears return addresses would have little to worry about, Kreienkamp said.

Furthermore, several people involved in discussions say the Post Office wants to rely on irradiation as little as possible, focusing instead on technology that could detect biohazards and irradiate them if necessary.

``I think you're looking at scanning for detection, and if there's a problem, then irradiating,'' said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of corporate affairs at the Direct Marketing Association.

The Postal Service said in a statement that nothing is final. It said it continues ``to use a variety of technologies and will use all methods that prove efficacious, safe, cost-effective, and are able to be integrated into our mail processing system.''

-------- human rights

Activists Want Monitoring of UN Refugee Pact

December 11, 2001
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-un-refugees.html

GENEVA (Reuters) - Rights activists called on Tuesday for an independent monitoring system to check whether member states of the Geneva Convention on Refugees were abiding by the rules on taking in asylum seekers.

Over 120 countries plan to give renewed backing this week to the international treaty on the rights of refugees despite moves by some to curb immigration following the September 11 attacks in the United States.

The commitment is due to be made by ministers and senior officials from signatory states to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees at a meeting in the Swiss city on Wednesday and Thursday, United Nations officials said.

But non-governmental organizations (NGOs), meeting in Geneva on the eve of the conference, said that the problem with the Convention was that too many states only paid lip-service to it.

``The Convention itself is fine. The problem is to ensure that states really abide by it,'' said Anders Ladekarl, who chaired a meeting of NGOs preparing a joint position.

``States...should introduce effective, independent and impartial monitoring of state compliance,'' Amnesty International said in a statement.

The Convention, drawn up following the mass movement of people across Europe at the end World War Two, spells out who is entitled to refugee status and how they should be treated under international law.

According to the draft of a declaration to be approved at the inter-government Geneva meeting, the participating states will: ``Reaffirm our commitment to implement our obligations under the 1951 Convention...fully and effectively.''

The Convention, ratified by 143 countries, although only 123 are expected in Geneva, says a refugee is someone forced to flee their country or place of residence out of ``well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or opinion.''

Host countries belonging to the pact must not expel refugees, even if they arrived in the country illegally.

UNDER STRAIN

But the international treaty has come under strain due to the difficulties of separating genuine political refugees from economic migrants, who are simply seeking a better life.

``People seeking asylum for non-political reasons are not refugees. The problem is that everybody is being lumped together,'' said spokesman Rupert Colville of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), co-host of the meeting with the Swiss government.

Australia, whose immigration minister Philip Ruddock will attend, has been fiercely criticized by the UNHCR for its refusal to allow ships carrying would-be asylum-seekers to dock after they were rescued from sinking ships on the high seas.

The UNHCR says that Australia as a treaty member was obliged to process the requests of the boat people, many of them Iraqis and Afghans, to see if there were genuine refugees among them.

The September 11 attacks on the United States have also prompted a number of countries, including the United States and Britain, to tighten up immigration laws.

UNHCR officials and activists have expressed concern that the crackdown on immigration could make it even more difficult for political refugees to find asylum.

``In the aftermath of September 11, many countries have forsaken the human rights of refugees and asylum-seekers by imposing draconian security laws which inevitably target non-nationals,'' Amnesty said.


-------- activists

Mitchell Plan

December 11, 2001
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011211-24870345.htm

Foreign policy and military experts, politicians and humanitarians will lead a national symposium in Washington today on what is being described as a new Marshall Plan for preventing global conflict.

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and a panel of analysts will share insights and examine the results of a new Stanley Greenberg poll on new threats to security and the need for comprehensive approaches to international problem-solving.

Participants include retired Army Gen. George Joulwan, the former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe; former U.N. Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism Philip Wilcox; and Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs and current senior adviser to the Nuclear Threat Reduction Campaign.

Bobby Muller, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, and Ken Bacon, president of Refugees International, will also weigh in at the conflict symposium, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the J.W. Marriott Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

----

Court Will Review Right to Secret Data
Decision Could Affect Anti-Terror Operations

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2001; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22995-2001Dec10?language=printer

Stepping into a long struggle over U.S. policy in Latin America that could have implications for the current war on terrorism, the Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would consider whether an American woman has the right to sue former high-ranking U.S. officials for allegedly covering up the torture and murder of her husband, who was a commander of the now-defunct Marxist guerrillas in Guatemala.

