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NUCLEAR
'The Bomb is Back' by Jonathan Schell
For Iraq Inspectors, 'Yellow Cake' and Other Quarries
Arab Ministers Welcome U.N. Resolution on Iraq
Where First Strikes Are Far From the Last Resort
Nuclear Deceit
North Korea Told to Dismantle Nuclear Arms Project Promptly
My Private Seat At Pyongyang's Table
Anti-artillery laser successfully tested
Contolled Burn
After Iraq, Bush will attack his real target
For Powell, A Long Path To a Victory
'Baghdad's Moment of Truth,'
Rice Defends CIA Missile Strike
MILITARY
U.S. Said to Advise Colombia Sale
UK forges £1bn secret arms deal with Thailand
Germ - Warfare Negotiators Try Again
England Prepping for Possible War
Confrontation Over Kaliningrad
Pressure Mounts on Iraq to Accept U.N. Demands
Disarming of Iraq still no safe bet
Iraq Media Says World Defeated U.S. War Plans
Netanyahu pledges to stick by US Mideast 'road map'
Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Suspected of Planning Bus Attacks
Israeli Helicopters Fire Into Gaza After Palestinian Shooting Attack
Clouds hang over NATO's big bang expansion
Party Chief Wants U.S. Out of Pakistan
MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'
Syria warns of traps in UN resolution
U.N. Plans Immediate Test of Iraq Inspections
At Navy school in Monterey, voices of skepticism about Iraq war
US ready for war 'by next month'
Building a War:
War Plan in Iraq Sees Large Force and Quick Strikes
Modern-day blitzkrieg
For Gulf War Veterans, A Conflict Within
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
White House Weighs Letting Military Tribunal Try Moussaoui
Victim Killed in Yemen Tied by U.S. to Cell in Buffalo
ENERGY AND OTHER
The burning questions of hydrogen
Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip
ACTIVISTS
ITALY Florence Wary as Opponents of War Stage a Huge March
6 Chinese Detained Outside Party Congress
Anti-War Activists Protest in Florence
Students Protest In Iran
Iran Students Protest Death Sentence for Second Day
Activists Vow Europe - Wide Protests Against Iraq War
Belgium War Protest Turns Violent
Why We Must Resist an Invasion of Iraq
Tolerating Protest Is The Downside To Being President
Vigil in Iraq was not pro-Saddam
-------- NUCLEAR
'The Bomb is Back' by Jonathan Schell
What can be done about the growing nuclear threat?
November-December
Sojourners Magazine
http://www.sojo.net/magazine/index.cfm/action/sojourners/issue/soj0211/article/021110.html
The world has entered a new nuclear age, a second nuclear age. The danger is rising that nuclear weapons will be used against the United States. Just as bad, the danger is rising that the United States will use nuclear weapons against others. A paradoxical product of the new danger is the Bush administration's proposal to achieve the nuclear disarmament of Iraq (which may or may not be trying to build nuclear weapons) by overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. To understand why, we have to look back to the beginning of the post-Cold War period.
When the Cold War ended, many Americans, encouraged by official statements, came to believe that nuclear danger might be a thing of the past. The conclusion was not surprising. The world's great nuclear arsenals, we had been told for some 40 years, were built for a purpose-waging the Cold War-and that purpose melted away with the disappearance of the Soviet Union. Might not the arsenals also melt away? What earthly purpose did they serve? Russia was our friend. Could it possibly make sense any longer to threaten it with annihilation-and to go on enduring the threat of annihilation at Russian hands? And indeed, reductions were occurring under the auspices of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and more could be expected. Perhaps nuclear weapons were now simply the detritus of an age of peril that had passed, and would be carted away. Perhaps one day we'd wake up and discover that the last warhead had been dismantled.
The large hopes and modest achievements of the early post-Cold War years, however, bred complacency rather than a determination to act. Opportunity was mistaken for accomplishment, and little was done. Nuclear danger dropped out of public consciousness. Nuclear arms control negotiations slowed to a creep. In the ensuing atmosphere of official and public indifference, a shockingly different future began to take shape. It was a future that had its roots in the very genetic code of the nuclear threat. Nuclear arsenals are based on scientific and technical knowledge. It is the destiny of knowledge to spread. In the absence of clear political decisions to constrain the weapons, nuclear proliferation must be the result. During the Cold War, nuclear danger grew to threaten all points of the compass. In the post-Cold War period, if current trends are not reversed, nuclear danger will in addition arise at all points of the compass.
Yet if we are to understand the origins of the new nuclear dangers, we must grasp their connection with the old ones. Existing nuclear arsenals-the legacy of the Cold War-are inextricably linked to the budding arsenals of our time. Proliferation (to new countries or terrorists), in a word, is linked to possession (by the existing nuclear powers), and we cannot hope to address the former without addressing the latter.
IN THE EARLY years of the Clinton administration, it became clear that the United States would not seize the immense opportunity for nuclear disarmament that the end of the Cold War presented. The United States had already brushed aside Gorbachev's proposal to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Clinton's Nuclear Posture Review, announced as an attempt to reconsider the need for nuclear forces in the post-Soviet era, concluded that things should remain substantially the same as before: Even in the absence of the Cold War enemy, the United States would retain immense nuclear arsenals and threaten their use-not merely in retaliation but even in a first strike. In early 1998, news leaked out that a new Presidential Decision Directive had been issued. One of its conclusions, as Robert G. Bell, a member of Clinton's National Security Council, told The Washington Post, was that the United States should retain nuclear weapons "for the indefinite future."
These critical decisions by the United States, matched by comparable decisions by the other Cold War nuclear powers, were little remarked on by the public, but they were watched closely in other capitals, where decisions whether to build new nuclear arsenals were being made. The most important were New Delhi, where the Indian government, already the possessor of a "peaceful" non-weaponized bomb, was deciding whether to become a full-fledged nuclear power, and Islamabad, where the Pakistani government, nervously eyeing India, was asking itself the same question. If nuclear weapons were to be the currency of power in the new age, India reasoned, then India must have them. Continued renunciation would constitute "nuclear apartheid," its foreign minister said.
In May 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests. Pakistan responded with six. The South Asian nuclear arms race was underway. In early 2002, the two powers engaged in the first full-scale nuclear confrontation of the nuclear age entirely unrelated to the Cold War. Other countries-including Iraq, Iran, and North Korea-also were developing nuclear programs. Recently Yasuo Fukuda, chief of staff to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, aired his opinion that Japan might have to reconsider its ban on nuclear weapons in its armed forces, and though the government disavowed any such intention, other important figures in Japan voiced their agreement.
Meanwhile, proliferation was increasing the danger of nuclear terrorism. Plainly, the more nuclear powers there are in the world, the more likely it is that nuclear weapons or nuclear materials will fall into the hands of terrorists. The poor guardianship of Russian materials is an enduring international scandal. The danger is acute that Pakistani weapons or materials, many of whose managers are Islamic fundamentalists, will fall into terrorist hands. Before Sept. 11, one veteran of the Pakistani weapon program, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, paid several visits to Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden has claimed to possess nuclear weapons, and though we may doubt the truth of his claim, no one can dismiss the possibility that his al Qaeda network or some other terrorist group may soon acquire one and use it against the United States or another country.
BUT MOST STARTLING has been the revolution in the United States' nuclear policy unveiled since the attack of Sept. 11. It threatens nothing less than a full-scale nuclear revival-a worldwide re-legitimization of nuclear weapons and a resurgence, in this country and elsewhere, of reliance upon them for military purposes.
The United States has always been the world's leader in matters nuclear. Our country invented the atomic bomb, was its first and only user, invented the H-bomb, developed the strategy of deterrence that guided and rationalized the Cold War buildup, and pioneered almost every innovation in delivery vehicles of the nuclear age. Now, by finding new uses for nuclear weapons, building new nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, and building new anti-nuclear defenses, the United States once again is taking the lead in the nuclearization of the international arena.
Reversing 50 years of precedent, the Bush administration has decided to deal with proliferation not through diplomacy and treaties but through the use of force, including nuclear force. This is the radical policy shift that underlies the administration's call to overthrow the government of Iraq by force. In his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush melded nonproliferation policy into the war on terrorism, lumping three potential nuclear proliferators-Iraq, Iran, and North Korea-together in the "axis of evil," to whom he delivered something of an ultimatum. "The United States of America," he announced, "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." If in the '90s continued possession had led to proliferation, proliferation now had led to pre-emption. That is, having failed to put a stick in the gears of proliferation by committing itself to abolition, the United States now proposes to stop it by military means-by "counter proliferation." Meanwhile, the United States will seek to defend itself against retaliation by building a missile defense system-a system that will do nothing, of course, to protect against bombs delivered by car, boat, or truck.
A new policy, called "offensive deterrence," has come into effect. Its linchpin, as in the planning for war in Iraq, is the pre-emptive strike, conventional and nuclear. The president has made it known to the world in the bluntest terms. Though deterrence and containment-the mainstays of Cold War policy-will remain in effect in some areas, the new policy will be to attack first. America, the president said in his speech to the graduating class at West Point, must "be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world." For "Deterrence-the promise of massive retaliation against nations-means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies." Thus the United States must "be ready for pre-emptive action."
A new Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the press in March, added detail to the new policy. New nuclear weapons, including something actually called a "Robust Earth Penetrator," would be built. A new plant to build nuclear weapons would start production in 2030. A new ICBM would be readied for the year 2020, a new submarine-launched missile for 2030, a new bomber for 2040. A widening array of nuclear targets-Russia, China, Libya, Sudan, North Korea, Iraq, Iran-were named.
As these new dangers were being born, were the old dangers from the Cold War arsenals at least being liquidated? No. The recently signed agreement by Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia cutting operational strategic weapons to about 2,000 on each side over the next 10 years will remove the weapons from delivery vehicles but not dismantle them. In the year 2012-21 years after the fall of the Soviet Union-there would still be more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in the American arsenal. Even the operational arsenal of some 2,000 will be enough for the two countries-putative allies-to destroy one another many times over.
The new American policy provides the missing link in a vicious circle that is as dangerous as the arms race of the Cold War, if not more so. In this new process, nuclear possession goads proliferation (including proliferation to terrorist groups); proliferation goads missile defenses and pre-emption; and missile defenses and pre-emption in turn goad proliferation.
The policy, whose first step is the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, seeks to prevent proliferation and safeguard the United States. It can do neither. It in fact generates the very threat it hopes to remove. It is a path not to safety but to nuclear proliferation and nuclear war. The vicious circle needs to be disrupted by a beneficial one, in which a commitment by the nuclear powers to abolition and a negotiated program of nuclear reductions becomes the foundation for an effective policy of nonproliferation, and these lead over time to abolition itself, the only sane goal of nuclear policy for the 21st century.
But history suggests that the impulse for such a profound reorientation of policy is unlikely to come from the political establishment. It must come-as other profound moral and political changes, such as the abolition of slavery, have so often done in American history-from the people. The Urgent Call (page 22) is an instrument offered to help serve this purpose. The bomb is back. But those of us who oppose the bomb are back, too. And we're not going away.
Jonathan Schell, a peace fellow at the Nation Institute, is author of The Fate of the Earth and The Gift of Time: The Case for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons Now. He lives in New York City.
The Bomb is Back. by Jonathan Schell. Sojourners Magazine, November-December 2002 (Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 20-25, 58-59). Cover.
-------- inspections
For Iraq Inspectors, 'Yellow Cake' and Other Quarries
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 10, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33208-2002Nov9?language=printer
Any amounts of uranium oxide, called "yellow cake," will be one of the first items the United Nations inspection team will look for in Iraq's declaration, due Dec. 8, of its programs to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, a former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who set in place the 1991 post-Gulf War nuclear monitoring of Iraq, is aware of the recent British intelligence report on Baghdad's attempts to buy "yellow cake" from Niger. He is also aware of the analysis that "Iraq has no active civil nuclear program or nuclear power plants and, therefore, has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium" unless it is eventually producing weapons-grade materials.
Blix and his colleague, Mohammed El Baradei, the current IAEA head who is responsible for the nuclear inspections, believe an initial test for Saddam Hussein's adherence to the new Security Council resolution will be in the evidence he provides to support the claim he is expected to make in the Dec. 8 declaration. They expect him to claim that he has destroyed the chemical and biological weapons he had in 1991 along with the facilities to produce nuclear ones, as well as the means to develop or deliver any new ones.
The declaration must also list all facilities used to build delivery systems for prohibited weapons as well as commercial factories and storage sites for "dual-use" materials and equipment that could be used to build such weapons.
Blix's team has for months been compiling a list of sites it expects Baghdad to declare, based on materials passed on from the previous inspectors, from governments such as the United States and Britain, and from its own analytic team that has been tracking Iraqi purchases for the past two years.
U.S. officials, including President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have publicly stated that Hussein has hidden stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and has resumed efforts to build nuclear devices.
Bush administration officials who have long doubted that inspections can disarm the Iraqi leader are focusing on a provision of Friday's U.N. resolution. It requires Iraq's Dec. 8 declaration to be "accurate, full and complete" and that any "false statements or omissions" would constitute "a further material breach" that could trigger a U.S.-led invasion.
"Declarations by Iraq are not evidence," Blix said during a training session for inspectors. "They have to be sustained by evidence from the inspection of sites and/or examination of documentary evidence presented or the interviews of people with relevant knowledge," he added.
Although the U.N. inspectors want evidence from Hussein to prove he does not have prohibited weapons and materials, they also want the United States, Britain and others to provide information, including intelligence data, that can be verified. As Blix told his inspectors: "Intelligence may be very important, but if it is not sustained by evidence, it remains allegations. It is our job to try to verify plausible allegations."
In Senate testimony in September, Rumsfeld said Hussein's regime "has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons -- including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox . . . large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons . . . including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas . . . [and] has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons."
Iraq's alleged stocks of deadly anthrax provide an example of the issues facing inspectors.
In 1998, a U.N. inspection team estimated that Iraq could have produced two to four times the 8,500 liters it declared in 1991. Iraqi officials told the inspectors they never weaponized anthrax and destroyed all stocks in 1991. Later, the U.N. team found spores in six Iraqi missile warheads.
Meanwhile, an article published last week, saying that U.S. intelligence had reported Iraq had hidden 7,000 liters of anthrax, has been denied by senior administration officials familiar with CIA analyses. "Private experts and perhaps defectors have said that," an official said last week.
Blix has said anthrax is one of many open issues that must be investigated because Iraq produced no records or protocols about the destruction of the biological agent. He expects the Dec. 8 declaration would have some of those records. In addition, Rihab Taha, the British-educated scientist who headed the Iraqi biological weapons program and who is known among inspectors as "Dr. Germ," is still working in Iraq and a prime candidate on inspectors' interview list.
Iraqi missile systems are also on Blix's list. A CIA report said Hussein never "fully accounted" for Iraq's missile programs. Discrepancies in previous Baghdad declarations "suggest" an undetermined number of Scud-type missiles may still exist, the report said. But the United States has not been able to locate those missiles, an intelligence official said.
The CIA and British intelligence have reported that Iraq's newer missiles, prohibited from having a range longer than 150 kilometers, can go much farther and thus are a violation. That also will be an early target for inspectors who expect to place monitoring cameras in missile construction facilities and demand to be present at missile engine tests and missile launchings.
A newer target for inspectors that Iraq is now required to declare will be Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles. The CIA has said they are capable of delivering biological and perhaps chemical warfare agents. If found to have that capability, they would be destroyed.
As Blix told an audience in Moscow in late October, "Inspectors may be more likely to encounter smoke than smoking guns. However, smoke might be enough to trigger government concern and action." He noted that in the case of discovering North Korea's nuclear activity, inspectors never found the weapons program. Instead, it was the discovery that Pyongyang had been producing more plutonium than had been declared that produced the 1994 crisis.
Iraq's cooperation with the inspectors will be another early test.
"Lack of cooperation, like an offer of good cooperation, sends signals," Blix said in Moscow. "Any denial of access or any other uncooperative conduct," he said, would be reported to the Security Council. The council would decide the consequences, he said, adding, "It is not the inspectors who decide the question of peace and war but the council and its members."
--------
Arab Ministers Welcome U.N. Resolution on Iraq
November 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-arabs.html
CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab foreign ministers on Sunday welcomed a new U.N. resolution on disarming Iraq and Egypt's foreign minister said Baghdad appeared positively inclined toward accepting the tough new text.
As the clock ticked for Baghdad to accept the U.N. Security Council's tough new terms or face the threat of military action, delegates at an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers urged Baghdad and the United Nations to continue cooperating to avert a war which could destabilize the entire region.
Iraq has until November 15 to agree to the U.N. Security Council resolution, which received unanimous backing on Friday. Parliamentary sources in Baghdad said Iraq's parliament would meet in emergency session on Monday to decide a response.
Top weapons inspectors are due to travel to Baghdad on November 18 to set up communications, transport and laboratories.
A statement issued at the Cairo talks said the ministers ``welcome what was mentioned in Resolution 1441 stating that the Security Council is the only appropriate body which can evaluate the reports written by inspectors.''
Asked about Iraq's likely response to the resolution, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters: ``The indications are positive and there was a general feeling during the meeting that the cooperation of Iraq with the inspectors will be instrumental in avoiding any military operation.''
Asked if Arab ministers had called on Iraq to agree to the new terms, Maher told reporters: ``The Iraqi tendency is positive in general. That's why there was no need to make such a call.''
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said earlier in Cairo that his country was still studying Friday's vote.
PRESSURE ON IRAQ
The resolution gives inspectors sweeping new rights and Iraq 30 days to submit a detailed list of its weapons. It also gives the Security Council a key role before any possible attack, but does not force Washington to seek authorization for war.
The resolution and comments from ministers at the Arab League meeting saying the text presented a ray of hope for peace has turned up the heat on Iraq to yield to the U.N.'s demands.
Washington, which accuses Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction, has called on Arab states to drive the point home to Baghdad that this was its last chance to avert a strike.
The Arab statement also called on Security Council members who had given assurances to Syria -- the only Arab state on the Council -- that the resolution was not a pretext for a strike, to stick to this commitment and ensure that the new U.N. text is not used as an automatic trigger for a military strike.
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said his country had only agreed to the resolution after receiving a letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell assuring them the text could not be used as an excuse for military action.
Arab ministers also said they welcomed ``Iraq's unconditional acceptance of the return of international inspectors and urge the continuation of cooperation between the United Nations and Iraq to solve all outstanding problems peacefully.''
Iraq has previously agreed to the unconditional return of the inspectors, whose are to verify the dismantling of banned chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range missile programs. Iraq says all such programs have been dismantled.
Arab ministers also demanded that ``inspection teams carry out their mission with professionalism, complete neutrality and objectivity and that they do not carry out provocative acts so as to ensure their credibility.''
They demanded that Arab experts be included among the inspectors and said Arabs remained ``committed to maintaining Iraq's security, safety, sovereignty and territorial integrity.''
As is common in joint Arab statements, the ministers also called on Israel to heed U.N. resolutions pertaining to the Jewish state. Arabs are particularly concerned about resolutions concerning the return of occupied land.
Disarmament inspections originally started after Iraqi forces were expelled from neighboring Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War. Inspectors withdrew in 1998 in a wrangle over access to President Saddam Hussein's palaces.
-------- israel
Where First Strikes Are Far From the Last Resort
By Aluf Benn,
Washington Post
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page B03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30629-2002Nov8?language=printer
TEL AVIV
A picture can be worth a thousand strategy papers. While David Ivry was Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1999 to 2002, he displayed in his office a large aerial photograph of the wreckage of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, which Israel had bombed in 1981 when Ivry commanded the Israeli air force.
At the time of the raid, the Reagan administration, then supporting Saddam Hussein, condemned the Israeli preemptive attack. But after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Dick Cheney, then defense secretary, sent this photograph to Ivry and wrote on it: "For Gen. David Ivry, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 -- which made our job much easier in Desert Storm."
This week, a senior Israeli delegation will travel to Washington for a periodic "strategic dialogue." The "day after Iraq" scenarios will top the agenda. For the Israelis, it will be another moment of sweet vindication, because the "day before" is not a matter of dispute between Washington and Jerusalem. The Bush administration has embraced Israel's broader strategic approach of preemption. The administration has shown a willingness to hunt down terrorists, attack nascent programs to develop weapons of mass destruction in other countries, and even invade nations to change their governments and deny safe havens to terrorists and other enemies, much as Israel has done for over 50 years.
While an overt policy of preemptive action might be new to Americans, it has been a staple of Israeli defense policy for decades. Since 1951, Israeli military planners have advocated a "first-strike" strategy against imminent threats. In October 1956, under the strain of terror attacks and futile reprisals, Israel launched a "preemptive war" against Egypt, Israel's main adversary at the time, to prevent the use of Czech arms that Cairo had acquired with Soviet help. Regime change was even part of the package: Israel, along with its momentary allies Britain and France (who helped by seizing the newly nationalized Suez Canal), hoped to get rid of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Arab nationalist regime as part of the package.
Though American opposition forced Israel's withdrawal and Nasser remained, the lesson of preemption was not lost on Israelis, especially not on Ariel Sharon, who had commanded the first unit to enter the Sinai. In later years, Israel resorted to preemption several times. The Six Day War of 1967 was a preemptive strike against massive Arab military mobilization, an obvious threat rather than a presumed one, and it changed the political balance and borders. While he was defense minister, Sharon applied the doctrine by invading Lebanon in 1982, ousting Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization from Beirut and enthroning, at least briefly, a loyalist regime there.
The Bush administration has adopted the Israeli approach in its war on terrorism. For the president himself, the Sept. 11 attacks made preemption a top priority. For Cheney and the conservative Pentagon intellectuals, the convergence has been long in coming. Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary, was dispatched by Cheney to Israel during the Persian Gulf War. The Pentagon's number three, Douglas J. Feith, is a former right-wing Jewish activist who opposed the Oslo peace accord. Richard Perle, a key adviser, is close to the Israeli establishment.
In a recent article about the lessons of Osirak, Sharon's cabinet secretary, Gideon Sa'ar, wrote, "The same approach that led the Begin government in 1981, belongs now to the Bush administration." Sa'ar said the White House's recent national security strategy document showed the acceptance of Israel's long-held policy of "initiative, offensive and preventive steps."
The prospect of an American attack on Iraq has produced a rare consensus in Israel, even amid a divisive election campaign. Sharon, Israeli leaders from both camps, and the security establishment have backed the Bush administration's war plans, and urged the United States to act without delay.
In some ways, this is surprising. True, Saddam Hussein is one of the Jewish state's staunchest enemies. His Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv and Haifa during the 1991 Gulf War, piercing Israel's shield of invincibility and denting its ability to deter. And Hussein's nuclear ambitions have threatened Israel's atomic monopoly in the region. In recent years, however, the Israeli establishment has been content to let U.N. sanctions and U.S. and British air attacks keep the Iraqi threat in check. Successive prime ministers (with the notable dissent of Sharon) and military leaders have portrayed Iran as the more dangerous menace. At a security cabinet meeting last week, intelligence chiefs said that Iraq "poses no existential threat" to Israel. So why should Israel rush to support a war, that might expose it to biological or chemical attack? Two plausible reasons: political expediency and strategic vindication.
Facing a stalemated war of attrition with the Palestinians, a crumbling economy and a political crisis at home, the Israeli establishment is craving a deus ex machina to save the country and put it back on a positive strategic and financial path. An American victory over Saddam Hussein would alter the regional environment and position the United States, Israel's main ally, as the chief arbiter in the Middle East.
Some right-wing politicians like Foreign Minister (and former prime minister) Binyamin Netanyahu and cabinet member Natan Sharansky share a personal and ideological affinity with Republican conservatives in Washington. Both have argued for years that Arab democracy is the best guarantor of peace. According to this school of thought, turning Iraq into a model Arab state, run by a pro-Western regime protected by American bayonets, serves Israel's best interests. It would create a positive domino effect, as autocratic regimes throughout the Middle East would have to fight for their survival, and thus have less energy to confront Israel.
