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NUCLEAR
Gulf veteran babies 'risk deformities'
India, Pakistan and G.E.
'Dirty Bomb' Suspect's Case Goes Nowhere, Time Says
Gov't Nears Nuke Material Decision
Maryland Security Council Built on Foundation of Cooperation
A Neighbor to the North Looms Even Larger After Sept. 11
Iraq attack could crash US economy
MILITARY
Report: Bin Laden Not in Afghanistan
Pakistan Readies Karachi Arms Show
Chen Says China Will Not Intimidate Taiwan
Afghan drug lords set up heroin labs
Bush rhetoric is scaring Europe, says Mandelson
Saudis Probing Qaeda Handed Over by Iran
Kurdish guerrillas poised to fire first shots in war on Iraq
Republicans Say Bush Can Justify Attack on Iraq
Iraqi Opposition Gets U.S. Pledge to Oust Hussein for a Democracy
Kurds Must Endure Iraq's 'Nationality Correction'
Secret CIA visit yields security plan
Amid Talks and Violence, Sharon and Arafat Trade Accusations
Homes Lost and Found on Hill Where an Israeli Project Rises
Iran sends prisoners to Saudis
Internet good friend to terrorists
National Guard Awaits Niche In Homeland Security Plan
U.S. Base in Qatar Seen Central in Any Iraq Attack
POLICE / PRISONERS
Scientist Denies Involvement in Anthrax Mailings
In the Secret-Detentions Club
OTHER
Asian Smog Cloud Threatens Millions, Says U.N.
Study: Asian Pollution May Be Fatal
CDC Chief: West Nile Could Spread
ACTIVISTS
Syria Frees Dissident After 27 Years in Jail
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Gulf veteran babies 'risk deformities'
Nic Fleming and Mark Townsend
Sunday August 11, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0%2C6903%2C772633%2C00.html
Children of British soldiers who fought in wars in which depleted uranium ammunition was used are at greater risk of suffering genetic diseases passed on by their fathers, new research reveals.
Veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have been found to have up to 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities in their genes. That has raised fears they will pass cancers and genetic illnesses to their offspring. The study is the first to analyse chromosome deformation in soldiers.
Paul Tyler MP, a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf War Syndrome working group, said it would be 'outrageous' if the findings were ignored by the Government.
'High levels of genetic damage do not occur naturally. It increases the probability of cancer, deformed babies and other genetic conditions significantly,' said Professor Albrecht Schott, a German biochemist who co-ordinated the research.
Schott collected blood samples from 16 British veterans last year. Fourteen had fought in the Gulf war, one of whom also served in Bosnia. Of the others, one served only in Kosovo and one only in Bosnia. Two of the veterans are women. The former soldiers have between double and 14 times the usual level of chromosome abnormalities. The average was five-and-a-half times higher than found in civilians. None had less than double the normal rate.
Ex-Warrant Officer Ray Bristow, who served in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf war, has previously been found to have hundreds of times higher than the safe limit of depleted uranium in his urine. The father of three from Hull, now a wheelchair user, suffers problems with his memory, respiratory system, liver, kidney, bowels and hearing. He recently had a large tumour removed from his hand.
Schott, who has a £30,000 debt after funding the tests himself, said that in the 18 months since they were done the condition of many veterans had worsened. Some were suffering from cancers.
'This confirms that we have been exposed to ionising radiation,' said Shaun Rusling, chairman of the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association. 'That is the only way we could have this level of chromosome damage.'
Last month the MoD said it was launching an investigation after a study revealed 19 Gulf veterans had developed lymphatic or bone marrow cancers compared with 11 in a control group.
A US government survey of 21,000 veterans has also shown that those who served in the Gulf were two to three times more likely to report birth defects in their children.
Depleted uranium is used in shells because its high density allows maximum penetration of hard targets such as tanks and underground bunkers. The US and Britain have admitted using 350 tonnes of depleted uranium in the Gulf war. Iraqi scientists have reported high levels of childhood cancers and deformed babies in populations exposed to the ammunition.
Some 53,000 British troops served in the Gulf. Of these, at least 552 have died and more than 5,200 have reported a range of illnesses.
Once in the body, depleted uranium can remain for years emitting small doses of alpha radiation. Former soldiers who were heavy smokers, or had undergone chemotherapy or X-ray treatment were excluded from the study as these factors could also lead to higher than normal levels of chromosome aberrations.
Kenny Duncan believes that his children's health problems are linked to his service in the Gulf war. All three were born with deformed toes and suffer from asthmas, hay fever and eczema.
His wife Mandy said: 'It's scandalous that while we are suffering with the consequences of what the Government has done, politicians are just thinking about money.'
A spokesman for the MoD dismissed Schott's findings. 'We consider the tests neither well thought out nor scientifically sound,' he said.
-------- india / pakistan
India, Pakistan and G.E.
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/opinion/11FRIE.html
BANGALORE, India - Two months ago India and Pakistan appeared headed for a nuclear war. Colin Powell, the U.S. secretary of state and a former general, played a key role in talking the two parties back from the brink. But here in India, I've discovered that there was another new, and fascinating, set of pressures that restrained the Indian government and made nuclear war, from its side, unthinkable. Quite simply, India's huge software and information technology industry, which has emerged over the last decade and made India the back-room and research hub of many of the world's largest corporations, essentially told the nationalist Indian government to cool it. And the government here got the message and has sought to de-escalate ever since. That's right - in the crunch, it was the influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the trick.
This story starts with the fact that, thanks to the Internet and satellites, India has been able to connect its millions of educated, English-speaking, low-wage, tech-savvy young people to the world's largest corporations. They live in India, but they design and run the software and systems that now support the world's biggest companies, earning India an unprecedented $60 billion in foreign reserves - which doubled in just the last three years. But this has made the world more dependent on India, and India on the world, than ever before.
If you lose your luggage on British Airways, the techies who track it down are here in India. If your Dell computer has a problem, the techie who walks you through it is in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley. Ernst & Young may be doing your company's tax returns here with Indian accountants. Indian software giants in Bangalore, like Wipro, Infosys and MindTree, now manage back-room operations - accounting, inventory management, billing, accounts receivable, payrolls, credit card approvals - for global firms like Nortel Networks, Reebok, Sony, American Express, HSBC and GE Capital.
You go to the Bangalore campuses of these Indian companies and they point out: "That's G.E.'s back room over here. That's American Express's back office over there." G.E.'s biggest research center outside the U.S. is in Bangalore, with 1,700 Indian engineers and scientists. The brain chip for every Nokia cellphone is designed in Bangalore. Renting a car from Avis online? It's managed here.
So it was no wonder that when the State Department issued a travel advisory on May 31 warning Americans to leave India because the war prospects had risen to "serious levels," all these global firms who had moved their back rooms to Bangalore went nuts.
"That day," said Vivek Paul, vice chairman of Wipro, "I had a C.I.O. [chief information officer] from one of our big American clients send me an e-mail saying: `I am now spending a lot of time looking for alternative sources to India. I don't think you want me doing that, and I don't want to be doing it.' I immediately forwarded his letter to the Indian ambassador in Washington and told him to get it to the right person."
No wonder. For many global companies, "the main heart of their business is now supported here," said N. Krishnakumar, president of MindTree. "It can cause chaos if there is a disruption." While not trying to meddle in foreign affairs, he added, "what we explained to our government, through the Confederation of Indian Industry, is that providing a stable, predictable operating environment is now the key to India's development."
This was a real education for India's elderly leaders in New Delhi, but, officials conceded, they got the message: loose talk about war or nukes could be disastrous for India. This was reinforced by another new lobby: the information technology ministers who now exist in every Indian state to drum up business.
"We don't get involved in politics," said Vivek Kulkarni, the information technology secretary for Bangalore, "but we did bring to the government's attention the problems the Indian I.T. industry might face if there were a war. . . . Ten years ago [a lobby of I.T. ministers] never existed."
To be sure, none of this guarantees there will be no war. Tomorrow, Pakistani militants could easily do something so outrageous and provocative that India would have to retaliate. But it does guarantee that India's leaders will now think 10 times about how they respond, and if war is inevitable, that India will pay 10 times the price it would have paid a decade ago.
In the meantime, this cease-fire is brought to you by G.E. - and all its friends here in Bangalore.
-------- terrorism
'Dirty Bomb' Suspect's Case Goes Nowhere, Time Says
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-dirtybomb.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The case against Jose Padilla, whose detention for allegedly plotting to build a ``dirty bomb'' was dramatically announced in June by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, is going nowhere and appears to have been ``blown out of all proportion,'' Newsweek reported on Sunday.
Padilla, 31, an American citizen accused of being an al Qaeda operative who was planning to set off a radiological bomb in the United States, was arrested in Chicago four months ago. He is being detained as an ``enemy combatant'' in a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
Last week Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, told Newsweek his client had told family members he was coming to Chicago from Zurich, Switzerland, to visit his 12-year-old son.
The Justice Department has brought no charges against Padilla, a New York native who goes by the name of Abdullah al Muhajir, and many U.S. officials now acknowledge that his alleged plot ``had never moved beyond talk,'' Newsweek reported.
``If Padilla had any accomplices in the U.S. they have never been found -- or even identified,'' said the magazine, which quoted one intelligence official as saying the idea of a plot was ``blown out of all proportion.''
Ashcroft, who announced Padilla's arrest at a June 10 news conference in Moscow that was broadcast around the world, publicly accused him of planning to use a ``dirty bomb.''
Such a device would combine conventional explosive -- even dynamite -- with radioactive material. It is designed to spew radiation over a huge area, spreading terror and illness rather than inflicting mass casualties.
Ashcroft said the government had ``multiple, independent and corroborating sources'' that Padilla was closely associated with al Qaeda and was ``involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States.''
``Inside the U.S. intelligence community, sources tell Newsweek, there were high-level doubts about Ashcroft's dramatic announcement from the start,'' the magazine said.
Padilla has been held incommunicado ever since ``with no charges pending against him and no prospect of a trial or court hearing where the government's evidence can be tested.''
Newsweek said U.S. authorities were not even interested in making a case against Padilla, but intend to force him to tell what he knows about al Qaeda -- which the United States blames for carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
``If this guy thinks he might be there for 20 years with no recourse, he might just say, 'OK, let's talk,''' the magazine quoted an administration official as saying.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Gov't Nears Nuke Material Decision
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Material.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pending a final environmental review, the Energy Department is expected to move as much as several tons of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium from a federal research laboratory in New Mexico to Nevada because of security concerns, according to documents.
In a department memo, John C. Browne, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, called the proposed move ``the best overall decision to meet the post-September 11th challenges for the long-term security of nuclear activities.''
An Energy Department spokesman, Bryan Wilkes, said that while no final decision has been made, moving the material to the Nevada Test Site is the preferred option being studied to increase security. The environmental study is being reviewed, he said.
Several tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, which could be used to make an atomic bomb, are kept at Technical Area-18 at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico where critics have said it cannot be adequately protected.
``There is no doubt that that facility was at high risk. They simply could not defend it,'' said Pete Stockton, an analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group that Sunday released a copy of the Browne memo and other documents involving the expected move.
Built in the 1940s, Technical Area-18 is located at the bottom of a steep canyon, where the high ground and an adjacent highway makes the site difficult to defend.
In repeated security exercises, troops have been unable to protect the material. In a 1997 exercise, Army Special Forces posing as attackers wheeled away a garden cart full of props representing the nuclear material. In another test, attackers obtained access to the facility where they could detonated an explosion, had they been terrorists.
Had actual material been stolen it would have been enough to make several weapons, said Stockton, who three years ago chaired a DOE team that recommended to then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson that the material be moved. Richardson ordered the environmental studies into moving the material.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a frequent critic of security at federal weapons facilities, urged the department to complete the move as quickly as possible and safeguard the material from potential terrorists.
POGO, which has criticized DOE security of nuclear weapons material, obtained a draft press release from the National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency within the DOE, that indicated that plans are going forward to move the material to Nevada with a decision anticipated next month.
Everett H. Beckner, deputy NNSA administrator, has given his approval to begin design activities and other steps to implement the move, according to a memo obtained by POGO.
The material is part of a research project in which scientists examine how electronic components of nuclear weapons respond to small, short-lived nuclear detonations.