The case pits Jennifer K. Harbury, an American activist who supported the guerrillas during their war against the Guatemalan army, against such Clinton administration figures as former secretary of state Warren Christopher and former national security adviser Anthony Lake. The question at the heart of the case is what U.S. citizens are entitled to know from government officials entrusted with foreign policy secrets.

Harbury began what was to become a headline-making campaign to find her husband, a Guatemalan citizen named Efrain Bamaca, in 1993. She contends that, despite her hunger strikes and other protests, officials repeatedly lied and refused to tell her everything the U.S. government knew about Bamaca's case, effectively denying her information she could have used to pursue his freedom through litigation. This, she argues, violated her "right to access" to the courts.

In 1995, it was revealed that a Guatemalan colonel who was a paid asset of the CIA was involved in the interrogation of Bamaca. The presidentially appointed Intelligence Oversight Board said the following year that the CIA did not keep the State Department or Congress adequately informed of its activities in Guatemala. But the board said there was no evidence of a coverup by CIA officials.

That same year, Harbury sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On March 22, 1999, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the lawsuit. Harbury appealed, and on Dec. 12, 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit partially reinstated the case, holding, in an opinion by Judge David Tatel, that a reasonable government official should have known that misleading Harbury would deny her constitutional rights. Christopher, Lake and five other defendants named in Harbury's suit petitioned for Supreme Court review.

In the current war on terrorism, the CIA, military special forces and other U.S. government agencies are waging a largely covert campaign against terrorism worldwide. At least one American citizen, John Philip Walker Lindh, has already been captured by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.

"The issues in this case are made more acute by the events following 9-11," said Richard A. Cordray, a lawyer for the former officials. "What is at issue here is whether government officials can be held liable for constitutional violations when they are alleged to have concealed information. What's at stake here is covert operations, and that has direct ramifications for Afghanistan."

The court needs to preserve "some latitude" for officials even to deliberately mislead people if they deem it absolutely necessary to protect a sensitive operation, Cordray said.

Jodie L. Kelley, a lawyer who represents Harbury, said the entire case could have been avoided if officials had simply responded "no comment" to Harbury, rather than falsely assuring her that they had checked and found no government information regarding Bamaca.

Kelley said that the possibility of a similar case arising out of the war on terrorism only makes it more important to recognize legal claims such as Harbury's.

"We don't want what happened in the wake of 9-11 to obscure the point that the right here is an important one. It's the right to go to court," she said.

The case is Christopher v. Harbury, No. 01-394.

----

Spread of AIDS in Rural China Ignites Protests

New York Times
December 11, 2001
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/11/health/11AIDS.html

SUIXIAN, China - As China's central government takes steps to address its growing AIDS problem, officials in some of its most seriously affected areas here in central China are doing little to help patients or to curb the spread. In fact, many are redoubling their efforts to suppress any discussion of the problem.

In late November, as China for the first time marked World AIDS Day in Beijing with some fanfare, officials in Suixian County detained poor farmers wasting away from AIDS, as well as Chinese journalists who had come to interview them.

At the height of the standoff, officials from Chengguan township held three journalists in a government guest house and 11 peasants infected with the H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in the township's headquarters. Fifty villagers, most also infected with H.I.V., gathered in protest outside the gates of the crumbling two-story building.

"We weren't allowed in, so we just stood there shouting," recalled Xie Yan, 35, a soft-spoken mother of three whose husband died this spring and who has been told that she will be dead within two years. "We screamed: `People are dying and you do nothing but detain them,' and `What sort of officials are you?'

"To them we are like bubbles. They know if they turn away and ignore us, we will soon pop and be gone."

But ignoring such people has become an increasingly difficult task as poor farmers, emboldened by desperation, are beginning to protest and speak out. The government media have also started to report more on the issue.

In three incidents in November, sick and destitute farmers with AIDS from different villages here in Henan Province were detained by the police after they tried to protest their abandonment.

Many more are seething with anger, even though rural officials throughout the province have warned residents not to make trouble or speak to journalists.

"All of us want to appeal, but most don't dare because they're too afraid," said one elderly woman with AIDS. "People who have tried at all are under surveillance. It's even hard for them to leave the village."

People interviewed for this article spoke in different locations, all outside their rural villages.

Although the government says a vast majority of people with H.I.V. in China became infected through intravenous drug use, the large but poorly defined AIDS epidemic among poor farmers in central China - whose epicenter is Henan - started in the 1990's when poor farmers sold their blood to companies using unsterile collection methods.

In some villages more than half the adults are now believed to be infected.

