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NUCLEAR
U.S., Russia near deal to ship uranium to Y-12
Regulators say Xcel managers downplayed errors at [MN] nuclear plant
Those near [Indiana] base fear plan to end testing of water
Saddam 'hiding the weapons in mosques'
U.S., U.N. Differ on Arms Hunt
Iraq Weapon Inspectors Set for Last Chance Hunt
With More at Stake, Less Will Be Verified
Inspector: War or Peace Up to Iraq
N. Korea radio says Pyongyang has nuclear weapons
Pyongyang Radio Suggests N.Korea Has Atomic Arms
Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile
Nuclear Study, Given Go-Ahead, Rouses Fears
Report: $3M Los Alamos Items Missing
BNFL's Savannah clean-up slated
MILITARY
U.S. Turns Horn of Africa Into a Military Hub
US strategy in Gulf: Arms for military bases
Tucson to Stage Bioterror Drill
U.K. Denies Reported Gas Attack Plot
Hussein Defenders Seen As Hard Corps Loyalists
U.S. expands Iraq resolution to include no-fly zones
Iraq says U.S.-British airstrike killed 7 civilians
Iraqi Kurds Set Sights on Baghdad
Iraq Can Make Powdered Bio - Weapons
Sharon Calls for Securing Settlements
Saudis Warn U.S. Against War Talk
The Alliance That Lost Its Purpose Is Europe's Most Popular Club
Tough Politicking as Pakistani Parliament Opens New Chapter
Chechens kill, abduct law enforcers
Ukraine's critical period
Distancing Tradition, Marines Eye Role in Special Operations
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
No U.S. domestic spy agency, Ridge says
Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
China's Salt Police Enforce Monopoly
CIA Feels Strain of Iraq and Al Qaeda
'Spy': The F.B.I.'s Worst Mole
Kuwait arrests senior Al-Qaida member
Ridge Says There Are No New Threats Against U.S.
The Warning Overdose
ACTIVISTS
90 Arrested at Army Base Protest
PLAIN FOLKS FOR PEACE
Kyrgyzstan Police Crush Protest, Detaining 100
Iranian Scholars Protest
Hard-Line Hindus Plan Rally, Defying Indian Government's Ban
Protesters Arrested at India Rally
Thousands Protest for Haiti President's Resignation
Greeks Protest Against War in Nov 17 Rally
Police, Protesters Clash in Greece
Venezuela Opposition Stages March
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S., Russia near deal to ship uranium to Y-12
By Frank Munger,
Knoxville News-Sentinel senior writer
November 17, 2002
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_1550995,00.htm
OAK RIDGE - If a U.S.-Russian deal is completed as expected early next year, the Y-12 National Security Complex will begin receiving regular shipments of highly enriched uranium from Russia.
The nuclear material would be used to fuel several research reactors in the United States, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The proposal calls for the purchase of 250 kilograms - about 550 pounds - a year for up to 10 years, according to Bill Brumley, the federal manager at Y-12. The price tag is still being negotiated, he said.
Brumley said officials hope that a government-to-government agreement will be reached in December, followed by a contract signing in February.
"Our target is to have delivery of the first shipments in May," Brumley said.
Y-12 personnel have already made one trip to Russia to prepare for the shipments, he said.
The project is part of an international effort to reduce the risk of weapons-usable materials getting into the hands of terrorists or others seeking a nuclear capability.
Among the biggest concerns is the security of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. The head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency earlier this week confirmed that small amounts of material have disappeared from the nuclear facilities, and there are suspicions of much worse occurring.
Y-12's principal mission is production of nuclear warhead parts from uranium and other materials. It is the principal storehouse for bomb-grade uranium in the United States.
The Oak Ridge plant also is heavily involved in the nonproliferation programs, regularly sending experts to Russia and other foreign countries to provide advice and assistance on nuclear security.
In conjunction with ORNL, Y-12 last year established a Joint Center for International Threat Reduction.
Y-12 will not process the Russian uranium into fuel rods or plates for the U.S. research reactors, but will store the material in high-security vaults and dispense it as needed.
Brumley declined to specify the enrichment level of the Russian uranium, but it must be extremely high if it's going to be converted to fuel for the High Flux Isotope Reactor.
The ORNL reactor uses uranium fuel that's more than 90 percent U-235, the fissionable isotope of uranium. That's in the same range as material used in nuclear weapons.
By comparison, TVA's nuclear reactors typically use fuel that's only 4 to 5 percent U-235 to produce electricity for the region.
Brumley said this would be the first U.S. purchase of highly enriched uranium from Russia that does not involve "blending down" the materials to reduce the U-235 content.
By definition, highly enriched uranium contains at least 20 percent U-235, which is the minimum concentration needed for atomic bombs.
A number of research reactors around the world are being reconfigured to use uranium fuel with a lower enrichment. This reduces the risk of reactor fuel being diverted to use in weapons.
Y-12 is supporting this program by taking some of its surplus of highly enriched uranium and blending it with depleted uranium (which has most of the U-235 removed) to provide a fuel stock with an enrichment of 19.75 percent.
"The key is anything below 20 percent can't be used for weapons purposes," Brumley said.
The newly processed uranium is sold to research institutions with reactors that have made the conversion.
Y-12 has a $24 million contract with the Japanese Atomic Energy Institute and an $8.6 million contract with French authorities.
Another deal is nearly completed with a group in Argentina, which is designing and building a research reactor in Australia, Brumley said. Negotiations are under way with South Korea, he said.
Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.
-------- accidents and safety
Regulators say Xcel managers downplayed errors at [MN] nuclear plant
BY DAVID HANNERS
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Sun, Nov. 17, 2002
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/breaking_news/4541900.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
ST. PAUL, Minn. - KRT NEWSFEATURES
(KRT) - On the morning of Oct. 24, 2001, workers at Xcel Energy's Monticello nuclear power plant, 40 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, were performing a "hot shutdown" of the reactor when they disregarded a previous crew's instructions, opened some valves and vented pressure from the cooling water that protects the reactor from a meltdown.
Unless kept at the proper pressure, the water boils away and exposes the reactor's uranium fuel rods, which would then overheat. By venting the pressure, the workers were, in the words of one expert, "on their way to the Three Mile Island accident."
After about 15 minutes - and after the cooling system had lost nearly 20 percent of its pressure - alarms went off in the control room. When the workers realized their error, they closed the valves. The pressure stabilized and then climbed.
Federal officials think management didn't take the problem seriously enough, a pattern detected in Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspections of Xcel's two nuclear power plants. The plants are managed by Nuclear Management Co., a company founded and partially owned by Xcel.
The NRC complained that the plant's operators downplayed the significance of the event and failed to report it in a timely manner, even though it had "an actual and credible impact on plant safety."
Monticello's operators "did not recognize the potential condition," the NRC said. The incident involved some of the same elements involved in the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in 1979 and the Chernobyl explosion in 1986, nuclear experts said.
No one claims Monticello or Xcel's other atomic plant, Prairie Island, are unsafe. They're in the "middle of the pack," one expert says. A Nuclear Management Co. official says the plants are safe and working to improve.
But NRC routine and special inspections over the past couple of years have turned up recurring problems.
Those shortcomings include ongoing problems with maintenance; a failure to identify potential problems; a slowness to make repairs; inadequate monitoring of critical safety equipment; bad communication; and problems in assessing risk factors.