On the Net:
Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org
National Nuclear Security Administration: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
-------- maryland
Maryland Security Council Built on Foundation of Cooperation
By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 11, 2002; Page SM03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1170-2002Aug9?language=printer
After deadly anthrax spores were released in the District's Brentwood postal plant last October and an army of postal workers headed home to towns throughout the Washington region, a realization came to Anne Arundel County Fire Chief Roger C. Simonds.
Whether the emergency is because of a toxin, tornado or suicide bombing, boundaries between towns, counties and states can suddenly melt away.
"We are no longer a region unto ourselves," said Simonds, a nationally certified expert in hazardous materials. "The anthrax incident brought that home."
The need for expanded cooperation and shared expertise can arise in an instant, he said. "In today's world, no one stands alone."
That realization drove the creation of the 15-member Maryland Security Council, which Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) signed into law last spring. The council, which comprises several state agency chiefs, the superintendent of Maryland State Police, municipal and county officials and emergency workers, is expected to prepare a coordinated approach to evacuating residents and dispatching personnel and equipment to the scene of a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.
The same thing has been happening in states throughout the country, said Ann Beauchesne of the National Governors Association. "This is definitely a trend," she said. "Most of the states have some sort of terrorism task force in place."
Besides Simonds, several other local officials have been tapped to serve on the state council, including Montgomery County Fire Administrator Gordon A. Aoyagi, former five-term Prince George's County sheriff James V. Aluisi, Laurel Mayor Craig A. Moe and Frederick businessman and longtime firefighter Richard L. Yinger.
"We picked some really great individuals," said Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the governor. "There is a lot they have to do."
Guillory said the leaders were chosen for their expertise and ability to bring a local perspective to the challenge of coordinating an array of municipal, state and federal agencies.
It is especially important that towns and counties have a voice in statewide response planning, said Moe. "We are the first line of defense," he said, "the first ones to the scene."
Yinger said he is honored and humbled by the task. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, hehas wondered about the security at Fort Detrick in Frederick as well as the region's countless other landmarks. "Almost every town has something."
He wonders how approaches to civil liberties and racial profiling might change in protecting such sites. The questions are challenging, he said.
The council will be required to submit an annual report to the General Assembly containing assessments of existing emergency plans and recommended changes.
"They'll take a look at all of those," Guillory said, "make sure they are up to date."
Simonds said he hopes the council can help make cooperation between jurisdictions easier by expanding mutual-aid agreements among neighboring police, fire and rescue agencies to a statewide level. He said he was reminded of that need in April, when Anne Arundel emergency personnel received a call from Charles County for help at the scene of the devastating tornado that struck LaPlata. The Anne Arundel team quickly received special permission from the county executive to respond, but under a statewide mutual aid agreement, they would not have needed to hesitate at all before answering the call, Simonds said.
There are also unique strengths to be shared among departments, he said. "Montgomery County has a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] urban search-and-rescue team," Simonds said. "I have a very strong dive team and marine operation." A new 40-foot county fire boat, acquired in cooperation with the state, can help along the Chesapeake Bay.
Simonds stressed that he believes the foundation for statewide readiness has already been laid. "I think we are much better prepared than we think we are."
Yet it is also true that planning for emergencies is never done, Moe said. "Any plan is a living document," he said. "It's an organic process."
-------- new york
A Neighbor to the North Looms Even Larger After Sept. 11
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By SETH KUGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/nyregion/11NUCL.html
At Riverdale, its northwestern corner, New York City is just 25 miles from the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, in Westchester County. Before Sept. 11, most New Yorkers didn't give much thought to the plant, and the struggles over its operation remained largely a local affair, confined to counties north of the city.
"I would bet that before 9/11, 9 of 10 New Yorkers weren't aware that there was a nuclear power plant 30 miles from Times Square," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group that advocates closing the plant.
Now, however, efforts are under way to make New Yorkers more aware of the plant to its north. In June, Riverkeeper sponsored an advertising campaign on major local radio stations to increase awareness. On Thursday, Mr. Matthiessen met with the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, to seek support for a bill before the Council that calls for closing the plant.
Riverkeeper has also been working with the New York City Campaign to Close Indian Point, coordinated by Elizabeth Shanklin, chairwoman of the Bronx County Green Party. Ms. Shanklin's group is urging the city's 59 community boards to pass resolutions supporting the closing of Indian Point. Nine have done so, but nine others that have been approached are undecided, including Ms. Shanklin's board, No. 8, in Riverdale.
Ms. Shanklin understands that Indian Point is competing with other much closer potential and actual terrorist targets for New Yorkers' attention. "Most New Yorkers haven't seen Indian Point and haven't heard of Indian Point," she said, "so we'd like to think it's at a distance and we don't need to be concerned." But, she argues, an attack on the plant could render the city uninhabitable for centuries.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, the company that runs Indian Point, says people like Ms. Shanklin are preying on New Yorkers' jitters with what he calls "misinformation and scare tactics."
Mr. Steets said even the closest part of the city would not be in danger in the event of an attack. "Twenty-five miles is probably 20 miles more than necessary for evacuating somebody in the event of a major event in the plant," he said.
-------- us politics
Iraq attack could crash US economy
By Jane Black
Dublin, Ireland,
11 August, 2002,
Sunday Business Post
http://www.sbpost.ie/story.jsp?bottomadvert=&rightadverts=&rightnav=/common/navs/right/sponsorsnav.jsp&leftadverts=&advert=/common/adverts/top/sundaypaper300502.htm&title=Sunday%2BPaper&story=WCContent;id-53308&list=businesspost
As military strategists plan a US invasion of Iraq to unseat President Saddam Hussein, economists are busy trying to predict the operation's impact on an already struggling US economy.
Plans are still vague, and it is impossible to predict the full effect, but there is a growing consensus that it would hurt, not help.
In the first place, any attack would weigh heavily on the federal budget.
In May the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted a surplus of $773 billion over the next five years (excluding government pension and medical plans). Earlier this month the CBO announced that it now expected the government to run a deficit of $153 billion.
Any invasion would add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit. Some fear that this would affect important domestic programmes, such as a controversial bill to help the elderly pay for prescription drugs, but economists say Congress would most likely simply borrow more to cover the costs of war.
In the near term, an invasion could stimulate growth, as the government spends billions on goods and services for the military. But, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Economy.com, it will be a long-term negative for the $6 trillion US economy.
"Large deficits mean higher long-term interest rates and slower growth. If we're devoting resources to fighting a war, we're not going to have them to spend at home," he said.
Just how much a war would cost is unclear. But a leaked Pentagon war plan suggested that the operation could require 250,000 American troops invading from several directions.
By comparison, the US employed about 340,000 American soldiers in the 1991 Gulf War. Thirty-four US allies, including Afghanistan, sent an additional 160,000 troops. The cost then was $61 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service -- $80 billion in today's dollars.
In 1991, however, US allies shouldered almost 80 per cent of the bill -- $48 billion of it. This time, no other countries have yet committed themselves to help fund an invasion of Iraq.
Analysts fear that oil prices would rise substantially, as they did following the two Opec price shocks in the middle and late 1970s and following the Gulf War. Iraq alone produces two million barrels of oil a day. Other Arab states might also cut production if they were dragged into a conflict -- or to take advantage of higher prices.
A New York Times columnist recently wrote: "We're talking about a war in the world's main gas station."
The first oil shock could be instructive, analysts say. In 1973, in the midst of the Arab-Israeli war, Arab oil-producing nations announced major cuts in production, and an embargo of shipments to the US and other nations supporting Israel.
That December the Opec cartel raised the posted price of crude oil -- which had been near $3 a barrel at the start of the year -- to near $12. The result: a massive recession for the United States and much of the industrial world.
Then there are the markets. Over the past two weeks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has seen triple-digit rises and falls, gaining or losing as much as 500 points in a single day. Such skittishness is a result of corporate scandals at top US companies such as Enron, WorldCom and Tyco.
Investors are worried that consumers, who have continued to spend at normal levels since September 11, could be retreating from the market.
It is still possible the United States could avoid war. Last Tuesday Iraq invited the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, to Bagdad for talks, suggesting that the three-and-a-half-year ban on weapons searches could be near an end.
But the efforts may do little to avoid a confrontation. The Bush administration rejected an invitation to the UN for talks and to US Congressional members to tour suspected biological, chemical and nuclear weapons sites.
Last week Bush left little doubt that the government was still exploring military options to remove Saddam Hussein. "I will explore all options and all tools at my disposal," Bush told an audience in Madison, Mississippi, on Wednesday.
"Diplomacy, international pressure, perhaps the military . . . We see threats evolving, we will deal with them."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Report: Bin Laden Not in Afghanistan
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Newsweek-Bin-Laden.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Osama bin Laden escaped Afghanistan on horseback last December under U.S. fire and rallied Taliban troops from an Afghan stronghold in February, Newsweek magazine reported.
Citing two accounts by current and former Taliban members, the magazine reported in its Aug. 19 issue that the al-Qaida leader fled the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, where U.S. forces were bombing, with 28 people through the rugged White Mountains. The entourage traveled in to Pakistan and back to the Afghan mountain stronghold of Shahikot over five days in December, the magazine said.
A former Taliban official and professional guide told the magazine he led bin Laden's group on the journey, sometimes through heavy snow. The guide, who the magazine did not identify, said bin Laden rarely dismounted during the trip.
A Taliban soldier named Ali Mohammad told Newsweek that he saw bin Laden accompanied by 15 bodyguards in mid-February in Shahikot, where Taliban troops were preparing for an American attack.
Bin Laden rallied the troops, the soldier said, urging them to keep their morale up and ``take care of the injured and be confident that God will award you on Judgment Day.''
U.S. officials have said they don't know whether bin Laden is dead or alive.
-------- arms sales
Pakistan Readies Karachi Arms Show
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 10, 2002; 10:08 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2371-2002Aug10?language=printer
KARACHI, Pakistan -- Pakistan will tout its technology for extending the useable life of surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles at an arms show next month in Karachi, a top general said Saturday.
Maj. Gen. Syed Ali Hamid said none of the groups invited to attend International Defense Exhibition and Seminars, known as IDEAS 2002, had canceled, despite recent attacks against Western and Christian interests. He said providing security for the show would not be a problem.
"We are expecting a larger number of participants from countries the world over, including the United States, as in the first show two years back, when some 45 foreign companies and delegates participated in IDEAS 2000," Hamid said. "All the countries we have extended invitations to have accepted the invitation, and we hope for a larger number of participants (than in 2000)."
The show, which will be opened by military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, runs from Sept. 17 to 20, and is expected to draw 40 official military delegations and 600 invited companies and guests.
Hamid said Pakistan would promote services that would extend a missile's life by five to seven years. After the last arms show, Pakistan's military exports jumped from $40 million to $85 million.
-------- china / taiwan
Chen Says China Will Not Intimidate Taiwan
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-taiwan-china-rally.html
TAIPEI (Reuters) - President Chen Shui-bian said on Sunday Taiwan will not be intimidated by rival China, calling on the self-ruled island to unite, a week after infuriating Beijing by backing the idea of a vote on formal independence.
Speaking at a political rally, Chen referred to China's military threats and diplomatic embargo but did not repeat bold comments made last weekend that a referendum was a ``basic human right'' and there was ``one country on each side'' of the Taiwan Strait.
``We will not be intimidated,'' said Chen, who shared a stage at the rally with his predecessor, Lee Teng-hui, in an appearance that could feed Beijing's suspicions about the island's independence movement.
``We must not abandon beliefs that are right. We must keep walking the right path and must not stop,'' said Chen. The president, reading from a prepared text at a ceremony organized by a small political party, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, did not elaborate.
China, which has threatened to attack Taiwan if it declares independence, reacted furiously to Chen's backing for legislation preparing for a referendum, warning that he was leading the island to disaster.
-------- drug war
Afghan drug lords set up heroin labs
'The West kills us with bombs - we will respond with this'
Jason Burke, chief reporter
Sunday August 11, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4479574,00.html
Hundreds of kilos of heroin are being manufactured each week by factories recently set up in eastern Afghanistan, prompting fears of a new influx of high-quality, easily transportable drugs into Europe.
The renewed production of heroin, which had ceased following edicts by the Taliban regime and last autumn's US-led military action, is a blow to the British-led, multimillion-pound effort to stop drugs production in the country. Tony Blair has given the campaign his personal backing, committing more than £20 million of British taxpayers' money to the project. That backing convinced a reluctant Afghan government to announce a ban on the growth of opium six months ago.