In general the blood buying schemes were geared toward collecting plasma, a component of blood used in making medicines. The collectors would remove about a pint of blood from each donor, pool it with others and later spin it in a centrifuge to separate out the desired element. The leftover, mostly red blood cells, would be divided up and reinfused into the donors - preventing anemia, but also spreading AIDS.

The epidemic is still shrouded in silence, because local officials were often involved in the profitable blood business. So while the authorities in Beijing held a big international conference in November and are airing television dramas on the subject, repression and concealment continue here.

Some Chinese AIDS experts contend that at least a million people in Henan Province are infected. But a leader of the provincial health office said in an interview with a local government-owned newspaper in early December that there were only 1,495 cases of H.I.V. in the province.

"At present the AIDS disease situation in our province remains at a low epidemic level," he said.

Chinese health officials estimate that 600,000 people nationwide carry the virus, although many experts say the real number is much larger.

The fear that has maintained the rural victims' silence is lifting these days as villagers learn more about the disease that afflicts them.

In villages like Dongguan South, home to the sick farmers who protested in November, the fear of a miserable death, the fear of leaving orphans behind, has trumped the fear of persecution.

"Why stand up now?" said Zhao Yong, a thin man with a deep cough and sallow skin. "Because before we had no idea of what was going on. My wife died in April. My best friend's wife died in May. At that time we had not heard of AIDS. We were using up our family's saving on useless treatments."

A majority of adults in Dongguan South sold blood to collectors affiliated with the local hospital and the local disease prevention station from 1994 to 1997. In 1997 local health officials suddenly advised villagers to stop, giving no explanation, they said.

That was about the time that the first villager died of a mysterious pneumonia, and today, in a village with 600 adults, 200 are showing serious symptoms of AIDS.

While Dongguan South had only scattered deaths from 1997 to 2000, at least 14 young people have died since spring. H.I.V. generally incubates silently for at least a few years.

The villagers learned about AIDS only this year, when a Chinese reporter clandestinely delivered some copies of a book published privately by Gao Yaojie, a retired doctor who has championed AIDS awareness. There has been no official AIDS education here.

The quickening pace of death in the village has also moved farmers to action. "At first, if it was in the family, people kept it a secret," said Ms. Xie. "They didn't dare talk about it. But now we can see that it's so widespread. We're in this together."

Ms. Xie found herself forced into activism just this year, when her husband fell ill with severe headaches and nausea - signs of meningitis.

After his death two months later, the local disease prevention station notified her that her husband's illness had resulted from AIDS. She was then tested.

"When I got the results I knew right away I was going to die," she said, with tears in her eyes, a small thin woman with chapped cheeks, suffering from diarrhea. "Ever since then I've been preoccupied and depressed.

"If I can't find a hospital to give me free treatment, I should put my kids in an orphanage," she added, beginning to weep.

The recent protest in Suixian County, so far the largest by people with H.I.V., is in some ways an outgrowth of the international AIDS meeting in China. At that time, a small group of farmers from Suixian went to Beijing, hoping to get treatment and also to shed light on the local situation by contacting journalists and presenting a petition.

They never achieved their larger goal. They were admitted to a government hospital in Beijing for "testing" on the day the meeting started and were released on the day it ended.

But their presence put Suixian on the map, and in the week that followed, more than half a dozen curious Chinese journalists set out to visit.

A crew from an influential government television program on women's issues called "Half the Sky" managed to meet with a number of villagers, though they soon found themselves trailed everywhere by plainclothes police officers, a person who was there said. When they tried to leave the county, they were detained and held in a government guest house for two days.

A second group of journalists, from smaller newspapers, spent several days in a game of cat and mouse with the local authorities in Suixian and the next county, Weishi, which also has a serious AIDS problem. The police searched hotels and farmers' homes in an unsuccessful attempt to find them.

In the wake of those visits, the local authorities hauled in farmers who had been interviewed, warning them "not to speak out," said Wang Zhiguo, a villager who was detained.

Meanwhile, a shouting crowd of people with AIDS gathered at the locked gates of the whitewashed government compound, chanting and demanding their friends' release.

After a few hours the farmers inside were let go, temporarily defusing the situation. But the crowd reassembled again the next day to protest, this time demanding financial assistance.

Wheat and corn farming are the main income source in Dongguan South, a village of small unheated mud-brick houses. In a number of families, all adults are dead or ailing, unable to tend their fields or feed their families, let alone pay for treatment.