"These are not things that cost a million dollars to fix; they are things that cost thousands of dollars to fix. So why haven't they been fixed? Management hasn't gotten around to it. Why don't they bother fixing the minor problems, because the minor problems will add up?" said John Broadhurst, a University of Minnesota physics professor who directed the school's Williams Laboratory for Nuclear Physics.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported Friday that the NRC currently is deciding what enforcement action to take after finding that two workers at Prairie Island withheld records during an NRC review of an unplanned shutdown at the plant in 2001. The records showed plant officials had long known of a potential problem with a critical piece of safety equipment but did not rectify it.
The NRC's concerns about maintenance and record-keeping echo complaints raised by workers in Xcel's non-nuclear operations. Company memos obtained by the St. Paul Pioneer Press during the last few months show that, to reduce expenses, Xcel has eliminated all but emergency maintenance, has deferred repairs, has dropped plans to replace old equipment and has cut staff.
Workers claim the cuts have led to a decline in service. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is investigating allegations that the company submitted fraudulent reliability data to the state.
Minneapolis-based Xcel, which was formed by the 2000 merger of Northern States Power and Denver-based New Century Energies, faces money problems. It has cut dividend payments to shareholders in half. One of its unregulated subsidiaries, NRG Energy, is $10.2 billion in debt and on the verge of bankruptcy. Like other power companies, Xcel has suffered from reduced demand for energy because of the downturn in the economy.
Utility regulators have expressed fears that industrywide financial pressures could prompt nuclear plant owners to cut corners - and safety. A 1996 report prepared for the NRC by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen warned that "the threat exists that nuclear utilities, in their desire to cut costs and increase competitiveness, will be forced to impair their operational safety and increase risk."
Xcel would not provide anyone to be interviewed for this article. But an official with Nuclear Management Co. said its operations at the two plants haven't been affected by Xcel's financial troubles.
The plants are safe, said the official, Michael D. Wadley, senior vice president of Nuclear Management Co., which is based in Hudson, Wis.
"The one thing this industry has to have in the long run is public trust. There's no mandate to operate nuclear power plants in this country," said Wadley. "We exist because people find our operations safe and acceptable, and we provide a beneficial product to the community."
Nuclear Management Co. was formed in 1999 by Northern States Power, and two of its top three executives - Wadley and CEO Michael B. Sellman - came from NSP. Nuclear Management Co. is the license-holder for the plants, but Xcel (which has a 20 percent stake in Nuclear Management Co.) maintains ownership of the facilities and the power they generate. Xcel also foots the bill for maintenance and improvements.
Xcel, through its subsidiary NSP-Minnesota, provides electricity to 1.3 million customers in the state. Nearly 29 percent of the megawatts the company generates come from Monticello, which became operational in 1971, and the two reactors at Prairie Island, which entered service in 1973 and 1974.
From a safety and reliability standpoint, Prairie Island and Monticello - or "P.I." and "Monti" as they are known within the companies - are considered about average, compared with other plants around the country.
"There are clearly some much worse, and there are also some that are much better," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who monitors atomic power issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent nonprofit group that originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Although the plants have passed NRC inspections, federal officials - and the nuclear industry's own evaluators - have noted a decline in maintenance, a failure to fix recurring problems, slow record-keeping and other key problems at the plants since the mid- to late-1990s.
Xcel's Web site notes that in 1998, Prairie Island received its seventh consecutive "excellent" or "1" rating from the nuclear industry's internal evaluation group, the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators. Similarly, the Web site notes Monticello got its fifth consecutive 1 rating from INPO in 1997.
Those are the last public mentions of either plant's INPO rating. The ratings, which are closely guarded industry secrets, have fallen at both plants, according to workers familiar with them who spoke only on the condition their names not be published.
Each plant is now a "3" on the 5-point INPO scale, the workers said. INPO spokesman Terry Young, citing the confidentiality of the organization's work, declined to explain what a "3" rating means, other than to say each point on the scale represents "varying levels of proficiency."
INPO was established by nuclear plant owners after the Three Mile Island accident. Its annual evaluations carry great weight because its standards are considered tougher than those of the NRC. Insurance companies use INPO evaluations to set a plant's rates.
"INPO reports are not geared at seeing whether you're meeting regulatory minimums or not. They're judging you against a higher standard, against industry-best practices. If you're dropping away from industry-best standards, that's not a good sign," said Lochbaum.
Lochbaum and Broadhurst, of the University of Minnesota's Williams Laboratory, examined NRC reports at the request of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Each said that while both atomic plants suffer from small and non-safety-related problems that would nag any large industrial facility, they were most concerned by the persistent problems noted at Monticello.
"What made Monticello worse (than Prairie Island) was the recurring nature of some of their things," said Lochbaum, who worked in the nuclear industry for 17 years before joining the Union of Concerned Scientists. "That suggests that there's an unwillingness or inability to learn from mistakes because they keep getting repeated."
Nuclear plants are stunningly complex. They are metallic mazes of equipment, piping and wiring. Inspecting that complexity at a time of shrinking federal budgets led the NRC to change its reactor oversight process in 2000. The commission now places greater emphasis on plant operators identifying, reporting and fixing problems on their own.
"The inspection program looks at activities with the highest safety significance," said Bruce Burgess, the NRC's branch chief responsible for inspections at Monticello. "That gives us some confidence - not complete confidence, but some confidence - that if they're doing the highly significant activities correctly, they're also doing it with the lower ones, as well."
But NRC inspectors have expressed concerns that plant operators haven't focused on what might be considered "small issues." For example, last year the NRC reviewed Monticello's "corrective action" program to assess how well workers identified and resolved problems. The commission said it found "a number of weaknesses in the station's implementation and use of the corrective action program."
The NRC noted that it had found the same problems in an earlier inspection. Wadley said that sometimes there is a lag between the NRC's requiring a change and the company's implementing the change. He said Nuclear Management Co. places an emphasis on small details since they can lead to bigger and more serious issues.
"The focus is on the small issues. If you eradicate those, you stand a good chance of eliminating any event of any significance," he said.
Once a corrective action is identified, plant operators are to complete work orders to fix the problem, then review the work to make sure it was done correctly. At Monticello, inspectors discovered that the process was fraught with lengthy delays.
The NRC found "a significant number of work orders did not receive post-work reviews for more than one year after the work was completed." Similarly, the plant had backlogs of two other important types of documents: assessment of Actions to Correct Conditions, or ACCs, and Actions to Prevent Recurrence, or APRs.
In its inspection a year ago, the NRC discovered 611 unresolved ACCs, some of which dated back to 1993. There were 408 unresolved APRs. Some of them dated to 1995.
The NRC's Burgess said he couldn't tell whether those figures would be considered high. "We don't compare, as part of our process, across sites," he said. "But in my experience, they would not be considered unusual numbers."
The NRC also had concerns about workers' performance, most notably after the October 2001 partial depressurization of the reactor. A crew had just taken over for the previous shift and decided that although they were performing a "hot" shutdown, during which the reactor is still producing heat, they should use the depressurization procedure used in a "cold" shutdown.
The NRC said plant operators failed to recognize the gravity of the crew's mistake and failed to report it in a timely manner.
Monticello officials finally filed a report on the human performance aspects, "but only after station management personnel had been contacted several times by NRC regional management to discuss the issue," the NRC said.
"Following the event ... personnel at all levels of the organization remained fixed on the low risk significance of the issue and the minimal actual plant impact, and did not recognize the potential condition adverse to quality related to the day shift crew's poor performance," inspectors wrote.