This view is widely held at the Qirya, Israel's Pentagon in Tel Aviv. Frustrated by their failure to crush the Palestinian intifada, military leaders pin their hopes on an Iraqi war. The chief of staff, Gen. Moshe ("Bogy") Ya'alon, said last week that a successful American attack in Iraq would force a Palestinian "decision" on a post-Arafat leadership drawn "from the ranks of those who understand that terror and violence will not bring them achievements." The Israel Defense Forces chief intelligence analyst, Brig.-Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, told the security cabinet that "this is a clash of civilizations" between the West and Islam, and Israel is in the front line.
Israeli military strategists believe that after the fall of Hussein, Israel's other main adversaries, Iran and Syria, would reconsider their support for terrorism, stop arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and abandon their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Sharon has already called on the United States to target Iran after Baghdad.
From the left-wing perspective, the main advantage of a war would be the resumption of the defunct peace process. Many Israeli officials believe that after taking Baghdad, the United States would try harder to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and even revive the Syrian track. "After Iraq, the United States would not want to paralyze its relations with the Arabs," outgoing foreign minister Shimon Peres says. The logic is simple. If America wins easily, it will need to calm anti-American feelings in the Arab street. If Iraq becomes a second Vietnam, the United States will need Arab support. In both cases, the compensation that Washington's Saudi and Egyptian allies will demand will be pushing Israel out of the occupied territories. The blueprint is already there, in the form of the "road map" that Bush has already laid out for Palestinian statehood and a final-status agreement by 2005.
Most politicians, senior officials and military analysts in Israel anticipate a "day-after" peace process along these lines. They recall how the elder Bush forced Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's right-wing government into the peace process following the Gulf War. A minority opinion, held by foreign ministry officials, holds that after Iraq, the younger Bush will turn to his reelection in 2004. To avoid alienating American Jews and their Christian right allies, the president will refrain from pressuring Israel to compromise. History supports this line. After all, George W.'s father turned against Israel and lost the election.
But the "day after" is still far ahead. First, Israel must endure another fiercely contested election in late January following the collapse of Sharon's coalition last week. The aftermath of war with Iraq would be the next government's business. In the meantime, U.S. war preparations continue, with help from Israel. American forces have received training here in urban fighting, and a senior U.S. military liaison officer visited last week.
Israelis have occasionally had doubts over preemption and regime change. The Lebanon debacle ignited a debate over "wars of choice," similar to the post-Vietnam introspection in the United States. Retired Gen. Israel Tal, the builder of Israel's armored corps and perhaps its most prominent defense theoretician, has long recognized the limits of Israel's power and never advocated regime change in neighboring countries.
Yet after the Persian Gulf War, Tal reconsidered, and supported action against rogue states. "It's important to perfect and institutionalize this model of international intervention to prevent threats to world peace," he wrote in a 1996 book. "Global democratization, if realized, could have an important implication for the general world security, as well as the national security."
Tal warned, though, that "you can enforce a democratic constitution by external force, but it's difficult to forge democratic values -- this could only be the outcome of a long process." He said that while the need for a first-strike war in the face of an imminent threat is indisputable, "preemptive war is debatable, since you have a choice."
Last week, the United States wasn't dwelling on the limits of power; it was testing them. Adopting another Israeli counterterrorism method, U.S. forces assassinated suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, copying a controversial tactic widely used by Israel against the Palestinians, and previously condemned by Washington.
But as it follows Israel's model, the United States should remember that despite many stunning battlefield victories, Israel's acts of preemption have, at best, bought it periods of relative quiet. At worst, they have deepened conflicts. The Six Day War brought occupation. The Lebanon invasion turned into an 18-year quagmire. Only the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, a more limited venture, remains an untarnished success. The Israeli experience should instill caution as much as inspiration.
Aluf Benn is the diplomatic correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
-------- korea
Nuclear Deceit
By Jim Hoagland
Washington Post
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30449-2002Nov8?language=printer
North Korea's determined covert pursuit of new nuclear weapons may stretch back five years and may now be on the verge of success. This much is certain: Pyongyang's recently uncovered nuclear deceit forces the world's powers to reexamine basic attitudes toward proliferation and deterrence.
The deceit was not a solitary, lunatic effort to trick the United States and overturn decades of nonproliferation rules and treaties. This was a calculated, strategic joint venture by North Korea and Pakistan. They conspired to ignore all rules and agreements -- especially Pyongyang's 1994 deal with the Clinton administration to freeze development of nuclear weapons -- and to share the right to possess atomic arsenals and missiles capable of vaporizing their neighbors.
A philosophical line in global nuclear politics has been crossed. Pakistan helped North Korea construct a secret centrifuge system of uranium enrichment in return for missile technology and equipment. But don't assume that this was just a crude barter between two destitute, irresponsible regimes.
This deal was also an implicit statement of revolt that reaches beyond local ambitions to confront India or South Korea or to ensure national survival and sovereignty. Selling or transferring nuclear-weapons material and technology to nations that have no connection to your national survival is a significant new development. That is why the key questions about what has happened -- and why -- must be pursued with Pakistan as well as North Korea.
The Bush administration is disinclined to ask President Pervez Musharraf those questions as the war on al Qaeda continues. That is shortsighted. If Pakistan will break the rules to help a distant pauper Asian dictatorship, how can it say no to rich Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Libya when they offer to buy an Islamic bomb? If there is no accounting from Pakistan, the major powers' pretense of control over the spread of nuclear weapons is exposed as one more giant fraud of the past heady decade.
This is Enron and WorldCom to the tenth power, with mushroom clouds in the background. Forensic accountants working with the CIA may have helped nail North Korea's crooked balance sheet. James Kelly, the State Department's top Asia expert, stunned North Korean officials in October by detailing the fraud.
The North Koreans then stunned Kelly by acknowledging the program. They even challenged him to do something about it. Other sources say that the North Koreans possess 2,000 to 3,000 centrifuges and are already enriching uranium.
This description suggests that North Korea is moving relentlessly toward a self-sustaining point of no return in the enrichment process. The numbers alone suggest that North Korea may require no further help from Pakistan to produce new bombs to go with the pair of atomic devices that Pyongyang assembled before the 1994 agreement subjected its plutonium-based program to inspections and a freeze.
"We developed hard confirmation of the program this summer," says a senior Bush administration official, who cited "shards of evidence" of the North Korea-Pakistan nuclear relationship going back to 1997. "Those turned into pretty clear suspicions by 1998, and by 1999 the North Koreans committed to this program."
Clinton administration officials confirm that timeline. Like Bush aides, they say they cannot know whether Pyongyang always intended to subvert the 1994 agreement or inexplicably changed course. But it is clear that the program predates President Bush's election and his placing of North Korea on the "axis of evil." The trigger for the deceit happened on Clinton's more amiable watch.
What to do now? "Well, we won't be getting into an elaborate agreement that depends on North Korea's word," says the Bush official. "We are pushing other nations to make it clear that North Korean entry into the international system can come only after it abandons this program." In plain English: China must apply pressure to its Communist-ruled neighbor, and Japan and South Korea must hold back financial aid and political recognition.
But the problem is broader and graver than North Korea's dying regime. The spread of nuclear weapons is now not only a global fact, but also a project and an intention for some of the Third World's most belligerent and angry regimes. They have watched with envy as Pakistan openly and repeatedly threatened nuclear war to block India's conventional retaliation for cross-border terrorism in and from Kashmir.
The United States must align itself with responsible nuclear powers that do not proliferate. Britain, France, India, Russia and Israel appear to fit that category. They must cooperate to constrain the appetites and abilities of irresponsible nuclear powers. North Korea and Pakistan stand at the top of the list of irresponsibles, and they must not be given leeway to help lengthen it.
----
North Korea Told to Dismantle Nuclear Arms Project Promptly
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/asia/10KORE.html
TOKYO, Nov. 9 - The United States, Japan and South Korea called on North Korea today to dismantle its nuclear weapons development program in a "prompt and verifiable manner."
At a meeting here, the three allies also pledged to seek a peaceful resolution of the crisis caused by North Korea's recent admission that it had been secretly developing nuclear weapons, in violation of a number of international agreements.
"North Korea can benefit from greater participation as a member of the international community, but that participation rests on North Korea's prompt and verifiable dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs," said a joint statement issued after the meeting.
However, diplomats here said the discussions, which were held at the assistant foreign minister level, had failed to achieve a consensus on whether to punish North Korea for having broken its commitments or how to do it.
The meeting today comes amid an intense flurry of consultations leading up to a meeting scheduled for Thursday in New York of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, an international consortium that has been building two light-water nuclear reactors for North Korea as part of an agreement with the country that obliges it to surrender its nuclear materials.
Among the three allies, the United States has been pushing for the hardest line, with the Bush administration saying it has no interest in talking further with North Korea until it complies with the nuclear weapons agreements it recently acknowledged violating.
Douglas J. Feith, under secretary of defense for policy, said this week that there was a "fundamental disagreement" between the United States and South Korea over how to deal with the North's nuclear program. In pointed comments to reporters after meeting with Japanese officials here on Friday, Mr. Feith said "there should be a penalty, not a reward" for North Korea's behavior.
Some administration officials are believed to favor the suspension of oil deliveries to North Korea that the United States provides as part of the Agreed Framework, the 1994 commitment by the North not to produce nuclear weapons that led to the start of the power plant construction.
Under the consortium's division of labor, South Korea agreed to provide the nuclear cores for North Korea's new reactors, which are believed to be less prone to weapons proliferation than North Korea's own reactors, which are now under international surveillance. Japan, meanwhile, has committed itself to providing much of the financing.
"It is important to deepen our understanding of each other's positions,"Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, said in a statement on Friday.
But despite routine comments emphasizing their common ground, each of the United States' main allies in the region has displayed serious reluctance to support any hard-line approach to North Korea.
South Korea's departing president, Kim Dae Jung, has staked his legacy on reconciliation with the North and has resisted the American approach by pressing on with a series of economic cooperation agreements with North Korea at a time when Washington is calling for more pressure.
Indeed, South Korea announced new agreements with North Korea on cross-border cooperation today while the meeting in Tokyo was under way. "Inter-Korean relations are on a path toward reconciliation and peace, even though they are affected by `turns and twists,' " Mr. Kim said.
Japan, for its part, is locked in talks to normalize relations with the North. Although Japan has said North Korea must comply with its nuclear commitments before new economic cooperation begins, security issues have been trumped here by the drama over the fate of five Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
The five are now visiting Japan for the first time since then and their every move is recorded by television crews. Japanese diplomats appear more eager to persuade North Korea to allow the children and spouses of the five to join their relatives here, rather than risk a diplomatic rupture by backing harsh penalities related to the nuclear weapons issue.
North Korea, mindful of the intense Japanese attention to the kidnapping victims, warned Japan on Friday that if it pressed the nuclear issue it would destroy any progress made so far in normalization talks.
----
My Private Seat At Pyongyang's Table
By Don Oberdorfer
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30631-2002Nov8?language=printer
PYONGYANG, North Korea - Conference Room Number Two in the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is dominated by a highly polished teakwood table under photographs of Kim Il Sung, the nation's founding father, and his son Kim Jong Il, the current leader. Here on the afternoon of Oct. 3, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly dropped a verbal bombshell that still reverberates throughout Northeast Asia.
Facing Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan, Kelly began the long-awaited first official visit by a member of the Bush administration with an accusation rather than the expected greetings. North Korea, he charged, possesses a secret program to produce highly enriched uranium, the essential component of one type of nuclear weapon, and was therefore violating signed agreements with the United States, South Korea and the International Atomic Energy Agency to keep the divided peninsula nuclear-free.
Minister Kim told me, during an unusual set of meetings that I attended last week in North Korea, that he had been "stunned" by Kelly's statement. He reported Kelly's statements to his superiors at the first coffee break, setting off furious internal consultations. After an all-night meeting of its top officials, North Korea detonated its own verbal explosion the next day. First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju, North Korea's most important diplomat, told Kelly and the U.S. delegation that the reclusive nation is "entitled to have nuclear weapons" to safeguard its security in the face of a growing U.S. threat. After a debate of their own, the Americans interpreted the statement to be an admission that Kelly's charge was true. Now it was the Americans' turn to be stunned by an unexpected declaration and to wonder what to do next.
A month later, both nations are still groping for a way out of their nuclear deadlock. The United States insists that North Korea eliminate its secret nuclear program as the first step toward the renewal of a non-hostile relationship and appears ready to apply pressure if this is not done. North Korea, insisting that U.S. hostility is at the root of its program, is calling for dialogue, while preparing to cast off other nuclear restraints if the confrontation deepens.
After the Kelly visit, no U.S. delegation had sat in Conference Room Two to discuss the impasse until several days ago, when I accompanied Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to South Korea under the first President Bush and now president of the Korea Society in New York. In more than nine hours of talks, we heard senior North Korean diplomats and military officers defend their nation's actions and appeal for renewed U.S. engagement. I got the distinct impression that North Korea wishes to end the conflict and would give up its uranium program if face-saving arrangements could be made.
The development of nuclear weapons by North Korea would tilt the military balance on the divided peninsula, where the United States still maintains close to 37,000 troops to defend South Korea almost 50 years after the end of the Korean war. Other countries in the region -- South Korea, Japan and Taiwan -- could follow suit, making Northeast Asia a far more dangerous place. A North Korean atomic bomb could be more dangerous to U.S. interests than weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Unlike the members of the Kelly delegation, Gregg and I are merely private citizens. Displaying no enthusiasm for our visit, the Bush administration refused to let us travel from Seoul to Pyongyang via the demilitarized zone, which is guarded by the U.S.-led United Nations command, even though North Korea had given us a rare approval for the route. We ended up flying from Seoul to Beijing, then taking one of the twice-weekly flights into North Korea's capital.
This was my third visit to Pyongyang. There was more traffic than before, mostly ancient trolley buses, early model Japanese cars, and bicycles, the last notably absent during my 1991 trip there as a Post correspondent. Small, tent-like kiosks selling candy, snacks and other small items have appeared, evidence of economic reforms announced in July. The fields we saw on the outskirts of Pyongyang on a sightseeing outing looked barren and dismal, however.
Our hotel on the banks of a willow-lined river had its own generator. A resident diplomat said it was not unusual to have eight or more power outages a day. Officials we met blamed the power shortage on the United States. After an earlier crisis over North Korean nuclear weapon aspirations in 1994, an Agreed Framework was signed, under which light water nuclear power reactors were to be financed by South Korea and Japan and built under U.S. sponsorship by 2003. In return, North Korea shut down a nuclear plant at Yongbyon that was producing plutonium, the raw material of another type of nuclear weapon. The United States agreed to supply 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil a year while the reactors were being built. The construction program is five years or so behind schedule. In the present climate, its future is in doubt.
Many Republicans and some Democrats in Congress have condemned this deal as giving in to blackmail. Nonetheless, they have not cut off the funds for the monthly deliveries, to avoid giving North Korea an excuse to restart its plutonium plant and thus trigger a nuclear crisis for which the lawmakers could be blamed. Existing U.S. funds, however, will support shipments only through January.
Critics of the 1994 accord, including some top Bush administration officials, see the new revelations as a golden opportunity to cancel the agreement. North Korea bolstered that case by declaring to Kelly and in some subsequent statements that U.S. threats have "nullified" the agreement. According to Washington sources, President Bush personally intervened several weeks ago to prevent the administration from declaring the Agreed Framework dead, although he is no fan of the accord.
I asked Kang, who was the chief North Korean negotiator of the Agreed Framework, to describe its status. He said it is hanging by "a thread." He confirmed that North Korea believes it is still in force, though precariously so. There is little doubt that if the United States stops delivering the fuel oil, the thread will snap and the agreement cease to exist.
The plutonium plant at Yongbyon, closed under the Agreed Framework, could produce fissionable material far more quickly than the uranium enrichment program, which is believed to be at least two years away from generating enough material for even a single weapon. According to a U.S. estimate, the plant could have produced enough fissionable material for about 100 nuclear weapons by now, had it not been halted in 1994.
In our conversations in Pyongyang, the North Korean diplomats whom Kelly saw and Lt. Gen. Ri Chan Bok of the Korean Peoples Army repeatedly denounced the Bush administration's hostile rhetoric. They expressed concern that the administration, by labeling North Korea a part of the "axis of evil," is paving the way for a preemptive strike aimed at forcing the same kind of "regime change" here that some Americans seek in Iraq. "We are ready to sacrifice ourselves to defend our country against aggression," said Ri, who wore seven rows of campaign ribbons on his khaki tunic. "We won't be slaves by kneeling down, but we will fight."
While not forthrightly confirming Kelly's charge, the officials never denied seeking to enrich uranium in secret facilities, but portrayed their actions as a response to the Bush administration's hostility. When we noted that U.S. officials charge that the enrichment program began during the Clinton administration, when the political climate was warmer, our interlocutors said North Korea has adopted a "neither confirm nor deny" policy about whether the program existed before Bush took office. They also would "neither confirm nor deny" whether North Korea already possesses a nuclear weapon.
Neither in our conversations nor in an Oct. 25 Foreign Ministry statement did the North Koreans request any compensation for ending the enrichment program. They made no demand for a U.S.-North Korean peace treaty to officially end the Korean War, a longstanding proposal of the North. Instead, over and over we heard demands for a non-aggression treaty with the United States to assure North Korea's security.
If such a treaty is negotiated, the North Koreans said, they will "clear the U.S. security concerns," implying an end to the uranium enrichment program. The United States, however, insists that because North Korea has violated existing accords it must verifiably end the enrichment program before new negotiations can begin. "Now the focus is on [North Korea's] actions, not elaborate negotiations or written agreements," Kelly told me before my departure. Vice Foreign Minister Kim said North Korea would like to see "a format of simultaneous action steps" with both sides moving at the same time to end the impasse.
My conversations in Pyongyang persuaded me that a new nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula can be averted if dialogue gets underway -- but it also could be brought on if the Bush administration applies pressure and harsh rhetoric alone. The North Korean officials we saw discussed the situation candidly and, for the most part, coolly, even while displaying resentment of U.S. words and actions. We insisted that the uranium enrichment program will have to be scrapped. The North Koreans appear ready to do that, if the United States accepts their regime as their neighbors have done. They left the door wide open for a peaceful resolution.
If this path is rejected in Washington, however, the future of Northeast Asia could be very different. In that case, the verbal bombshell that Jim Kelly detonated one month ago could prove to be the start of a new and more dangerous conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Don Oberdorfer, a former Post diplomatic correspondent, is journalist- in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and author of "The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History" (Basic Books).
-------- missile defense
Anti-artillery laser successfully tested
November 10, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021110-24379412.htm
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Weapons that travel far faster than a speeding bullet are as little as five years from use in combat, say defense officials who used a laser to shoot an artillery shell out of the sky last week in a first-of-its-kind feat.
The Army used a high-energy laser built by TRW Inc. to heat the shell and cause it to explode in flight. The test was successfully repeated a second time.
The shell was fired from a howitzer at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. As it traveled at about 1,000 mph, it was tracked by radar and infrared heat sensors. Then it was locked onto and zapped by the laser beam traveling at light speed.
The Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser is a short-range weapon being developed with Israel, which wants it to destroy Katyusha rockets fired at its border villages by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
The weapon, which looks like a searchlight, is one of a few laser devices the Pentagon is working on as part of missile defense.
In earlier tests, the Army used the laser to shoot down 25 Katyushas, both singly and in salvos. Artillery shells, however, generate far less heat than rockets do and are more difficult to track. Also, because rockets are pressurized, they are easier to blow up than shells.
"This was, science-wise, a significant accomplishment," said William Congo, a spokesman for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command.
Before, the only defense against a shell was to add more armor, move out of the way or dig in, said Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Arlington. "Now, in theory, this kind of capability allows you to deny that kind of attack," he said.
The laser could be in use in 2007. Since development began in 1996, the Army, the Israeli Defense Ministry and TRW have spent $250 million on the project.
It is designed for use against shells, mortars, short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and air-to-surface munitions. It could also target helicopters and small aircraft, including robot drones.
Officials hope to shrink the weapon enough to allow it to be mounted on a truck, allowing it to be deployed where needed.
"It's movable; it's not mobile. What we are moving toward is a much smaller, mobile device," Mr. Congo said.
An artist's rendering of the weapon shows it assembled from two tractor-trailers.
The weapon would also have to be nimble enough to destroy multiple rounds as quickly as they are fired.
"Shooting down a single artillery shell is pretty cool, but artillery shells don't come in ones," said Christopher Hellman, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
Other related weapons the U.S. military is developing include the Airborne Laser, a $3.7 billion project to mount a laser aboard a Boeing 747. The flying laser is being built to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles shortly after launch.
Also under development are space-based lasers, which would also target ballistic missiles, and ground-based systems that could take out orbiting satellites.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- ohio
Contolled Burn
Van Rose
November 10, 2003
Pike County News Watchman Piketon, Ohio
From: "Vina K Colley" vcolley@earthlink.net
PIKETON - A local environmental activist is labeling a planned burning of vegetation at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant as dangerous.
Government agencies associated with the plant have been planning a controlled burn of the X-611A prairie, an 18-acre plot on the east side of the facility which covers a capped sludge lagoon.
The process is considered to be a safe practice by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
Vina Colley, a former plant worker and president of Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security, is objecting to the burn, stating that contaminants present in the soil could be released into the atmosphere.
Colley bases her judgment on an independent environmental study of plant contamination released last February by Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D., a senior associate with Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York, N.Y. It focused primarily upon the plant's Quadrant II, but some attention was given to Quadrant IV, where X-611A is located. According to Resnikoff's findings, traces of plutonium and neptunium exist in that area of the site.
"How can the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies give the Portsmouth plant contractor permission to burn this contaminated land?" asked Colley.
"Plutonium is the most dangerous substance on earth. Haven't the Southern Ohio residents and plant workers been harmed enough?"
If grass in the prairie habitat is burned, contaminants will get into the air, said Resnikoff during an interview on Friday. He said residents in the area surrounding the enrichment facility would not "be falling out and dying," but would still be at risk. "If you inhale plutonium and other materials, it increases the chances of cancer to occur," he stated.
Brian Blair, a supervisor with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's Division of Emergency and Remedial Response Southeast District Office, doesn't see the burn as a hazard to the environment.
"It just burns the vegetation itself," he said. "It doesn't burn down to the ground."
Blair explained that the burn was scheduled by the U.S. Department of Energy and contractor Bechtel Jacobs Company for November 2 in an effort to control weeds and stimulate the growth of plant life.
However, the operation has been postponed due to rain.
X-611A was once the location of three lagoons, installed in 1954 and used for the disposal of lime sludge waste generated by the enrichment plant. Land was capped in 1999 and a developed into a prairie environment after low levels of chromium, beryllium and uranium were detected.
"It was a concern," said Blair regarding contamination present on the land. "But it was in the lime material. It's covered and beneath the vegetated zone."
The detected materials, he added, existed at concentrations which did not pose an immediate threat to the environment. The Ohio EPA denies the presence of contaminants in the soil.
Despite concern by Colley and her organization, Bechtel Jacobs Spokesperson Sandy Childers announced that the controlled burning should proceed as planned.
"We haven't rescheduled it yet," she said, "but the window of opportunity is through December 31."
Resnikoff does not plan to take an active role in the issue and said he leaves all action against the operation to Colley.
-------- us politics
After Iraq, Bush will attack his real target
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor
November 10, 2002
Toronto Sun
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_nov10.html
NEW YORK -- President George Bush wrapped himself in the American flag and won a major victory last week as U.S. voters gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican party. In mid-term elections, the party in power almost always fares badly, but this year an electorate, gripped by fear of terrorism, and whipped into war fever by high-voltage propaganda, voted Republican. Thank you Osama and Saddam.
One poignant photo said it all: Georgia's defeated Democratic senator, Max Cleland, sitting in a wheelchair, missing both legs and an arm lost in combat in Vietnam. This highly decorated hero was defeated by a Vietnam war draft-dodger who had the audacity to accuse Cleland of being "unpatriotic" after the senator courageously voted against giving Bush unlimited war-related powers. I do not recall a more shameful moment in American politics.
Bush's victory is clearly a mandate to proceed with his crusade against Iraq. Preparations for war are in an advanced stage. The U.S. has been quietly moving heavy armour and mechanized units from Europe to the Mideast. Three division equivalents and a Marine heavy brigade are now in theatre. An armada of U.S. warplanes is assembling around Iraq, which is bombed almost daily. U.S. special forces are operating in northern Iraq, and, along with Israeli scout units, in Iraq's western desert near the important H2 airbase. The war could begin as early as mid-December if there is no coup against Saddam Hussein.