But the return of the refining laboratories, each capable of producing £400,000 worth of heroin a week, has revealed the failure of the programme to make a significant impact.
The production of the high-value drug could further destabilise Afghanistan. In recent weeks there have been several bomb attacks and assassination attempts. Some have been blamed on elements close to al-Qaeda or former Taliban fighters, but others, such as the murder of Abdul Qadir, a Vice-President and Minister, in Kabul in July, have been blamed on drug-related feuds. The bomb that exploded in a warehouse in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Friday, killing at least 26 people, has also been linked to narcotics, although officials yesterday said it was probably an accident caused by badly stored construction explosives.
The Observer has learnt of three heroin laboratories in the lawless hills south-east of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan. There are believed to be several more. Two factories have been established in the Acheen district and one in the Adal Khel district of Nangarhar province.
One local resident, Naeem Shinwari, said the factories were working in broad daylight, producing between 70 and 100 kilos (154lb-220lb) of refined heroin a day, with the capacity to increase production if the supply of raw poppy remains constant. Afghanistan has supplied more than two-thirds of the world's opium for nearly a decade.
So far the British-led eradication programme has led to the destruction of 16,500 hectares (41,000 acres) of poppy field, out of an estimated total of 80,000. Farmers were offered $1,750 for each hectare that was destroyed. However the programme has been marred by allegations of corruption. Huge stockpiles of opium, used as a form of credit in rural Afghanistan, have meant that the supply of raw materials for the drug has not been affected.
In the early 1990s Afghanistan produced more than 90 per cent of heroin reaching the UK. The Taliban erad icated opium production in a bid to gain recognition from the international community in 2000. Heroin is far easier to smuggle than bulky opium. Previously, 10 or more kilos of opium had to be smuggled through Iran or Central Asia to laboratories in Turkey to be turned into heroin. Refining the drug in Afghanistan makes it easier to smuggle high-value consignments.
Abdul Wakeel, of Ghani Khel district, told The Observer that heroin and heroin-refining chemicals were being openly traded in local markets. He said the prices of heroin varied from £500 for a kilo of poor quality 'brown' heroin for smoking to more than £1,500 for pure, highly refined heroin which could be injected. Heroin for intravenous use would fetch £50,000 per kilo in Britain.
Haji Daulat Mohammad, a shopkeeper, said that prices were low because opium stocks remained high and heroin production was expected to rise sharply in coming months.
'Even if there is no cultivation of poppy next year, the existing stock is sufficient for 12 months at least,' he said. 'It may be haram (forbidden by Islam), but there is drought, unemployment and no other way to make my living.
'The West say making heroin is wrong and damages human beings, but they drop bombs on innocent civilians. We have no other way except to destroy the USA through narcotics. They shall drop bombs on us, and we shall send them this gift.'
-------- europe
Bush rhetoric is scaring Europe, says Mandelson
Close Downing Street ally voices fears that President Bush is alienating public opinion.
Gaby Hinsliff and Jason Burke
Sunday August 11, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,772584,00.html
Peter Mandelson has added his voice to the growing concern about President Bush's handling of the Iraq crisis with a warning that the US leader's aggressive rhetoric risks alienating European public opinion.
The former Cabinet Minister, who remains close to Downing Street, spoke out as a new poll revealed two-thirds of voters in the Prime Minister's own constituency do not back military action against Saddam Hussein.
Mandelson, who has just returned from a trip to Washington, said the President's public speeches had been too narrowly designed to appeal to nervous Americans.
'Bill Clinton was adept at speaking an international language that seemed to embrace every quarter of the world,' he added. 'Bush hasn't mastered that technique.'
His words reflect unease within the British Government about the President's unpopularity in this country - creating potential pitfalls for Tony Blair in backing his cause.
The poll of 887 people in the Sedgefield constituency found 64.6 per cent believe Blair should not support military action to oust Saddam Hussein, following a week of growing opposition from clergy, MPs, trade unionists and military figures.
However one senior Government source said voters could be won over 'if the circumstances were justified' and Ministers made a clear case.
Mandelson said current polls simply reflected voters trying to judge an 'unknown quantity' - because it was unclear what form military action could take - and reacting to media speculation and criticism by 'armchair strategists'.
'The third thing they are reacting to is a lack of two-way empathy between President Bush and people around the world,' Mandelson added. 'He does not seem to speak a world language. Whenever he addresses the issues he seems to be addressing the American people and their concerns.'
That was 'not unreasonable' in the light of ordinary Americans' fear of terrorism in the wake of 11 September - and their bafflement as to why Europeans do not share it - but left Europeans wrongly feeling 'that President Bush is going it alone regardless of other views and interests'.
'The maxim that seems to operate in Washington is "with our allies if at all possible, but on our own if necessary",' he added.
Blair insists no decisions have been made on military action but that the issue of weapons of mass destruction must be addressed.
Baghdad meanwhile has already launched its propaganda offensive, hoping to split Britain from the US in the hope of avoiding war.
Saddam Hussein is planning a personal appeal, possibly televised, to Blair, inviting him to travel to the Iraqi capital.
He has let it be known Blair can visit any site named as a chemical, biological or nuclear weapons facility in the secret dossier of alleged evidence against Saddam compiled within Whitehall.
The poll, conducted by the Northern Echo, surveyed areas including Sedgefield, Newton Aycliffe, Ferryhill, the Trimdons, Hurworth and Heighington. Only 17.6 per cent said that Blair was right to support the bombing of Iraq.
-------- iran
Saudis Probing Qaeda Handed Over by Iran
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-al-Qaida.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sixteen suspected al-Qaida fighters who fled Afghanistan were handed over by Iran to Saudi Arabia, which is interrogating them, the Saudi foreign minister said Sunday.
``The innocent will be let go and the guilty ones will be incarcerated and go to trial,'' Prince Saud al-Faisal said. Iran ``cooperated with us'' in handing them over, he said, but declined to speculate on whether that reflects improved U.S.-Iran relations.
Saud said on ABC's ``This Week'' that Iran's ``cooperation with us has been very important and very significant in fighting the terrorists.''
He said in a Washington Post interview published Sunday that information obtained from the captives was being made available to the United States.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's foreign policy adviser, Adel Al-Jubeir, said on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that for ``those that deserve punishment ... the punishment will be severe.''
On another subject, the foreign minister reiterated that Saudi Arabia would not allow use of Saudi soil in a U.S. attack on Iraq. The United States should ``give a diplomatic solution a chance before going to war,'' the prince said.
``We see there is movement on the diplomatic front on this issue,'' he said without elaboration.
``There is no proof there is a threat imminent from Iraq,'' Saud said in explaining his country's refusal to all the United States to use his country in such an attack.
The 16 suspected al-Qaida fighters are reportedly Saudi citizens. The prince said they were turned over in June. About the same time, Iranian officials said publicly that Iran was returning any captured al-Qaida operatives to their home countries.
President Bush has labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' that threatens global stability.
Sen. Fred Thompson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that despite the latest developments ``Iran's track record (on terrorism) is not very good.''
Iran in the past ``has cooperated with and assisted'' al-Qaida, Thompson, R-Tenn., told ``Fox News Sunday.''
The decision to turn over suspected al-Qaida members to Saudi Arabia ``serves the purpose of the Saudis and also the Iranians,'' he said.
Thompson characterized Saudi Arabia's reluctance to support action against Iraq as ``self-preservation'' to blunt criticism from the religious extremists within Saudi Arabia.
He called U.S.-Saudi relations ``a marriage of convenience'' because ``they need us and we need them.''
-------- iraq
Kurdish guerrillas poised to fire first shots in war on Iraq
Tim Judah in northern Iraq meets enemies of Saddam who seek to crush Islamist militants with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Sunday August 11, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,772585,00.html
The Kurds of Iraq are girding for war. Guerrillas, known as peshmergas, are working day and night hauling sandbags, digging trenches and bulldozing mountain roads to their front lines.
In what may be the opening battle of the war for Iraq, the Kurds are preparing to crush an Islamic fundamentalist group which has seized territory on the Iraqi-Iranian border and which some claim provides evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Iraqi Kurdish sources say they need to move quickly to crush the Taliban-inspired Islamists known as Ansar al-Islam because, if a US-led attack on Saddam begins, all peshmerga forces will be needed to surge southwards into government-controlled Iraq. They do not want to face a war on two fronts.
Kurdish sources say Ansar al-Islam is backed by an unlikely coalition of al-Qaeda, Iran and Saddam's Iraq. The peshmergas say Saddam's intelligence services are providing money and other backing to al-Ansar. None of these three has any ideological sympathy with the others, but both Iran and Saddam have an interest in weakening the Kurds.
From fortifications above the village of Darashish it is possible to see al-Ansar's bunkers and, with binoculars, their turbaned fighters. Many are known to have fought in Afghanistan and about 70 are believed to be Arabs and Afghan al-Qaeda members, many of whom have found sanctuary here since the fall of the Taliban.
Over the past few weeks the 1,000-strong peshmerga force belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has been bolstered by 2,000 peshmergas from elsewhere in the Kurdish safe haven that was set up beyond Saddam's control in 1991.
The haven is guarded by US and British warplanes, but the area lies well beyond the Iraqi no-fly zone.
According to Lt Col Ahmad Chekha Omer, a senior peshmerga commander, positions overlooking al-Ansar were visited just over two weeks ago by nine US military intelligence officers. They were preceded by three British officers. He believed his high command had requested air strikes in support of a peshmerga attack.
According to Omer: 'If the Iranians don't interfere we can finish them easily.' He says Iranian military trucks were spotted in the area two months ago, that Iran has supplied the al-Ansar fighters with three truck-mounted Katyush multiple rocket launchers, and that Iranian officers give them maps and weapons training.
In the past, Iran has supported the PUK and it was the Iranian-peshmerga capture of nearby Halabja in 1988 that resulted in Saddam's chemical attack on the city which killed 5,000. Now the Iranian regime does not want to see a democratic and pro-Western Iraq replacing Saddam's regime. A worse scenario for Tehran is a federal Iraq with a prosperous Kurdish unit, leading to similar demands from Iran's eight million Kurds.
Al-Ansar's connections to Saddam's regime raise the possibility of linking the Iraqi dictator and the 11 September attacks. PUK sources say prisoners have attested to a link between al-Ansar and Iraqi intelligence. Their leaders and many men fought in Afghanistan. According to Akbar San Ahmed, the peshmerga commander for Halabja, documents found on the body of an al-Ansar fighter after a battle last September, when 42 peshmerga prisoners were massacred, included the words: 'This is a gift to bin Laden.'
In jail in Sulaimaniya, the PUK holds a man convicted of being an Iraqi agent. An Iranian Arab, he has told them he smuggled arms from Baghdad to bin Laden in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and drugs from al-Qaeda that were used to buy more arms.
The man, Muhammed Mansour Shahab Ali, 27, talks nervously. In an interview with The Observer , he said he met bin Laden four times and carried out three murders for him. The interview was conducted in the presence of PUK officials and there is no way of checking its veracity.
Apart from armaments, Shahab Ali claims that in 2000 he smuggled 30 refrigerator motors, which he believes were filled with a gas, from Iraq to bin Laden.
Given Saddam's use of chemical weapons in Kurdistan, and during the Iran-Iraq war, this raises speculation that Iraq was supplying bin Laden with materials for chemical weapons. Shahab Ali gave no reason why Saddam would want to support al-Qaeda, which has publicly blasted Arab regimes like his.
Shahab Ali's stories, if true, provide an insight into the murky connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq and back US claims of such a link.
----
Republicans Say Bush Can Justify Attack on Iraq
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-congress.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Republican senators contended on Sunday that President Bush was able to make the case for a preemptive attack on Iraq, with one saying ``to wait for the provocation is to invite a very, very large disaster.''
Disputing a growing number of calls by lawmakers, including some from within Bush's own Republican Party in recent days, Sens. Richard Lugar and Fred Thompson said Bush already had ample reason to act against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Both raised the specter of the Sept. 11 attacks, which the United States blames on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.
``It's weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a dictator who might use them,'' said Lugar, from Indiana.
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texas Republican, caused a stir last week when he broke ranks with Bush in suggesting the United States had no business attacking the Gulf oil-exporting nation without sufficient provocation.
Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Sunday joined Armey and the others urging against such an attack on Iraq, telling NBC's ``Meet the Press'' Saddam posed no serious danger to the United States.
Lugar, however, a leading member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who will be ranking Republican with the retirement of Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, said while the administration had not yet fully made the case for an attack on Iraq, Bush could.
``The president has to make the case that in this particular instance to wait for the attack, to wait for the provocation is to invite a very, very large disaster,'' Lugar said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
Enough was known about the chemical and biological possibilities that there was a case to be made for removing a dictator who would use them before they were used, he said. ``My guess is that at the end of the day that is the case on which the war effort will rest.''
Lugar said it was clear Saddam ``has a preemptive war possibility.''
``(Bush) can describe this very well with the illustration of those terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon. That was preemptive without warning, fortunately without weapons of mass destruction,'' Lugar said.
WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, said Bush was making the case, ``that we can't wait for Saddam Hussein to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on one of his neighbors or on American troops. We have to preemptively strike.''
``This is a precedent-setting move for the United States to basically go on the offense as a defense,'' Hutchison told CNN's ``Late Edition.''
Thompson of Tennessee, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. war on terrorism, launched by Bush in retaliation for the attacks in New York and Washington that killed some 3,000 people, included preventing such attacks before they occur.
``Part of what we do has got to be offensive,'' Thompson told ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``And when we know that we have someone like Saddam, who has shown the capability in times past of using whatever he's got -- we know he's got biological, we know he's got chemical, we know he's undoubtedly working on nuclear...
``... Once that intelligence is there that he has the capability, especially nuclear, then we have a responsibility to seriously address that,'' Thompson said. ``And it looks to me like that, in the end, we will have to go in and do something about that.''
Levin, however, said Saddam would not use such weapons unless provoked by a U.S. military attack.
``Containment of Saddam is so far working,'' the Michigan Democrat said. ``He would not, in my judgement, initiate an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, because it would lead to his own destruction. ... He's a survivalist. He is not a suicide bomber.''
The public debate on a possible U.S. attack on Iraq has intensified in recent weeks with hearings on Capitol Hill airing the question of whether Washington should move militarily to oust the Iraqi president Bush has vowed to replace.
Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Saturday stepped up pressure on Baghdad by meeting with Iraqi opposition groups on how to fill the void if Washington follows through.
Bush, however, again played down expectations of any imminent attack on Iraq.
--------
Iraqi Opposition Gets U.S. Pledge to Oust Hussein for a Democracy
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/international/middleeast/11IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - Vice President Dick Cheney told Iraqi opposition leaders today that the Bush administration was determined to oust Saddam Hussein from power and replace him with a democratic government, Iraqi resistance leaders said today.
In their second day of high-level talks in Washington, the opposition leaders conferred by video conference with Mr. Cheney, who is on vacation in Wyoming. They also met at the White House today with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Participants in the meeting said afterward that the discussions had dealt with the military situation in Iraq as well as the general principles that would determine how Iraq is governed if Mr. Hussein was deposed, specifically the need to preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq and ensure that a new government respects democratic principles.
While Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld's statement that the United States wants a democratic government in Iraq may not appear surprising, it has important implications. It indicates that Washington would not accept an outcome in which Mr. Hussein was toppled in a coup and replaced by another authoritarian figure, even one more amenable to American interests. It suggests that Washington is committed to bring about sweeping changes in Iraq and depose not just Mr. Hussein but the entire ruling structure.
While the administration has discussed the desirability of a democratic Iraq, the pledge to the opposition comes at a particularly important juncture as the United States faces questions internationally and in Congress about its ultimate aims if Mr. Hussein is overthrown.
It is also significant because discussions between the White House and the Iraqi opposition about the future of Iraq have now begun in earnest.
"The main message was that the U.S. is seriously committed to regime change in Iraqi," Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, one of the opposition leaders, said, referring to the discussions with Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld.
"There is no decision on how and when, but the U.S. did stress it wants to maintain the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq and the establishment of the democratic rule of law," he added. "They support a democratic regime in Iraq. They would not support replacing one dictator with another."
Such a transformation could pay huge strategic dividends for American foreign policy, but it would also require a substantial effort to rebuild Iraq, including the development of new governing institutions.
Mr. Rumsfeld alluded to this vision of a new Iraq on Friday when he told reporters that the United States wanted to see an Iraq that did not develop weapons of mass destruction or threaten its neighbors, and which respected the rule of law and gave its citizens a voice in running the country. Such changes should be sought, he said, despite the criticism that the United States has made a half-hearted effort to build new institutions in Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban.
"Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if Iraq were similar to Afghanistan, if a bad regime was thrown out, people were liberated, food could come in, borders could be opened, repression could stop, prisons could be opened?" Mr. Rumsfeld said. "I mean, it would be fabulous."
President Bush was more circumspect in his comments on Iraq today. He said he had "no imminent war plan" or timetable for confronting Iraq. But he added that Iraq was "an enemy until proven otherwise" because of its programs to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the missiles that might carry them.
In the Bush administration's discussions with the Iraqi opposition on Friday and today, an American military intervention seemed to be a foregone conclusion. The main goal seemed to be to lay the political groundwork for an eventual American military campaign by encouraging Iraqi opposition figures to put aside their past feuds and work together.
With encouragement from Washington, the opposition leaders also sought to show that they are an inclusive group that welcomes support from military officers and officials inside Iraq. That is important since the White House believes that the opposition groups currently have little military ability, and Washington is clearly hoping that Iraqi military units nominally loyal to Mr. Hussein join a campaign against him.
"We want to expand beyond our group of six," Sharif Ali said in an interview. "There are other elements that need to be brought in."
Earlier in the month, Congress held two days of hearings to discuss the administration's policy in Iraq. While many members of Congress generally support American military action, some have pointedly asked what the administration's long-range plans are for Iraq and have questioned whether the administration is truly prepared to stabilize the country and help rebuild Iraqi institutions after such an intervention.
Last week the House majority leader, Dick Armey, said the United States would not be justified in atacking Iraq without a provocation. One of the administration's aims in the meetings today was to make the case that a significant segment of Iraqi society welcomes American military action to create a new, democratic Iraqi.
The Iraqi opposition leaders include representatives from the two main Kurdish factions, an Iranian-backed Shiite group, a monarchist group, a group that includes former Iraqi military officers and the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization. In Iraq, the government-controlled news media denounced the opposition figures as a "delinquent clique," portraying them in essence as a band of outsiders determined to seize power for themselves.
Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld have taken the most hard-line stance on Iraq in the administration and clearly gave the Iraqi opposition leaders a sympathetic hearing. In his video-conference appearance, Mr. Cheney told the Iraqi opposition leaders that the administration supported their efforts and was determined to replace the Hussein regime.
Then the opposition figures met with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Myers. Mr. Rumsfeld, they said, was particularly emphatic in his 40-minute meeting with them today.
"The secretary of defense made it quite clear that they were committed to regime change in Iraq, that they were going all the way," Sharif Ali said.
--------
Kurds Must Endure Iraq's 'Nationality Correction'
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/international/middleeast/11KURD.html
BARDA QARAMAN, Iraq - When Saddam Hussein's men came for them, Omar Osman Siddiq and his family went quietly.
With his wife and eight children, Mr. Siddiq silently loaded the family's possessions onto a truck waiting to carry them away from the home in Kirkuk, a city rich in oil, where his forebears had lived for generations.
Then, at a police station, Mr. Siddiq surrendered all the personal documents Iraqis need for daily existence, including identity cards, a booklet for weekly food rations, even the registration for the family car.
Flanked by armed guards, he faced one last indignity, signing a paper attesting that everything had been in accordance with law, and voluntary.
By nightfall, the truck reached its final destination: a plot of ground in the arid desert here 80 miles east of Kirkuk, just outside the 90 percent of Iraq that is governed by Mr. Hussein and inside a self-governing Kurdish enclave that lives a precarious existence under Western air protection. To finance their new existence as refugees here at Barda Qaraman, the Siddiqs had savings of $30.
The family's deportation in July followed their rejection of Decree 199, a presidential order issued by Mr. Hussein to reinforce a population policy that is Iraq's equivalent of ethnic cleansing. The Siddiqs are Kurds, the predominant ethnic group in northern Iraq, and Decree 199, proclaimed last year, lays down a procedure known as "nationality correction." It gives Kurds and other minorities the chance to avow that they "mistakenly" registered themselves as non-Arabs and that they wish to reclaim their Arab origins.
The policy has been used primarily against Iraq's Kurds, who make up as much as 25 percent of the country's population of 23 million, by far the largest minority. But it has been used against Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Turkmen, too, among other groups.
Creating an Arab majority on the great Mesopotamian plain north of Baghdad is not a new policy for Iraq. Nor is it an innovation by Mr. Hussein, who, like all Iraqi leaders since the state's founding in 1921 is an Arab, from the Sunni sect of Islam, to which most Kurds belong. But Mr. Hussein, especially since his 1991 gulf war defeat and the creation of the Kurdish enclave, has accelerated efforts to drive minorities out, and bring Arabs in, to the region that sits atop some of the world's greatest oil reserves.
To resist Mr. Hussein's enforcers is to risk severe punishment, including execution, according to Kurdish refugees and human rights organizations. So the Siddiqs took care to say nothing provocative when the men with the truck arrived. The children were coached not to cry or ask questions, and above all to say nothing derogatory about Mr. Hussein.
"If you say anything, they will shoot you," said Mr. Siddiq, 38, an electrician who owned a repair shop in Kirkuk. "All I told them on the day they came for us was, `O.K., we'll leave, there's no need for any violence.' But my nerves were so taut that if I had had a Kalashnikov rifle, I would have shot every one of them."
A week after the deportation, and safe in the Kurdish enclave, Mr. Siddiq's wife, Shukria Khaled, 41, and the children, still seemed too frightened to say anything directly critical of Mr. Hussein. But when 9-year-old Ahmed was assured by his father that Mr. Hussein could not reach him at Barda Qaraman, he hesitated a moment before jumping up and shouting, "Saddam's a bad man!"
In an instant, the shout became a contagion, with other Siddiq children, then friends from nearby tents, picking up the refrain, then adding new invectives, all the while running about joyously in the cool of the desert evening, before collapsing in laughter amid the jumble of appliances, furniture and suitcases that constitute the Siddiqs' new home.
The Kurds, as a group, have suffered much more than deportation under Mr. Hussein. During the Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988, when Kurdish separatist groups allied themselves with Iran, his warplanes dropped poison gas on Kurdish towns and villages, killing thousands. Kurdish accounts say that thousands more Kurdish men were arrested and never seen again.
Many thousands more Kurds have disappeared since 1991, when Iraq's defeat by United States-led forces in the battle for Kuwait was followed by a Kurdish uprising in the north that was brutally suppressed by Mr. Hussein. That, in turn, led the Western powers to declare the no-flight zone north of the 36th parallel that created the Kurdish enclave.
Many families in the territory have stories about relatives in the areas around Kirkuk and Mosul, another oil city under Mr. Hussein's control, who have been led away by the Iraqi secret police since the 1991 uprising and not heard from since. Their offense, the families say, was usually that they were related to somebody who joined in the uprising.
But even families that took no part in the political upheavals have been affected by Baghdad's drive to change the ethnic composition in the oil fields.
According to United Nations figures, more than 800,000 people have fled north into the Kurdish enclave since 1991, nearly a fifth of the enclave's population of 3.6 million. But Kurdish refugee organizations say that about 250,000 of those who have moved were forced out after rejecting "Arabization," like the Siddiqs.
Rizgar Ali, a Kurdish official responsible for assisting the resettlement of Kurds in the enclave, cited official Iraqi figures that show that Kurds constituted 54 percent of the population of Kirkuk Province in 1954, compared with only 25 percent now. Meanwhile, he said, Arabs have risen to more than 50 percent of the population from less than 10 percent.
Even if minority families agree to accept Arab nationality, their compliance is often only a prelude to further persecution. Human rights reports cite cases of families that have signed the conversion papers being prosecuted afterward for having "falsely" claimed to be Kurds.
Some were then stripped of all property and moved from the northern area into the Arab heartland of Iraq. Other families have been told that their changed status makes them only "second-class Arabs," and that their homes and jobs are to be given to "genuine Arabs" who are moving north under policies that provide subsidies to Arab migrants.