While operators at Monticello were generally able to spot things that needed correcting, there were "weaknesses in the identification of specific issues and potentially adverse trends," the NRC said.
The same issue arose at Prairie Island last year and led to a monthlong shutdown of one of the plant's reactors. The NRC found that operators had gone two years without noticing ongoing problems with the plant's emergency diesel generators, which are used to power the reactor's cooling system in certain emergencies.
------- depleted uranium
Those near [Indiana] base fear plan to end testing of water
Army says pollution at ex-test-firing range doesn't appear to be moving from the site.
By Tammy Webber tammy.webber@indystar.com
1-317-444-6212
November 17, 2002
Indiannapolis Star
http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/5/001556-8985-0
Big Creek flows through a former military test-firing range riddled with unexploded shells and more than 150,000 pounds of depleted uranium -- an area so dangerous the Army plans to fence it off forever rather than attempt to clean it up.
But what really worries residents near the 55,000-acre Jefferson Proving Ground in southeastern Indiana is an Army plan made public last week to stop monitoring the creek and groundwater for depleted uranium contamination. ad click here!
"We have no assurance that stuff won't wash down through here over time," said Robert Rosenthal, who lives along Big Creek less than two miles from the site. "At the very least, there ought to be long-term monitoring downstream of the site. Many of us have wells within a stone's throw of the creek."
Jefferson Proving Ground is one of at least nine Indiana military installations contaminated over the years by everything from explosives and heavy metals to polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and petroleum. All of them, including a portion of the proving grounds, have undergone either full or partial environmental cleanups.
Besides the proving grounds, the most highly polluted sites are the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane and the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant in Charlestown, environment officials said. But only the proving ground -- which straddles Jefferson, Jennings and Ripley counties -- includes areas deemed too polluted and expensive to clean up.
The Army, which stopped firing depleted-uranium rounds eight years ago, wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to terminate the Army's license to possess the radioactive metal at that site; if that happens, monitoring would no longer be required, said Claudia Craig, chief of the NRC facilities decommissioning section.
"We would not terminate the license unless we thought no environmental monitoring was needed," Craig said.
Army officials have said the pollution is relatively low -- though there are some hot spots -- and doesn't appear to be moving from the 1,200-acre firing range. But some residents aren't convinced it will stay that way. A group plans to seek a hearing before an NRC administrative law judge, said Richard Harris, president of Save the Valley, a southeast Indiana environmental group and a member of the restoration advisory board established to recommend uses for the base.
"We think they should monitor it longer because it's going to lay there forever," Harris said.
Steve Taylor, national organizer of the Maine-based Military Toxics Project, a national nonprofit network of community organizations on military environmental pollution, agreed.
"They're not the ones who have to live there," he said of the Army. "There is an incredible history of environmental hazards that communities were told would be safe turning out not to be safe."
Army officials could not be reached to comment on the plan.
Although groundwater contamination has been detected at many Indiana military sites, no contamination has been found off-site, said Bruce Palin, deputy assistant commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's office of land quality.
"Our first priority is to prevent any migration off site," he said. "But these sites are so large, the (contamination) is within the boundaries."
There is some concern that heavy metals were washed into the Ohio River from the closed 10,649-acre Charlestown plant, said Doug Griffin, the state's project manager. Most of the contamination -- nitric acid, lead, mercury and explosives -- was captured in a series of basins leading to the Ohio River. Cleanup plans are being finalized for three of the basins and still are being discussed for the two most polluted basins, closest to the river, Griffin said.
That facility, like most that were closed, eventually will be turned over to the state or private residents for redevelopment as recreational, commercial or industrial areas.
Cleanup of buried mustard gas, dyes and explosives has been completed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, which is still operating and where munitions are being destroyed, Griffin said. PCB contamination still must be cleaned, and ground water may have to be cleaned.
The Department of Defense plans to clean up closed bases by 2005 and the most polluted active bases by 2007; all sites should be clean by 2014, said John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant deputy undersecretary of the environment.
Aside from concerns about environmental testing for depleted uranium at the Jefferson Proving Grounds, environmentalists generally have few complaints about the pace of targeted cleanups, said Paul F. Walker, directory of the legacy program for Global Green USA, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that addresses post-Cold War environmental issues.
Griffin said cleanup of military installations is fairly straightforward.
"There is no polluted groundwater under subdivisions, no houses on top of pollution . . . there are no Love Canals," he said, referring to a highly publicized New York landfill. "But there are things that still need to be done."
"Lately the (Defense Department) has been just cranking away at those sites."
-------- inspections
Saddam 'hiding the weapons in mosques'
By Philip Sherwell and David Wastell
17/11/2002
Sunday 17 November 2002
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/17/wirq17.xml/
Saddam Hussein is hiding chemical and biological weapons supplies in mosques and hospitals in an effort to thwart the new United Nations inspection mission to Baghdad, Iraqi dissidents have revealed.
America says the Iraqi leader has also set up highly-trained "clean-up" squads at his most sensitive secret weapons sites to hide evidence and "sanitise" key facilities even as inspectors are on their way.
Saddam was completing his concealment strategy as French and Russian diplomats wrangled with their American and British counterparts at the UN in New York over the Security Council resolution backing the return of the weapons inspectors.
American intelligence has intensified its information-gathering campaign about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme as Washington prepares to provide the inspectors with the data to counter Baghdad's concealment efforts.
In a significant breakthrough, the claims of Adnan al-Haideri, an Iraqi civil engineer who defected to America last year and revealed how Saddam was building underground vaults to hide chemical and biological weapons laboratories, have been backed up by US spy plane missions.
The aircraft are fitted with a device that detects underground voids - such as bunkers and tunnels - through variations in the earth's gravitational field. The device found a void where Mr al-Haideri said there was a subterranean nerve-agent laboratory.
Several scientists responsible for Iraq's WMD programme have been shifted out of the country on false passports already to prevent the inspectors questioning them, leading exiles have told The Telegraph.
In the past fortnight two scientists have been sent to Yemen, two elsewhere in the Middle East and one each to Romania, Malaysia and Singapore, according to the Iraqi National Accord (INA), an opposition group with good contacts within the regime.
Dr Ayad Alawi, the INA's leader, also disclosed that the regime was moving documents and materials from weapons laboratories and a ballistic-missile site into hospitals, schools and mosques in the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
The concealment operation is being co-ordinated by Brig Gen Walid al-Nasri, a trusted aide from Saddam's home region of Tikrit who reports directly to Qusay Hussein, the dictator's second son and head of his powerful State Security Organisation.
An official of the US Defence Intelligence Agency said: "They have trained large numbers of personnel in how to deal with an intrusive inspection regime."
These "clean-up" squads have developed methods for rapidly cleaning and sterilising equipment such as fermenters and centrifuges used to manufacture and store chemical and biological agents.
Iraq has also tried to "bury" small-scale weapons-making activity in larger-scale industrial sites.
British and American intelligence have developed a plan for the weapons inspectors that meets a timetable for attack early next year. They want them to look at about 1,000 sites. About 100 are considered certain to contain evidence of illegal activity.
In his first public comments since the UN resolution was passed, Saddam said yesterday that he had accepted the harsh terms to avert a US attack. After again insisting that Iraq was "devoid of weapons of mass destruction", he used typically vituperative language to denounce Israel, America and the "devils" that followed them.