But for all the propaganda about wicked Saddam, Iraq is not the main objective for the small but powerful coterie of Pentagon hardliners driving the Bush administration's national security policy. Nor is it for their intellectual and emotional peers in Israel's right-wing Likud party. The real target of the coming war is Iran, which Israel views as its principal and most dangerous enemy. Iraq merely serves as a pretext to whip America into a war frenzy and to justify insertion of large numbers of U.S. troops into Mesopotamia.
A minor threat
Israeli defence officials have long dismissed demolished Iraq as a minor threat, even though it likely has between six and 18 old Scud missiles hidden away. Saddam did not use chemical weapons in 1991 for fear of Israeli nuclear retaliation. Israel now has the world's most advanced anti-missile system, Arrow, with two batteries operational, and numerous batteries of the latest U.S. Patriot missiles in place.
The prevailing view in the Israeli military is that Iraq will be quickly defeated by U.S. forces, and then likely split into two or three cantons. Israel's North American supporters, however, are still being given the party line that Israel is in mortal danger from Iraq.
Iran is a different story. Iran is expected to produce a few nuclear weapons within five years to counter Israel's large nuclear arsenal, and is developing medium-range missiles, Shahab-3s and -4s, that can easily reach Tel Aviv.
With 68 million people and a growing industrial base, Iran is seen by Israel as a serious threat and major Mideast geopolitical rival. Both nations have their eye on Iraq's vast oil reserves.
Israel's newly appointed hardline defence minister, former air force chief Shaul Mofaz, who was born in Iran, has previously threatened to attack Iran's nuclear installations. Thanks to long-range F-15Is supplied by the U.S., plus cruise and ballistic missiles, Israel can strike targets all over Iran. This week, Israel's grand strategy was clearly revealed for the first time, though barely noticed by North American media, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called for an invasion of Iran "the day after" Iraq is crushed.
Elections in Israel at the end of January will probably return Sharon's Likud party and its extreme rightist allies to power, this time with a strengthened position. Ferocious competition for party leadership between the iron-fisted Sharon and the even more hardline Benjamin Netanyahu suggests a further move to the far right, zero chance for peace with Palestinians, and a more aggressive policy towards Israel's unloving neighbours.
In the U.S., Pentagon hardliners are drawing up plans to invade Iran once Iraq and its oil are "liberated." They hope civil war will erupt in Iran, which is riven by bitterly hostile factions, after which a pro-U.S. regime will take power. If this does not occur, then Iraq-based U.S. forces will be ideally positioned to attack Iran. Or, they could just as well move west and invade Syria, another of Israel's most bitter enemies.
Israel's Likudniks thirst for revenge against Syria - and also Iran - for supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which drove Israeli forces from Lebanon.
Pentagon superhawk Richard Perle, told the TVO program Diplomatic Immunity that the U.S. was prepared to attack Syria, Iran, and Lebanon.
By February or March, the U.S. media will likely be flooded with dire warnings about the threat to the world from Iran. Israel's American lobby will turn its guns from Iraq to Iran. "Links" will surely be "discovered" between Iran and al-Qaida. The cookie-cutter pattern that worked for whipping up war psychosis against Iraq should work just as well against Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia - and win the next national election.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com or visit his home page [http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_home.html].
----
For Powell, A Long Path To a Victory
Pragmatism, Persistence Led to 15-0 U.N. Vote
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33408-2002Nov9?language=printer
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell won two victories on Friday. The most obvious was the unanimous United Nations Security Council approval of tough new weapons inspections in Iraq, a major international achievement for the Bush administration.
But perhaps the sweeter victory for Powell was his vindication as the leader of President Bush's foreign policy team.
After a string of losses to administration hard-liners on issues ranging from the Middle East and Iran to U.S. funding for international population programs, and increasingly public questions about whether he was headed toward resigning, Powell alone stood at President Bush's side in the White House Rose Garden just after the U.N. decision in New York, basking in presidential praise of his "leadership, his good work and his determination" in securing the 15-0 vote.
No one, including Powell, believes the intramural battles over Iraq are over. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's compliance with the resolution, if it happens at all, is expected to be grudging and open to interpretation at every turn. U.S. war plans remain on the table. Even inside the State Department, few believe that Hussein will comply with intrusive new inspections, and there is a feeling that the administration will inevitably confront a decision on war.
Word of new inspections has elicited no comment from the Pentagon. But in Powell's camp, at least, officials are now optimistic that if war does come, it will be an internationally supported effort rather than what many in the world worried would be the vengeful, unilateral strike of an obsessed superpower. And while the administration battle lines are still deeply drawn between the more aggressive views of how to deal with Iraq, represented by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and those, led by Powell, who favor at least trying to achieve international consensus, the past three difficult months appear to have helped achieve a more orderly means of decision-making.
As far as Powell is concerned, the National Security Council structure designed to synthesize differences among Cabinet officials worked effectively. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose authority in dealing with such high-powered players has long been questioned in Washington, was seen across the board as a fair arbiter in presenting all views to Bush.
In the end, despite the bellicose rhetoric of some senior officials, a certain pragmatism won out.
"Nothing in this administration is calm sailing," said one senior diplomat in Washington. "It is deeply, ideologically split. But in a curious way, common sense has asserted itself thus far. . . . It's really quite extraordinary. Powell is still at it, Rice has held the center," and Bush, far from his original instincts, "has managed to rebuild the Security Council."
At each key decision point over the past three months -- whether to go to the United Nations in the first place; whether to seek a new resolution against Iraq or simply declare that its violation of past demands for disarmament justified immediate U.S. military action; whether to compromise with the views of other nations -- Bush was confronted with opposing views from his top advisers.
And as recounted in interviews with senior White House, State and Defense officials and foreign diplomats, it was a process whose outcome was in doubt every step of the way. A Chance to Make the Case
Iraq returned to the front burner in Washington over the summer after a hiatus during the Afghan war. Most of the talk focused on growing U.S. preparations for war, which provoked by late August a torrent of international calls for Bush not to "go it alone" in attacking Iraq.
In fact, Bush had already decided by that point that he would take his case to the United Nations, overruling administration skeptics who worried that diplomacy would enmesh, and possibly derail, the drive for a military takedown of Hussein's government. Looming large, senior administration officials say, was the case made by Powell during a private White House dinner on Aug. 5, alone with Bush and Rice.
It was not the most auspicious timing for Powell. Bush was about to depart for an extended vacation at his Texas ranch, and the secretary himself had returned only a day before from a grueling trip that took him to six Asian capitals in eight days. He had begun the trip angry; a New York Times report the morning of his departure suggested he was considering resignation, and an editorial said he would never be "a great secretary of state" if he couldn't stand his ground against "the sharks" circling him at the Pentagon and the vice president's office.
But despite his fatigue and preoccupations, "what Colin did very effectively in that dinner was to talk about the upside of making an aggressive approach at the U.N., and the downside of not doing it," a senior official said. The idea he promoted, said another, was to "get the U.N. involved, to broaden the coalition should military action be required and finally, if required, to have a lot of people on the other side to pick Iraq up and put it on its feet."
Bush had little personal use for the United Nations, which he considered a 20th-century organization out of tune with the new threats and demands of the 21st. But he had been hearing about coalition broadening in recent months from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the foreign leader to whom he felt closest and who shared his belief that Hussein had to be stopped.
So as he began his Texas working holiday, Bush decided he would go to the United Nations, his first strategic decision.
On Aug. 12, national security "principals," including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, met at the White House to figure out how to proceed. Talk quickly turned to a speech Bush was already scheduled to give at the U.N. General Assembly exactly one month later. The original White House idea was for a boilerplate address on democratic values, but the group decided that it should focus on Iraq and the Security Council's failure since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to deal with Hussein's defiance of its disarmament resolutions. "It was actually the vice president who initially said, you know, these are after all the U.N.'s resolutions, not America's resolutions," recalled one participant, "and we started talking about . . . a challenge to the U.N. to live up to its heritage."
Rice departed for Texas four days later, while the others stayed behind and began wrestling with what would become the president's second key decision -- what his message to the United Nations would be.
Each camp began writing its own draft, with Cheney's staff and Rumsfeld deputy Paul Wolfowitz saying that Bush should simply inform the General Assembly that the United States already had international legal authority to launch a military attack, based on Iraq's "material breach" of a decade's worth of Security Council resolutions. Powell felt that it was worth giving inspections one more chance if it meant that the rest of the world would fight alongside the United States in the face of continued Iraqi defiance.
As Bush prepared for a Labor Day return to Washington, the principals compared their U.N. speech drafts. "We were down to tactical issues," a participant said. "Do you, in the speech, call for a resolution or not? Should it be the president who does that? Should you say 'inspection regime' or not? How detailed should he be about what an acceptable inspection regime should look like?"
On Sept. 4, Bush said publicly for the first time that he would not only address the United Nations on Iraq, but also would seek congressional authorization for a U.S. military attack. Key foreign leaders, nervous at talk of war preparations over the summer, began to weigh in. Russia said it saw no need for either U.S. or U.N. action. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned it would be "unwise to attack Iraq now." And French President Jacques Chirac said the Security Council not only needed a new resolution, but also needed two of them -- one to start new inspections, and a second one later, if necessary, to decide what to do in the event Iraq failed to comply.
Some senior administration officials now insist that there was early internal agreement that the United States would seek a new U.N. resolution on Iraq. Others said that some principals argued strongly that no resolution was needed, nor should one be sought, and when Bush's completed text was distributed just hours before his early morning departure for New York on Sept. 12 with no mention of a new resolution, they appeared to have prevailed.
Powell went into high gear, and the British were called in for reinforcement. Without a call for a new resolution, they argued, the speech would have no punch line, no indication of what the president expected the Security Council to do. Rice, increasingly seen by the "soft side" of the debate as a valuable honest broker and perhaps even an ally in her discussions with Bush, decided to call each of the involved senior advisers that night to say "Look, there really is a decision" to be made. "Do you have any view that you want to express to the president?"
Bush, of course, had the final say. When he stepped to the General Assembly lectern at 10:39 the next morning, he warned of U.N. "irrelevance." He said the threat from Iraq was dire and immediate, and that the United States would not hesitate to defend itself.
And then he formally resolved the difference among his advisers, announcing, "We will work with the U.N. Security Council for the necessary resolutions" to make one more try at securing Iraqi disarmament without war. Code Words and Hard Sell
A high-level interagency group, assigned to begin drafting just such a resolution, quickly agreed on so-called "red lines" for inclusion: It had to declare Iraq already in "material breach" of previous U.N. demands and outline harsh new inspection guidelines that would brook no deception. Most important, it had to promise "serious consequences" for defiance -- code words for war.
Again, each side in the internal debate independently provided passages it insisted must be included. Guidelines from the Pentagon effectively ordered the inclusion of U.S. officials and forces as part of the inspection teams on the ground. The hard-liners insisted that the final, "action" paragraph give advance approval for U.N. members to use "all necessary means" to counter Iraqi failure to cooperate -- language they knew would be interpreted as a trigger for U.S. invasion at will.
Powell and the British argued to no avail that the resolution draft was "totally unsellable in New York," one participant said. The other three permanent members of the council with veto power -- France, Russia and China -- all declared it dead on arrival. But the forces allied with Powell also believed that what one diplomat called "this hideous, extreme resolution" might ultimately prove useful in persuading the council to move toward a less draconian compromise that still would be more powerful than the initial inclinations of most members. A frightened United Nations, they felt, was not a totally bad thing at this stage.
"We always knew . . . 'all necessary means' wasn't going to make it," one senior official said. "There were a few things that were in the 'let's see how people react' category, and we were always going to deal with those."
Senior Defense Department officials insisted they had a guarantee of presidential support for a range of "nonnegotiable" items in the first resolution draft, even as others at the State Department said Powell was acting with complete assurance of Bush's backing. It was here, White House, State and diplomatic officials said, that the British played a key role. Powell was speaking to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw daily, often several times a day, even as Rice was conferring with her counterpart, David Manning, in Blair's front office, and Blair was repeating to Bush at every opportunity what had become a mantra: that as long as the basic "red lines" were included, having an agreed resolution was more important than insisting on every word. U.S. diplomats began chipping away at the most unacceptable wording, sometimes passing new versions to the French even before they had been seen by others in Washington.
Bush, in this third key decision, agreed to a substantially revised draft that was circulated in New York on Oct. 23. "All necessary means" was gone, and agreement to a "second stage" of council consideration in the event of Iraqi violations, if not a guaranteed second resolution, was included. During a week of consultations between Powell and French Foreign Secretary Dominique de Villepin, it was fine-tuned to within a word or two of French approval.
Throughout the deliberations, Powell had taken care to make sure Bush had enough details to see things his way, including the technicalities of how new inspections would work. A crucial moment in the Washington endgame, several participants in the process agreed, came 10 days ago when Powell invited chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed el Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- both deeply disdained at the Pentagon as weaklings incapable of standing up to Hussein -- to meet with Bush, Cheney, Rice and Wolfowitz.
"It was very valuable, because you could read very easily in both the body language and what they said that these were completely serious people," said one participant in the meetings. "They had both been through a lot with the Iraqis and a number of other difficult regimes, and they had no desire to be deceived by the Iraqis."
The meetings helped convince Bush that Blix wanted the same tough inspections that he did, and that a pared-down version of the original resolution guidelines would still guarantee intrusive, unyielding inspections. "They acquitted themselves really well," a senior official in Powell's camp said of Blix and el Baradei. Carping stopped at the Pentagon.
Powell launched into an intense, nonstop week of pressure and cajoling on the telephone with London, Paris and Moscow, plus additional talks with his counterparts among the 10 elected members of the council. So consuming were the negotiations that Powell later joked he was still on his cell phone just minutes before his daughter's wedding on Saturday night, switching it off only as he started to walk her up the aisle.
On Thursday, following several final word changes, Bush clinched a final deal over the telephone with Chirac. A conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin was less conclusive, but Putin instructed Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to keep talking to Powell. Ivanov called an hour before the council vote, at 9 a.m. Friday, to confirm Russia's yes.
The longest holdout was Syria, and an abstention, rather than a no, was the most optimistic prediction. In a last stab Thursday night, Powell had sent a personal message to the Syrian foreign minister, saying that Damascus would be standing alone at the Council, and asked the U.S. ambassador to deliver it verbally, in person. Straw made a call to the Syrian capital, and so did Annan.
Friday morning, as the United States's U.N. ambassador, John Negroponte, was leaving his office across the street from U.N. headquarters for the council vote, he received a call from the Syrians saying they, too, would vote yes. Negroponte used his cell phone to call Powell as he was walking down the U.N. hallway toward the council chamber.
Powell called Rice, and Rice called Bush just as 15 hands were going up around the table, signaling unanimous support for the U.S. resolution.
----
'Baghdad's Moment of Truth,'
By Colin L. Powell
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33592-2002Nov9?language=printer
On Sept. 12, President Bush went before the United Nations and challenged the Security Council to meet its responsibility to act against the threat to international peace and security posed by Iraq. The council's unanimous passage of Resolution 1441 was a historic step for the United Nations toward ridding Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by peaceful means.
The international community has given Saddam Hussein and his regime one last chance. It is now for Baghdad to seize it.
Seven weeks of consultation, debate and negotiation in the Security Council only forged a deeper agreement and a stronger resolve among the world that Iraq must fully and finally disarm. It should now be clear to Saddam Hussein that this is not just a matter between Iraq and the United States, but between Iraq and a united world.
After 11 years of flouting dozens of U.N. resolutions and statements, Hussein's contempt for the international community is obvious. We are all well acquainted with the tactics of denial, deceit and delay that he has used time and again to avoid compliance. We are also well aware of the brutal and aggressive nature of his regime. He has twice invaded his neighbors and he has used chemical weapons not just against other countries but against his own citizens: men, women and children.
During the four years since inspectors have been barred from Iraq, Hussein has done everything he can to acquire and develop more weapons of mass destruction -- whether biological, chemical or nuclear. He has no scruples about using the weapons that he possesses or about providing them to terrorists should that suit his interests.
Long experience with Saddam Hussein and his regime tells us that he will respond only when confronted with steadfast resolve and the threat of force. Every member of the Security Council understands that if Hussein fails to comply with Resolution 1441, there must be serious consequences.
The words of the resolution are unambiguous:
• The Security Council has found Iraq in material breach of its solemn obligations.
• Iraq has been given one week to state whether it intends to comply with Resolution 1441.
• Iraq must produce a comprehensive declaration of its weapons programs.
• Iraq must submit to an inspection regime that is far tougher and far more thorough than ever before.
Saddam Hussein must give the inspectors immediate, unimpeded, unconditional and unrestricted access to uncover the weapons of mass destruction that he has had so many years to hide. Access not just to places such as presidential palaces but to people and other sources of information will be critical, because you have to know where and when to look in order to find biological and chemical weapons that are easy to conceal and move. Without access to key people and information, the inspectors would have to search under every roof and in the back of every truck.
The chief U.N. inspector, Hans Blix, and the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El Baradei, have been given the robust regime they need. The United States will support the inspectors in every way. Other U.N. members will do the same. The disarmament process must now begin. The first inspectors plan to arrive in Iraq one week from tomorrow. The world will be watching. The inspectors are required to update the Security Council 60 days after inspections start. Inspectors also are required to inform the council whenever they encounter interference or obstacles. As President Bush said on Friday, U.S. policy will be one of zero tolerance.
In the days and weeks of inspections that lie ahead, the international community can expect Iraq to test its will. Backing Resolution 1441 with the threat of force will be the best way to not only eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction but also to achieve compliance with all U.N. resolutions and reach our ultimate goal: an Iraq that does not threaten its own people, its neighbors and the world.
President Bush and both houses of Congress have emphasized that the United States prefers to see Iraq disarm under U.N. auspices without a resort to force. We do not seek a war with Iraq, we seek its peaceful disarmament. But we will not shrink from war if that is the only way to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. The Security Council has confronted Saddam Hussein and his regime with a moment of truth. If they meet it with more lies, they will not escape the consequences.
The writer is secretary of state.
----
Rice Defends CIA Missile Strike
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Yemen-al-Qaida.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has given U.S. officials ``broad authority in a variety of circumstances'' to protect the country, such as the CIA missile strike that killed a top al-Qaida suspect in Yemen, a senior White House aide said Sunday.
``I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials,'' said his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
``He's well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority.''
Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, described by U.S. and Yemeni officials as al-Qaida's chief operative in Yemen, was killed Tuesday along with five other men after a CIA Predator drone aircraft fired a missile at their car.
Yemeni and U.S. officials said the dead also included a Yemeni-American man, identified by Yemeni officials as Ahmed Hijazi. According to a U.S. official, Hijazi was linked to alleged members of the al-Qaida cell in suburban Buffalo, N.Y.
Rice would not say who authorized the strike.
``The president has given broad authority to U.S. officials in a variety of circumstances to do what they need to do to protect the country,'' Rice said on ``Fox News Sunday.''
``We're in a new kind of war, and we've made very clear that it is important that this new kind of war be fought on different battlefields.''
She said the United States has had ``very good cooperation with the Yemeni on a variety of things'' and noted that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has spoken about that.
``We're fighting on a lot of different fronts. We have a lot of allies in this war,'' Rice said.
The CIA strike also killed four other men described as al-Qaida operatives.
Al-Harethi was believed to have coordinated the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. sailors.
The U.S. attack last week drew criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International sent letters of inquiry about the incident to U.S. and Yemeni officials and a spokesman for the group in Washington said the attack violated international treaties prohibiting execution without trial.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
U.S. Said to Advise Colombia Sale
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Brazil-Colombia-Aircraft-Sale.html
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- The United States has advised Colombia to cancel the purchase of 40 Brazilian fighter planes, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper cited a letter from the commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America, Gen. James T. Hill, to the commander of Colombia's military forces, Jorge Mora Rangel, asking Colombia to reconsider the sale. Advertisement Alt Text
Hill said the $234 million deal for equipment and the Emb-314 light fighter planes, made by Brazil's Embraer, could jeopardize U.S. Congressional approval of future aid to Colombia, the newspaper quoted the letter as saying.
Colombia and Brazil started to negotiate the sale in early October. Embraer was Brazil's biggest exporter last year.
Hill wrote that the Colombian Air Force should use the money for more urgent needs, like modernizing its U.S.-made C-130 Hercules transport planes, the newspaper report said.
A spokesman with the U.S. Southern Command said he was unaware of Hill's letter. Brazil's foreign ministry had no comment on the report, while officials at Brazil's defense ministry were not immediately available for comment. Colombia's military spokeswoman and the country's defense ministry also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
----
UK forges £1bn secret arms deal with Thailand
Minister agrees to help promote food products linked to cancer
Antony Barnett, public affairs editor
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,837136,00.html
Britain has struck a secret deal worth £1 billion to sell arms to Thailand in return for promoting food that has been linked to cancer-causing chemicals.
The deal, which was last night condemned as 'disgraceful' by opposition MPs and farmers, involves Britain selling guns, Hawk jets, riot control equipment and secondhand frigates from the Royal Navy to Thailand.
In return, Britain has agreed to provide financial help to Thailand to develop its farming industry and promote Thai food products in this country and abroad.
The deal was conceived in May, when the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, visited the UK and met Defence Minister Geoff Hoon and Trade Minister Patricia Hewitt. Hewitt also agreed to help Thailand overturn the European Union ban on the import of Thai chickens.
The ban was introduced after it was discovered that the poultry contained cancer-causing chemicals after farmers had been using illegal veterinary drugs.
The agreement on the highly controversial arms deal was formally signed last month by the British ambassador in Bangkok.
Opposition MPs last night claimed the deal has strong echoes of the arms-for-aid scandals that plagued the Tories and were supposedly outlawed by the Labour government.
The Liberal Democrats have demanded full details of the agreement, questioning what taxpayers' money is being used to support the deal and whether it is compatible with EU free trade policy.
Vince Cable, Lib Dem trade and industry spokesman, who last night wrote to Hewitt, said: 'This is a deeply depressing and disgraceful deal. Linking arms sales with food production gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "swords to ploughshares".
'If the DTI is to promote actively the import of Thai food goods for the sole benefit of BAe Systems, then the Labour government has sunk to a new low in its arms trade policies.'
A spokesman for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: 'Not only is this another example of pushing weapons sales on the developing world but to tie it with food production is outrageous and morally unacceptable. It's simply an arms-for-aid scandal in another guise.'
The farming community has also reacted with anger at the deal which it claims threatens jobs.
Ian Johnson, for the National Farmers Union in the South West, said: 'Aside from the moral question, it's extraordinary that the Government which appears to have abandoned British farmers seems to be doing all it can to help farmers in the Third World who will end up exporting cheaper - and some would argue - inferior products into our markets.'
According to reports in the Thai press, under the pact the British government would seek to increase imports of Thai farm produce and help find new markets for Thai goods. In return the Thai government will buy arms from British Aerospace, now known as BAe Systems.
The Department of Trade and Industry last night refused to comment on the deal, but the Foreign Office defended it, saying it will modernise Thai armed forces and help it combat terrorism, at the same time alleviating poverty and improving its food production.
A Foreign Office spokesman denied it was an 'arms-for-aid' deal because it would be BAe Systems investing in Thailand's agriculture sector and not the British state. He said Britain would promote Thai food exports to other parts of the world and not the UK.
A spokesman for BAe said the deal was in an 'embryonic stage' and was a little 'unusual'. But he said it was similar to most major defence deals in which the company agrees to invest in local industry, known as 'offsets'.
In 1997, International Development Secretary Clare Short announced she was banning deals linking arms sales to aid, following the Pergau Dam scandal in which the Conservative government gave Malaysia £300m to help build a controversial dam in exchange for buying British arms. The High Court ruled that former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd acted unlawfully in allowing such a deal.
-------- biological weapons
Germ - Warfare Negotiators Try Again
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Biological-Ban.html
GENEVA (AP) -- Negotiators hoping to protect the world against germ warfare are trying to pick up the pieces a year after the United States shocked other countries by backing out of an enforcement system.