The size of the protest in Suixian County is extraordinary, but it is not an isolated phenomenon. Recently, farmers from the villages of Chenglao and Wenlou have been detained in the city of Zhumadian, where they went to press local officials for more help.

Wenlou, the only village in Henan that the government has acknowledged by name to have an AIDS problem, has become something of a showcase for the disease, its AIDS victims visited by officials from Beijing and given a clinic and a modicum of free medical care.

But villagers say the drugs dispensed there are worthless against their disease, and at the end of November eight villagers with H.I.V. marched into the Zhumadian health office and refused to leave without a promise of more help.

After a two-day sit-in, officials sent them to a detention center in nearby Shangcai County and charged them with "disturbing order of a government office." Three of the men served sentences of 15 days.

[Officials told them it was illegal to leave their village and that they would be detained again if they tried, the three said in a phone interview after their release on Dec. 8. The jail was cold, and they were given only bread, soup and gruel to eat.

[One of the men, extremely ill with high fever and diarrhea, went three days without any care. When help came, "The guards wore masks and gloves and handed me the medicine in a bag on a pole," recalled the man, Wang Hongxiang. "I won't try this again."]

It is hard to know if other villages will try go down the path of protest, which brings publicity at least, and in some cases medicine. But the reservoir of desperation created by AIDS in rural China is potentially vast.

Residents of rural Henan, and experts who have traveled there extensively, can tick off dozens of places in the province with AIDS problems, most of which have received no publicity.

They add that over the course of the 1990's, people from adjacent provinces also took part in blood selling schemes, seeding satellite epidemics. For example, Yucheng in nearby Shanxi Province has a serious H.I.V. epidemic related to blood selling, the government press has reported. More surprising, so does Zizhong in Sichuan Province, more than 500 miles from Henan.

Doctors from distant Sichuan said farmers there traveled to Henan to sell blood, especially during winter when farming was slow.

"The villages that have been written about are just the tip of the iceberg," said a Chinese researcher who has studied the problem. "These were the ones that started earliest, so we're aware of the problem. In other places it will break out in a couple of years."

----

Administration Lambasted on ABM Treaty Withdrawal

11 Dec 2001
U.S. Newswire
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1211-155.html

To: National Desk
Contact: Scott Lynch of Peace Action,
202-862-9740, ext. 3030 703-725-5680 (cell)
Web site: http://www.peace-action.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Peace Action, the nation's largest peace and disarmament organization, today lambasted the Bush Administration's plan to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in order to pursue its dream of a Star Wars anti-missile weapon system. The announcement to withdraw from the ABM treaty, according to media reports, could come in a matter of days. As provided by the treaty, the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty would become effective in six months after the announcement.

"What missile defense?" asked Peace Action executive director Kevin Martin "It's pathetic that after having spent $100 billion on anti-missile weapons since Reagan, that all we have is a missile system that can sometimes hit a target that has a beacon that guides the interceptor to it. The Bush administration is ready to destroy an arms reduction framework that has been successfully reducing nuclear weapons for thirty years and replace it with, essentially, nothing."

"The Bush Administration exhibits a theological belief in the utterly irrelevant (as we saw Sept. 11) 'missile defense' system. U.S. and world security is much better served by getting serious about nuclear non-proliferation and the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons" continued Martin."The radical unilateralists in the Bush Administration have triumphed. The Wolfowitz, Bolton and Pearle sphere think U.S. military, political and economic power is so great that we don't need to be a good global citizen-that we can and should strut about the world like a schoolyard bully. Obviously they think the rule of law should only apply to the weak."

"However, in seeking unilateral solutions at the expense of international cooperation, they ensure that instability, insecurity and, ultimately, terrorism will be with us for a long time to come. They are laying the groundwork today for the next massive, deadly asymmetrical attack on the United States. The big winners in this announcement are Boeing, Lockheed Martin, TRW and Raytheon, who will continue to reap immense profits from Star Wars contracts whether the system ever works or not. The big losers are the American people and American security," said Martin.

"It is now time for congressional leadership to right the course of our foreign policy that has been high-jacked by the radical unilateralists in the Administration. We've got six months to mobilize public support to preserve the ABM treaty and avert a nuclear arms race," said Scott Lynch, Peace Action's Communications Director. "The Administration has now ensured that Star Wars and the ABM treaty will be big issues in next year's election campaigns. The choice for candidates is simple: do you want nuclear arms control or nuclear anarchy?"

Peace Action, founded in 1957 as SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), has 85,000 members nationwide.


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