The first test will come on December 8, the deadline set by UN Resolution 1441 for him to declare Iraq's stocks of biological and chemical agents, its nuclear-bomb programme and remaining ballistic missiles.
"If the Iraqis stick with a declaration of 'nil', then it's war," said Dr John Chipman, director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the London-based think-tank that produced a damning recent dossier on Iraq's weapons programme.
He said that Baghdad would most probably come up with a "middling" declaration.
America, backed by Britain, would argue at the Security Council that an incomplete December 8 declaration would put Baghdad in "material breach" of Resolution of 1441. France and Russia would in turn be expected to contend that the inspectors be given the chance to prove that Saddam was lying.
Despite the growing American military build-up, Pentagon planners would still prefer to launch a closely co-ordinated air and ground offensive after late December, when more than 200,000 US troops would be in the region.
The plan is that US intelligence will provide the UN inspectors with the "killer" data once America is ready for the military finale. The inspectors would then make unannounced spot checks while the US kept the sites under surveillance relayed live by unmanned spy drones.
Washington believes the Iraqis will be seen either trying to conceal weapons material or will be caught out. The UN Security Council will be allowed a short time to debate, but the Pentagon will already have launched the final, brief countdown to war.
----
U.S., U.N. Differ on Arms Hunt
White House Urges Intrusive Inspections
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64597-2002Nov16?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 16 -- With an advance team of U.N. weapons inspectors due to arrive in Baghdad on Monday after a four-year absence, the United States and the United Nations are divided over how aggressively the inspectors should conduct their hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, U.N. and U.S. officials say.
The Bush administration is insisting on the most intrusive inspections possible, pushing U.N. arms experts to probe where previous inspectors could not, and to impose strict reporting requirements on the Iraqi government. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cautioned Thursday against the view that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein will be given any "slack" in the inspection process that would deter the United States from using force if Iraq fails to cooperate.
The U.N.'s chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has argued for a more measured approach to achieving disarmament. Blix spelled out his aims last month in Vienna at a meeting with recruits to the inspections teams; he said they should be "firm" with their Iraqi counterparts but never "angry and aggressive."
The division reflects broad differences in the U.N. Security Council that remain unresolved despite the council's unanimous approval Nov. 8 of Resolution 1441, which sets out stringent new terms for inspections in Iraq. And it may foreshadow clashes between the United States and its partners in the United Nations as Blix and his teams begin their inspections Nov. 27.
In a letter today to Iraq's parliament explaining why he accepted the resumption of inspections, Hussein reiterated his contention that Iraq is "devoid of weapons of mass destruction."
The claim was dismissed by President Bush in his weekly radio address. "We have heard such pledges before, and they have been unfortunately betrayed," Bush said. "Our goal is not merely the return of inspectors to Iraq; our goal is the disarmament of Iraq. The dictator of Iraq will give up his weapons of mass destruction, or the United States will lead a coalition and disarm him."
While Bush has argued that the 15-nation Security Council should have "zero tolerance," making even minor infractions a potential cause for military action, Blix, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other key Security Council members, such as Russia and France, maintain that Iraq will be held accountable only for serious violations
"The U.S. does seem . . . to have a lower threshold than others may have" to justify military action, Annan told reporters in Washington on Wednesday before meeting with Bush. "I think the discussion in the council made it clear we should be looking for something serious and meaningful, and not for excuses to do something."
Annan's view reflects those of U.N. members who have interpreted comments by senior White House and Pentagon officials as suggesting that conflict with Iraq may be inevitable.
Since the Security Council vote, administration officials have argued that the resolution prohibits Iraq from firing on U.S. and British warplanes enforcing "no fly" zones over northern and southern Iraq. The resolution says Iraq shall not take or threaten hostile acts against U.N. member personnel upholding "any" previous resolutions, but the United States has differed with other U.N. members over whether the Security Council ever sanctioned the "no fly" zone policy.
Asked about the matter in Canada on Thursday, Powell acknowledged that "one could argue" with the U.S. interpretation. But he said the United Nations was seeking a "new spirit of cooperation" from Iraq, and that, therefore, firing on aircraft would suggest Iraq's behavior had not changed. "If they were to take hostile acts against United States or United Kingdom aircraft patrolling in the 'no fly' zones, then I think we would have to look at that with great seriousness," Powell said.
The issue was thrust into the open today as administration officials said they have determined that an attack by Iraqi air defenses Friday against U.S. and British warplanes patrolling a "no fly" zone in southern Iraq was a "material breach" of Baghdad's obligations under the terms of the resolution. The Iraqi government said that seven civilians were killed and four injured by allied planes responding to the attack.
Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will arrive in Baghdad on Monday with more than 25 technical specialists. Blix told reporters Friday that he and El Baradei will meet with senior Iraqi officials while their team tends to communication and transportation. About 12 arms experts are to arrive Nov. 27 and formally begin the inspections. They will be joined by another 80 inspectors in the following weeks.
U.N. officials have voiced concern that the United States will press for the kind of provocative inspections that characterized the 1991-98 disarmament effort by the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM.
Blix, who assumed leadership of UNSCOM's successor agency in 2000, is trying to change the culture of the arms inspectors, whose predecessors aroused deep animosity in Iraq for using tough tactics to gain access to U.N. sites.
The conduct and composition of the inspections teams have emerged as a major issue. Iraq and other Arab governments appealed to Blix, who has employed more inspectors from the United States than from any other country, to hire more Arab arms experts, who might be more in tune with Iraq's religious and cultural sensitivities.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri made it clear in a letter to Annan on Wednesday in which Iraq accepted the resolution that his government will be monitoring the inspectors for evidence that they are spying on behalf of the United States.
"The fieldwork and the implementation will be the deciding factors as to whether the true intent was for the Security Council to ascertain that Iraq is free of those alleged weapons or whether the entire matter is nothing more than an evil cover" for U.S. aggression, Sabri wrote.
UNSCOM, which was established at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 to eliminate Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and missiles with ranges longer than 90 miles, is credited with destroying more Iraqi weapons than U.S.-led forces during the conflict. But it was shuttered in late 1999, following revelations that the United States had used the inspection agency to collect intelligence on the Iraqi government.
The Security Council established a successor agency, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, in December 1999 to complete Iraq's disarmament. The new inspectors have been placed on the U.N. payroll to decrease the likelihood that they will serve the interests of their governments.
Iraq refused to allow the new inspection agency to resume its work, however, until it was confronted by a credible threat of U.S. military action.
The United States has pressed Blix to appoint a senior U.S. official to manage the flow of American intelligence to the inspection agency. It has also insisted that Iraq be required to permit its scientists and their families to be interviewed abroad, and imposed a 30-day deadline on Iraq to provide a complete account of the status of its chemical, biological and nuclear facilities.
Blix has not yet agreed to the U.S. request about having an American in charge of monitoring the intelligence flow. Although Blix has pleaded with Washington to increase its intelligence support for UNMOVIC, he has also expressed concern that the relationship could compromise his organization. He said today in Paris that the former inspection agency had "lost its legitimacy by being too closely associated with intelligence and with Western states."
Speaking to reporters Friday before leaving New York, Blix said there may be "practical difficulties" in conducting interviews outside Iraq. He also has questioned whether Iraq could file a full declaration on its petrochemical industry within the 30-day deadline, making it clear that he would judge Iraq's "intention" before deciding whether Iraq has violated any of the resolution's requirements.