In the case of Mr. Siddiq, Iraqi officials visited his home three times, starting last summer, offering the family a new start as Arabs. Mr. Siddiq refused. "I know the history of Saddam against the Kurds," he said. "So I told them, `I was born a Kurdish man, and I will die a Kurdish man.' On the third visit, they said, `O.K., you've had your chance. Now you'll have to leave.' "
Mr. Ali, the Kurdish official, carries the wistful title of governor of New Kirkuk, the name of a broad area south and west of Sulaimaniya, a Kurdish-governed city about 40 miles from Barda Qaraman.
But Mr. Ali, whose family was forced out of its ancestral home by Iraqi forces creating a belt of Arab-only villages east of Kirkuk in the early 1960's, believes that the deportations are laying the ground for major strife, even if the government in Baghdad changes.
If President Bush succeeds in his repeated vow to use American power to oust Mr. Hussein, Mr. Ali said, any future Iraqi government that wants to reintegrate the Kurds peacefully into a united Iraq will have to meet Kurdish demands for the restoration of lost property. "We shall not surrender any of our rights, not ever," he said.
In the meantime, at the Barda Qaraman refugee camp, more than 100 Kurdish families struggle to get by without sanitation, and some, like the Siddiqs, without even a tarpaulin for shelter. They say they wish only that Mr. Bush will make good on his pledge to get rid of Mr. Hussein.
"We hear the good news about George W. Bush on the Voice of America every night, that he's going to shoot Saddam Hussein, and it's all we talk about," Mr. Siddiq said. "We believe Mr. Bush can carry us back to Kirkuk. But can you tell him, please, to hurry up?"
-------- israel / palestine
Secret CIA visit yields security plan
By Aluf Benn,
Sunday, August 11, 2002 Elul 3, 5762
Ha`aretz
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=195756&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0
A CIA team that visited the region secretly has formulated a detailed plan for security reforms in the Palestinian Authority. The team spent several weeks in the PA and Israel, meeting with top security officials on the Palestinian side, and apparently with Israeli officials as well. They did not meet with PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, as per the U.S. administration's instructions to circumvent him.
The team handed in its report last week to the administration in Washington and recommended profoundchanges in the structures, tasks, operations and recruitment programs for the PA security services. The administration is now studying the recommendations, in consultation with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which have agreed to help implement the reforms.
At the same time, work is proceeding on civic and economic reforms, under the direction of the international "task force," which will meet at the end of the month in Paris, to be followed by a visit to the region by an American envoy for a situation assessment.
The administration, meanwhile, is pleased with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's instructions to the army to ease conditions for the civilian population in the territories, and with his personal monitoring of implementation of those moves, which Washington believes sends a message about their importance to the defense establishment.
The U.S. continues to be understanding of the security constraints that make it difficult for Israel to accept tens of thousands of Palestinian workers back inside the country, or to lift checkpoints and sieges in the West Bank. Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, the government coordinator in the territories, met yesterday with U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer to discuss these issues.
Intelligence reports to the political echelon say that the Hamas is very troubled by the plan to ease conditions in the territories, because it makes it more difficult to recruit activists. They are now pressuring the PA leadership, threatening to attack those places where abatements go into place, so the IDF will resume its checkpoints and closures in those places.
Sharon said yesterday that he intends to invest most of his time in "a genuine political process that will lead to an arrangement, an agreement, and eventually to peace."
In a speech to this year's graduating class at the National College for Security, he said the security situation has an enormous impact on the economic situation and that to resume investments, growth and job creation, "it is necessary to bring back security and quiet."
He reiterated his position that the obstacle to peace is "the gang of murder, terror and corruption in the PA," and said "the only way to peace requires removing that gang of murderers from their political positions ... That's the way and there is no other. Any attempt to talk with terrorists will only plant in their hearts the hope that they can deceive us again. We won't fall into that trap, which is meant to weaken us and save them. There will be no compromise with terror, and no negotiations with it."
Sharon said that to advance the peace process there must be genuine reforms, which means "a reorganization of the Palestinian security forces, which are all involved in terrorism."
He mentioned the discussions Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is holding "with the necessary people on the Palestinian side, as long as they don't deal in terror or are involved in it." He made no mention of meetings Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and top Israeli security officials held this week with their Palestinian counterparts. Those meetings included "old regime" officials Mohammed Dahlan and Amin al-Hindi. A security source said that Sharon approved those meetings "down to the last detail."
Sharon promised to build the separation fence as quickly as possible, but added it is not a miracle solution that will prevent all terror attacks.
Turning to another issue, Sharon said he is in touch with Haredi rabbis, looking for a "reform in how the burden is shared. I want to bring about a just, genuine change," in national service.
--------
Amid Talks and Violence, Sharon and Arafat Trade Accusations
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli and Palestinian leaders traded recriminations Sunday, each accusing the other of stoking the Mideast conflict. A Palestinian gunman was killed and three Israelis were wounded in scattered violence.
The two leaders exchanged angry charges despite recent contacts between the two sides and talk of a possible and limited Israeli troop withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and then the West Bank.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he did not believe Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's government would take action to prevent Palestinian attacks against Israel.
``Arafat is the head of terrorism and no one is counting on him,'' Sharon told a Cabinet meeting, according to Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar.
Arafat said he did not think Sharon's government was serious about peace negotiations.
``This government is looking only for more escalation for its military plans. They are not looking to achieve peace,'' Arafat said at his mostly destroyed compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops tracked down and shot and killed a Palestinian militant after he opened fire on Israelis working on a fence at a Jewish settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip, wounding one of them, the army said.
The Palestinian gunman hit the Israeli worker with at least five bullets in his arms and legs, according to the Barzilai Hospital in the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Israeli troops chased the gunman to a house in the nearby Palestinian area of Beit Lahiya and killed him in a gun battle, the army said. Troops then blew up the house.
The militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the Israeli workers and identified the gunman as Basil Naji, 22.
In the northern West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian gunfire wounded two Israeli soldiers, the army said.
Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II delivered one of his most forceful denunciations of Middle East violence, lamenting that Palestinians were subjected to ``collective punishment'' and Israelis were gripped by fear.
``When will one learn that coexistence between the Israeli and Palestinian people cannot result from arms? Neither attacks, nor walls of separation, nor retaliation will ever lead to a just solution of the conflict under way,'' John Paul said Sunday at his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, a hill town near Rome.
The Israel-Palestinian talks, since stalled, had focused on Israeli forces leaving Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip. If calm prevailed, Israel then would examine withdrawing from parts of the West Bank, where troops are in most Palestinian cities and towns.
Sharon called the Palestinian proposals for an Israeli withdrawal ``a trick designed to coincide with the talks between Palestinian officials and U.S. leaders.''
A Palestinian delegation was in Washington last week for discussions with senior Bush administration officials on stabilizing the region and reforming the Palestinian security forces.
Arafat said he was encouraged by the Washington discussions, which included the highest-level meetings between U.S. and Palestinian officials in recent months.
``There were very positive talks and today (Sunday) they will return and give a full explanation,'' Arafat said of the Palestinian team.
The Palestinian Authority's interior minister, Abdel Razak Yehiyeh, met CIA director George Tenet outside Washington on Saturday and said he was revamping what remains of a Palestinian security force devastated by the Israelis, and firing officers he found to be incompetent.
In another dispute, an Israeli government official accused Egypt of trying to meddle in Israel's politics, bringing into the open a rift over Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's overtures to the Israeli left and his harsh criticism of Sharon.
``Unfortunately, the president of Egypt and other high officials have not been treating Israel properly lately,'' Saar told reporters. ``They have made improper statements which have strayed from the diplomatic path, in an effort to interfere in the Israeli political system.''
Saar also issued a warning to Israeli Labor Party leaders, several of whom have visited Egypt in recent weeks.
Labor Party leader and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who recently visited Egypt, ``will do all he can to find any possibility toward peace and calm to the region,'' his spokesman Yarden Vatikai said in response to Saar's comments.
Yoram Dori, spokesman for Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, another Labor leader who recently visited Egypt, said he did not believe Saar's comments were directed at Peres.
In comments to reporters in the Egyptian capital Sunday, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said accusations Egypt was meddling in Israeli affairs were ``baseless.''
In other Mideast violence, a Palestinian gunman cut through a wire fence and shot and killed an Israeli woman and wounded her husband late Saturday, the army said.
After using wire cutters on the fence, the gunman crawled through the opening into the Mechora settlement in the Jordan Valley. He fired on a car, seriously wounding the Israeli driver as he arrived at his home. The driver's wife was fatally shot as she came out of the house.
Israeli soldiers then shot and killed the gunman, the army said.
--------
Homes Lost and Found on Hill Where an Israeli Project Rises
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/international/middleeast/11SETT.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 - Five years ago, Israel's decision to build a sprawling housing complex on a pine-covered hilltop in East Jerusalem temporarily brought peace negotiations with the Palestinians to a halt. The plan was condemned by the United Nations, criticized by the United States and bitterly protested by Palestinians and left-wing Israelis.
But in Jerusalem, the extreme, even the shocking, has a way of becoming as routine as a mortgage payment.
Now the project, called Har Homa, is becoming a reality of stark white stone and glass brick, a suburban dream hewn from a tormented landscape. A work still in progress, it is drawing together - or at least juxtaposing - the conflict's insiders and outsiders, its winners and losers, in a reluctantly shared enterprise that is as political as it is commercial. Like Jerusalem itself, it is a place that evokes the ache of homes lost, and the balm of homes found.
The first Israeli families are moving in, driving up the hill past billboards proclaiming "the Heights of Prestige" and listing amenities from Jacuzzis to kitchen cabinets of fine veneer to "prestigious ceramic tile floors."
On a dust-choked construction site overlooking the revered, war-battered town of Bethlehem, which lies still as stone under 24-hour Israeli curfew, Romanians, Chinese and Turks are laboring to build Har Homa, earning some money to send home from the heart of a conflict few of them grasp.
They work alongside a few Palestinians who - conscience-stricken but desperate for the wages, understanding the conflict in their bones - sneak past the Israeli police, defying Israeli law to help Israeli contractors build what the Palestinians regard as an Israeli settlement on stolen land.
"My heart is bleeding," said Salman Jahalin, 28, his corduroys covered with the hilltop's powdery white dust. "I feel guilty for being here and doing this kind of work. But I have no other choice."
Mr. Jahalin, the father of four, is from the West Bank village of Zaatara. In addition to being a laborer at Har Homa, he has become one of its first - if illegal - residents. He sleeps most nights on the stone floor of a newly built storeroom rather than risk being caught and arrested by the Israeli border police while returning home.
In a conflict that revolves around location, location, location, Har Homa is a monument to the shifting political geography. The property here was captured from Jordan by Israel during the 1967 war, then incorporated into Jerusalem's expanded boundaries.
To the Israeli government, Har Homa is a Jerusalem neighborhood, not a settlement, and it is also a strategically placed buffer against the Palestinians.
To many of those moving in, Har Homa is an affordable home with a stunning view of the khaki Judean hills, planted with olive orchards and spiked with the minarets of mosques.
Talia Daniel, 32, moved into Har Homa more than a month ago with her husband and three sons. "This is my first house," she said proudly. "It's a beautiful place, very prestigious, even if it's close to the Arabs."
She expressed no fear that her family's view of Bethlehem or its safety might be compromised by the conflict. "Today, every place is frightening in Jerusalem," she said. "What's special about here?"
Most of the land that is now Har Homa was owned by Jews when the government expropriated it in the early 1990's. But other parts were owned by Arabs, including some owned by the family of Muhammad Abu Tair, 47, an electrician who comes from a nearby Palestinian village, also now incorporated into Jerusalem's limits.
He now works at Har Homa. "They are good houses," he said sadly of his work. "Good and beautiful houses."
In 1997, in what seems like another age, Yasir Arafat, took his complaints over Har Homa direct to President Bill Clinton; Mr. Arafat's top representative in Jerusalem described the housing project as "a declaration of war against the Palestinians." Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, warned that the decision to build Har Homa would be "the beginning of a new cycle of violence." The State Department rebuked Israel for its plans.
Now, no one in Israel says much about it. "Politically, I think it's largely faded into the background," said Jeff Halper, the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. "It's sort of a fait accompli, I think."