Member countries of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention start a two-week conference Monday to look for new ways to ensure that nations abide by their commitments under the treaty.
The accord has never included enforcement provisions. Discussions on a system of inspections failed last year when the United States withdrew its support, saying inspections cannot detect violations and could compromise self-defense measures.
The United States has accused Iraq of developing biological weapons as part of its arsenal of mass destruction, but Washington -- and independent experts -- suspect other nations also are violating the germ warfare treaty.
``The United States believes that over a dozen countries are pursuing biological weapons,'' said John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control. He has been willing to name only some of them, including Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Cuba and North Korea. All of them except Sudan have signed up to the treaty. Iraq also has signed.
This month's meeting is expected to consider a proposal that would set up annual discussions on different ways to combat biological weapons, said Patricia Lewis, director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.
The discussions would be nonbinding, but would keep the world thinking about the threat that some nation could develop and use weapons of mass destruction that kill by spreading disease.
``The very worst thing that can happen is that this thing is not discussed at an international level,'' Lewis said.
The discussion idea is based on suggestions from the United States, but the talks are at such a sensitive stage it is uncertain that Washington will back them, she told reporters at a preview briefing.
The Bush administration has given no sign it has budged from its opposition to setting up a system to verify adherence to the treaty.
``Detecting violations is nearly impossible,'' Bolton said. ``Proving a violation is impossible.''
Bolton, who spelled out U.S. policy in a speech last August in Tokyo, said violators can simply claim they were working on defenses against germ warfare and can easily clean up evidence ``by using no more sophisticated means than household bleach.''
Washington says the verification process could work against countries that adhere to the treaty because inspectors might divulge defense and commercial secrets to potential enemies and competitors.
``The United States invests over a billion dollars annually on biodefense,'' Bolton said. ``The U.S pharmaceutical and biotech industry leads the world. Each year U.S. industry produces more than 50 percent of the new medicines created.''
Some countries would use the treaty to import technology and equipment ostensibly for peaceful purposes but, in fact, use them to develop biological weapons, Bolton said.
Lewis said the biggest worry is over biodefense programs.
``Inspectors going into those facilities could gain an awful lot of information about what you believe to be your potential threats and how you're responding to them,'' she said.
Although a majority of the 146 nations that have ratified the treaty favor continuing work on an enforcement mechanism, many have said it would be pointless to carry on without the United States.
A few countries have said privately they were glad Washington opposed further work because they, too, had strong doubts about the plan, she said.
Lewis declined to say which they were, but diplomats said China, Pakistan, Iran and Cuba were unenthusiastic.
Last December, only minutes before the end of the three-week conference on the treaty, the United States moved to end the negotiations to develop an inspection system to search for any violators.
The move took everyone by surprise, even close allies that had been consulting with the United States all day, diplomats said.
The Cold War-era treaty was drawn up without enforcement provisions because no one at the time seriously believed any country would try to use biological weapons.
-------- britain
England Prepping for Possible War
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-Iraq.html
LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's government said Sunday it is preparing for possible military action against Iraq in case diplomatic efforts to disarm Saddam Hussein fail.
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said military action would be a last resort, but ``we have to show Saddam Hussein that we mean business.''
``Clearly the United States and indeed the United Kingdom have had a range of military plans available as we do in the event of contingencies developing anywhere in the world,'' Hoon told Sky News.
``We've certainly got to be ready, I don't want to put any specific dates on that but I assure you ... that we are prepared.''
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Saturday that ``no decision has been taken,'' on the United Nations resolution, which calls on the country to dismantle its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities.
Saddam on Sunday called for an emergency session of parliament to take up a response to the resolution.
But Arab leaders meeting at an Arab League summit in Cairo said Iraq has indicated it will accept the resolution. Saddam on Sunday called an emergency session of parliament to discuss the document.
U.S. officials said a Pentagon plan calls for more than 200,000 troops to invade Iraq, if Baghdad fails to cooperate with weapons inspectors.
Meanwhile, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in an interview published on Sunday that he expected to be in Iraq within a week.
According to an interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, Blix said he and Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, would be in Baghdad by Nov. 18 with a preparatory team.
Blix was quoted as saying his inspectors would be firm.
``I don't think we will break in any door. We will behave tactfully, firmly and seriously,'' he was quoted as saying.
The Sunday Telegraph newspaper said Britain would begin mobilizing 15,000 troops next week if Saddam refuses to get rid of his weapons of mass destruction.
Quoting unidentified defense officials, the newspaper said the mobilization would include up to 200 Challenger tanks, warships, submarines and planes.
The Ministry of Defense said the report was speculative and said no decisions would be made until the U.N. weapons inspectors reported back to the United Nations.
Hoon said he expected Iraq to comply with the ``will of the international community.''
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Sunday that Saddam faced ``the choice of his lifetime, literally.''
He told the British Broadcasting Corp. that if Baghdad complies with the resolution, the ``prospect of, and the justification for, military action will recede.''
He said it was likely Saddam would meet the seven-day deadline to accept the resolution. But he said a 30-day deadline for him to disclose his weapons of mass destruction was more important.
``We will know within 30 days whether he is serious about complying,'' Straw said.
-------- europe
Confrontation Over Kaliningrad
Putin Warns of a New 'Berlin Wall' in Dispute With EU
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33692-2002Nov9?language=printer
KALININGRAD, Russia -- To President Vladimir Putin, this tiny Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea has become an unlikely source of confrontation with Europe.
Putin recently warned that Europe is about to lock away the 1 million residents of Kaliningrad behind a new "Berlin Wall."
An oddity of history and geography bordering on Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad is a Russian outpost separated by 200 miles of foreign soil from the Russian "mainland." But in recent months, as Poland and Lithuania have taken the final steps to join the European Union, it has generated the previously unthinkable: a major crisis in relations between Putin and the united Europe he has often talked of joining.
"Russia's geopolitical choice will depend on how the Kaliningrad problem is resolved," Putin's special envoy for the matter, parliamentary leader Dmitri Rogozin, recently vowed.
On Monday, Putin will meet with European leaders at a special Russia-EU summit in Brussels aimed at resolving an impasse over the European plan to introduce visas for travel between Kaliningrad and its neighbors. Currently, Kaliningrad residents can travel freely through Poland and Lithuania, with no visa or foreign passport required, to go to or from the rest of Russia.
Russia has now declared visas an unacceptable requirement, as onerous as if Canada suddenly imposed visas on Alaskans traveling to the lower 48 states. The European Union has been equally opposed to the solution suggested by Russia -- "sealed trains" through a Lithuanian "transit corridor."
In a sign of how emotionally charged the "Kaliningrad question" has become, a Russian woman from a fringe nationalist party threw a cake at a visiting EU delegation this week, shouting, "Kaliningrad was, is and will be ours!"
She was wrong about the history. For 650 years, Kaliningrad was a German trading center known as Konigsberg. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin seized it as a spoil of victory at the end of World War II, renaming the bomb-shattered city, resettling it with Russians and turning the entire region into a secret military installation that was off-limits to foreigners.
But the protester's political pitch was on the mark, capturing the mood in Moscow as Putin stages the biggest confrontation of his presidency between Russia and Europe. Here in Kaliningrad, though, a much more complex story emerges than the one Putin has told, concerning not just the West's willingness to accommodate Russia but also Moscow's willingness to accommodate this region's unique problems.
"Those people who claim to be solving this problem in Moscow are just undertaking a PR campaign," said Solomon Ginzburg, a reformist deputy in the local parliament. He called the visa issue "absolutely exaggerated" and reserved particular scorn for those populist politicians in Moscow who have talked about seizing back territory from Lithuania in retribution for the imposition of visas.
"If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones. Those borders were set after World War II. That's a political danger, especially for Kaliningrad, considering we were never a part of Russia before 1945," Ginzburg said. European diplomats involved in the discussions about Kaliningrad agree with this view, he said.
"The future of Kaliningrad is not in Brussels, it's in Moscow. It's not about visas but about how this region is run," said a European envoy close to the talks. "We shouldn't talk about the isolation of the Kaliningrad region but of the self-isolation of Kaliningrad. And that self-isolation is not done by the local authorities but by Moscow. For Moscow it's just another one of their geopolitical games."
Many European diplomats have been infuriated by the tough Putin rhetoric, obscuring as it does Russia's responsibility for the state of Kaliningrad. "The declarations that the EU is building a new Berlin Wall, that the EU is turning away from Russia, it's not so," said Yaroslav Chybinsky, the Polish consul here.
Kaliningrad's problems go back to the early days of post-communist Russia, when the region was seen as a place of special promise, poised to develop into a capitalist model even faster than the rest of the country, thanks to its favorable location in Europe. A special free-trade zone was established in 1991, and Kaliningrad residents waited expectantly for the Hong Kong-like boom they were sure would come.
Instead, economic decline set in, even worse than elsewhere in Russia.
Outdated manufacturing plants closed, and the region's industrial base has now all but disappeared. Military downsizing left thousands of mid-career officers stuck in Kaliningrad and out of work. Heroin arrived, swiftly followed by an HIV infection rate that was once the highest in Russia.
Rather than becoming a model of global commerce, Kaliningrad became an old-fashioned center of shuttle trading, with thousands of people eking out a living by trekking across the border with loads of cut-rate cigarettes, black-market CDs and other goods to sell in comparatively well-off Poland and Lithuania. This "gray economy" is now thought to account for 40 percent to 60 percent of the region's total trade, experts said.
Visas could make such cross-border trading more difficult, many Kaliningrad residents said in recent interviews, but they are hardly the most important problem the underdeveloped region faces. With their neighbors' standard of living rocketing ahead of theirs, many blame Moscow for ignoring the region's problems or making them worse. Like Ginzburg, many here said the current political storm in Moscow over the visas was just meant to distract attention from the Kremlin's own failure in addressing the Kaliningrad question.
Moscow's indifference is partly a matter of money and partly Putin's political priorities. The special free-trade zone may have made sense for Kaliningrad in the free-wheeling era of President Boris Yeltsin, when Russian regions competed to win the most autonomy from Moscow. But Putin has made restoration of federal control the centerpiece of his presidency and generally prefers centralized solutions.
As a result, many here fear that their "special economic zone" will soon become a relic of the 1990s, incompatible as it is with the Putin style of governance.
"One of the major problems in Russia is unified legislation that doesn't take into consideration the peculiarities of the regions. Especially for Kaliningrad, there should be a more flexible approach, more individualized," said Sylvia Gourova, deputy mayor of Kaliningrad. "But there is no understanding or awareness of this in the federal government."
In the meantime, the modest size of Moscow's financial support of Kaliningrad was apparent during an interview with Mikhail Tsekel, the region's vice governor. Tsekel was quick to brag about the recent package of Kaliningrad projects approved by Moscow, a 10-year, $3.1 billion package of 147 projects.
"Our opponents don't know how much progress has been made," he said.
What he didn't volunteer was the size of the federal government's contribution to that package -- only 9 percent of the total, with another 3 percent supposed to come from regional funds. The rest, the overwhelming majority, is to be privately generated by local business. The package, in other words, is only an elaborate wish list.
Moscow's late arrival to the debate is also evident at the Kaliningrad Economic Development Agency, where the slogan on the wall proclaims, "Russian region, European opportunity," but director Georgy Dykhanov acknowledged, "We are certainly not in Europe yet." More than a decade after the Soviet Union's collapse, his group has just won a contract from the Ministry of Trade and Economic Development in Moscow to develop options for Kaliningrad's future.
Among the possibilities, he said, are Kaliningrad as a sort of overseas colony, compensated for its distance from the Russian motherland with tax breaks and other economic incentives. Or, Dykhanov said, Russia could decide to make Kaliningrad a "bridge" to Europe, investing in infrastructure and first-class facilities to make it the main Russian trading center with the West.
More practical, and less costly, would be to make Kaliningrad a "pilot region," pioneering both domestic economic reforms in Russia and new, closer ties with the EU. But that, too, would require the special treatment Putin has resisted.
Any of these alternatives would require political will that doesn't yet exist in Moscow, Dykhanov said, adding, "Russia itself has yet to decide how to use Kaliningrad."
And while they may be talking about the future here in Kaliningrad, such identity issues are unlikely to predominate in Monday's Russia-EU summit, where old-fashioned dealmaking on the visas, and little else, is likely to result.
"I fear that if the visa question is solved, then nobody will care anymore about Kaliningrad," said Stephan Stein, the German economic representative here, who pointed out that foreign direct investment is only $4 million for the region this year, the rest scared off by "political instability" that seems likely to continue as Kaliningrad's fate is debated in Moscow. "At least it's in the limelight now," he said.
-------- iraq
Pressure Mounts on Iraq to Accept U.N. Demands
November 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/news-iraq.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament convenes in an emergency session on Monday to decide on a tough new U.N. resolution calling on Baghdad to disarm or face possible military action.
Iraq has until November 15 to agree to a Security Council resolution passed unanimously on Friday demanding that Baghdad allows U.N. arms experts unhindered access to sites suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction or face ``serious consequences.''
The United States warned Iraq on Sunday one false step in complying with the resolution would result in military action.
Iraqi parliamentary sources told Reuters the 250-seat assembly would meet at 7:00 p.m. (1600 GMT) on Monday in accordance with a decision by President Saddam Hussein.
``Parliament will take the necessary decision regarding the U.N. Security Council resolution,'' one source said.
Top weapons inspectors are due to travel to Iraq on November 18 to set up communications, transport and laboratories.
Signaling hopes for a breakthrough, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said after an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo on Sunday that Baghdad appeared inclined toward accepting the new text.
``The indications are positive and there was a general feeling during the meeting that the cooperation of Iraq with the inspectors will be instrumental in avoiding any military operation,'' he said when asked about Iraq's likely response.
Asked if ministers had called on Iraq to agree to the U.N. terms, Maher told reporters: ``The Iraqi tendency is positive in general. That's why there was no need to make such a call.''
``ZERO TOLERANCE'' FOR IRAQ
In Washington, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Iraq would be held to a ``zero tolerance'' standard on arms inspections under the new resolution. Any breach would trigger serious consequences, she told Fox News Sunday.
Disarmament inspections first started after Iraqi forces were expelled from neighboring Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War. Inspectors withdrew in 1998 in a wrangle over access to Saddam's palaces.
Rice said Bush reserved the right to use force without Security Council approval if Iraq violated the resolution. But Washington would initially discuss with the Council the consequences of any breach.
U.S. officials said President Bush had approved plans for the invasion of Iraq if it failed to comply fully with the resolution.
The plan, based on the lessons learned during the Afghan conflict, calls for the quick capture of Iraqi territory to establish forward bases that would be used to propel 200,000 or more troops deeper into the country.
Saddam on Sunday ordered the Iraqi parliament to hold an emergency meeting on the new resolution. The parliament will then refer its decision to Iraq's highest leadership authority -- the so-called Revolutionary Command Council led by Saddam and chaired by his top aides.
The 250-seat Iraqi parliament will hold closed-door consultations on Monday morning ahead of the plenary session in the evening, another parliamentary source said.
Arab foreign ministers on Sunday endorsed the toughly worded resolution but also called on Security Council members to ensure it could not be used as an automatic trigger for war.
The resolution gives inspectors sweeping new rights and Iraq 30 days to submit a detailed list of its weapons. It also gives the Security Council a key role before any possible attack, but does not force Washington to seek authorization for war.
Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix is due in Cyprus this week where his team will have a base, before heading for Iraq, a Cyprus government source said.
An advance team of about a dozen inspectors is expected to head for Baghdad around November 25 to make spot inspections. Between 80 and 100 inspectors are due to resume their work in full by December 23.
----
Disarming of Iraq still no safe bet
By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune senior correspondent
November 10, 2002
http://www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=chi-0211100496nov10
WASHINGTON -- The United Nations has opened the endgame with Saddam Hussein over his weapons of mass destruction, but the outcome that President Bush has somberly ordained--full disarmament--is not at all certain.
As many loopholes as the UN Security Council tried to close with its minutely detailed resolution commanding Iraq to submit to weapons inspections--and as determined as Bush is to strip Iraq of its deadly arsenal--there is still room for Hussein to string out the process.
Moreover, there is space for interpretation of what might constitute a breach of the UN resolution. There may be quarrels over which materials qualify as weapons components.
And there is grave uncertainty, harbored in the highest reaches of the White House, over whether the UN inspectors can ever find all of Hussein's presumed chemical, biological and nuclear materials, even if he throws open every bolted door in his country and welcomes the inspectors to probe every hidden basement.
Few in the Bush administration expect that to happen. At the end of an Arab League meeting late Saturday in Cairo, Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, said Iraq had yet to accept the UN resolution, although he said agreement was likely eventually.
Yet most officials calculate that Hussein will balk at some point during the inspections, when UN experts inevitably get too close to the weapons that help sustain his power. And any resistance, Bush has warned repeatedly, will trigger a swift U.S. military response--and Hussein's overthrow.
But if Hussein chooses to cooperate with the inspectors, and if he relinquishes all the weapons they manage to find, he still can avert the showdown that hard-liners in the White House have been itching for ever since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"That's the nightmare scenario: Saddam plays along and manages to seem to get a clean bill of health," said one Pentagon official who declined to be named. "Then how do you show that an invasion would be warranted?"
The administration never had to worry about such a potential predicament when it declared "regime change" to be its ironclad policy toward Iraq earlier this year. But mounting alarm at home and abroad over the prospect of a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq persuaded the president to take the problem of Hussein's defiance to the United Nations in early September.
Yet winning multinational support for confronting Hussein, Bush found, required a subtle alteration in Washington's language. "Regime change" suddenly became "a changed regime" as Bush allowed that if Hussein succumbed to UN inspections and surrendered his weapons of mass destruction, that would be tantamount to having changed the Iraqi regime, even if Hussein still were in place.
Another concession followed. During two months of painstaking Security Council horse-trading with France and Russia over the terms of the Iraq resolution, the White House ultimately was compelled to agree that any obstructions Iraq might pose to the inspectors would not automatically trigger a U.S. military response, but instead would have to be discussed anew by the Security Council.
White House officials made it clear they saw that change as largely semantic. Bush insisted that he would not be handcuffed by any Security Council deliberations and retained his right, endorsed by Congress, to take action against Iraq if the UN refused to do so.
But semantics are what UN resolutions are all about. It took the shifting of a few clauses and the arcane switch of an "or" to an "and" to get the Security Council to reach unanimity on the Iraq resolution Friday. And it's in the fine print that Hussein may find a way out of his corner, if he chooses to take it.
`Cheat and retreat' feared
The UN resolution instantly started the clock ticking: Iraq has until Nov. 15 to formally accept the terms of the resolution, and three more weeks, until Dec. 8, to disclose a full inventory of its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. The UN weapons inspectors must begin their work by Dec. 23, and within 60 days after that--by Feb. 21 at the latest--the inspectors must report back to the Security Council.
At any point before then, however, if the inspectors run into any Iraqi defiance or obstruction, they are to report the offense immediately to the Security Council, which could trigger an American invasion.
But after 11 years of dodging 16 previous UN resolutions, Hussein is well-practiced in what Bush called Friday "the old game of cheat and retreat."
"Saddam will choose to cooperate, but I would put `cooperation' in quotation marks, because it's not the same as compliance," said Martin Indyk, a Mideast expert at the Brookings Institution and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. "It means allowing the inspectors to come in, allowing them to do their work, making it look as if he's going along with the resolution. He might even fess up to some [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities to give him some credibility.
"But in essence, what he will be doing here is not making a fundamental decision to disarm, but rather making a calculated decision to play out the clock."
Even if Hussein discloses a roster of Iraq's chemical and biological materials as he is required to do, he can plausibly claim legitimate uses for many of them, because precursor components of potential weapons often have pharmaceutical or scientific uses.
Then there is the question of what, precisely, will constitute Iraqi defiance of the inspectors.
"Is a two-hour delay in entering a building sufficient to lead to war?" asked Ivo Daalder, a weapons expert at Brookings, who noted that the UN resolution does not explicitly answer such questions. "The likelihood is that Saddam is not going to give us the clear-cut failure to cooperate that would evidently lead to war."
Hussein could complicate U.S. plans further merely by postponing any confrontation with UN inspectors until the last possible moment. That's because the optimal time for military maneuvers in Iraq is the winter, before the desert heat soars to temperatures that play havoc with sensitive military equipment and transform soldiers' protective anti-chemical and anti-biological suits into virtual ovens.
But military experts say the summer will not ultimately spare Hussein.
"Mid-January to mid-February is probably the optimum time to launch an attack, but there's no reason you can't do it beyond that," said retired Army Col. Ken Allard, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I think you're OK all the way up to March and April.
"Remember, we had to do some nasty things in Afghanistan in very bad weather. And in some ways, waiting . . . gives us even more time to prepare."
Components easily hidden
Even if there are no disputes over Iraq's compliance with the inspectors--and the hard-to-conceal evidence of any Iraqi nuclear weapons program is uncovered--the reality is that chemical and biological weapons programs are much more easily hidden.
Lethal pathogens, for example, can be cultivated in a bathroom. And UN inspectors aggressively probing Iraq in 1995 discovered a deadly VX gas program only when Hussein's son-in-law defected and led them to it.
Such facts underlie the skepticism voiced by Vice President Dick Cheney, a leading administration proponent of a pre-emptive U.S. attack against Iraq.
"A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of [Hussein's] compliance with UN resolutions," Cheney told a veterans group in August. "On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow back in his box."
Indyk, who served as an assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, has a similar worry.
"I often went to bed thinking we had the intelligence where [Hussein] was hiding his stuff," Indyk recalled of the previous UN inspections process in Iraq, "only to wake up the next morning to find there was nothing there.
"We may think we've got the goods, but there's a risk in that whole enterprise that, in fact, we won't find anything, and Hussein will be able to use it as a way of showing there's nothing there."
----
Iraq Media Says World Defeated U.S. War Plans
November 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un-resolution.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's official press on Sunday praised the world community for choosing diplomacy over war by adopting a U.N. resolution giving Iraq a last chance to disarm, thereby defeating U.S. plans to wage war.
The Al-Iraq daily said weeks of arduous negotiations, which produced a unanimous resolution on Friday, demonstrated the strong determination of the Security Council to prevent the United States from getting its way.
``The consultations, efforts and negotiations on the Iraqi issue at the United Nations indicate without any doubt the fear of the whole world of the plans that America is seeking to achieve,'' it said.
``The international community has become conscious that if America is able to achieve its plots against Iraq, there will be repercussions...and that the whole world will come under the domination of the United States, ruling it as it wishes.''
Co-sponsored by the U.S. and Britain, the resolution was agreed after France, Russia and others persuaded Washington to remove from its wording an explicit authorization to use force against Iraq and a call to back U.N. inspectors with troops.
Baghdad has yet to announce if it will accept or reject the resolution which threatens ``serious consequences'' unless Iraq opens its territory to tough new weapons inspections. It has one week to comply, and the clock began ticking on Friday.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said late on Saturday that Baghdad was still studying Friday's council vote to allow U.N. arms inspectors unfettered access to any site suspected of producing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
``Iraq has not issued a decision and Iraq is studying this resolution,'' Sabri told reporters after a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.
PAPER SAYS WORLD REJECTS U.S. ATTACK
Al-Jumhuriya newspaper said pro-Iraq demonstrations taking place in some European cities illustrated the world's rejection of a U.S. attack on Iraq.
``The awareness of the world of the U.S. objectives and motives has uncovered and exposed the evil British-American plan and foiled the first of its series -- to automatically use force against Iraq,'' it said.
``The hypocrite American, British and Zionist intentions can no longer be hidden. They are closely watched by the world community and the cheap bargaining and maneuvering of the criminals in the U.S. administration will produce no benefits,'' al-Jumhuriya added.
In Washington, officials said President Bush had approved a plan to initially capture parts of Iraq and establish footholds to thrust in 200,000 or more troops if Baghdad failed to comply with the U.N. resolution.
Saying any attack was unlikely until early next year unless Iraq refused to comply with the new resolution, the officials said an assault would begin with a smaller number of troops while U.S. bombers attacked President Saddam Hussein's palaces, air defenses and bases.
The chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is due in Cyprus in the coming week where his team will have a base, before heading for Iraq, a Cyprus government source said.
An advance team of about a dozen inspectors is expected to head for Baghdad around November 25 to make spot inspections. Between 80 and 100 inspectors are due to resume their work in full by December 23.
Disarmament inspections originally started after Iraqi forces were expelled from neighboring Kuwait by a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Gulf War. Inspectors withdrew in 1998, saying Iraq had withdrawn its cooperation.
-------- israel / palestine
Netanyahu pledges to stick by US Mideast 'road map'
Herb Keinon,
Nov. 10, 2002
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/PrinterFull&cid=1036830287261
Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told foreign leaders over the weekend Israel would not change its position on the US-sponsored diplomatic "road map" in the short time left before Israel's national elections.
Netanyahu's comments follow statements he made soon after taking office last week that the plan is off the agenda until after the US campaign against Iraq, a position at odds with the government's stated position.
The peace plan issue has turned into a political football between Netanyahu and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, with some observers saying Netanyahu wants to close ranks with Sharon on this issue to keep the prime minister from portraying the new foreign minister as someone whose positions will hurt US-Israeli relations.
Last week, Sharon hinted a total rejection of the so-called "road map" would hurt Israel's chances to secure US economic aid packages.
Netanyahu spoke over the weekend with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who congratulated him on his new position.
According to Netanyahu's office, the foreign minister said his positions are well known, but he has no intention of changing the government's policies in the short time remaining before the elections.
The Quartet, comprised of the US, European Union, the UN and Russia, is scheduled to hold a meeting on the peace plan sometime in mid-December. By that time the Likud primary will most likely have been held, and Israel will have submitted its position to the US.
According to this plan, after genuine security and administrative reform in the Palestinian Authority, including Palestinian elections, a Palestinian state with provisional borders is to be established by the end of next year. Israel and this provisional state would then negotiate a final status deal, scheduled to be completed by 2005.
The Prime Minister's Office, together with the Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry, are drawing up Israel's position on the paper, and Sharon is slated to convene a meeting on the matter on Monday.
Sharon and former foreign minister Shimon Peres expressed reservations to the plan, but never rejected it outright. The widespread feeling among Israeli and US diplomatic officials is the plan has little chance of gaining traction until after the expected US campaign in Iraq.
Israel submitted preliminary reservations to the road map to US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns when he was here last month, and is expected to submit its written response to the plan by December. The Palestinians are also expected to submit their response by then.
According to one diplomatic official, however, Israel's response will probably not be submitted until after the Likud primary. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield is slated to arrive this week, and this issue is expected to be on the agenda.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu, in his conversation with Berlusconi, asked him to look into the possibility of Israel joining the European Union. This idea has been put on the table by some members of the European Parliament, and has gained a degree of support in Italy.
----
Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Suspected of Planning Bus Attacks
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/middleeast/10MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 9 - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a leader of the militant group Islamic Jihad in the West Bank city of Jenin today, ending a three-week manhunt, Israeli security officials said.
Israel accused the man, Iyad Sawalha, of masterminding two attacks on Israeli buses that killed 31 people. In each case, the most recent on Oct. 21, a vehicle driven by Palestinian suicide bombers blew up beside a bus's fuel tank.
Later today, an Israeli soldier was killed and an officer was wounded in a roadside bombing in the Gaza strip, near the Netzarim settlement. Islamic Jihad claimed that the explosion was in retaliation for Mr. Sawalha's killing.
The shooting of Mr. Sawalha came as members of other Palestinian groups prepared to meet on Sunday in Cairo to discuss the course of the conflict, now more than two years old, and a possible limited cease-fire.
Operating on intelligence from Israel's Shin-Bet security service, Israeli soldiers seeking to arrest Mr. Sawalha surrounded a house near Jenin's old market, then opened fire after being fired upon, the Israeli security officials said. Grenades were also thrown from the house, the Israeli officials said.
The officials said that, once the firing stopped, soldiers entered the house and found Mr. Sawalha dead. Two soldiers were slightly injured by a grenade.
Mr. Sawalha, 28, was the latest Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin to have inherited his post after his predecessor was killed or arrested by Israel. After a partial withdrawal, Israeli forces again seized all of Jenin after the Oct. 21 bombing, in what the army called an operation to pursue Mr. Sawalha and his cell. Israel also held Mr. Sawalha responsible for other bombings and attempted attacks.
In Gaza City, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, pledged that the group would "continue resistance against the enemy anywhere, anytime."
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, criticized the killing, which came just after the start of Ramadan. "It is a very big crime that was committed through military aggression against our people and against our holidays," he said at his headquarters in Ramallah.
Representatives of Mr. Arafat's Fatah faction are planning to meet in Cairo with members of Hamas, another Islamic group. Since the summer, leaders of Fatah have been discussing with Hamas the possibility of a limited cease-fire, and Fatah members said the Cairo talks would continue that dialogue.
But Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a political leader of Hamas in Gaza, said the talks would focus more on improving relations between Fatah and Hamas, which have been particularly tense since Hamas members killed a senior Fatah security official in Gaza last month.
He suggested that only Israel was interested in a truce that would end suicide attacks. "Israel is trying its best to talk about how this meeting will lead to a cease-fire or ending the martyrdom operations," he said. "Is it Israel that determines the agenda for negotiations? If this is the case, I don't think anybody from Hamas will participate."
An American envoy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield, is expected to arrive in the region on Monday to promote a Bush administration "road map" for peace and a Palestinian state in 2005. The plan calls for Palestinian civic and security reform and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank cities, as well as an eventual settlement freeze. Both sides here have criticized the plan.
--------
Israeli Helicopters Fire Into Gaza After Palestinian Shooting Attack
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Gaza.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli helicopters fired rockets into a body shop in downtown Gaza City early Monday, touching off a large fire, witnesses say.
The helicopters shot at least eight rockets into the shop, believed to be empty at the time. There was no immediate word on casualties.
The Israeli military declined immediate comment. However, Israel has frequently targeted such shops in the past, saying Palestinian militants use them to manufacture weapons.
The airstrike came about two hours after a Palestinian shooting attack on a communal farm in northern Israel that left five people dead.
During much of the 2-year-old Palestinian uprising, Israel has responded to Palestinian attacks with airstrikes. However, Israel had largely halted the practice and instead has relied on troops that have been occupying Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank for the past several months.
-------- nato
Clouds hang over NATO's big bang expansion
Sunday November 10, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021110/1/34kdx.html
NATO is set to agree to a "big bang" expansion at a landmark summit in Prague this month, but clouds will hang over the party, notably on the Alliance's role in the post-September 11 world.
The 19-member alliance is expected to give the green light for up to seven new ex-communist states at the November 20-21 summit, in its biggest enlargement ever into the former Soviet bloc.
But while the new members will no doubt celebrate, NATO members are grappling with a wide range of problems, including notably Europe's stark military weakness compared to the US.
Other clouds include the looming threat of US-led military action against Iraq, which is only serving to highlight the power gap between the US and Europe since the end of the Cold War.
"There are elements on the American right who think that the Europeans are worse than useless," said Dena Allin of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) in London.
NATO chief George Robertson, deeply aware of the risk of drifting into irrelevance, repeatedly calls on the Alliance's European members to increase their defence spending.
Europe's military expenditure is dwarfed by the United States, which spends more than double the EU's combined defence budget, which stood at 118 billion euros (116 billion dollars) in 2001.
"It's a question of modernisation or marginalisation," Robertson said recently.
The Prague summit has been long awaited by nine ex-communist states hoping to join the Alliance.
Three former Soviet bloc countries -- the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary -- joined the Alliance in 1999.
Until barely a year ago, the list of expected new members was fairly short. Russia has long opposed further NATO expansion, and barely four countries were tipped to get the thumbs up in Prague.
But September 11 changed all that: the geo-political shift which overnight put Russia on the same side as the West in the fight against terrorism.
The main beneficiaries, according to diplomats, are Romania and Bulgaria, which have squeezed onto the list of five tipped for membership: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia.
While most officials insist the definitive decision will taken only in Prague, two other Balkan countries, Macedonia and Albania, are formally candidates but are not holding their breath.
-------- pakistan
Party Chief Wants U.S. Out of Pakistan
Associated Press
November 10, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-paki10nov10,0,6786407.story
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A leader of Pakistan's religious right, coming off the bloc's best election showing in the country's 55-year history, demanded Saturday that the U.S. military leave the country.
"We were opposed to their war in Afghanistan before, and we are opposed now. The vote of the people was clear: They want them out of Pakistan," Maulana Fazlur Rehman said in an interview.
Last month's general elections, the first since military rule was imposed here in 1999, gave the religious right 59 seats out of 342 in parliament. The pro-military party won 103 seats, far short of the 172 needed to form a government. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's party controls 80 seats and may form an alliance with the religious bloc.
The six-party alliance of religious parties, of which Rehman's party is a dominant partner, campaigned almost exclusively on an anti-American platform. It demanded U.S. soldiers leave Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, criticizing President Pervez Musharraf's support for the war on terrorism.
Rehman's lieutenant, Mir Hussain Gillani, added that it was the religious duty of every Pakistani Muslim to protect and offer sanctuary to Taliban forces and Al Qaeda members.
He said Osama bin Laden was not a terrorist. "Osama is one of the biggest followers of Islam," he said. "What has the United States and the West proven that he has done?"
-------- spy agencies
MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'
Startling revelations by French intelligence experts back David Shayler's alleged 'fantasy'about Gadaffi plot
Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4543555,00.html
British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.
The latest claims of MI6 involvement with Libya's fearsome Islamic Fighting Group, which is connected to one of bin Laden's trusted lieutenants, will be embarrassing to the Government, which described similar claims by renegade MI5 officer David Shayler as 'pure fantasy'.
The allegations have emerged in the book Forbidden Truth , published in America by two French intelligence experts who reveal that the first Interpol arrest warrant for bin Laden was issued by Libya in March 1998.
According to journalist Guillaume Dasquié and Jean-Charles Brisard, an adviser to French President Jacques Chirac, British and US intelligence agencies buried the fact that the arrest warrant had come from Libya and played down the threat. Five months after the warrant was issued, al-Qaeda killed more than 200 people in the truck bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The arrest warrant was issued in connection with the murder in March 1994 of two German anti-terrorism agents, Silvan and Vera Becker, who were in charge of missions in Africa. According to the book, the resistance of Western intelligence agencies to the Libyan concerns can be explained by MI6's involvement with the al-Qaeda coup plot.
The Libyan al-Qaeda cell included Anas al-Liby, who remains on the US government's most wanted list with a reward of $25 million for his capture. He is wanted for his involvement in the African embassy bombings. Al-Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al-Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996.
Astonishingly, despite suspicions that he was a high-level al-Qaeda operative, al-Liby was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad. The raid discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda 'manual for jihad' containing instructions for terrorist attacks.
The Observer has been restrained from printing details of the allegations during the course of the trial of David Shayler, who was last week sentenced to six months in prison for disclosing documents obtained during his time as an MI5 officer. He was not allowed to argue that he made the revelations in the public interest.
During his closing speech last week, Shayler repeated claims that he was gagged from talking about 'a crime so heinous' that he had no choice but to go to the press with his story. The 'crime' was the alleged MI6 involvement in the plot to assassinate Gadaffi, hatched in late 1995.
Shayler claims he was first briefed about the plot during formal meetings with colleagues from the foreign intelligence service MI6 when he was working on MI5's Libya desk in the mid-Nineties.
The Observer can today reveal that the MI6 officers involved in the alleged plot were Richard Bartlett, who has previously only been known under the codename PT16 and had overall responsibility for the operation; and David Watson, codename PT16B. As Shayler's opposite number in MI6, Watson was responsible for running a Libyan agent, 'Tunworth', who was was providing information from within the cell. According to Shayler, MI6 passed £100,000 to the al-Qaeda plotters.
The assassination attempt on Gadaffi was planned for early 1996 in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. It is thought that an operation by the Islamic Fighting Group in the city was foiled in March 1996 and in the gun battle that followed several militants were killed. In 1998, the Libyans released TV footage of a 1996 grenade attack on Gadaffi that they claimed had been carried out by a British agent.
Shayler, who conducted his own defence in the trial, intended to call Bartlett and Watson as witnesses, but was prevented from doing so by the narrow focus of the court case.
During the Shayler trial, Home Secretary David Blunkett and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw signed Public Interest Immunity certificates to protect national security. Reporters were not able to report allegations about the Gadaffi plot during the course of the trial.
These restrictions have led to a row between the Attorney General and the so-called D-Notice Committee, which advises the press on national security issues.
The committee, officially known as the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee, has objected to demands by the prosecution to apply the Official Secrets Act retrospectively to cover information already pub lished or broadcast as a result of Shayler's disclosures. Members of the committee, who include senior national newspaper executives, are said to be horrified at the unprecedented attempt to censor the media during the trial.
Shayler claims Watson later boasted that there had been MI6 involvement in the Libyan operation. Shayler was also planning to call a witness to the conversation in which the MI6 man claimed British intelligence had been involved in the coup attempt.
According to Shayler, the woman, an Arabic translator at MI5, was also shocked by Watson's admission that money had been paid to the plotters.
Despite the James Bond myth, MI6 does not have a licence to kill and must gain direct authorisation from the Foreign Secretary for highly sensitive operations. Malcolm Rifkind, the Conservative Foreign Secretary at the time, has repeatedly said he gave no such authorisation.
It is believed Watson and Bartlett have been relocated and given new identities as a result of Shayler's revelations. MI6 is now said to be resigned to their names being made public and it is believed to have put further measures in place to ensure their safety.
A top-secret MI6 document leaked on the internet two years ago confirmed British intelligence knew of a plot in 1995, which involved five colonels, Libyan students and 'Libya veterans who served in Afghanistan'.
Ashur Shamis, a Libyan expert on radical Islam said: 'There was a rise in the activities of the Islamic Fighting Group from 1995, but many in Libya would be shocked if MI6 was involved.'
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Syria warns of traps in UN resolution
AFP
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2002 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?artid=27880673
CAIRO: Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara said Sunday that a new UN disarmament resolution averted a war against Iraq for now, but conceded it could contain "traps" and warned Baghdad to tread carefully.
When asked by journalists to explain why Syria voted on Friday in favor of UN Security Council resolution 1441, Shara said the measure helped spare Iraq from what appeared to be an immediate and "inevitable strike".
"The resolution rules out the specter of war for several weeks or several months," he said on the sidelines of a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, who are working to ensure Iraq accepts the resolution.
Shara said Syria, the only Arab country with a seat on the 15-member Security Council, voted in favor "after having obtained assurances and guarantees that this resolution contains no clause allowing the use of force against Iraq."
He added Syria had received the assurances on this from France, Russia and the United States, and said "for now, it is impossible to strike Iraq".
The resolution calls on Iraq to accept a tough new inspection regime or face "serious consequences."
Iraq has until November 15 to accept what the council called "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations."
However, Shara conceded, there are "points which are not very clear, some details contain traps and ambiguities which can be negative. We hope that our Iraqi brothers do not yield to American provocations from now on, because the provocations are a means which the United States is counting on a lot to say Iraq has not respected UN resolutions," he added.
In a bid to decrease the chances of war, Shara said Syria will try to "convince the UN Security Council to have Arab inspectors join the teams which will travel to Iraq. If war erupts, it will be provoked by a spark, and this spark will be a report from the inspectors," he said.
US President George W. Bush, who has been calling for military action in Iraq if it fails to comply with its disarmament obligations, said Friday the resolution did not tie US hands.
Meanwhile, Syria's state-run media said Sunday Damascus would make "all efforts possible to ensure the lifting of the unjust sanctions imposed on Iraq" since the 1991 Gulf War.
"If the intentions are good, the mission of international arms inspectors to Iraq will finish quickly. It will then be possible to demand a lifting of the sanctions that have hurt the Iraqi people enormously," the Tishrin newspaper wrote.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Saturday that Iraqi compliance with Resolution 1441 would clear the way for the lifting of the UN sanctions regime.
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UNITED NATIONS
U.N. Plans Immediate Test of Iraq Inspections
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/middleeast/10DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - United Nations weapons inspectors plan to force an early test of Saddam Hussein's intentions by demanding a comprehensive list of weapons sites and checking whether it matches a list of more than 100 priority sites compiled by Western experts, Bush administration and United Nations officials say.
The officials said the site list had been quietly put together in the last several months, winnowed down from more than 800 in the United Nations' database. The short list was derived from the findings of previous weapons inspections and the latest intelligence culled from defectors and other sources by American and other intelligence experts.
Fortified by the approval on Friday of a tough Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq comply with a new inspection regime, United Nations officials are expected on the ground in Iraq on Nov. 18. A week or so later, the first inspectors are to arrive and begin their work.
A provision in the resolution says that any "false statements or omissions" regarding weapons sites would constitute a "material breach of Iraq's' obligations."
Many experts say Mr. Hussein is more likely to defy the inspectors than to cooperate. But the concern in the administration is to make sure any defiance by Iraq is beyond dispute. Only then could the administration convince the United Nations, its allies and Americans in general that war is necessary.
Many administration officials say they would far prefer a bold rebuff by Mr. Hussein, rather than have him seem to cooperate but actually try to run out the clock with evasions and confusing tactics in the hope that support for war will subside. Speed is important, military experts say, because the cooler winter months, ending in February or March, are the optimal time for an attack against Iraq.
The inspection team is to be led by Hans Blix, executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic. Mr. Blix, who is to lead the inspections of biological and chemical weapons, said this week that the first team of inspectors would number between 80 and 100. Mohamed ElBaradei is to lead the team of nuclear weapons inspectors.
Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei have personally assured top Bush administration officials - including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary - that their teams will be assertive in their demands of inspection sites. Their first order of business is to ask for Mr. Hussein's list of such sites.
Administration officials say it should be easy to tell whether those sites match the ones on the inspectors' list. But not everyone is convinced.
Martin Indyk, a former staff member of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, recalled that while monitoring Iraq inspections in the 1990's, he frequently went to bed at night convinced that Washington had solid intelligence information on weapons sites. But often, he said, the next morning showed nothing was there. "There's a risk in the whole enterprise of not finding anything," he said.
Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who will be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the new Senate, said: "The inspectors may have some success unearthing things and revealing them to the world. But my own view is that it will be very difficult to find and discover the evidence. How can you tell if a kettle where shampoo is being made was once used to make anthrax?"
As for Mr. Hussein's list of sites, people with experience in the matter recall that shortly after the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, Mr. Hussein declared that Iraq had no nuclear weapons or biological programs but that his forces had already used chemical weapons.
"It was a blatantly false declaration," said Timothy McCarthy, a former weapons inspector. "As we went along, the lies became smaller and more calculated."
"I suspect that the chances are better than even that Iraq will come clean on something, maybe something of importance," Mr. McCarthy said. "It will be something like, `We just discovered that a Republican Guard officer had kept two anthrax bombs in his family's villa. He died and his wife called and told us about it.' The Iraqis then hand the information over to Unmovic and say: look how we're cooperating. That would be very consistent with prior Iraqi strategy."
One way of provoking a confrontation would be for weapons inspectors to demand to go to a site and find the Iraqis either blocking it or delaying the inspectors' entry, providing time for removal of any incriminating evidence.
"You know, they slammed the doors to the Agricultural Ministry and left people in the parking lot," Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said last week, referring to what happened in the late 1990's.
To thwart such tactics, experts say, the United States would have to use spy planes to monitor compliance with a demand that the Iraqis freeze the site, with nothing - not even a donkey cart - allowed to go in or out. Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, has said that a delay of only two hours in a requested entry should constitute a violation.
But some experts think it might be hard to turn Iraqi dilatory tactics into a justification for war.
"The likelihood of Saddam providing a very clear noncooperation is small," said Ivo H. Daalder, who was on the National Security staff under Mr. Clinton. "He's likely to cooperate sufficiently for the process to continue. Is a two-hour delay in entering a building sufficient to lead to war, if, on the other hand, there is sufficient progress in visiting sites and gathering material and destroying it?"
Administration officials and experts say the inspections team faces an early quandary as to how quickly to demand access to highly sensitive sites, where incriminating evidence is most likely to be found. The experts say the inspectors cannot move so quickly that it looks like a deliberate provocation to Iraq.
Anything that smacks of a deliberate challenge, aimed at instigating Iraqi countermeasures, might alienate the French or the Russians. The administration is counting on French, Russian and Arab envoys to try to persuade Mr. Hussein behind the scenes to cooperate with the inspections if he wants to avoid war.
"Let's say that Saddam, despite all his past history, manages to subtly suppress the evidence of weapons of mass destruction, but give the impression that he is cooperating," Mr. Lugar said. "We then come to a dilemma. We have to say: cough it up or suffer the consequences. It could lead to a very difficult situation."
U.S. Blackmail, Iraq Says CAIRO, Nov. 9 (AP) - Iraq accused the United States today of blackmailing the United Nations to adopt a "bad and unjust" resolution requiring the government to eliminate weapons of mass destruction or face serious consequences.
The Iraqi News Agency said the leadership "will study quietly this resolution and will issue the proper response in the next few days."
"The whole world knows that the approval of this resolution was a result of U.S. blackmail and pressure exerted on the Security Council members," the agency said.
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At Navy school in Monterey, voices of skepticism about Iraq war
Robert Collier
E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
San Francisco Chronicle
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NucNews/pending?view=1&msg=676
When former Secretary of the Navy James Webb gave a speech last Thursday at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey slamming the Bush administration's threatened war with Iraq, an outsider might have expected the officers assembled there to give him a frosty reception.
In fact, the opposite occurred. The respectful, admiring welcome he received gave an unusual, somewhat counterintuitive glimpse into the often- closed world of the U.S. military. Among the Naval Postgraduate School's students and faculty, at least, it seems that independent, critical thinking is alive and well.
Granted, Webb is no outsider. A much-decorated former Marines officer, he became assistant defense secretary and secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration -- quitting the latter job in 1988 to protest budget cutbacks in the Navy's fleet expansion program.
In recent months, Webb has been a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, calling it, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, a distraction from the fight against al Qaeda.
But in his introduction before a packed auditorium, the school's superintendent, Rear Adm. David Ellison, called Webb a "military hero" and a "dedicated public servant."
Webb took the baton and ran with it, warning that a war in Iraq -- and a possible long-term occupation of the country -- would be a critical mistake.
"We should not occupy territory in Iraq," he said. "Do you really want the United States on the ground in that region for a generation?
"I don't think Iraq is that much of a threat," said Webb, an opinion rarely heard among current or former Republican administration officials.
But Webb recalled proudly that as Navy secretary in 1987, "I was the only one in the Reagan administration who opposed the tilt toward Iraq in the war with Iran," referring to the U.S. sharing of intelligence and arms with Saddam Hussein's forces.
The reaction at Monterey to Webb's speech might have surprised Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has led the administration's charge on Iraq.
"His reputation may be controversial, but a lot of things he said we tend to agree with," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Paul Tanks, a graduate student in space systems operations.
The Naval Postgraduate School, at least in civilian circles, does not have the name recognition of military institutions like West Point. But it is a premier school for the U.S. armed services, giving master's and Ph.D. degrees to mid-level officers of the Navy and other branches. About one-quarter of its student body is foreign, from the armed forces of 45 nations.
Some departments, such as meteorology and computer science, rank with the best of U.S. civilian universities.
"The military is not monolithic," said John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis who was in the audience Thursday. "These are all military officers, they're very sensible people, and Webb is a very, very thoughtful guy."
Arquilla, like Webb, is one of the military's critical thinkers, an oft- quoted expert on what he calls "network theory" -- studying decentralized organizations like al Qaeda.
"Iraq is a terrible detour from what we ought to be doing," Arquilla said. "The real threat is from the al Qaeda network. Saddam is a minimal threat to us. He knows that if he uses any of his weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies, we're going to nuke him into glass, but if al Qaeda uses them, what are we going to retaliate against? Whom do we target?"
Arquilla explained that many students agree with Webb. Military officers, he said, are far from the hard-line, uncritical followers that most civilians think they are.
"Most of my students are in special operations, they want to be challenged, they are off-design thinkers by nature," Arquilla said.