Some former weapons inspectors say they are concerned Blix may be falling into an Iraqi trap and have urged him to undertake an even more aggressive approach to inspections than UNSCOM. "Blix may go too far down this line," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Studies. "If you are too weak, the Iraqis will read you in a second and take advantage of it."
----
Iraq Weapon Inspectors Set for Last Chance Hunt
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq.html
LARNACA, Cyprus (Reuters) - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and a team of 30 head into Baghdad on Monday to give Iraq a last chance to convince the world it does not have weapons of mass destruction.
Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, take with them a stick and carrot in their mission to reopen offices shut four years ago.
In 1998, the United Nations lost patience with what it judged as President Saddam Hussein's lack of cooperation after his defeat in the 1991 Gulf War and pulled its inspectors out.
Backed by threats of a U.S.-led war if there is a repeat of 1998, Blix said the weight of deciding if there should be war or peace with Iraq did not rest on his shoulders.
``We will report cooperation and lack of cooperation,'' Blix told reporters on the eve of his departure for Baghdad from Cyprus where the inspectors have set up their logistics base.
``The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq and the Security Council and members of the Security Council,'' the 74-year-old Swede added.
In a sign of building tension, U.S. and British warplanes bombed an air defense system in northern Iraq on Sunday after Iraqi forces fired at the jets in a ``no-fly'' zone.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw of Britain said Saddam would make the mistake of his life if he played cat and mouse games in the hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as missiles that could deliver them.
IRAQ PROMISES OPEN ACCESS
Iraq promised there would be no effort to hamper searches and forecast the inspectors would prove U.S. charges that Iraq had been rearming since the inspectors left were false.
``We have given instructions to all responsible people and many government areas to respond immediately to any request to enter their sites and inspect them,'' Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz told London Weekend Television's Jonathan Dimbleby program on Sunday.
IAEA chief ElBaradei said the inspectors would arrive in Baghdad with some knowledge of suspect sites because of tips from U.S. and other intelligence agencies as well as their own advance investigations.
``We have a very good game plan,'' he said.
When asked how sure he would be that Iraq was not concealing weapons, ElBaradei, an Egyptian, replied: ``We do not take 'no' for an answer. We have to verify a 'no' is actually a 'no'.
He said Iraq's reward for full access and a clean report was ``to come back to be fully members of the international community and to eventually eliminate sanctions.''
DECEMBER 8 IS FIRST BIG TEST
Blix, who will return to Cyprus on Wednesday, said his first team would work out logistics like hiring vehicles and setting up laboratories that would test air, water and soil samples.
He said formal inspections start on November 27, and he expects to have 100 inspectors drawn from more than 40 countries in Iraq by the end of the year. Nothing will be off-limits including mosques and Saddam's palaces.
The first significant test is a December 8 deadline for Iraq to submit a full account of all its banned weapons programs. By January 27 next year, the inspectors must have given their first report to the U.N. Security Council.
The team leave Cyprus for Baghdad at about 0800 GMT on Monday, arriving about three hours later on a C-130 aircraft chartered from Safair, a private South African airline which has been involved in other U.N. operations.
Sunday's bombing raids were part of a rise in the number of incidents involving the patrols over no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq as the chances of war loom over inspections.
Iraq does not recognize the no-fly zones, set up after the 1991 Gulf War to protect a Kurdish enclave in the north and Shi'ite Muslims in the south from attack by Saddam's military.
----
With More at Stake, Less Will Be Verified
By David Kay
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Washington Post; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61790-2002Nov15?language=printer
The first obstacle U.N. weapons inspectors may face when they arrive in Iraq tomorrow will be getting from one place to another.
For symbolic reasons, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) team would prefer not to travel via U.S. or British helicopters. Too bellicose, perhaps. The German government, for domestic political reasons, won't allow its own to be used. Chile has volunteered to lease two Vietnam-era Huey helicopters to the inspectors, as it did in the past, and the United Nations last week was scrambling to figure out how to get them to Iraq in time.
This minor logistical issue will be solved, but the attention to political etiquette when weapons of mass destruction are at stake provides a taste of the difficulties to come. This is not a time for political niceties, yet the multilateral culture isn't comfortable with the tough measures needed to root out hidden weapons. The U.N. is now embarking on its second attempt to use coercive inspections to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. And even though the previous frustrating effort lasted seven years, this one -- with a tougher mandate -- is somehow supposed to be largely wrapped up in just 60 days with half as many inspectors.
The very need for this effort is an admission that the era of non-coercive non-proliferation is over. At the dawn of the nuclear age, the United States relied on unilateral controls on technology exports and diplomatic pressure to prevent unfriendly states from gaining weapons of mass destruction, while offering to keep non-nuclear allies under the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Now, it is turning to international inspectors to act as sleuths, to search not only for evidence of a nuclear arms program but for other weapons of mass destruction as well.
International nuclear inspection teams were first created as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970. The teams were never expected to ferret out clandestine nuclear programs. Rather, the IAEA was part of a deal to provide incentives, such as peaceful nuclear technology, in return for voluntary international inspections and a promise that the existing nuclear powers would eventually dismantle their own nuclear forces. Inspectors were there only to verify that commercial nuclear materials were not being diverted to military programs. Member states had to approve, in advance, the locations to be inspected, and the methods and equipment to be used. In reality, these inspections never amounted to much more than confidence-building among the self-proclaimed good guys of non-proliferation.
This mix of U.S. security guarantees, incentives and voluntary international inspections yielded some remarkable successes. Although South Africa, India and Pakistan represent significant failures, South Africa eventually renounced and destroyed its weapons. And many other countries were restrained. At one time or another, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, West Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan all moved toward gaining a capacity to produce nuclear weapons. The non-proliferation policies crafted by the United States managed to bring these programs to a halt.
Iraq's bellicosity and our awareness that it was simultaneously moving forward on several weapons of mass destruction fronts underlined the need for a new sort of inspection program, one that is better staffed, better financed, better equipped and willing to make unapologetic use of the intelligence services of allied countries in trying to uncover hidden programs or weapons.
The first inspections team sent to Iraq -- the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) -- had many of those characteristics as well as sweeping authority from the Security Council. UNSCOM had several unprecedented powers. It could and did go anyplace, anytime, with anyone, without Iraqi permission; it had unlimited authority to take environmental measurements and samples; and it got intelligence from various governments.
Even so, the experience of UNSCOM, of which I was a member, shows how difficult it can be to deal with a recalcitrant nation and what we might expect in the coming weeks from Baghdad .
The cease-fire resolution of 1991, like the resolution just adopted, required Iraq to submit a complete list of the quantities and locations of its prohibited weapons and their production systems. But full disclosure was not in the cards. The Iraqi declaration submitted on April 18, 1991, acknowledged approximately 10,000 nerve-gas shells, 1,000 tons of nerve and mustard gas, 1,500 chemical weapon bombs and shells, and 52 Scud missiles with 30 chemical and 23 conventional high-explosive warheads, but denied having any biological or nuclear materials. Within three months, the U.N. inspectors found four times as many chemical weapons as Iraq had declared and a gigantic nuclear program that could have produced weapons in just two years. By October 1991, inspectors had found more than 100,000 chemical shells -- almost 10 times the amount in the declaration.
Critics of the current Bush administration's willingness to go to war should consider how little happened to Iraq a decade ago as a result of its lack of cooperation with UNSCOM. Economic sanctions were imposed, but had little effect and faint support. Hussein convinced the world that the sanctions were maintained only at the insistence of the United States and that they were hurting Iraqi children. Whether this was true or not became immaterial. Commercial pressures soon made smuggling both lucrative and effective, and the sanctions lost much of their impact. For coercive sanctions to be a credible alternative to military action, the international community must give inspectors greater support than that.