Mr. Halper described Har Homa as part of Israel's efforts to create "facts on the ground" that would impede concessions of territory in any peace deal. "There are so many fronts that, if you're the peace movement, you can't keep up," he said.
Israelis may not think much these days about Har Homa, but residents of Palestinian towns like Bethlehem and Beit Sahur have watched the construction with dismay.
Har Homa, which translates roughly as "mountain wall," looks as forbidding as a fortress. Indeed, among the advantages that residents of Har Homa have over their Israeli and Palestinian neighbors is that they do not have to gaze out at Har Homa, which is not easy on the eyes. But these new residents are also providing an advantage - a strategic one - to their fellow Israelis.
Har Homa is a crucial link in a chain of Israeli developments, settlements and connecting roads that surround an area of dense Palestinian population, centered on Bethlehem, and cut it off from largely Palestinian East Jerusalem. The land for Har Homa was expropriated under a left-leaning Labor government, but its construction also fits the vision of the current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who speaks of Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, united capital.
The people who are moving here appear to be doing less in pursuit of an ideology than of an affordable home. "Where's Turkish Muhammad?" demanded an Israeli woman, abruptly striding up to Mr. Jahalin and using her nickname for another worker.
The woman, a 34-year-old accountant who identified herself as Soni, had appeared in a seemingly empty section of Har Homa to survey her new apartment, which she is about to move into. She had paid $150,000 for her three-bedroom, two-bath home, Soni said.
Her apartment's balcony offers a spectacular view over Beit Sahur toward the flat-topped hill of the Herodion, a palace constructed 2,000 years ago by another ambitious builder, Herod the Great.
Soni was not oblivious to the politics of her new home. "If Arafat and Sharon will stay at home, we will run the states and everything will be fine - the small people," she said. But in the meantime, she explained, "my political point of view is money."
"This was my chance to buy," Soni said. "If I had $300,000, I would buy in Rehavia." That is an upscale Jerusalem neighborhood.
Indeed, prices have been dropping here, both to buy and to rent from buyers, some of whom are already offering up their homes in classified advertising. The government is subsidizing the purchase of homes.
The reason is that during the 22-month conflict, a neighboring development called Gilo, also built on 1967 land and part of the same strategic chain, has repeatedly come under fire from the adjacent West Bank town of Beit Jala. Residents of Gilo have had to bulletproof their apartments, and a cement wall now blocks their West Bank vista. A likeness of the view has been painted on the wall.
The first phase of construction of Har Homa, 2,500 units, is drawing to a close. The Housing Ministry reports that almost 1,000 homes have been sold, and that several hundred people have already moved in, living in what remains a vast construction site. Israel envisions an eventual complex of 6,500 units housing at least 20,000 Israelis, with schools, parks and shopping.
A small group of Israeli Arab and Palestinian workers is also living in Har Homa, in a plywood shack. They work and sleep in shifts, guarding the construction materials from theft. They wash outside, from a spigot, and they watch movies in Arabic received on a large satellite dish.
Under threat of suicide bombers, Israel has seized control of seven of eight Palestinian cities in the West Bank and placed them under curfew. It has dug ditches around cities like Bethlehem and filled them with barbed wire. Still, Israeli security officials say, thousands of Palestinians find ways each day to get into Israel, not, in their case, to kill others and themselves but to find work.
The Palestinian workers said they could make up to 100 shekels daily here - about $21 dollars - compared with nothing at all in the West Bank. As the conflict has ground on and Israel has sealed off Palestinian areas, the Palestinian economy has collapsed.
The men said other Palestinians did not criticize them. "Everybody knows that it's a settlement, but nobody asks you not to work," said one man, who gave his name only as Hassan, 30, the father of five. "They know the alternative: not to eat." Hassan lives half an hour away, but he stays at Har Homa for two weeks at a stretch to avoid getting caught.
Toward dusk one evening this week, a dozen Palestinian men were seen dashing from Har Homa, through a break in the construction fence, down the rocky hillside and toward the olive groves of the West Bank.
"It's painful to see the Israeli police come here and arrest these people," said one of the guards, Salem Alkuran, 18, an Israeli Arab from Beersheba.
The Palestinian workers said they had been hired by Israeli Arabs serving as middlemen to Israeli Jewish bosses. Most said they spoke enough Hebrew to get by. Among themselves, the workers speak Arabic, and they talk politics.
Mr. Jahalin, the Palestinian laborer, said the only solution to the conflict was to establish a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. But Mr. Abu Tair, the electrician, differed. "These people are strangers," he said. "This is Muslim land, and an Islamic state should be established."
Mr. Alkuran, the Israeli Arab, spoke up. "We can live together," he said. "It's impossible to move the whole country."
-------- mideast
Iran sends prisoners to Saudis
Aug. 11, 2002
UPI
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20020811-070657-9778r.htm
WASHINGTON, Iran quietly detained and expelled 16 members of the al-Qaida terror network, cooperating with both Saudi Arabia and the United States, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told The Washington Post, the newspaper reported Sunday.
The foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, said that the al-Qaida fighters, all Saudi nationals, fled to Iran from Afghanistan, and that Iran has deported them to Saudi Arabia.
Prince Saud told the newspaper that Iran handed over the al-Qaida fugitives knowing that whatever intelligence was obtained from them during interrogation would be passed on to the United States.
The Post said the 16 were flown to Saudi Arabia in June but that it is not known if they are still in custody.
Iran repeatedly denied charges that it was harboring al-Qaida and Taliban fighters or that it deserves to be considered as part of an "axis of evil," as President Bush has described it.
Prince Saud said all information his country has on the al-Qaida network has been exchanged with the United States. He added that intelligence-sharing is just one example of U.S.-Saudi cooperation, contradicting recent criticism of Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi foreign minister dismissed as "ridiculous" a recent briefing to a Pentagon advisory board, in which a civilian analyst described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, "active at every level of the terror chain." The White House and the Defense Department have disavowed the analyst's comments at the briefing.
-------- space
Internet good friend to terrorists
Schriever squadron roots out information that makes bases vulnerable
By John Diedrich
The Gazette
August 11, 2002
http://www.gazette.com/stories/0811top2.php
A computer and Internet connection found in millions of homes can reveal a lot about a U.S. military base: how high a fence is, where the operations center and fuel supply are located and how many troops live there.
That scares a military braced for more terrorist attacks.
Airmen in the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base work to make such an attack tougher. They scour the Internet for potentially compromising information, thinking and acting like the enemy.
They can't, however, yank the information when they find it. They simply show commanders where their base might be vulnerable.
Such information once was the domain of powerful nations with satellites, spy planes and billion-dollar budgets. The Internet and high-quality satellite pictures from private companies put the information a click and a credit card away.
The threat from easily available information - coined "open-source intelligence" - is real.
Last year, U.S. soldiers found a General Accounting Office report on an al-Qaida computer in Afghanistan that showed how easy it is to breach security at sensitive U.S. buildings.
The United States has since "scrubbed" its Web sites of potentially sensitive information, but more than government information is available on the Internet.
High-resolution satellite pictures, including images of military installations, are for sale or free on the Web.
"These (terrorists) understand the use of the Internet," said Ken Allard, a retired Army colonel and an expert on information warfare who lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at Georgetown University.
"What it constitutes is a treasure trove for someone who knows what they are looking for."
The public has a right to know, Allard said, but that right shouldn't allow release of information that might jeopardize national security.
"The First Amendment is not a suicide pact," he said.
Others question the threat.
John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense research group, posts pictures of U.S. bases and other military information on the site, which the Aggressor Squadron regularly checks.
Pike said the site promotes public debate and doesn't jeopardize national security.
Satellite pictures from private companies may show a base runway, buildings and anything that isn't inside or camouflaged, but the information only poses a threat if the commander isn't properly protecting the base, Pike said.
"I continue to be surprised by how surprised people are about what is available," Pike said. "If any commander thinks he can build a base out in the middle of the desert and nobody is going to notice, he has got another thing coming."
Part of the Aggressor Squadron's job is to remind commanders people are watching.
The squadron, formed in October 2000 with an annual budget of about $3 million, combs the Internet for nuggets of potentially compromising information.
The airmen use commercial telephone lines and civilian computer programs to analyze satellite photos and make the threat realistic.
In other words, they use what's available to anyone.
The airmen find out plenty.
They figured the height of a base's outer fence by the shadow it casts. They counted the barracks and estimated the number of soldiers living on the base with the help of information in a newspaper story.
They determined how many barricades were at the front gate, then set up barricades in a parking lot at Schriever and figured how long it would take to drive through them.
The airmen couldn't get a picture of one building they suspected was on the base, but They found a photo of it on an Internet site created by someone stationed on the base so his parents could see where he worked.
Squadron members also found out which Global Positioning System satellites the base used by checking the direction its satellite dish faced. That allowed the squadron to employ a GPS jammer. Most U.S. jets, bombs and ships use the satellites for navigation and timing.
The squadron built one jammer small enough to fit in a cigarette pack. It had a weak signal and would have to be close to the antennae to work.
Another jammer, about 15 feet tall, could interrupt the signal from farther away.
It was relatively easy to build. The airmen bought the plans online for $35. The amplifier came from an electronics store, the generator from a ham-radio operators convention. The rest - PVC pipe, copper tubing, wood supports and hardware - came from a home improvement store. The total cost was less than $9,000.
"This is not something cosmic," said Lt. Col. Rad Widman, who until recently commanded the squadron. GPS jamming usually can be defeated by changing a channel frequency, but operators must realize they are being jammed, Widman said.
Although the squadron uncovers weaknesses every day, members don't see critical failures. "The sky is not falling," Widman said. "The picture we want to put out is one of preparedness."
Allard, the retired Army colonel, sees more dire risks and hopes the squadron's work expands.
"There is an assumption that technology gives us an invulnerable edge. It never does. That is a deadly assumption," he said.
"The beginning of knowledge is knowing where the loopholes are."
-------- us
National Guard Awaits Niche In Homeland Security Plan
White House's Caution Chafes Against Those Urging Action
By Bill Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 11, 2002; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3856-2002Aug10?language=printer
They've flown air patrols over Washington and New York and stood sentry at airports, borders, power plants and bridges. But one of the most formidable resources in the nation's fight against terrorism, the National Guard, barely gets a mention in the debate over a new Department of Homeland Security, and its future role remains undefined.
Despite the urgings of many security analysts and some lawmakers, the Guard has not been included in the White House homeland security plan, which would merge all or parts of 22 federal agencies in the biggest government reorganization of the past 50 years.
"We have an enormous asset in America in our National Guard," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said at a recent congressional hearing. "We have men and women who are dedicated to the country and show it with the sacrifice that they make. But we clearly can use them, I think, more effectively as part of homeland security."
The Bush administration is moving cautiously for three reasons, officials said. The Army and Air Force depend heavily on the National Guard for overseas combat missions. The Posse Comitatus Act limits the Guard's ability to routinely enforce federal law within the United States. And the National Guard is under the day-to-day command of the states, territories and the District, except when called to federal duty by the Pentagon.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said the National Guard's role will become more clear this fall after the launch of the military's new Northern Command, which will oversee the defense of the continental United States. Military officials will work with the White House and the nation's governors in defining suitable missions, he said.
But former senator Gary Hart (D-Colo.), who was co-chairman of a commission that studied the terrorist threat, said the White House should act now to designate the National Guard as the arm of the military that would respond to terrorist strikes in the United States. "What George Bush ought to do is call the 50 adjutant generals [who command state National Guard organizations] into the White House and say, 'Right now you work for the 50 governors; you don't work for me. But there may come a time when you will work for me, and I want you to make homeland security the primary mission -- not your only mission, but your primary mission,' " Hart said.
There is much the National Guard can do under current federal law without cutting back on overseas military work, Guard officials said. A recent internal study proposed providing about 50,000 members expertise in homeland security, with as many as 12,000 devoted solely to prevention and response. They would be available for call-up either by the Pentagon or the states, officials said.
"Homeland security and homeland defense is part and parcel of what we're all about," said Gen. Raymond F. Rees, vice chairman of the National Guard Bureau, the Guard's administrative arm. The Guard has performed those duties since colonial times, he said.
With 350,000 people in the Army National Guard and 110,000 members in the Air National Guard, the organization has a presence in 3,100 communities. The Guard has teams in 27 locations trained and equipped to deal with the aftermath of an attack involving weapons of mass destruction.