"Overall, military officers have a great openness of mind. There's a great capacity for innovative thinking. They've seen a lot, they've done a lot, they come here at mid-career. Now, we're getting many who are rotating out of Afghanistan. This isn't like four-star generals who are just thinking how to protect their conventional force structures."
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US ready for war 'by next month'
November 10 2002
By Julian B Washington, Richard Norton-Taylor,
UK Guardian
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/09/1036308527668.html
Even as the UN weapons inspectors pack their bags for a daunting trip to Iraq later this month, the Pentagon is steadily building up its forces in the region and is expected to be ready for battle by as early as next month, military analysts said on Friday.
The Bush administration is deeply sceptical of the inspectors' chances of disarming Saddam Hussein's regime and is convinced that a conflict is almost inevitable. The Pentagon wants to be in a position to strike quickly if a crisis over inspections is reached, and would prefer that moment of truth to come on its timetable - when it has its troops and equipment in place and before the cool winter months are over.
In contrast to the Bush administration, the British Government has been extremely wary of being accused of sabre-rattling. Military commanders have been increasingly frustrated at the failure of their political masters to give the go-ahead to a British force because of their reluctance to be seen as "interfering" in the diplomatic process. However, Britain is poised to announce the mobilisation of thousands of troops and reservists, probably to coincide with the seven-day deadline for Baghdad to declare its intention to comply with the UN resolution. "We will have to put our money where our mouth is," a British defence official said.
The speed with which the US could go into battle would depend on the size of the force the Pentagon wanted to use. A light force could go into battle by early December, according to Patrick Garrett, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington thinktank.
"If it's going to be a force of 130,000, that has been talked about, I would be looking at some time in mid-December," Mr Garrett said.
Colin Robinson, an analyst at the Centre for Defence Information in Washington, believes a conflict is more likely after the New Year, partly for political reasons. "We believe it's going to start in January or February," he said "The inspection process has to be given time to play out, and it's the best time of year."
Mr Robinson also pointed out that by early January, the US will have gathered a formidable armada in the seas around Iraq.
General Tommy Franks, the head of the US central command, is due to arrive in Qatar at the end of this month with 600 of his senior staff officers, ostensibly for a week-long exercise, but Pentagon officials say it is quite likely a working command post will be left in place after the war games are over.
The headquarters of two of the army and marine units likely to play a leading role in any Iraqi conflict have been ordered from their bases in the US and Germany to Kuwait, where there are already more than 10,000 troops. The total number of US troops in the Gulf region is thought to be as high as 50,000. Huge amounts equipment from stockpiles in the US and Germany are bound for the Gulf to add to the supplies already in the region.
B1 heavy bombers have been sighted in Oman, and preparations are being made to deploy B2s, the batwing stealth bombers most likely to strike the first blow in any conflict.
The number of RAF aircraft in the region may be tripled, and British military commanders have already joined their US counterparts in Qatar.
Mr Robinson said the other "flashing light" was the order last month for the transfer of the US army's German-based 5th corps headquarters to Kuwait.
Navy cargo ships have taken to sea to transport armour and other equipment, reportedly including mobile bridges, to Gulf bases.
"If you really want an indicator they are planning an invasion, it's bridging equipment because you need it to cross the Tigris and Euphrates," Mr Garrett said. "And now they're shipping it. That's pretty clear."
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Building a War:
As Some Argue, Supply Lines Fill Up
By William M. Arkin E-Mail: warkin@igc.org.
November 10 2002
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-op-1arkin10nov10,0,1294130.story
WASHINGTON -- In all the to-and-fro of debate over whether the United States should or will wage war against Iraq, almost no one was paying attention to Maj. Gen. Kenneth Privratsky. Outside the tight little world of the Military Traffic Management Command, almost no one had even heard of him. Yet Privratsky's former assignment may tell us more about the true intent and direction of the Bush administration than all the diplomatic pronouncements, political maneuvers and United Nations debates put together.
Privratsky was busy shipping thousands of tons of military equipment and supplies to the network of new U.S. bases that have sprung up like dragon's teeth across Central Asia and the Middle East. Among the resources he was using was the Russian railway system.
"I never imagined that I would be involved in shipping cargo through Russia," the former Traffic Command chief says, seeming a little awed to have found himself running Army supply trains through the heartland of his former Cold War enemy.
An army marches on its stomach, Napoleon famously observed. There is no more voracious military stomach than the U.S. armed forces. And since the war on terrorism began with Americans fighting in Afghanistan, the Defense Department has moved with notable agility to extend its globe-girdling capacity to march. It is this massive buildup of military capabilities -- and the way it ropes in reluctant partners, sometimes publicly and sometimes privately -- that shows where senior officials in the Bush administration are headed.
Some analysts have suggested that U.N. weapons inspections may reduce the likelihood of war. That is not how senior White House and Pentagon officials see it. None believes Saddam Hussein will permit effective inspections, but they see the U.N. effort as a win-win situation: The inspections process will improve the political climate for eventual action and buy time for the Pentagon to get ready. The war that Bush and his team think is necessary and inevitable will thus come with the approval of both Congress and the U.N. Meanwhile, one of the main practical obstacles to war with Iraq will have been dealt with: The enormous infrastructure needed to supply and sustain today's armed forces against Iraq is being constructed on the foundations of the system created for the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan war, initiated just 26 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, set in motion the third-biggest airlift effort in history, after the Berlin airlift of 1948-49 and the allied buildup following the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But it was not enough. Sea-lift and surface shipments were needed too. Ships carried ammunition, military supplies and humanitarian aid to Persian Gulf and Pakistani ports for American and coalition forces to the south and west. In the north, containers were unloaded at ports in the Netherlands and Germany, in the Russian Arctic, on the Black Sea, and in Vladivostok in the Russian far east.
These shipments made their way to U.S. forces operating for the first time in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the jumble of other 'stans, using a complex system of rail lines that included those of the former Soviet Union and its old satellites. The Russian system was especially fragile, ground down by decades of communist mismanagement and neglect. But U.S. logistics specialists and U.S. materiel made it work. The new system could not only handle vastly larger quantities of material but do so at substantially lower cost. For example, flying the first 1.4 million humanitarian rations into Afghanistan cost more than $7 per meal; sending the next million rations via surface transportation cost just 15 cents per meal.
By the time Privratsky and his colleagues had the surface routes fully operational, they were handling 92% of all military cargo used in Afghanistan. Today, that system is being retooled for Iraq. Many bases in the Persian Gulf region can serve as well for war in Iraq as they have for Afghanistan. And the reduced scale of military operations in Afghanistan -- along with greater allied military involvement there -- is freeing up resources for the next conflict.
To understand the scale of the effort underway, one must look at the Pentagon's evolving war plans. Prior to Sept. 11, Central Command's blueprint for war with Iraq, OPLAN 1003-98, calculated that 10 airfields and six seaports would be needed to sustain air, ground and naval forces. As the plan has evolved, force levels have grown and the requirement for airfields and seaports has risen to 18 and 13 respectively. OPLAN 1003-98 calls for more than 60,000 short tons in supplies a day, the equivalent of some 3,500 tractor-trailers driving the distance from Tampa, Fla., to Savannah, Ga., every day -- or 5,000 flights by C-130 Hercules cargo planes.
It is the logistical equivalent of loading up, moving and unloading everyone and everything in the city of Norfolk, Va. -- population 230,000 -- including all the automobiles, to the Middle East. Fortunately for the Pentagon, Kuwait has given carte blanche for the use of its airfields, ports and warehouses in any upcoming war. Thanks to operations Southern and Northern Watch, which have patrolled the "no-fly" zones in Iraq for the last 12 years, the United States also has well-tended and continually expanded bases in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
Qatar formally entered the mix when Operation Enduring Freedom began last year. The base at the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean also stands ready to host heavy B-2 and B-52 bombers.
Not everyone is on board. Jordan has made it clear to Washington that it cannot overtly host American forces on its soil. Also, Saudi Arabia is uncomfortable with the direction of U.S. policy. Pentagon leaders, however, remain confident the Saudis will ultimately allow everything except the launching of offensive strikes from their soil. But even if the United States were to lose its modern command center and air base at Prince Sultan, the lineup of alternatives is impressive.
Though media attention has focused on the new U.S. base at Al Udeid in Qatar, the buildup in Oman looms largest in Pentagon calculations. Oman was not much used in Desert Storm, but it now has three major bases that could serve as alternatives to other bases in the Arab world. For years, the Pentagon has been stockpiling munitions in Oman. In December, B-1 bombers operating from Diego Garcia moved to Thumrait, Oman. That reduced the need for shipping munitions to the more distant British base, and it brought the planes closer to Iraq. Moreover, munitions have been moved to Oman from Azraq in Jordan.
Beyond the Middle East, U.S. bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia add to the capabilities against Iraq. Many of these bases had just become fully operational as the fighting in Afghanistan ended. Moreover, U.S. units stationed there are being augmented, and in some cases replaced, by French Mirages. F-16s are also expected from Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. More allied aircraft in Afghanistan means more U.S. planes free for duty elsewhere. If necessary, these planes and some of the new bases, with their established ship and rail supply lines through Russia, could even play a direct role against Iraq.
Remember, F-15E Strike Eagles flew combat missions from Kuwait around Iran into Afghanistan. There is no reason why similar missions could not be flown from Central Asia to Iraq. Aerial tankers stand ready at 17 locations, including places like Bulgaria. Next month, the U.S. Central Command will send a mobile command post and a staff of 600 to Qatar for "Exercise Internal Look." Their mission: to test the networks of communications and computers needed to link together air, naval, ground, special operations, intelligence and coalition partners' assets during an Iraq war.
The Pentagon, said CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, wants "to be sure that we have the right bandwidth lined up, to be sure that we can talk to our components." Even the laborious task of bringing in the heavy weapons and large formations of Army and Marine Corps troops is well advanced. Much of the heavy gear is already positioned in the region. Ships are bringing in more. The Dahl, for instance, left Charleston, S.C., on April 14 bound for the Persian Gulf with the largest shipment ever loaded on a Navy roll-on, roll-off transport.
Last week, as the United Nations Security Council debated and approved a resolution on Iraq, it is worth remembering that the best guide to White House intentions may be deeds, not words. By all signs, the necessary pieces of the great logistical puzzle are settling into place for war in early winter.
The Iraqis may chatter about whether the U.S. armed forces have what it takes for another war. The answer is just over the horizon, in all directions. And for those who worry about unilateralism, the Bush war machine seems to enjoy a surprising number of compliant, if not vocal, partners. Just look at Brig. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody, Privratsky's replacement, and her Russian railroad.
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THE MILITARY
War Plan in Iraq Sees Large Force and Quick Strikes
November 10, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/middleeast/10MILI.html
This article was reported and written by David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - President Bush has settled on a war plan for Iraq that would begin with an air campaign shorter than the one for the Persian Gulf war, senior administration officials say. It would feature swift ground actions to seize footholds in the country and strikes to cut off the leadership in Baghdad.
The plan, approved in recent weeks by Mr. Bush well before the Security Council's unanimous vote on Friday to disarm Iraq, calls for massing 200,000 to 250,000 troops for attack by air, land and sea. The offensive would probably begin with a "rolling start" of substantially fewer forces, Pentagon and military officials say.
Mr. Bush, speaking at a news conference on Thursday, did not discuss the secret process for planning a possible war, but he noted that if military action was required to compel Iraq to disarm, the United States and its allies would "move swiftly with force to do the job." He repeated his determination today, saying in his weekly radio address that "Iraq can be certain that the old game of cheat-and-retreat, tolerated at other times, will no longer be tolerated."
The military plan calls for the quick capture of land within Iraq, which would be used as bases to funnel American forces deeper into the country. That approach is intended to relieve some of the diplomatic pressure created by massing troops and initiating attacks from neighboring nations, including Saudi Arabia.
Under the plan, United States and coalition forces could operate out of such forward bases in northern, western and southern Iraq, building on lessons learned in Afghanistan, where the military seized a similar outpost south of Kandahar.
As the Pentagon puts the finishing touches on a plan of attack, White House and State Department officials are discussing what one senior official called a "seamless transition" from attack to a military occupation of parts of the country. It would include efforts to deliver food to Iraqis and to engage them quickly in planning for economic development and eventual democracy in areas that President Saddam Hussein has terrorized.
Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists and local military officials would be encouraged to reveal the location of hidden stores of weapons of mass destruction, a process Mr. Bush publicly encouraged from the Rose Garden on Friday when he told Iraqis that "by helping the process of disarmament, they help their country."
One senior official, drawing on comparisons with the American occupation of Japan in 1945, said, "Our message will be that the faster we find the weapons and arrest Saddam's guys, the faster they get some normalcy."
Mr. Bush, after several war-planning meetings with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the gulf, has decided that military action in Iraq would be carried out with the large troop levels that General Franks has consistently advocated. Even so, Mr. Bush can still maintain the formal position that no decision has been reached because he has not yet ordered the nation to war.
Even as the United Nations weapons inspectors prepare to fly to Iraq, the American military is moving into a new phase of positioning logistical forces that military officials say are significant indicators of a movement toward war.
The Army is loading tugboats, forklifts and other cargo-handling equipment onto the Tern, a giant cargo ship in Hampton Roads, Va., that is bound for the gulf to prepare ports for the arrival of tanks and other armored equipment.
But the orders to send those heavy ground forces have not been given. "We have a lot of things teed up to go if the big guys decide to send it," said one senior Defense Department official. "But no green lights yet."
Pentagon officials had been awaiting language from the Security Council because the timetable for the inspection process will shape the schedule of troop deployments and, ultimately, the start of any offensive that Mr. Bush may order.
Heavy equipment recently deployed to the gulf region will remain while inspections get underway, officials said. But troops and ships sent for exercises or regular duty might rotate with fresh forces if it appeared that the inspections were moving ahead without obstruction.
The plan still has some moving parts, senior administration officials said, but it calls for 200,000 to 250,000 troops - several Army and Marine divisions, aircraft carriers and Air Force wings. The only ally expected to contribute significant ground forces is Britain, with several thousand troops expected to participate.
"There were options within the plan, but there has only been one plan," one military officer said. "They have settled on the bulk of it." But the officer said the war plan maintains flexibility over the final deployment of troops in order to cope with a range of Iraqi responses.
The entire troop total may not necessarily be in the region when the offensive begins. The bulk of the force would probably stand ready in case of battlefield setbacks and be poised to occupy parts of Iraq as soon as resistance ends.
Under the plan, the air campaign would be less than the 43 days of the first gulf war, and probably under a month, military officials said.
In the opening hours of the air campaign, Navy and Air Force jets, including B-2 bombers carrying 16 one-ton satellite-guided bombs and B-1 bombers carrying 24 of the same weapons, would attack a range of targets from military headquarters to air defenses. Only 9 percent of the weapons dropped in the gulf war were precision-guided; this time, the figure would be well in excess of 60 percent, allowing more effective bombing with fewer total aircraft, officials say.
The campaign would quickly seek to cut off the country's leadership in Baghdad and a few other important command centers in hopes of causing a rapid collapse of the government, officials said.
As in Afghanistan, Special Operations forces would infiltrate Iraq early in the campaign to designate targets, to destroy sites holding weapons of mass destruction, and to seize other objectives to prevent Mr. Hussein from slowing the American assault by flooding the marshes in southern Iraq or igniting the country's vast oil fields, officials said.
Because the United States wants to help transform Iraq quickly into a liberated nation, the air campaign would be carried out to avoid the major destruction of the gulf war. The campaign would try to avoid destroying important city services and alienating the civilian population, and would also encourage Iraqi troops to defect. The targets of a bombing campaign would be the specific pillars of power holding up Iraq's government, like leadership headquarters and Mr. Hussein's sprawling presidential compounds.
"While we would not want to kill many Iraqi soldiers, if they stupidly fight, we will," a senior military official said.
Pentagon officials say the war plan does not envision a clean break between the end of an air campaign and the opening of a ground offensive, as in the first gulf war. Instead, ground operations would be more likely to be woven into the opening stages of the air war, with the aerial bombardment continuing "as long as we find targets," one official said.
The "inside-out" approach of attacking centers of power first aims to capitalize on the American military's ability to strike at long distances and to maneuver forces rapidly to neutralize a large target. One important aim would be to disrupt Mr. Hussein's ability to order the use of weapons of mass destruction. Another would be to wrest control of Baghdad from Iraqi forces without getting bogged down in block-by-block urban warfare.
But Mr. Hussein has proven to be a vicious adversary, and senior administration officials have mounted a campaign to warn Iraq's military commanders that they will be charged with war crimes if they unleash weapons of mass destruction. This week, Mr. Bush hinted at another concern, that the Iraqi government would purposefully sacrifice its population to stain an American military victory with civilian blood.
"The generals in Iraq must understand clearly there will be consequences for their behavior," Mr. Bush said on Thursday. "Should they choose, if force is necessary, to behave in a way that endangers the lives of their own citizens, as well as citizens in the neighborhood, there will be a consequence. They will be held to account."
Mr. Bush did not say so specifically, but veteran analysts of the Iraqi government say Mr. Hussein is preparing thousands of civilian volunteers to fill "martyrs' brigades" and offer up their lives to bombs and advancing troops, even though it is unclear how many would follow through.
Some of those volunteers would hope to slow the American-led offensive by acting as suicide bombers or fighting in neighborhood defense squads, but their true strategic goal would be to generate anti-American feelings in the region.
"There is no consideration about them triumphing over an enemy, but a second definition of victory," said Yossef Bodansky, author of "The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism." "What Saddam is saying to himself is, `I'll give them real civilian bodies, real civilian blood on Al Jazeera or CNN.' "
The move to war has already raised concerns of terrorist reprisals in the United States, and senior Pentagon officials say they anticipate a mobilization of the National Guard and Reserves equal to or larger than the 265,000 called to active duty in the first gulf war.
Most of these reserve forces would be assigned to guard sites like military installations, civilian power plants and airports, although some would be assigned to guard bases overseas and certain specialties would be required for the Iraqi offensive. Several units have been notified that they may be summoned to duty as early as January.
In another sign of the total force that may be involved in offensive action and post-war occupation of Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld has presented the White House with a plan to inoculate as many as 500,000 service members against smallpox. Mr. Bush has not yet decided on the vaccinations, which could have serious, even fatal, side effects for a small percentage of those receiving the vaccine.
The timetable for a war is closely tied to the requirements laid out in the Security Council's resolution and to Mr. Hussein's compliance. The last deadline is Feb. 21, when inspectors are to report their findings to the Security Council. Military planners say the longer nights and moderate weather then are optimal for war.
"The task the international community now faces is to determine what choice Saddam Hussein will make," Mr. Rumsfeld said on Friday, whether he will truly disarm or evade the inspectors.
----
Modern-day blitzkrieg
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Retired Air Force Gen. George Harrison
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/11/09/cnna.cnna.harrison/index.html
ATLANTA, Georgia -- Iraq has six days to let the United Nations know whether it will comply with the terms set out in a resolution passed unanimously by the Security Council Friday. CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper spoke with retired Air Force Gen. George Harrison about how a possible war in Iraq might be fought.
Cooper: In Jamie McIntyre's report they talked about a modern day blitzkrieg. Is that what this thing is going to look like?
Harrison: I think that's exactly what it'll look like. I think this war, if and when it comes, will be characterized by what I call shock and sustainment. It'll be an initial heavy blow, primarily air, but certainly supported by all kinds of other sorts of operations. But it won't be a one-time shot, it'll be a sustained operation so that the enemy -- the Iraqis -- don't have an opportunity to recover from the shock.
Cooper: Much like the last Gulf War...
Harrison: That's correct. That's right. Although this will be much more intense and much more precise. Remember we had mostly unguided bombs during the Gulf War. This time it'll be primarily guided bombs with ... accuracy errors down in the tens of feet area rather than in the hundreds of feet area.
Cooper: Is that because the weaponry has improved?
Harrison: The weaponry has significantly improved. The J-DAM that Jamie was just talking about ... the Joint Direct Attack Munition is a GPS-guided bomb. If you know the coordinates of the target it'll hit within 10 or 15 feet of the target.
Cooper: Now in Jamie's report, they talk about not only this aerial blitzkrieg with missiles, bombs ... also covert operations and psychological operations. Sounds a lot like the war in Afghanistan.
Harrison: Well it does. And it'll have some of those characteristics but it'll be much more intense it'll be much wider in scale, much broader in scope. The infrastructure in Iraq is more developed so the infrastructure, the things that sustain the Iraqi military machine can be targeted more precisely. As you recall we had a very vague enemy in the Taliban.
Cooper: There's been a lot made, and particularly by the Iraqis, of they're going to be fighting in the cities they're going to be defending the cities. And it may be talk, it may be bluster. How seriously do you think the United States should take that?
Harrison: Well I think the U.S. will take it very seriously but I think our planners understand that that is the Iraqis' strength and we'll avoid that kind of fighting. We don't want to get bogged down in city fighting digging out those 15,000 inner circle guards of Saddam's one at a time. And we'll figure out ways to approach that problem without getting bogged down in the city.
Cooper: In the last Gulf War so much was made about the Republican Guard and these highly elite trained troops and in the end ... after significant bombing they didn't seem so highly trained...
Harrison: A portion of the Republican Guard was ready to fight, unfortunately for them the U.S. Army was well-prepared and was able to move in with again, shock action and take out those Republican Guards that were willing to fight. They weren't a pushover by any means. That was a tough fight for the U.S. Army.
Cooper: So you think there will be opposition.
Harrison: There will be opposition.
Cooper: I want to move on to the Predator. Because so much attention was paid to elections a lot of people kind of missed this really significant operation in Yemen really conducted by a Predator drone that took out a suspected terrorist.
Harrison: That's right. It was almost "Star Wars" in its context, the way that it operated. The Predator as you know is essentially a radio-controlled model airplane. It's a fairly good-sized airplane, probably about the size of a Cessna 150, 172, something like that.
Cooper: As a kid I would've dreamed of a model airplane like this.
Harrison: It is really fantastic. But in addition to all the things that a model airplane pilot has, the flight controls, the radio controls, all those kinds of things, the operators of the Predator operate the sensors, the low light level TV, the infared sensor, the electro-optics, much like a television camera, and they have in addition to that on the Predator that was used in Yemen, the capability to fire Hellfire missiles from the Predator itself.
Cooper: And that is obviously a very significant capability. We don't want to give anything away that would adversely affect things, but what can you tell us about how this thing works? I mean, you don't need a person on the ground with a laser sight pointing at this truck. Theoretically this truck was driving along in a relatively unpopulated area in Yemen and what, these Predators are just flying around constantly?
Harrison: Well the Predator was hovering over the area. I'm sure that there was some kind of an intelligence operation that gave the operators of the Predator an idea that this is a place to look at, a place to have a Predator orbiting. The Predator was clearly in orbit, it had Hellfire missiles onboard.
Cooper: So you need intelligence to know what you're looking for.
Harrison: Sure, sure. You need intelligence with the TV camera to know where to point it. You have to have some queuing so that you know where to look. But once you know where to look, once they've focused on the primary target, they keep the target in sight, and then when it's time to take the target out, there is a laser which is coaligned with the sensor, whether it's the TV, the infared, whatever. The laser puts a spot on the target, the Hellfire is launched and the Hellfire goes after the laser spot.
Cooper: Now is this being done out of an AWACS and where they're circling overhead even higher or is it being done from a ground base?
Harrison: Probably from a ground-based operation which does not have to be very close to the Predator. It can be thousands of miles away.
Cooper: Is there any sense, and I don't know if it's public knowledge or not, how many Predators there are out there?
Harrison: I'm not sure. The Air Force operates one. I'm not sure about the numbers that have been published. The Air Force does operate one squadron of Predators. And the airplane is continuing to be produced. As a matter of fact, there's a follow-on model, the Predator B, which will be a little more powerful, fly a little higher and have longer endurance.
Cooper: We don't know who it was who had to give the order to fire that (Hellfire). My understanding from all the press reports is that the president of the United States has signed some sort of directive which no longer requires he be to say: "Go ahead and fire the missile."
Harrison: I'm not clear about the exact release procedure. We know that it was a CIA-operated Predator. That's been published. And I'm not sure that there's been any publication of the approval process. But clearly so many of these operations can conceivably go on at one time the president can't possibly authorize release of every single weapon.