As inspections dragged on, UNSCOM also lost political support because of its reliance on intelligence supplied by national governments, principally the United States. In much of the world, after all, the CIA is seen as the root of all evil. Even those of us involved in gaining access to this intelligence worried that if the cooperation continued for long, the national intelligence services would begin to use UNSCOM for their own espionage purposes. Yet inspectors do not have their own intelligence services. In order to avoid appearing to be in bed with the United States, UNMOVIC has been doing silly things such as buying lower-quality commercial satellite photos of Iraq and refusing to use experts who work for government agencies.
UNSCOM did have some notable successes in its later years. It uncovered a previously unknown biological weapons program, more concealed Scuds, and renewed efforts to perfect chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. But Iraq's hiding, cheating and deception grew in intensity and skill. By 1996 it was clear that inspections by themselves would not disarm Iraq. Finally, in December 1998, UNSCOM withdrew, declaring that Iraq's obstructionism made it unable to carry out its work, and the United States began carrying out limited military air strikes on Iraq. Iraq announced that it would not accept the return of UNSCOM inspectors and denounced them as U.S. spies.
And so in the end, the inspection efforts broke down. Though at the time of the cease-fire, the United States and its coalition allies believed a weak, defeated Iraq would have to give up its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq eventually filed almost two dozen "full, final and complete disclosures" of its prohibited weapons -- and each one proved to be false. Iraq's lack of cooperation with the weapons inspection process has been the one constant throughout the past 11 years. Under the latest U.N. resolution, Iraq's next report is due Dec. 8.
As for Saddam Hussein himself, in 1991 it was assumed that he would be replaced by a regime prepared to live in peace with its neighbors. Otherwise, how could inspections there ever end? Yet the Iraqi leader is still there, presumably preparing to foil a new cadre of inspectors.
No matter what happens in Iraq over the next few months, the dilemma of how to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will not end in Baghdad. Coercive disarmament, by its very nature, violates the sovereignty of the state being disarmed and hence is an unnatural act for international organizations such as the United Nations or IAEA.
In the case of Iraq, the IAEA did not seek, and only reluctantly accepted, an inspection role. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has expressed unhappiness with "UNSCOM cowboys" and sought to ensure that the new inspection efforts are "sensitive to the concerns as to the dignity, security, and sovereignty" of Iraq and more closely conform to U.N. norms. UNMOVIC has largely given up seeking national intelligence information and some providers of such information have ceased to offer it.
The IAEA safeguards prior to the Gulf War were unbelievably lax. This was not a secret. But countries that signed the non-proliferation treaty did not fear the spread of nuclear arms enough to pay the financial and political costs required to tighten up the safeguards. The shock of UNSCOM's discoveries in Iraq -- and, more recently, of North Korea's revelation about its surprisingly advanced weapons programs -- revised this calculus somewhat. IAEA safeguards today are marginally better than before the Gulf War. Whether they are good enough to prevent or detect proliferation remains highly uncertain and is being tested by Iran and perhaps others.
There is still vast room for improving the capabilities for coercive inspection operations, yet there are few proposals for doing that. That's because such inspections only take place when all other options have failed. To plan for failure is one of the most difficult bureaucratic tasks. Moreover, coercive inspections have no organizational champions. Arms control proponents lobby for more resources and attention for their treaties and voluntary organizations. The military services and defense contractors are never short of glossy PowerPoint briefings on new weapon systems. But one will search long and hard for a vocal advocate of coercive inspections with a program of training and systems that could make this approach more effective.
Even after finding weapons, an uncomfortable question remains. You can "rollback" on weapons by destroying them, but how do you roll back knowledge? Only by changing the nature of a regime. Buying time with inspections is worthwhile only if that time is invested in buying fundamental political change. It is the political system that makes Iraq's moves toward weapons of mass destruction a threat, while Sweden's or Belgium's or Japan's or Israel's moves in the past have been seen with concern, but considerably less alarm.
The experience with Iraq leaves the international community with a set of unhappy lessons: Voluntary arms control arrangements may fail to prevent or detect massive violations when faced with a clever, determined violator. Military action may stop short of removing the industrial and technical capabilities needed to support weapons of mass destruction programs, and leave untouched the political will that led a state to seek such capabilities. Finally, coercive disarmament by inspections, even when backed by economic sanctions and access to intelligence information, can fail when met by a determined regime that believes its own interests require possession of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Thus it seems likely that the next time the United States decides to take up arms against a suspected proliferator, the pressure will be intense to "go to Baghdad" -- that is, to carry on the conflict to the point of changing the political leadership -- rather than to end the conflict early and rely on U.N. inspection measures to remove weapons of mass destruction. The unpleasant fact is that if inspections fail to disarm Iraq, this ensures that future conflicts involving proliferation -- North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and, soon, Libya come to mind as possibilities -- will be more violent, with more casualties, and harder to terminate.
David Kay is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. In 1991, he served as chief nuclear weapons inspector of UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq.
----
Inspector: War or Peace Up to Iraq
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Weapons-Inspectors-Iraq.html
LARNACA, Cyprus (AP) -- The chief U.N. weapons inspector landed in Cyprus Sunday to assemble his team for a return to Baghdad and said the ``question of war and peace'' awaits an answer from Saddam Hussein.
President Bush has warned that Saddam faces military action if he fails to cooperate fully with the inspectors, who will fly to Iraq on Monday. Saddam faces a three-week deadline to reveal weapons of mass destruction or provide convincing evidence he no longer has any.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, overseeing the International Atomic Energy Agency's search for nuclear arms, flew to Cyprus from Vienna, Austria. They joined about two dozen other members of the advance team assembling here to prepare for a resumption of inspections after a nearly four-year absence.
``The question of war and peace remains first of all in the hands of Iraq, the Security Council and the members of the Security Council,'' Blix said.
Blix, who will lead the overall mission, said his team was prepared to meet the challenge of ensuring Iraqi compliance. But he said he hoped Iraq would not try to hide anything.
The 74-year-old Swedish diplomat said inspectors would be taking along much more sophisticated equipment than was available when the inspection program was suspended in December 1998.
``We do of course expect to get tips from the (U.N.) member states,'' Blix said. ``We also have modern equipment that is superior to what we had in the past. But...we would like the Iraqis to declare, and this is an opportunity for them to do so and we hope that they will seize that opportunity.''
Bush is insisting on ``zero tolerance'' of the Iraqi delaying tactics and deceit which marked the previous inspection effort.
ElBaradei, an Egyptian, said there was a need for ``intrusive verifications,'' meaning inspectors ``will use every means at our disposal to make sure that Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction.''
Also, Iraqis with key information would be interviewed outside the country if it was necessary to protect their safety. But, he acknowledged, ``if people do not want to talk, we obviously will not be able to force them to talk.''
However, Blix favors cooperation instead of confrontation with the Iraqis, and the differences in approach could create tension between the inspectors and the Bush administration, U.N. officials said Sunday on condition of anonymity.
One official said the Americans are keen to beef up the mission with staff and equipment Blix may not consider necessary.
``We're happy for the handshake, but we don't want the hug,'' said the official, referring to Blix's interest in U.S. support but also in avoiding the appearance that Americans are running the show.