Other specialists are capable of providing emergency medical care, restoring electrical power and rebuilding roads, dams and other such structures.
The Guard also has experience saving lives during disasters, transporting large numbers of people and equipment, and providing follow-up assistance, Rees said. Nearly 49,000 members are now on active duty in the United States and abroad.
Maj. Gen. Timothy J. Lowenberg, who heads the National Guard in Washington state, said members could conduct mass evacuations, set up shelters, decontaminate large numbers of people and enforce quarantines in the event of a biological attack.
"The military is accustomed to thinking in large orders of magnitude," he said.
Like Hart, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) supports expanding the Guard's homeland security role, though he said it would require new equipment tailored to fighting terror because much of the Guard's current inventory is combat-related.
Lieberman is chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which drafted a version of the homeland security bill that will be considered in September by the full Senate. He initially included language in a draft of that bill that would have given the Guard primary responsibility for "preventing, protecting, responding to, and recovering from significant direct threats." But Lieberman backed off after other senators raised concerns about meeting the Guard's military obligations.
Even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush called for engaging the National Guard in homeland security. In a February 2001 speech at a National Guard base in Charleston, W.Va., Bush declared: "The National Guard and Reservists will be more involved in homeland security, confronting acts of terror and the disorder our enemies may try to create." But exactly how that would occur was never determined.
White House officials said many homeland security ideas are still under consideration, but they insisted that the National Guard must remain an integral part of war-planning strategy. Some Pentagon officials are concerned that giving the Guard additional homeland security duties will undermine its "warrior ethic" and its ability to fight wars.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has expressed reluctance to make major changes that would commit significant portions of the Guard to homeland security, saying that the Guard must be agile enough to work wherever it is needed.
The National Guard Association of the United States, which represents nearly 50,000 Army and National Guard officers, also has voiced concern that taking on new homeland security duties would hurt the Guard's overseas mission.
"We support the intent of Senator Lieberman's proposals but hope that they do not eventually pave the way to a tacit understanding that the Guard can be dedicated solely to homeland security," said retired Maj. Gen. Richard C. Alexander, the association's executive director.
Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) said that the states must help define how the Guard fits into their own terrorism response plans, instead of accepting a role dictated by the federal government. Governors also must be able to continue to rely on the Guard for help with floods, storms and other natural disasters, he said.
The White House's recent homeland security strategy calls for a review of the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law that limits the military's ability to engage in federal law enforcement. Recoiling at the idea of armed soldiers patrolling the nation's streets, civil liberties groups have raised objections to amending the law. Ridge said the White House only wants to ensure that the Guard has the freedom to aid authorities in an emergency.
Money also is a concern; an expanded homeland security mandate could significantly boost the Guard's budget needs, officials said. The White House is seeking $15.6 billion for the Guard for fiscal 2003, up from a current budget of $14 billion. But the increase is for benefits for the workforce, not security.
As the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, the Guard still has 1,100 troops assisting the Customs Service and Immigration and Naturalization Service along the nation's borders and roughly 80 still helping to guard LaGuardia Airport in New York. The Air National Guard, which has flown more than 42,000 missions over Washington, New York and other U.S. cities since the attacks, continues to patrol the skies, although less frequently in recent months.
Roughly 500 Army National Guard members are still stationed at nuclear power plants, reservoirs, landmarks, bridges, tunnels and other sites in five states.
The Guard could do even more, said Frank Hoffman, a defense specialist who studied the issue two years ago while working for the commission led by Hart and former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) that called for making the Guard a large part of any emergency response to terrorism. The Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation issued similar recommendations in recent studies.
For example, the Guard now has 27 "civil support teams" trained to respond to attacks that involve nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological weapons.
But the congressionally appointed Hart-Rudman commission found a need for significantly more training, maintaining that only the military would be able to respond effectively on a large scale to those kinds of attacks.
"The reality is they don't train or equip as much as they should in this chem-bio area," Hoffman said.
--------
U.S. Base in Qatar Seen Central in Any Iraq Attack
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-qatar-usa-iraq.html
AL-UDEID, Qatar (Reuters) - If the United States decides to attack Iraq, it is likely to do so from its fast-expanding military base deep within the desert of the tiny Gulf state of Qatar, diplomats and analysts said Sunday.
Faced with refusal from key Gulf Arab ally Saudi Arabia to be a launch pad for strikes on Baghdad, Washington has poured money and labor into expanding its $1.4 billion Al Udeid airbase which officials say will be finished by December.
Qatar has publicly opposed any attack on Iraq but Gulf-based diplomats say Doha, widely seen as a maverick in this conservative region, has much to gain by currying favor with the world's only superpower.
``We cannot say when or how the facilities would be used...but as far as the progress of work is concerned it is almost 80 percent complete and I guess it should be ready by the year-end,'' said a U.S. official who declined to be named.
Commander of U.S. Central Command Tommy Franks has said the base was being developed for ``times of crisis.''
Sunday, U.S. Congressman David Hobson, chairman of the House of Representatives military construction sub-committee, visited the base, heightening speculation it could play a central role for U.S. military activity in the region.
The United States has several Gulf bases, mainly in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which alone hosts about 5,000 troops.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan airbase was the operations center for U.S. troops taking part in the multi-national coalition which liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
Qatar, like other Arab states, has warned against a military strike on Iraq as a means of carrying out President Bush's stated policy of ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
But diplomats say the Al Udeid base, equipped with command facilities and satellite links that can control thousands of air strikes daily, offers Washington an alternative to its Prince Sultan base.
RAPID TRANSFORMATION
Construction work at Al Udeid, located in sun-scorched sands 45 km (28 miles) west of the capital Doha, started three years ago but was switched into top gear in November after Saudi Arabia refused to let U.S. planes and troops heading to Afghanistan to use the Prince Sultan base.
Instead, the United States launched attacks from its Fifth Fleet facilities off Bahrain, and Al Udeid -- then a make-shift complex of tents capable of housing 40 aircraft.
The past nine months have transformed Al Udeid into a state-of-the-art facility with one of the longest runways in the Middle East, at 4,500 meters (14,760 ft), and that can accommodate up to 120 fighter jets, U.S. officials say.
The airbase has three hardened concrete underground shelters which can each hold 40 aircraft capable of operating even if the base came under biological or chemical attack.
Al Udeid stands next to a sprawling arms warehouse, where Central Command has stored tanks, armored personnel carriers and enough weapons to equip a whole brigade.
But a drive past Al Udeid, located in a maximum security zone, reveals nothing of the activity going on inside its high, sand-colored walls ringed with heavy barbed wire.
Al Udeid's fast-track development has only increased speculation that the United States was planning to shift its regional command center from the kingdom to Qatar, particularly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The hijacked jet attacks, which Washington says were mainly carried out by Saudis, strained U.S.-Saudi ties with some questioning the ``loyalty'' of Washington's main Gulf ally.
Before that, Saudi Arabia had reportedly grumbled to Washington that its troops had overstayed their welcome.
But during a visit to Doha in June, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld downplayed talk about Al Udeid, saying it would not become the main U.S. headquarters in the region.
Al Udeid hosts around 3,000 US troops and 50 planes. Officials say once complete, it will be home to 10,000 troops.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Scientist Denies Involvement in Anthrax Mailings
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/national/news-anthrax-hatfill.html
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Reuters) - A former U.S. Army scientist investigated by the FBI in its probe into last year's deadly anthrax mailings said on Sunday he had nothing to do with the attacks and lashed out at the government and media for unfairly focusing on him.
Steven Hatfill, a medical doctor and germ warfare expert, held a news conference with his lawyer to respond to media reports and government leaks he called character assassination that ruined his reputation.
``I have had nothing to do in any way, shape or form with the mailing of these anthrax letters and it is extremely wrong for anyone to contend or suggest that I have,'' Hatfill said.
``I have never worked with anthrax, I know nothing about this matter.''
Hatfill said he was appalled at last year's ``biological terrorism,'' when a spate of anthrax-laced letters were sent in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks. Five people died of the deadly bacteria and 13 others were sickened.
``But I am just as appalled that my experience, knowledge, dedication and service relative to defending the United States against biological warfare has been turned against me in connection with the search for the anthrax killer,'' he said.
Hatfill's name has been mentioned in connection with the anthrax mailings. FBI investigators have twice searched his house, and both times the searches were reported in the media.
Both Hatfill and his attorney said the scientist had cooperated with the FBI in their investigation. Since he was willing to cooperate, they said they were surprised the FBI had executed a search warrant on Hatfill's home on Aug. 1 and that news of the search had quickly become public.
OFFICIAL COMPLAINT
Hatfill, 48, was one of about 30 U.S.-based scientists the FBI considers a ``person of interest'' in its investigation. The FBI has never named Hatfill or called him a suspect but officials have confirmed the searches of his home.
Hatfill's attorney, Victor Glasberg, said he would file an official complaint to the government about what he said were leaks involving his client from the FBI and other law enforcement authorities regarding the investigation.
Glasberg said ABC News had told him they obtained a copy of a novel Hatfill was writing on bioterrorism. He said the only way the manuscript could have been obtained would be from the hard drive on Hatfill's computer which was seized by the FBI during a search of his home.
Hatfill has also been questioned several times by federal investigators and undergone a polygraph test in connection with the probe into last fall's mailing.
Glasberg suggested the leaks about the searches could have been made because FBI felt pressured to show it was making progress in its investigation.
The FBI has been trying since October 2001 to identify who was responsible for the attacks in which anthrax-laced letters were sent to two U.S. senators and to the news media.
Hatfill worked for the Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease, center of the nation's biological warfare defense research, at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He also worked at Science Applications International Corp., a defense contractor.
But while he is an expert in viral agents he said he has no experience with bacterial agents like anthrax.
Hatfill also received training for would-be United Nations inspectors examining Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a U.N. spokesman has said. But Iraq has not let inspectors return since they left in December 1998.
Hatfill said he was surprised that FBI agents thought he might have brought anthrax to his home.
He said he, like all researchers working in his area at Fort Detrick, had been vaccinated against the bacteria. But he said he had not received the yearly booster -- required to maintain immunity -- since 1999.
--------
In the Secret-Detentions Club
New York Times
August 11, 2002
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/weekinreview/11CROS.html
UNITED NATIONS - THE use of detention within the United States may be the most problematic tool in the Bush administration's arsenal in the global war on terrorism. It has alarmed American civil rights groups, and foreign critics have used the issue to turn a lot of initial sympathy for the United States into a new wave of anti-Americanism, while it has given China and Russia reason to call their far more egregious human rights violations antiterrorism.
Detention is not new in the United States. There was the roundup of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the wholesale detention of Haitian boat people and a significant number of Cubans in the 1980's and early 1990's. What is new is that the detentions are shrouded in secrecy: for the first time, the United States - like countries whose human rights policies it has long criticized - is withholding the names of detainees. A federal judge ordered the Bush administration to release the names by Aug. 17, but it filed a stay on Aug. 8 to challenge the ruling, arguing among other things that the White House does not want to give Al Qaeda a road map to the investigation by letting it know who has been interrogated.
"The detentions of Haitian asylum seekers weren't secret," said Elisa Massimino, director of the Washington office of the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights. "We were never denied the names; they were permitted access to counsel. It's really a qualitative difference with what's being done now."
She said that secret detention is a policy that "kind of seeps into the system and becomes part of the landscape forever," adding that there is concern in the human rights lobby that the detention section in new antiterrorism legislation is the only one with implied permanence. "That stuff is here to stay and it will take an act of Congress to get rid of it now," she said.
"If there is another attack, God forbid, we're going to see a whole new round of measures, and they will be far more extreme than what we've seen," she said. "If we want to see where this kind of thing is heading, then we can look to China, and we can look to Egypt and we can look to what Turkey was doing with the Kurds. That's our future, unless we can lay down some markers now about what would be too much."
No mainstream critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies suggests that Americans are physically abusing detainees, and detention in the United States, however harrowing for detainees and families, is a different experience from what happens in countries where there are few if any strong watchdog groups to monitor treatment and living conditions and to press for the widest application of civil rights standards.
In India over the 1990's, thousands of Kashmiris were detained, and the latest State Department human rights report says that hundreds of them were probably tortured or killed in detention. The Bar Association of Kashmir, part of an alliance of unarmed moderate separatists, estimates that as many as 5,000 Kashmiris may have "disappeared" in little more than a decade.