Cooper: It would seem to be rather cost effective. Relatively speaking, a Predator drone, it's unmanned, it's cost-effective not only in cost but in risk to American lives.
Harrison: Well of course it is. And that's the great strength of uninhabited air vehicles. You don't have a pilot at risk. You don't have an American serviceman at risk. And although these things cost about $3 million that's still significantly less than the cost of an F-16 or an F-15E for instance.
Cooper: Going back to any possible action in Iraq. Do you think this is going to be unlike anything we've seen before?
Harrison: I think it'll be surprising in its characteristics. I think that the planners are working with very innovative approaches, the increased accuracy of the weapons for instance, the capability of the B-2 ... as you recall the F-117 dropped two bombs, the B-2 can drop 40 or 50 with the same degree of accuracy, with the same degree of undetectability.
Cooper: Long drawn-out campaign you think?
Harrison: Depends on Saddam. But I suspect it will be measured in weeks and months rather than years.
----
For Gulf War Veterans, A Conflict Within
November 10, 2002
By BILL LEUKHARDT,
Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/custom/topnews/hc-gulfvets1110.artnov10.story
The baffling illness that cripples Scott Lovely several days a month, without warning, now has a name: gulf war syndrome.
"It's like the worst flu. I have no energy, bad headaches and chronic fatigue," said Lovely, a 33-year-old South Windsor machinist. "One day I'm fine and can go out and play football, then next day it's like I'm 60 years old. I was angry about it at first. Now I've learned to live with it. I get $103 a month in disability from the VA. I'd much rather have my health back."
On Monday, the Army veteran has to work, so he'll miss the day's parades and ceremonies that will honor him and all the nation's veterans.
But work won't prevent Lovely, and Persian Gulf War vets across the state and nation, from thinking of their Desert Storm service and the very real possibility of another war with Iraq.
"If we're going to do it, do it right this time," Lovely said Friday from CMP Machine Co. Inc., where he works. "I would defend this country in a heartbeat. I think we should go back if we have the evidence. And no more screwing around. None of these games of you punch me, then I punch you and you punch me back."
Talk of a new conflict with Iraq has heated up since the U.N. Security Council's unanimous approval Friday of a tough resolution calling on Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences" that would almost certainly bring military action.
President Bush threatened Hussein with "the severest consequences" if he fails to disarm.
Hussein has until Friday to accept the resolution. If he does not, it could mean a war with Iraq, and the possibility of chemical and biological warfare. It also could mean far heavier American casualties than in the lightning-fast Operation Desert Storm.
Those possibilities have gulf war veterans, and other Americans, feeling conflicted, wanting to finally get Hussein out of the way while worrying that a lot of American lives could be lost in the process.
"I honestly believe we have to go back," said Robert J. Luminati of Sharon, who was just out of his teens when he served in the gulf war as a mechanic with an Army infantry division. "It needs to be done. There's no other way. [Hussein] is not going to leave on his own.
"If we go over again, it'll probably be a lot of fighting in cities, not just out cruising in the desert," said Luminati, who is now a husband and father and works as an electrician.
At the time, the war in the desert was viewed as a smashing victory, gained cheaply. With the passage of time, the full cost is becoming better known.
Of the approximately 700,000 gulf war veterans across the nation, including 7,000 in Connecticut, the Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that 198,716, or 28 percent, have filed heath-related compensation claims. Of those, 156,000 have been approved.
Almost 300 American servicemen and women died during Desert Storm from combat or other causes, such as accidents. Of those dead, seven men and one woman either lived here or had strong ties to Connecticut. Over the past 11 years, about 8,000 others have died from injuries and health problems associated with their wartime service.
Bruce Miller, a retired Marine in Putnam who served in Vietnam and in Desert Storm, said the combat he saw in Vietnam was much worse than what he experienced in Iraq.
"Desert Storm was a cakewalk compared to the Tet offensive," Miller said. "I didn't see much combat in Iraq. Everybody there was giving up to us.
"Of late, I've been worrying about the men and women who might be sent back over there," he said. "We'll have to use saturation bombing. Remember, Saddam has chemical weapons and he has the means of delivery. The guy is clever. I remember he had his tanks buried in the sands off the sides of the road. We missed them."
Maureen Knibloe, a nurse in the Air Force Reserve during Desert Storm, is a parent now, like many other gulf war veterans. "My feeling then was that it was something the U.S. had to take part in," said the East Windsor resident, who hasn't been in the military for five years. "This time scares me a bit. It could be an all-out war."
Not all gulf war veterans see the need for another conflict.
Some Desert Storm veterans, such as Air Force reservist Forte Ruscito, say the talk of war again with Iraq brings back memories - and makes him nervous.
"I think we should stay out of that business and take care of ourselves," said Ruscito, a former Hartford police officer now retired on disability. "We can't always go sticking our nose overseas in things we cannot fix. We don't take enough care of our own over here as it is."
Today, similar sentiments will be aired in New Haven when Doug Rokke, a retired Army major in charge of removing depleted uranium munitions from gulf battlefields, speaks from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Dwight Hall at Yale University. Rokke's stop is one of many anti-war meetings in New England this weekend.
John Palmieri of Monroe, a Navy veteran of the gulf war and a self-professed "George Bush Republican," probably won't go to any such gathering. But he isn't convinced the nation needs another war with Iraq.
"I think the U.S. needs to stop being the world's policeman," said Palmieri, now married, the father of a 14-month-old son and the co-owner of a computer business in Bridgeport. "We had our opportunity in the gulf. I don't think we should be going in unless the United Nations is involved."
Palmieri, 31, is now suffering from symptoms of gulf war syndrome but so far has not been approved for military disability benefits.
"I get severe joint pain. My symptoms come and go. After I came back, I was in my early 20s and I felt like an old man. Sometimes I don't pick up my son because I'm afraid I'll drop him," he said.
Palmieri, who remembers "the chemical alarms going off on our ship sometimes," said a new war with Iraq probably would be worse.
"Saddam has a nuclear program. If he uses the weapons he has ... mustard gases and other stuff... they'd have a very tough ground war. You could have square miles of people dead in an instant."
John T. Dunn, 33, of Old Saybrook, served in the gulf war as a civilian volunteer with the American Red Cross. He was a 20-year-old police dispatcher in Clinton when he signed up for Desert Storm. "The war came up and I felt I should do something," he said.
Now, he's unsure if a new war with Iraq is what America should do.
"It'll be a whole different war this time. Saddam would unleash worse weapons. The cost would be unreal. And we'd have to stay in Iraq six, seven, eight years after the war to rebuild it, like we did in Japan," he said. "I'm happy I'm not the person in position to have to make this decision."
Claire Salerno of Southington, whose son, Robert, served in the gulf war and is still in the Army, has some simple advice to any family with a member in the service: "Pray. It's the best you can do."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
THE 9/11 SUSPECT
White House Weighs Letting Military Tribunal Try Moussaoui, Officials Say
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/politics/10TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - The White House is weighing a proposal to abandon the Justice Department's prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui in a federal court, remove him from the United States and place him before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, administration officials say.
They said the proposal to shut down the civilian prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, reflected a growing fear in the government that legal problems faced by the Justice Department in pursuing the case might be insurmountable.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there had been no final decision on moving Mr. Moussaoui to the American military base in Cuba, the proposal had been discussed in recent weeks among lawyers at the White House counsel's office, the Pentagon and the Justice Department.
They said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was recently briefed by aides on the possibility that Mr. Moussaoui would be put under the Pentagon's control.
The officials said it was unclear if Attorney General John Ashcroft had weighed in with the White House on the issue, but they said that other senior officials at the Justice Department did not want to lose control of the case to the Pentagon and were urging the White House to hold off on a decision to abandon the trial.
Mr. Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French citizen, is facing trial next year in Alexandria, Va., on charges that he conspired in last year's terror attacks. Civilian and military lawyers said it was unclear whether the court-appointed lawyers assigned to advise Mr. Moussaoui would be able to prevent the administration from moving him to Cuba.
Mr. Moussaoui, who is trying to act as his own lawyer, has admitted that he is a member of Al Qaeda, but he has insisted that he had nothing to do with the attacks.
The legal problems for the Justice Department center on the refusal of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to meet Mr. Moussaoui's demand for access to witnesses and evidence that, his court-appointed lawyers say, could aid in his defense.
The defense is seeking access to a variety of recently captured Qaeda figures, most notably Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a young Yemeni who was apprehended in Pakistan last month. He is accused of being a crucial planner of the Sept. 11 attacks and is identified by name throughout Mr. Moussaoui's indictment.
"The Pentagon and the C.I.A. argue, quite justifiably, that they want to keep these terrorists in isolation and under interrogation," even if that means abandoning the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui, one official said.
Law enforcement officials have said that in secret court filings, Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers have argued that without the access, he will be deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to seek out witnesses who might prove his innocence.
The officials said the judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema, had appeared to be sympathetic to the defense arguments and, in court orders not released to the public, had ordered that some of the witnesses be made available.
In a military tribunal, officials said, Mr. Moussaoui would almost certainly have fewer procedural rights to seek testimony from witnesses, including the captured Qaeda leaders.
His transfer to a tribunal might also be a relief to the administration because it would end the chaos created at recent court hearings, which Mr. Moussaoui has used as opportunities for tirades denouncing the United States and its criminal justice system.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Pentagon's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, recently discussed the proposal to transfer Mr. Moussaoui to Guantánamo Bay with his counterparts in the White House counsel's office and at the Justice Department.
The official said that while Mr. Rumsfeld had been briefed on the proposal to move Mr. Moussaoui to Cuba, he had not yet been asked to lobby the White House in support of the proposal.
The officials emphasized that whatever was done with Mr. Moussaoui, he would face trial somewhere, whether in a civilian court or before a military tribunal. "It's not a question of whether he'll be brought to justice," said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It's a question of where and how."
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer who is president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said that a decision to move Mr. Moussaoui from a civilian courtroom to a tribunal might be a sign of "nimbleness" by the government in dealing with the novel national security issue created in the prosecution of Qaeda suspects since Sept. 11.
"A critical observer might say that this is an embarrassing change of course for the government, while a sympathetic observer would say this is the government showing flexibility in an evolving and complicated area of criminal law," Mr. Fidell said. "The last thing the government wants to do is lose a case like this because of some public relations problems."
A decision to abandon the Justice Department's case could create a predicament for Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed civilian lawyers, who would have to decide whether they had any standing to continue to represent him and whether they wanted to try to keep him from being transferred to military custody.
Criminal defense lawyers not associated with the case suggested that the court-appointed defense team might try to press Judge Brinkema to block Mr. Moussaoui's transfer until the federal courts decided the constitutionality of the government's use of the "enemy combatant" designation for Qaeda figures.
The issue has been the subject of a variety of court challenges since Sept. 11, most prominently in a case involving the Justice Department's efforts to deny a lawyer to Yasser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and is being held incommunicado in a Navy brig in Virginia.
Mr. Moussaoui has tried to fire the team of court-appointed lawyers assigned to him by Judge Brinkema, but she has allowed the lawyers to continue to appear in court and to file motions on his behalf.
One of the court-appointed lawyers, Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender for Eastern Virginia, said in an interview that he might welcome a decision by the Justice Department to dismiss the charges in Alexandria.
"Who can stop them?" Mr. Dunham said. "We would consider it a win." But he would not comment when asked if he and the other lawyers would then try to prevent Mr. Moussaoui from being transported to Cuba for a tribunal.
Officials said a recent court order from Judge Brinkema delaying Mr. Moussaoui's trial by nearly six months, to next June, had taken some of the pressure off the administration for a quick decision on whether to move him to a military tribunal.
But they said the decision might still have to be made within several weeks, given a series of more urgent deadlines for the government to respond to requests from the defense for access to witnesses and documents.
The defense team is also weighing what to do about pleas by Mr. Moussaoui's mother for a new psychiatric examination of her son. In an interview, his mother, Aicha el-Wafi, said that she had become alarmed about her son's physical and emotional condition after meeting with him last week in the jail.
"Every time I see him, he is deteriorating - getting worse and worse," Mrs. el-Wafi said, speaking through an interpreter. "He can't think rationally. He doesn't talk rationally. He keeps saying, `I am going to be out very soon.' "
Another of the court-appointed lawyers, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., said they were considering Mrs. el-Wafi's request for court permission for a new psychiatric examination. "A mother's instincts with respect to her son are something that we should respect," Mr. MacMahon said.
-------- terrorism
THE TERROR NETWORK
Victim Killed in Yemen Tied by U.S. to Cell in Buffalo
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/middleeast/10YEME.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - American officials said today that a United States citizen believed to have been killed in Yemen by an American missile was probably the ringleader of a group of six men from the Buffalo area identified by law enforcement officials as a sleeper cell of the Qaeda terrorist network.
One senior government official said that the name of one of those killed in the missile attack - a name provided by the Yemeni government - was a known alias of Kamal Derwish, one of two unindicted co-conspirators in the case brought against the six who were charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization.
Officials said Mr. Derwish was believed to be the recruiter of other immigrants living in the upstate New York community of Lackawanna. Officials said Mr. Derwish acted as a mentor to several young men in the immigrant community and enticed them to come to Pakistan for further religious training. Once there, they were sent to guerrilla training camps run by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, the officials said.
One United States official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that while it is believed that Mr. Derwish was killed in the attack, the evidence is not conclusive. The missile was fired by an unmanned Predator drone aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The C.I.A. declined to comment.
The missile attack last Sunday destroyed a car carrying a senior leader of Al Qaeda and five others. It was the first time that the C.I.A.'s armed version of the Predator, a drone aircraft used by the military for surveillance, has launched a missile strike against suspected terrorists outside of Afghanistan.
The primary target killed was Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, also known as Abu Ali. Earlier this week, Yemen identified one of the other passengers as Ahmed Hijazi. Now, U.S. officials say that name has been used by Mr. Derwish as an alias.
The government official said that clue, along with the belief of some American officials that Mr. Derwish had fled to Yemen and had been in contact with Abu Ali, led them to believe that Mr. Derwish was also killed in the attack. The official said that, before launching the attack, the CIA did not suspect that Mr. Derwish might be in the car. The identification of him as the American citizen killed in the Predator attack was first reported by Newsday.
Administration officials have made it clear, however, that they are not troubled by the fact that Mr. Derwish may have died in the attack, because he was considered a Qaeda operative and therefore a legitimate target.
United States officials today described the 29-year-old Mr. Derwish as a key link between Al Qaeda and the Lackawanna suspects.
In Lackawanna, one young man who asked not to be identified said he knew Mr. Derwish well. "For nearly three years I was his student," he said. He said he frequently saw all of the suspects with Mr. Derwish.
He said Mr. Derwish would often talk about the need for the young men to further their studies of Islam, which he said could best be done by going to Pakistan.
He said that Mr. Derwish typically held discussion groups with many young men in attendance and provided pizza and that Mr. Derwish was more effective at relating to young people than the local imam.
Supporters of those charged in the case have suggested that Mr. Derwish fooled the young men into believing that they were merely furthering their religious studies while he was recruiting them for Al Qaeda.
Munir Mohsin, 33, said he was suspicious of Mr. Derwish. "He wasn't a person like those other guys," he said. "He would stand around and talk to the kids" outside the mosque.
Mr. Derwish's role in persuading the men charged in New York to go to South Asia is likely to figure prominently in their defense. One lawyer who spoke to one of the defendants said today that, "It was clear that he was the one who convinced these guys to go over there."
The lawyer, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Derwish met the men in Karachi and then escorted them to al-Farooq, a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
The burning questions of hydrogen
EDITORIAL •
November 10, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20021110-99639400.htm
Burning clean and basically inexhaustible, some believe it is the Holy Grail of energy. Others suggest it is a gaseous dream rising on the rhetoric of environmental windbags. So, is an economy powered by hydrogen fuel cells possible? If so, what will it look like? How much will it cost to achieve this? In the meantime, what should policy-makers be doing about it?
One of the few things that the primary players agree on is the fact that a hydrogen-based economy is inevitable, for reasons of efficiency, environmental benefit and inexhaustibility. Hydrogen fuel cells have the potential to be almost twice as efficient as internal combustion engines, and emit as exhaust only air and water vapor. Hydrogen can extracted from both water and natural gas, so there's practically no possibility of a shortage.
The larger question is when to expect hydrogen to take over. For reasons of cost and convenience, oil currently dominates the energy landscape and natural gas is in the immediate background. Proven global oil reserves are about 1 trillion barrels, according to Department of Energy estimates. While oil production could peak sometime in the next half-century, that is not really the issue, since few expect dried-up oil reservoirs to be the cause of a hydrogen conversion.
Instead, hydrogen fuel cells are expected to become an economic mainstay when the formidable technological and financial challenges are overcome in ways sufficient to give them a cost advantage over internal combustion engines. One of the biggest technological difficulties is the lack of a safe, effective way to store hydrogen fuel. Another is reliability - laboratory fuel cells last about one-fifth as long as would be needed to make fuel cells cost-effective.
Indeed, cost is the biggest question. Electricity generated by fuel cells in custom-built cars currently costs thousands of dollars per kilowatt, so its price will have to fall by about a factor of ten before such cars are economically viable. Assuming that fuel storage problems can be solved, Edward Murphy, general manager for downstream operations for the American Petroleum Institute (API), estimated that there is about $1 trillion invested in liquid-fuel infrastructure which will have to be either modified or written off.
As General Motors' hydrogen fuel-cell development experts Lawrence D. Burns, J. Byron McCormick and Christopher E. Borroni-Bird pointed out in an article in the October issue of Scientific American, "Viewed from where we are today, fuel cells and a hydrogen fueling infrastructure are a chicken-and-egg problem. We cannot have large numbers of fuel-cell vehicles without adequate fuel available to support them, but we will not be able to create the required infrastructure unless there are significant numbers of fuel-cell vehicles on the roadways."
Another key question is where that hydrogen will come from. Hydrogen fuel cells work by breaking apart a molecule of two hydrogens into electrons and protons - an expensive proposition - then sending the electrons through an electric drive motor and recombining the particles with oxygen to produce water. While hydrogen is universally abundant, it's not cheap to get at, since it usually comes attached to other molecules. At the moment, fuel cells are actually energy losers, since it costs more to free the hydrogen than is earned by running hydrogen through fuel cells.
Many environmentalists hope that one day hydrogen will be extracted via renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaics or wind turbines, which would result in a practically zero-emissions economy. However, such a future is highly problematic. As Jessie Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University in New York noted, producing hydrogen from renewables is conceptually possible, but practically unlikely, because doing so requires too much energy.
Instead, Mr. Ausubel suggested that nuclear power may eventually provide the most cost-effective answer. He believes that, one day, power from nuclear plants will be used to provide electricity by day and hydrogen fuel by night. "It has always been the right...vision of the future, and in my opinion, its time has probably come," he said. But numerous experts believe such progress could be decades away at best.
There is far greater disagreement about what, if anything, policymakers should be doing to push the hydrogen economy forward. Mr. Ebell pointed out that some of the hype about hydrogen cars could be simply part of a bait-and-switch played by environmentalists, promising a bright future that never comes in return for making people live with less energy. He said, "My biggest fear is that people will think the economy can turn on a dime." Mr. Murphy of API pointed out that the government "has a long, sad history of picking the wrong fuels," and suggested that instead of directing product outcomes, the government should be allowing consumers to do so via the marketplace.
Over the last quarter-century, the government has already spent $1.2 billion on fuel cell research and development, while automakers are spending billions. At the moment, there appears to be neither economic necessity nor environmental justification for Marshall Plan-style investments into hydrogen fuel cells.
If there's a future in hydrogen, and everyone agrees that there is one, then the market should be allowed to determine when it will happen and what it will look like.
-------- environment
Sun's rays to roast Earth as poles flip
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday November 10, 2002
The Observer
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,837058,00.html
Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically.
Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years.
The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. Navigation and communication satellites, Earth's eyes and ears, would be destroyed and migrating animals left unable to navigate.
'Earth's magnetic field has disappeared many times before - as a prelude to our magnetic poles flipping over, when north becomes south and vice versa,' said Dr Alan Thomson of the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh.
'Reversals happen every 250,000 years or so, and as there has not been one for almost a million years, we are due one soon.'
For more than 100 years, scientists have noted the strength of Earth's magnetic field has been declining, but have disagreed about interpretations. Some said its drop was a precursor to reversal, others argued it merely indicated some temporary variation in field strength has been occurring.
But now Gauthier Hulot of the Paris Geophysical Institute has discovered Earth's magnetic field seems to be disappearing most alarmingly near the poles, a clear sign that a flip may soon take place.
Using satellite measurements of field variations over the past 20 years, Hulot plotted the currents of molten iron that generate Earth's magnetism deep underground and spotted huge whorls near the poles.
Hulot believes these vortices rotate in a direction that reinforces a reverse magnetic field, and as they grow and proliferate these eddies will weaken the dominant field: the first steps toward a new polarity, he says.
And as Scientific American reports this week, this interpretation has now been backed up by computer simulation studies.
How long a reversal might last is a matter of scientific controversy, however. Records of past events, embedded in iron minerals in ancient lava beds, show some can last for thousands of years - during which time the planet will have been exposed to batterings from solar radiation. On the other hand, other researchers say some flips may have lasted only a few weeks.
Exactly what will happen when Earth's magnetic field disappears prior to its re-emergence in a reversed orientation is also difficult to assess. Compasses would point to the wrong pole - a minor inconvenience. More importantly, low-orbiting satellites would be exposed to electromagnetic batterings, wrecking them.
In addition, many species of migrating animals and birds - from swallows to wildebeests - rely on innate abilities to track Earth's magnetic field. Their fates are impossible to gauge.
As to humans, our greatest risk would come from intense solar radiation bursts. Normally these are contained by the planet's magnetic field in space. However, if it disappears, particle storms will start to batter the atmosphere.
'These solar particles can have profound effects,' said Dr Paul Murdin, of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. 'On Mars, when its magnetic field failed permanently billions of years ago, it led to its atmosphere being boiled off. On Earth, it will heat up the upper atmosphere and send ripples round the world with enormous, unpredictable effects on the climate.'
It is unlikely that humans could do much. Burrowing thousands of miles into solid rock to set things right would stretch the technological prowess of our descendants to bursting point, though such limitations do not worry film scriptwriters. Paramount's latest sci-fi thriller, The Core - directed by Englishman Jon Amiel, and starring Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart - depicts a world beset by just such a polar reversal, with radiation sweeping the planet.
The solution, according to the film, to be released next year, involves scientists drilling into Earth's mantle to set off a nuclear blast that will halt the reversal.
Given that temperatures at such depths rival those of the Sun's surface, such a task would seem impossible - except, of course, in Hollywood.
robin.mckie@observer.co.uk
-------- ACTIVISTS
ITALY Florence Wary as Opponents of War Stage a Huge March
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/europe/10DEMO.html
FLORENCE, Italy, Nov. 9 - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets here today to protest a possible military strike against Iraq, chanting antiwar slogans and throwing this Renaissance capital into a jittery state of alert.
The protesters represented a loose coalition of opponents of globalization who came here this week for a political conference. Tense Italian government officials feared a reprise of the bloodshed and chaos that erupted at an antiglobalization demonstration in Genoa last year. Advertisement Alt Text
About 5,000 police officers fanned out across the city to monitor the march and guard Florence's artistic and architectural treasures, some of which were also fenced off for protection. Hundreds of stores and restaurants closed, covering their glass facades with sheets of metal or plywood, as if preparing for a hurricane.
But by this evening, as marchers danced at a concert outside a stadium at the end of the four-mile route, there were no reports of serious violence.
The protesters toted placards, flags and banners in half a dozen European languages, many of which urged President Bush and Western European leaders not to attack Iraq.
"I think it's important to send a clear message to Bush and world leaders that if they go to war in Iraq, they're not doing it for a majority of people, and a lot of people object," said Darrell Goodliffe, 21, who had traveled to Florence from a small town near Cambridge, England.
Other demonstrators said their opposition to the war and their qualms over globalization were connected by a conviction that Western governments were motivated more by greed or imperialism and mistreating the world's less powerful people.