ElBaradei spoke of ``second-guessing'' when asked about pressure from Security Council members. Blix acknowledged input from different governments, but said, ``It is we who will decide what to do.''
Although Blix has urged the United States to provide more intelligence support for his mission, he also warned over the weekend of the pitfalls of such cooperation, saying in Paris that the previous inspection mission failed in part because of its close association with government intelligence agencies and Western states.
The last inspectors left Baghdad in December 1998 amid Iraqi allegations that some were spying for the United States and countercharges that Iraq was not cooperating with the teams. Their departure was followed by four days of punishing U.S. and British airstrikes on Iraq.
Blix and ElBaradei warned Sunday they would not tolerate attempts to coerce their staff into surreptitiously sharing information with governments.
``I can never guarantee that everyone will be 100 percent in my service,'' Blix said. ``But if we find anyone doing anything else, it's bye-bye.''
In a nod to U.S. concerns, Blix and ElBaradei said inspections will be tough, thorough and leave no space for deceit.
``We do not take 'no' for an answer,'' ElBaradei said. ``We have to verify to make sure a 'no' is actually a 'no.'''
Blix has said that preliminary inspections likely will resume Nov. 27, with full-scale checks beginning after Iraq files a declaration of its banned weapons programs by a Dec. 8 deadline.
Blix then has 60 days to report back to the U.N. Security Council with his findings.
Saddam agreed Wednesday to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return to search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the Security Council approved a toughly worded resolution.
Baghdad, however, insisted in a nine-page letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that it does not have any such weapons.
The U.N. resolution gives Iraq ``a final opportunity'' to eliminate its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the long-range missiles to deliver them. It gives inspectors the right to go anywhere at anytime and warns Iraq it will face ``serious consequences'' if it fails to cooperate.
After Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the Security Council imposed economic sanctions that cannot be lifted until U.N. inspectors verify that Iraq is free of such weapons and missiles.
The advance team will reopen the office used by the previous inspections regime and set up secure phone lines and transportation.
-------- korea
N. Korea radio says Pyongyang has nuclear weapons
11/17/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-17-north-korea_x.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's state-run radio reported for the first time Sunday that the communist country has nuclear weapons, but South Korean officials doubted the credibility of the report.
Pyongyang Radio reported in a Korean-language report that the country "has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons due to nuclear threats by U.S. imperialists," according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitors broadcasts from the North.
Some took the report as the North's first confirmation of possession of nuclear weapons. Until now, North Korea had claimed that it was "entitled to have nuclear weapons and more powerful weapons than that to protect its sovereignty from U.S. threats."
But on Monday, South Korean officials were skeptical that the report represented a change in North Korea's official position on nuclear weapons, which has been to neither confirm nor deny that the country has them.
"It's too early to say whether North Korea's official position on its nuclear issue has changed," said Choi Young-joon, a chief analyst at South Korea's Unification Ministry.
"In North Korea, such a report should follow an official government statement or policy announcement or comments by a top official," he said.
Yonhap played down the significance of the report carried by Pyongyang Radio, which is meant chiefly for the South Korean audience. No other Northern media, including its English-language foreign news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, carried it.
"Also, it was a one-time report and was not repeated," Yonhap said.
Yonhap said it was likely that the news anchor made a mistake or that the North was deliberately trying to create confusion.
In the report, North Korea accused the United States of trying to isolate it from the world by claiming that the communist country had broken nuclear arms control agreements.
"The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the DPRK (North Korea) and isolate the DPRK on a worldwide scale," said Rodong Sinmun, the North's communist party newspaper.
North Korea "is in full accord with the main spirit and purpose" of a 1994 pact with the United States and other anti-nuclear accords, it said.
Under the 1994 deal, North Korea agreed to freeze its plutonium facilities suspected of being used to develop nuclear weapons in return for two light-water reactors and 500,000 tons of oil every year until the reactors were built.
But in September, the North acknowledged to visiting U.S. diplomats that it had a uranium-enriching program to develop nuclear weapons. North Korea says the United States violated the accord first, citing delays in the reactor project.
Pyongyang has said it will only resolve the issue if the United States offers a nonaggression pact. Washington has rejected any talks with Pyongyang unless it gives up the nuclear weapons program.
--------
Pyongyang Radio Suggests N.Korea Has Atomic Arms
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean radio broadcast on Sunday appeared to confirm for the first time that the communist state has nuclear weapons in a statement criticizing the United States for raising tensions with disarmament demands.
The broadcast, monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, came as Seoul braced for Pyongyang's reaction to an agreement by the United States and its allies to suspend vital fuel oil shipments to penalize North Korea for its nuclear program.
North Korea's Pyongyang Radio said the country ``has come to have nuclear and other strong military weapons to deal with increased nuclear threats by the U.S. imperialists,'' according to Yonhap, which monitors North Korean broadcasts.
But Yonhap said the language -- which appeared to go further than Pyongyang's previous claims to ``be entitled to have nuclear weapons'' -- may have been deliberately misleading or represent a rare mistake by the North Korean state broadcaster.
South Korean government analysts were not immediately available to comment on the report.
Tension in one of the last Cold War flash points has mounted since U.S. officials said last month that North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms development program in violation of a landmark 1994 agreement with Washington.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North promised to freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for fuel oil, paid for by Washington, and two light water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce weapons material.
On Thursday, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreed to suspend the fuel oil shipments to North Korea from December in response to its violation of the pact.
North Korea's ruling party newspaper, in a report with similar content to the Pyongyang Radio broadcast, said the United States was the one who had broken the pact.
``The United States is spreading a whopping lie that the DPRK violates the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework,'' said a Rodong Sinmun article, carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
``The lie is aimed to tarnish the international prestige and authority of the DPRK and isolate the DPRK on a worldwide scale. And it is a cunning plot to cover up the criminal nature of the U.S. posing nuclear threats to the DPRK and divert the public attention at home and abroad elsewhere.''
DPRK is the acronym of the North's official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The communist newspaper said the United States had branded the North part of an ``axis of evil,'' and listed Pyongyang as a target for pre-emptive nuclear attack.
``This is a declaration of war, a nuclear war against the DPRK. Therefore, the U.S. openly violated and destroyed the DPRK-U.S. agreed framework and nullified the North-South joint declaration on denuclearization,'' the Rodong Sinmun said.
North Korea also reiterated terms it set late in October for addressing U.S. nuclear concerns: a non-aggression pact and a guarantee of the impoverished state's sovereignty.
-------- terrorism
Terrorist planned attack on nuclear warhead stockpile
By Philip Delves Broughton
November 17 2002,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/16/1037080966140.html
An Al Qaeda terrorist has confessed that he planned to drive a giant explosive device into a United States air force bunker in Belgium believed to contain nuclear warheads.
News of the plot came as the US warned that a broadcast thought to contain the words of Osama bin Laden foreshadowed a likely attack. The FBI said national landmarks and the aviation, oil and nuclear industries were all possible targets.
In an interview with a Belgian radio station, Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi, 31, a former professional footballer in the German league, said he had hoped to attack the Kleine Brogel base in eastern Belgium with a bomb similar to those used to blow up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
The base includes a munitions store and is believed by anti-nuclear groups to contain 20 free-fall nuclear bombs.
"I am guilty, I will have to pay for it," Trabelsi said in the radio interview from his cell. "What I did is not good, but I had no choice."