More recently in the Caucasus, Arthur C. Helton at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said, "Russian soldiers in Chechnya pick up Chechen men all the time and send them to `filtration centers,' where they are treated harshly, and some of them disappear; but the Chechens also capture or kidnap Russians or other Chechens or foreigners."
Detention - the deprivation of a person's right to freedom of movement, especially if no trial is impending or any charges are likely - is nearly universal, though it can take many forms.
What alarms many human rights advocates is how quickly governments resort to rounding up detainees in moments of crisis - or panic - and how, in places where due process of law is weak or nonexistent, a detainee one day may be a torture victim the next, or may "disappear" altogether.
DEMOCRACIES are no exception to the use of detention, even though prolonged detention without demonstrable cause violates international human rights law, Mr. Helton and others said. During "the troubles" in Northern Ireland in the 1970's and 1980's, the British detained hundreds of Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries, held them for varying periods and then convicted them in trials without juries.
Furthermore, said Mr. Helton, author of "The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century" (Oxford, 2002), across Europe, as well as in the United States, in Africa, Asia and most recently Australia, "detention is being used increasingly as a migration-control strategy." The reason he said, is that people who are not citizens and arrive uninvited are determined to have fewer rights.
Some governments try to detain whole classes of people, as in China, where the Falun Gong cult has been one of the most recent targets. Other governments carry out what they call "preventive detentions," rounding up potential troublemakers before they can act. But detaining people isn't limited to governments. In the Balkans, Serbs rounded up Muslims and Muslims held Serbs, though in smaller numbers - detentions that often led to abuse or death.
Ruth Wedgwood, a professor of international law at the Yale Law School and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, said that some of the strongest criticism of detentions, especially secret ones, grows out of a traditional American commitment to transparent government and a belief that openness must be preserved no matter what the cost or circumstances. In international conventions governing detention, she said, considerable leeway is actually given to governments.
"The international human rights conventions are not always so liberal as the American Constitution," she said. "Every statement of a right is accompanied by the statement that the right is subject to the limitations of public order, public health." But, she added, "detention must be proportionate and strictly necessary."
Governments may limit rights in a national emergency if the emergency is reported to the authority in charge of upholding the convention. This could be the United Nations if it is an international agreement or the Council of Europe, or other regional body if the covenant is regional. "Freedom of locomotion, as much as we cherish it, is not one of the super-entrenched rights in international covenants," she said.
"All they really hold sacrosanct is the physical integrity of the body: no torture, no unlawful killing, no disappearances."
Nevertheless, said Felice Gaer, chairwoman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom and a member of the United Nations committee on torture, there have to be better standards for how detention is employed: "Why is a person detained? Is it under the rule of law, or is it arbitrary? Is there access to a lawyer, doctor, family member? Is there access to a functioning legal system?"
She said that a record of each case should be kept, that inspections should be permitted and that any complaint of ill treatment should be examined. "When you start to break down these pieces and go into secrecy, that creates the uncertainty in which ill treatment can take place," she said. "That's what we're on the watch for."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Asian Smog Cloud Threatens Millions, Says U.N.
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-environment-asia-cloud.html
LONDON (Reuters) - A two-mile-thick cloud of pollution shrouding southern Asia is threatening the lives of millions of people in the region and could have an impact much further afield, according to a U.N.-sponsored study.
It said the cloud, a toxic cocktail of ash, acids, aerosols and other particles, was damaging agriculture and changing rainfall patterns across the region which stretches from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka.
The lives of millions of people were at risk from drought and flooding as rainfall patterns were radically altered, with dire implications for economic growth and health.
``We have an early warning. We have clear information and we already have some impact. But we need much, much more information,'' U.N Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer told a news conference.
``There are also global implications not least because a pollution parcel like this, which stretches three km high, can travel half way round the globe in a week.''
Toepfer said the cloud was the result of forest fires, the burning of agricultural wastes, dramatic increases in the burning of fossil fuels in vehicles, industries and power stations and emissions from millions of inefficient cookers.
He said the U.N.'s preliminary report into what it dubbed the ``Asian Brown Cloud'' was a timely reminder to the upcoming Earth Summit in Johannesburg that action, not words, was vital to the future of the planet.
``The huge pollution problem emerging in Asia encapsulates the threats and challenges that the summit needs to urgently address,'' he said.
``We have the initial findings and the technological and financial resources available. Let's now develop the science and find the political and moral will to achieve this for the sake of Asia, for the sake of the world,'' he added.
RESPIRATORY DISEASE RISK
Professor Victor Ramanathan, one of the more than 200 scientists involved in the study, said the cloud was cutting the amount of solar energy hitting the earth's surface beneath it by up to 15 percent.
``We had expected a drop in sunlight hitting the earth and sea, but not one of this magnitude,'' he said.
At the same time the cloud's heat-absorbing properties were warming the lower atmosphere considerably, and the combination was altering the winter monsoon, leading to a sharp reduction in rainfall over parts of north-western Asia and a corresponding rise in rainfall over the eastern coast of Asia.
The report calculated that the cloud -- 80 percent of which was man-made -- could cut rainfall over northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, western China and western central Asia by up to 40 percent.
Apart from drastically altering rainfall patterns, the cloud was also making the rain acid, damaging crops and trees, and threatening hundreds of thousands of people with respiratory disease.
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen -- one of the first scientists to identify the causes of the hole in the ozone layer and also involved in the U.N. report -- said up to two million people in India alone were dying each year from atmospheric pollution.
``If present trends as they are continue, then we have a very serious problem,'' he said.
The report called for special monitoring stations to be set up watch the behavior of the cloud and its impact on people and the environment.
``The concern is that the regional and global impacts of the haze are set to intensify over the next 30 years as the population of the Asian region rises to an estimated five billion people,'' the report said.
A spokeswoman for environmental group Friends of the Earth said urgent action was needed.
``Actions must include phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with clean, green, renewable energy and tough laws to protect the world's forests,'' she said.
--------
Study: Asian Pollution May Be Fatal
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Asian-Haze.html
LONDON (AP) -- The ``Asian Brown Cloud,'' a 2-mile-thick blanket of pollution over South Asia, may be causing the premature deaths of a half-million people in India each year, deadly flooding in some areas and drought in others, according to the biggest-ever scientific study of the phenomenon.
The grimy cocktail of ash, soot, acids and other damaging airborne particles is as much the result of low-tech polluters like wood- and dung-burning stoves, cooking fires and forest clearing as it is of dirty industries, the U.N.-sponsored study found.
``When you think about air pollution, many people think of industry and fossil fuels as the only causes,'' report co-author Paul Crutzen, a scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, told a news conference in London.
Often ignored, he said, was ``biomass burning,'' including forest fires and the burning of vegetation to clear land or to warm the homes of poor people.
More than 200 scientists contributed to the study, overseen by the U.N. Environment Program in preparation for the World Summit on sustainable Development opening Aug. 26 in Johannesburg, South Africa. They used data from ships, planes and satellites to study Asia's haze from 1995 to 2000.
The scientists say more research is needed but that some trends are clear. Respiratory illness appears to be increasing along with the pollution in densely populated South Asia, with one study suggesting the 500,000 premature deaths annually in India.
The dense cloud of pollution -- also caused by auto emissions, factories and waste incineration -- cuts the amount of sunlight reaching the ground and the oceans by 10 to 15 percent, cooling the land and water while heating the atmosphere.
That phenomenon appears to have altered the region's monsoon rains -- increasing rainfall and flooding in Bangladesh, Nepal and northeastern India, while cutting back needed seasonal precipitation in Pakistan and northwestern India.
Floods, drought, sunlight reduction and acid rain all can hurt agricultural yields, with the report indicating the pollution may be cutting India's winter rice harvest by as much as 10 percent.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., one of the report's authors, said the extent of the sunlight loss was ``a major surprise.''
Scientists say it's too early to draw definite conclusions about the impact of the cloud, and of similar hazes over East Asia, South America and Africa.
``We need much more basic scientific data to be able to establish what are the consequences for human health and the environment,'' said co-author Crutzen, co-winner of the 1995 Nobel chemistry prize for his work on the ozone layer.
But they warn the impact could be global since prevailing winds push pollution clouds halfway round the world in just a week's time.
For many years, scientists believed only lighter greenhouse gases -- such as carbon dioxide that is produced from burning fossil fuels such as gasoline and oil -- were global in reach and effect.
They now say microscopic, suspended particles of pollutants -- generically called aerosols by atmospheric scientists -- also travel the globe.
It's unclear what the haze's relationship is to global warming, which most scientists believe is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases that trap the Earth's heat. The pollution cloud appears to cool the area below by blocking sunlight.
Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said scientists and policy-makers ``should avoid making premature final assessments,'' but should start trying to cut pollution by introducing more efficient heating stoves in developing countries and turning to solar power and other clean sources of energy.
The environmental group Friends of the Earth said ``urgent action is desperately needed to tackle the causes behind this huge toxic cloud.''
``Actions must include phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with clean, green, renewable energy, and tough laws to protect the world's forests,'' said the group's climate coordinator, Kate Hampton.
Ramanathan said the surprises found by the study will drive scientists to keep studying human impact on the environment.
``We've been looking at environmental issues for the last several decades, yet the Asian haze came as a major surprise to us,'' he said. ``We don't know how many more surprises we will find.''
-------- health
CDC Chief: West Nile Could Spread
August 11, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-West-Nile.html
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- West Nile virus is an ``emerging, infectious disease epidemic'' that could be spread all the way to the Pacific Coast by birds and mosquitoes, the director of the Centers for Disease Control said Sunday.
The Northeast and the South have been hardest hit by the virus since it was first identified in the United States in 1999, but Dr. Julie Gerberding said birds and mosquitoes infected with West Nile are now in most states east of the Mississippi River and some to the west of it.
West Nile is ``a problem that is having an unusually high human toll this year. So it is serious, and we have to continue our public health action to combat it,'' Gerberding said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
Seven people with West Nile virus have died in Louisiana this year, and Mississippi officials are investigating a death they say appears to be linked to the virus. The virus has been detected in 35 states and Washington, D.C.
In Louisiana, state and local workers are spraying insecticide in residential areas where the Asian tiger mosquito and the Southern house mosquito typically lay eggs, under the assumption that the two species are the most likely carriers of West Nile.
``We have made an assumption about which species are involved in transmission of the disease here based on what has happened in other parts of the United States,'' said Dawn Wesson, a medical entomologist at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Gerberding said Louisiana's experience last year with the deaths of four people from St. Louis encephalitis, a mosquito-bourne virus similar to West Nile, has helped officials deal with this year's outbreak.
``I think the investments that we've made over the past several years in this kind of public health response have really paid off,'' she said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Syria Frees Dissident After 27 Years in Jail
August 11, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-syria-dissidents.html
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria has released a leading communist dissident after 27 years in jail because of serious health problems, human rights lawyers said Sunday.
Haitham Naa'l, a member of the disbanded Arab Communist Organization in Syria, was sentenced by a state security court to life imprisonment for plotting sabotage attacks against the interests of a Western country in Damascus.
Five other members of the group were sentenced to death and executed.
Aktham Naesa, head of the Committees for Defense of Human Rights, told Reuters that Naa'l, 51, was freed Friday. No immediate comment was available from the authorities or Naa'l.
Human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni told Reuters Naa'l was released because he suffered serious health complications.
``He has a heart disease, an ulcer and doctors also fear he has prostate cancer,'' he said.
Naesa described the release as a ``positive but incomplete'' step, urging the Syrian authorities to free two other prisoners who were jailed with Naa'l and 10 other political dissidents arrested and convicted over the past year.
``Only the release of all the prisoners can indicate a real breakthrough and a real respect of human rights in Syria,'' he said.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's second year in office has seen an attack on already restricted civil liberties despite promises of liberalisation he made when he came to power after three decades of iron rule by his late father Hafez al-Assad.
Ten Syrian dissidents have been tried and jailed, among them two parliamentary deputies, two lawyers, two doctors, an economist, a teacher, an engineer and a businessman.
Those dissidents were found guilty of undermining the constitution and defaming the state through their speeches and political debates. Several of the jailed dissidents were active in political debate clubs but none had preached violence.
Analysts attribute the crackdown to pressure from an old guard in the ruling Ba'ath party and security services.
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