"We're protesting for peace in general, in every possible sense, in every possible meaning," Martina Cambi, 27, of Florence, said as she used eyeliner to paint Y-like shapes on the brows of friends. They worried aloud that the result looked more like Mercedes symbols than peace signs.
Amadeo Rossi, 48, of Turin, Italy, said he was demonstrating "against the war in Iraq, the mistreatment of immigrants and the abuses of the Italian government - all of the problems in the world."
Although forum organizers said there were as many as a million people at the march, the official government estimate was 450,000.
Many of the demonstrators arrived in Florence on Wednesday, at the beginning of a five-day conference of a coalition calling itself the European Social Forum. It was intended to unite various groups, from environmentalists and labor unions to latter-day Communists, with concerns about globalization.
The last huge antiglobalization demonstration in Italy was during a summit meeting of the world's major industrialized nations in Genoa in July 2001. Rioting broke out, and one protester was shot dead by a Carabinieri paramilitary officer, while hundreds more were wounded in clashes with the police.
Still haunted by that melee, Italian officials debated whether to allow demonstrators to gather here this week. They approved the event only after deciding to tighten border controls in an effort to turn away demonstrators with criminal backgrounds.
The event's organizers, for their part, agreed to move the route of the march, the highlight of the five-day gathering, away from the city center.
Even so, a fierce debate among Italians about the wisdom and merit of the forum persisted. On Wednesday, one of the country's leading newspapers, Corriere della Sera, published a front-page opinion piece by the journalist Oriana Fallaci, a native of Florence, who denounced the protesters and urged Florentines to spurn them.
"Don't even look at them," wrote Ms. Fallaci, who also recommended that Florentines shutter the entire city. She said the protesters were demanding peace from Mr. Bush, but not from President Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Osama bin Laden.
The days leading up to the march were peaceful, but many Florentines had already fled town, leaving the narrow cobblestone streets in the city center oddly deserted.
Demonstrators said Florentines had misunderstood their intentions. "There are no barbarians here, only young people against war who want to meet and exchange ideas," said Leonardo Sacchetti, a spokesman for the forum.
Those young people seemed to be in a frame of mind more festive than combative, and at one point, when a minor scuffle broke out between about a dozen protesters, other protesters shouted, "Shame! Shame!"
As the demonstrators marched, many blew whistles, a shrill sound that competed with music from a 25-piece band. Others ate pizza as they walked, while a few glided along on in-line skates. A young woman with face paint that resembled a clown's climbed up a tree, then swung around the branches as if they were uneven parallel bars.
Whenever demonstrators passed stores with boarded-up windows, they scribbled notes on the wood.
The message outside a closed McDonald's restaurant said, "We wouldn't have gone in, anyway."
On the plywood in front of a shop, someone had written, "Closed for stupidity." Someone else had scrawled, "Hello, Oriana."
But another marcher had left a slightly sinister message. "I will return when you're open, and then . . ." it said.
--------
6 Chinese Detained Outside Party Congress
November 10, 2002
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/international/asia/10CHIN.html
BEIJING, Nov. 9 (Reuters) - Chinese police officers detained at least six people today for staging individual protests outside the Great Hall of the People, where a Communist Party Congress was in its second day, witnesses said.
The police surrounded one woman dressed in a red winter coat as she knelt outside the hall this morning and scattered some leaflets. They bundled her into one of the many police vans parked in the area, the witnesses said.
Another woman was detained on nearby Tiananmen Square after kneeling, wailing toward the Great Hall and dumping a bag full of papers on the square. Four others were also observed being picked up by the police, some after handing petitions to officers.
Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of China, is being patrolled heavily by uniformed and plainclothes police officers during the Communist Party's 16th Congress, which runs through Thursday.
At least seven people were detained on Friday.
----
Anti-War Activists Protest in Florence
Thousands Denounce U.S. Iraq Policy
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33332-2002Nov9?language=printer
FLORENCE, Italy, Nov. 9 -- A crowd of about 400,000 protesters from across Europe marched here today against a presumptive war on Iraq and plenty of other things as well -- globalization, cultivation of genetically modified foods, commercial control of the Internet, copyright laws, Israel's policies toward the Palestinians and liberalization of employee layoff rules.
The massive march was peaceful, unlike several past anti-globalization rallies around the world. Organized under the sponsorship of the European Social Forum, a coalition of "no-global" movements, it attracted the support of far-left Italian parties and the country's biggest trade union, which bused in 120,000 demonstrators.
The march was heavy on shrill whistles, communist hymns, red flags and portraits of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. None of the marchers shared the Bush administration's enthusiasm for overthrowing President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and instead held aloft banners proclaiming "Drop Bush, Not Bombs," "Stop Global War" and "The Real Terrorist is the West."
The U.N. Security Council's adoption Friday of a resolution ordering Iraq to disarm was widely regarded among the protesters as a pretext for a U.S.-led war. "We no longer have any illusions about institutions like the United Nations," said Alain Krivine, a French leftist.
"All the United States wants is oil to fuel their big cars," shouted Andrea Morettini, a student.
The turnout in Florence eclipsed both an anti-war rally held in London this year and an anti-globalization protest at the Group of Eight summit in Genoa last year. Violence and vandalism marred Genoa's march, as protestors tried to storm summit headquarters and police shot and killed one youth as he prepared to attack a carabinieri jeep with a fire extinguisher.
Today's march was the climax of four days of meetings. Participants gathered in the massive Fortezza di Basso, a fortress near the city's train station, and other locations before joining in the march. Organizers' estimates of the crowd far exceeded the official number.
Preparations for the march had been a source of controversy for weeks. Film director Franco Zeffirelli, a native of Florence, demanded that the protesters take their business elsewhere. Another Florentine, Oriana Fallaci, a celebrated interviewer and writer, called on the city to turn its back on the protesters, whom she labeled "fascists and nazis."
Florence had braced against possible violence and damage to its trove of Renaissance monuments. City workers built protective scaffolding around a replica of Michelangelo's David in Piazza della Signoria and fenced off other sculptures in a nearby loggia. Scores of businesses shuttered their storefronts, banks shielded automated teller machines, and McDonald's restaurants took down their golden arches. About 7,000 police stood discreetly if watchfully aside.
Demonstrators showed their disdain for Florentines who shut their businesses by scrawling insulting graffiti on walls and protective plywood window coverings. "Shame," wrote one on a shutter at the Black Molly Bar. "Closed out of ignorance," wrote another. Marzio's Beauty Salon on Via Francesco di Sanctis stayed open in a display of solidarity, according to its owner. Two customers in curlers applauded demonstrators as they passed, and the marchers responded with samba movements and raised fists.
----
Students Protest In Iran
Hundreds Urge Prisoners' Release
Reuters
Sunday, November 10, 2002; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33741-2002Nov9?language=printer
TEHRAN, Nov. 9 -- In a protest against Iran's hard-line judiciary, hundreds of Iranian students today called for the release of political prisoners.
The political demonstration, Iran's largest in more than three years, coincided with mounting tension in this country of 65 million people as pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami seeks to break the stranglehold on power of conservative opponents at the heart of the political system.
Witnesses said that about 500 students made fires outside the gates of Tehran University and chanted: "Freedom of thought forever!" and "Our problem is the judiciary!"
Police blocked roads around the campus and fired at least one tear gas canister. But they made no move toward the students.
The demonstration came just days after a hard-line court sentenced reformist Tehran University academic Hashem Aghajari to death for blasphemy after he questioned the clergy's right to rule the Islamic Republic.
Elected in 1997 and reelected in 2001 in landslides, Khatami has found his efforts to promote democracy blocked by conservative rivals who control the judiciary, armed forces and broadcast media.
Khatami has introduced two bills in parliament aimed at limiting the power of the judiciary and curbing the veto power of the conservative Guardian Council over election candidates.
Aghajari, a 45-year-old history lecturer who lost a leg in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, angered the conservative clergy in a speech earlier this year in which he said Muslims were not "monkeys" to blindly follow the teachings of senior clerics.
His death sentence, issued after a closed trial without a jury, has been widely condemned both inside Iran and abroad.
---------
Iran Students Protest Death Sentence for Second Day
November 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-reform.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iranian students protested for a second day on Sunday, outraged at a death sentence for blasphemy imposed on a reformist academic that has ignited a battle for political control of the Islamic Republic.
The student protests, the biggest and most vocal pro-reform demonstrations for more than three years, came as Iran's reformist-controlled parliament approved a draft bill to limit the power of the hardline judiciary.
Reformist President Mohammad Khatami appears locked on a collision course with hardline rivals over legislation that directly challenges the powers they have used to block successive stabs at reform in the country of 65 million people.
But parliamentary debate of the bill, which would give Khatami the power to suspend court officials who violate the constitution, was overshadowed by mounting outrage over the sentencing of university lecturer Hashem Aghajari.
Two reformist legislators resigned in protest at the court verdict against Aghajari, who was convicted on Wednesday of blasphemy after he questioned the right of the clergy to rule.
``This verdict shows our judiciary hasn't improved even a little bit. This is a medieval verdict,'' Hossein Loqmanian, one of the two MPs who resigned, told Reuters.
A rally was held on Sunday for Aghajari at Tehran University, scene of a peaceful five-hour demonstration on Saturday night during which hundreds of students chanted ``Political prisoners should be released'' and ``Freedom of thought forever.''
Around 500 students crammed into an auditorium to hear speaker after speaker condemn the court verdict and sharply criticize the country's clerical and political leaders.
``We want Aghajari and his lawyer not to appeal the verdict to see what happens to him. If he is hanged, we will be next to him,'' one male student said to wild cheers and applause.
``They are executing a professor of the university just for speaking his opinion,'' said another.
STUDENTS BECOME BOLDER
Witnesses said the speeches were bolder than any heard from the student body for several years.
Iran's student movement, a key supporter of Khatami's reforms, has been subdued and rent by internal squabbles since a fierce security clampdown during six days of student-led unrest in 1999 that led to the arrest of many student leaders.
Khatami did not escape criticism at Sunday's rally. One speaker at the student rally said the mid-ranking cleric ``only smiles beautifully and speaks nice words.''
Radical reformists are calling on Khatami to resign if, as expected, the conservative-controlled Guardian Council blocks his proposed legislation. Khatami was re-elected for a four-year term last year in a landslide but his popularity has waned as the reform process has stalled.
Analysts say the recent arrest of a number of reformists, the death sentence against Aghajari and the closure of several polling institutes linked to Khatami's government shows the conservatives are in no mood to compromise.
``The recent crackdown on the reformist camp shows that they won't give the legislation a chance,'' said one analyst, who declined to be named.
Conservative commentators accused reformists of exploiting the Aghajari case in an effort to mask internal divisions.
``Aghajari's death sentence is a gift for them and they consider it a lifeline to get out of their bad situation and to create some hue and cry,'' said Hossein Shariatmadari, publisher of the hardline Kayhan newspaper.
Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi called the verdict ``political'' but said many clerics also disagreed with it.
``As a cleric, who is also talking on behalf of a lot of senior clerics, I express my hatred toward this shameful sentence,'' he said.
Student leaders announced more protests for Monday and Tuesday and 181 legislators signed a letter of support for Karroubi's words.
Reformists and even some conservative commentators have called on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to intervene and spare Aghajari's life. So far Khamenei, who has the last word on all matters of state, has been silent on the matter.
-- Additional reporting by Khosro Nazari
---------
Activists Vow Europe - Wide Protests Against Iraq War
November 10, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-italy-protest.html
FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - Peace activists pledged on Sunday to stage protests across Europe against any war in Iraq, fired by the success of a weekend rally that brought half a million protesters onto the streets of Florence.
They said they were planning to hold a wave of demonstrations in three months' time, but would mobilize supporters sooner if a U.S. attack on Iraq looked imminent.
``We have fixed a date of February 15,'' said Italian militant Piero Maestri at the end of the Florence meeting of European anti-globalization groups, adding that the rallies would be staged simultaneously in all major European capitals.
``Some people wanted to hold it sooner, but the English said they needed more time to organize things. However, if war breaks out beforehand, we will hit the streets immediately,'' he said.
United in anti-Americanism and riled by a tough new U.N. resolution to disarm Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, activists from across the Continent joined forces for a carnival-like peace rally that flooded this Renaissance art city on Saturday.
Some militants indicated that they would not wait until next February before taking to the streets again, saying they were convinced the United States had already decided to wage war on Iraq.
``This war, when it comes, will be one of the most unpopular in history and we have to do something to try to stop it,'' said Alain Krivine, a far-left French member of the European parliament who took part in Saturday's protest.
``Florence has shown that there is radical opposition, from young and old people, and from all different countries.''
The United States insists it does not want a war with Iraq and will only attack if Saddam violates the latest U.N. disarmament resolution.
GHOST OF GENOA LAID TO REST
Organizers and police breathed a collective sigh of relief on Sunday that the demonstration had passed off peaceably, laying to rest the ghosts of the orgy of violence that overshadowed a summit in Genoa last year.
In Genoa a protester was shot dead by police and hundreds injured in running street battles, but in Florence security forces kept a low profile and won praise from all sides.
``I thank with all my heart the security forces who acted with great efficiency and professionalism,'' Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said in a statement.
But protest organizers said that those who had warned of the risk of violence in the run-up to the rally, including the government, now had to eat humble pie. ``The list of those who should be apologizing is very long, starting with the prime minister,'' said Alfio Nicotra, a member of Italy's Refounded Communist Party.
Saturday's march marked the climax of the first European Social Forum, a four-day anti-globalization gathering modelled on the World Social Forum that meets in Brazil each year.
The event drew tens of thousands of participants from dozens of countries from Portugal to Russia, offering delegates the chance to join discussion groups on topics ranging from debt-reduction to support for the Palestinian uprising.
But virulent opposition to any U.S. attack on Iraq proved the dominant theme, with anti-war slogans drowning out all other issues at the rally.
``If nothing else a few more people know that war on Iraq is wrong,'' said Clarence Jackson, 43, a Londoner selling copies of Socialist Worker on the streets of Florence.
-- Additional reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio
---------
Belgium War Protest Turns Violent
November 10, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Belgium-Riot.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Twenty-nine people were arrested Sunday after dozens of demonstrators clashed with riot police and attacked American businesses during a march to protest possible war in Iraq.
There were no reported injuries.
Police said up as many as a hundred youths, many of them of Arab origin, broke away from the main body of the march through the city center. Masked, stone-throwing youths broke windows at a McDonald's, a Marriott hotel, and a temporary employment agency.
They hurled stones at businesses and police, who responded with baton charges. They also targeted photographers and TV cameramen.
Witnesses said some of the march organizers tried to stop others from attacking the shops.
Police said many of those arrested were charged with damaging private property and rioting. They said 1,500 people took part in the rally. Organizers said 5,000 people took part.
Pro-Palestinian and anti-capitalist groups joined the demonstration led by a banner reading ``Stop USA.''
``We are against President Bush's policies in Afghanistan and Iraq,'' said Han Soete, one of the march organizers. ``We don't want another war.''
----
Why We Must Resist an Invasion of Iraq
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002
From: Max Obuszewski <MObuszewski@afsc.org>
William Lloyd Garrison, the impassioned anti-slavery abolitionist, printed the first copy of his newspaper, The Liberator, in Jan. 1831: "I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice." The Liberator 2002, #4 Why We Must Resist an Invasion of Iraq
"A military attack on Iraq is obviously criminal; ... unjustifiable on any legal or moral ground; irrational in light of the known facts; out of proportion to other existing threats of war and violence; and a dangerous adventure risking continuing conflict throughout the region and far beyond for years to come." - Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General, in a Sept. 20 letter to the United Nations
Hawks accuse peace activists of appeasement for supporting a diplomatic solution with Iraq. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the argument goes, appeased Hitler, causing World War II. Appeasing Saddam Hussein will have grave consequences.
Actually, a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy is the appeasement of dictators. The U.S. replaced the democratically elected leader in Iran with the Shah, a notorious autocrat who was eventually toppled. U.S. diplomats were then held hostage for 444 days in 1979-81, as appeasement with the Shah caused many Iranians to develop an intense hatred of the U.S. government.
The incoming Reagan-Bush administration, in turn, engineered a policy of appeasement with the dictator Saddam Hussein. On Dec. 20, 1983, Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to meet with the Iraqi tyrant to promise support for his war with Iran. Soon after, the U.S. provided intelligence data and operatives, economic aid and covert military supplies.
Our government facilitated the importation of the cultures used to develop biological weapons, and Saddam gassed Iranians and Kurds. But U.S. support was unwavering, and once Saddam defeated Iran, corporate interests appeared in Baghdad as access to Iraq's oil is a cornerstone of U.S. policy.
The Persian Gulf War was fought in 1991 to liberate Kuwait, not oust Saddam. Bush Sr. opted for a weakened Saddam rather than a splintered Iraq and regional destabilization. A deal was cut with Saddam's generals to retain their tanks and helicopters, which were then used to crush the Shiite and Kurdish rebellions.
More than a decade later, because of the economic sanctions, the Iraqi people suffer from a death toll of genocidal levels. The U.S., maintaining "no-fly zones," repeatedly bombs Iraq. Yet Senator John McCain said on Meet the Press [Sept. 22] that Iraq poses a "clear and present danger to the United States."
Bush Jr., at his most cynical, promised to attack Iraq alone if the UN did not act. What credibility does his administration have? It challenged the prohibition against using children in war, fought against an International Criminal Court, rejected the land mine treaty, renounced nuclear weapons treaties, and voted against enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention.
The White House argues that Iraq invaded its neighbor, possesses weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and violates United Nations resolutions. Israel and other US allies are also guilty of these infractions, but are not candidates for regime change.
A lack of weapons inspections cannot be the pretext for war, as Iraq agreed to full inspection by UN experts. Moreover, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector, told a Baltimore audience on Aug. 22 that Iraq does not have WMD.
There are other reasons to terminate Saddam. An invasion would deflect attention from Harken Energy, Halliburton, the depleted pension accounts and the treasury raid that turned a surplus into a multi-billion dollar deficit. A takeover of the Iraqi oil industry could prove quite profitable for many of the Bush campaign donors.
Despite media disinterest, protests against the war are occurring in Baltimore and across the country. Protesters are linking concerns about Iraq's weapons programs with disarmament efforts for the entire Middle East. UN Security Council Resolution 687 (April 3, 1991) imposed sanctions on Iraq until there is WMD disarmament. However, it also commits the Council to this objective: being "conscious of the threat that all weapons of mass destruction pose to peace and security in the area and of the need to work towards the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of such weapons."
Many of us demonstrating and speaking out recognize the duplicity of only challenging Iraq, despite rampant human rights violations and a vast accumulation of Western weapons by other countries in the region. Readers should consider signing the Iraq Pledge of Resistance at
http://www.peacepledge.org/resist/default.htm. I hesitate to predict the aftermath of an invasion of Iraq, but it will not bring peace to the Middle East. More likely, the Euphrates will become the "Big Muddy."
Max Obuszewski, a member of the Baltimore Peace Action Network [BPAN], has signed the Iraq Pledge of Resistance. Mobuszewski@afsc.org
----
Tolerating Protest Is The Downside To Being President
DANIEL RUTH
Nov 10, 2002,
Tampa Bay Online
http://www.tampatrib.com/News/columns/MGAENQXJC8D.html
Maybe it's just a minor, sour footnote soon forgotten on the grand canvas of a raucous, high-profile political campaign.
Or maybe its tiny echo is the sound of jackboots trampling on the First Amendment.
This involves being president of the United States - the ultimate job, with perks that can make even titans of industry drool with envy.
There's the White House, of course. Camp David is swell. A chance to catch a ride on Air Force One can be an orgasmic experience for the most hardened of pols. And when the commander-in-chief enters a room, they play a theme song, for goodness sake.
Plus, you get to assassinate enemies. Is this a great gig, or what?
Yet there are downsides to the work: economic woes, international friction, terrorism, news conferences and, worst of all, dealing with Congress.
Even more dreary is that sometimes when the president goes out in public, despite the best efforts of apparatchiks to shield him from reality, there are going to be citizens who want to remind the leader of the free world that they think he's a complete moron.
No doubt all presidents hate that sort of stuff. But then again, they asked for the office.
This brings us to the Nov. 2 campaign rally at the University of South Florida Sun Dome.
Love Fest
It was designed to be a Republican love fest, with President George W. Bush in town to shore up support for the re-election effort of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush. And there's no doubt that for an overwhelming majority of the 10,000 GOP faithful on hand, the event was a joyous celebration of their party as well as a chance to see the president in person.
Before the night was over, however, seven people would be arrested on trumped-up charges of trespassing (on public property?!?) simply because they wanted to exercise their constitutional right to petition their government in protest of numerous and sundry policies.
Others were escorted away from the Sun Dome for committing no worse a crime than possessing fliers critical of Jeb Bush.
No one would suggest the security of the president is not of utmost importance. That's why folks entering the Sun Dome were subjected to an array of intense security checks.
But since when did singing the national anthem represent a threat to the nation's chief executive? When USF student Carla Jimenez had her antiwar sign snatched away by Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies, she broke into a rendition of ``The Star Spangled Banner'' and was threatened with arrest!
What? Was she off-key?
Uh, Sheriff Cal Henderson? Aren't you supposed to defend the U.S. Constitution? Not use it as a doughnut napkin?
Protest Zone
Yes, fine, the protesters had to be an annoying presence for the Republican loyalists attending the rally.
But American political dialogue is supposed to be annoying.
Sometimes it's worth remembering that this is a nation founded on dissent. What do you think would have happened if the British had told those early Bostonians, ``Very sorry, chaps, but you'll have to move your tea party to a designated protest zone.''
Even Republican supporters entering the rally had their homemade signs confiscated and were handed prepared placards approved by the Bush campaign.
Geez, if the political process is going to become this homogenized, this controlled, Martha Stewart ought to be named the GOP chairwoman.
There has never been a president of this country who wasn't subjected to vociferous protests.
If the worst thing that ever happens to George W. Bush is a few dissenters holding up signs that read, ``Make Love, Not War,'' or ``Regime Change Begins At Home,'' he might want to count his blessings. It's a far cry from ``Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?''
Protest, unpleasant though the experience may be for a president, is the lifeblood of a democracy. For every sign, every chant, every warbling of the national anthem sung in anger is a vivid reminder of what hundreds of thousands of Americans have sacrificed their lives to protect throughout our history.
It's the right to petition our government - at the top of our lungs.
Columnist Daniel Ruth can be reached at (813) 259-7599.
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Vigil in Iraq was not pro-Saddam
November 10. 2002
Sarasota Florida Herald Tribune
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Site=SH&Date=20021110&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=211100590&Ref=AR&Profile=1029
The caption under the photo of Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness in the Oct. 27 article about their candlelight vigil in Iraq jumped out at us as an unmistakable skewing of the reality of that event. It is unconscionable that this paper would represent this action as a "demonstration in support of Saddam Hussein."
Kathy Kelly and others from this group have put their lives in jeopardy in traveling, repeatedly, to Iraq to investigate, report upon and do what could be done to, in some way, alleviate the suffering of the innocent Iraqi people -- who have been victimized by the 12 years of direct attacks and deadly sanctions leveled at Iraq from the United States and coalition governments.
These are people of conscience and compassion who have no affinity for Saddam. The reference to Saddam's releasing prisoners from Iraqi prisons, which could be perceived as a compassionate act or a calculated political move, does not, in any way, indicate that Kelly or the Voices in the Wilderness organization backs Saddam.
The group of Americans protesting in Iraq against the proposed actions, i.e. unilateral and pre-emptive strikes by the United States, have witnessed the horrors of the daily loss of lives (primary children, numbering in the hundreds of thousands) due to illnesses from the depleted uranium used in the bombs we dropped (and continue to drop?) on the Iraqi nation, the lack of medicines, food and clean water.
They know better than any Herald-Tribune writer what is going on there, and they have a right to express opinions about what they've experienced.
They give no support to Saddam; they are voicing their mutual humanity with the Iraqi people and wish others to understand that the Iraqis' plight cannot be ameliorated by "forced regime change" from the United States.
Set the record straight. Laurie Zimmerman Bradenton
Editor's note: The International Center for Prison Studies reports that the United States now has the largest prison population (1.96 million) and the highest incarceration rate of any nation.
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