Trabelsi was arrested last year, suspected of involvement in an Al Qaeda plot to attack the US embassy in Paris.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
THE ARSENAL
Nuclear Study, Given Go-Ahead, Rouses Fears About a New 'Bunker Buster' Weapon
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/17NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Buried in the $393 billion defense authorization bill that Congress approved this week was an obscure item that has raised concerns that the administration is gradually moving toward creating new kinds of nuclear weapons.
The item authorizes the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nation's nuclear stockpile, to spend $15 million to study modifying nuclear weapons so they can be used to destroy underground factories or laboratories.
The United States produced a "bunker buster" weapon in 1997 by repackaging a hydrogen bomb into a hardened case. But Pentagon planners contend that such a weapon would not be effective against the deeply buried and fortified installations that some countries, including Iraq and North Korea, are thought to use for producing and storing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Advocates of the study contend that the administration is not yet proposing to create a new weapon and is simply looking at solutions to an increasingly significant military problem.
But critics argue that the study is a first step toward producing weapons that would require a resumption of nuclear testing, which the United States suspended in 1992.
The Energy Department is also considering building a new installation for making the plutonium pits that are at the heart of nuclear bombs. The plant would cost $2.2 billion to $4.1 billion, the department estimates. It intends to issue a decision on construction in April 2004.
"A new `bunker busting' nuclear earth penetrator sends exactly the wrong signal to the world," said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. "At a time when we are trying to discourage other countries - such as North Korea - from developing nuclear weapons, it looks hypocritical for us to be preparing to introduce a whole new generation of nuclear weapons into the arsenal."
Democrats had tried to strip the $15 million item from the bill but instead settled for a compromise that would require the administration to issue a report explaining how the modified bomb would be used and whether conventional weapons could be just as effective. The Democrats also inserted a provision requiring the administration to seek Congressional approval before doing any basic research into a new nuclear weapon.
Fred Celec, the deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said the Pentagon would study ways of repackaging a weapon in hardened casing that could withstand crashing into solid rock.
Responding to criticism that the Pentagon was trying to make nuclear weapons more usable, Mr. Celec replied, "The definition of deterrence is that you must have the capability and that your opponent must believe you will use that weapon."
But Michael A. Levi, a physicist with the Federation of American Scientists, an arms control group, said that although a bunker buster might release less fallout than other nuclear weapons, it would still spread enough radiation to kill thousands of people. He argued that improvements in conventional weapons had made them almost as effective for closing off underground facilities.
"These are brute-force bombs," Mr. Levi said of the bunker buster. "The collateral damage they cause makes them less usable, and therefore less of a deterrent."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Report: $3M Los Alamos Items Missing
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Lab-Missing-Items.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Nearly $3 million worth of items owned by Los Alamos National Laboratory have disappeared or were reported missing over a three year period, according to a published report.
The lab's system of reporting lost items ``is conducive to covering (up) for items that are actually stolen,'' said the internal report, prepared within the lab's Office of Security Inquiries in March and obtained by the Albuquerque Journal for a story in Sunday editions.
The author's name was not on the report. It outlined missing items ranging from computers to a fork lift that disappeared between 1999 and 2001.
Lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler told the Journal that the lab goes through a rigorous accounting process each year by both lab officials and the Department of Energy. A lab spokesperson did not immediately return calls from the Associated Press Sunday.
Cell phones, cameras, computers and items valued at $5,000 or more are bar coded, Tytler said. The lab has about 80,000 items, valued at slightly less than $1 billion, that are bar coded and inventoried every year.
In 2001 and 2002, the lab reported that it accounted for more than 99 percent of its bar coded items, according to lab memos. Items unaccounted for in 2001 totaled about $100,000, a memo said.
The report indicates that it was written after a staff meeting and was intended to give ``a comprehensive view of the theft picture presently being experienced by LANL.''
Other memos show attempts to use government credit cards for unauthorized expenses including a car payment. The lab stopped that transaction. A U.S. House Committee on Science is investigating allegations that lab employees used lab credit cards to make illegal purchases.
The FBI alleges at least two employees have used lab credit cards to spend more than $50,000 for unapproved merchandise such as a barbecue grill and hunting knives.
-------- south carolina
BNFL's Savannah clean-up slated
By Solomon Hughes
17 November 2002
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=352796
A massive nuclear clean-up operation in the US, run by a subsidiary of BNFL, has been slammed by inspectors for having poor safety management and cost control.
Westinghouse Government Services, in which the nationalised nuclear fuels group has a 40 per cent stake, was criticised in a report into its $600m (£380m) contract to clean up an old nuclear bomb factory at Savannah River in South Carolina.
Inspectors from the US Department of Energy found that WGS had an "inadequate and ineffective" approach to "risk prioritisation" when dealing with safety and a "limited probability of success" in managing costs.
The DofE made a site visit during the summer and found that WGS avoided difficult and expensive work, such as building decommissioning and stabilising nuclear material, "weighs business elements more heavily (by a factor of three) than risk elements" and had a system that did not differentiate between small and large accidents.
Other reports by the nuclear watchdogs exposed unsafe storage of 22,000 tonnes of depleted uranium managed by Westinghouse at Savannah River. It is stored in drums, cardboard and wooden boxes inside "corroded" buildings on timbers that have "rotted and failed".
The criticism, published on the DofE's official website, comes only weeks after managers at Savannah were accused of racism for giving black workers more dangerous jobs than white workers.
It also comes at an embarrassing time for BNFL, as the draft Bill to set up a £48bn agency to sort out Britain's nuclear legacy was highlighted in the Queen's Speech last week. BNFL is expected to be central to this clean-up.
BNFL said it was not the lead contractor on the Savannah River project and referred all calls to Washington Group, its partner, which was not available for comment.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.S. Turns Horn of Africa Into a Military Hub
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/africa/17HORN.html
DJIBOUTI, Nov. 16 - For the first time since American troops withdrew from Somalia after a bloody firefight in the streets of Mogadishu, the United States military is rebuilding its combat power in the Horn of Africa.
The main goal this time is to put American forces in position to strike cells of Al Qaeda in Yemen or East Africa. But the Pentagon has also begun to use Djibouti to train its forces in desert warfare - skills that could be applied in Washington's campaign against terrorist groups or on the battlefields of Iraq.
"We are getting heavy weapons ashore and firing," said Col. John Mills, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has been conducting a major military exercise here for just over a week. "I am preparing my unit to operate in a high intensity conflict."
At a dusty, parched and desolate stretch of African desert, marines used live ammunition as they practiced infantry assaults. Marine howitzers lobbed shells six miles. Harrier jets dropped 500 pound-bombs, and Super Cobra helicopter gunships raked the ground with fire. M-1 tanks and other armored vehicles blasted their targets.
Bereft of oil or valuable resources, the impoverished nation of Djibouti has long been a desirable base for Western militaries. Put simply, what Djibouti offers is location. It is close to Yemen and near the Bal el Mandeb Strait, a critical choke-point where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. The sea lanes near Djibouti are particularly critical since they are used for commercial shipping and to transport American war matériel to the Persian Gulf.
Djibouti has other advantages for the American military as well, including a serviceable airport and harbor. The country is accustomed to the presence of Western military forces and is politically stable.
France, which had colonized Djibouti (pronounced ji-BOOT-e) before it became independent in 1977, still maintains a force of 2,800 strong here. Djibouti, in fact, is France's largest foreign military base.
American marines who have landed on the northern coast of Djibouti three times this year in major exercises are fast becoming regular, if temporary, visitors, but other forces are digging in for the long haul.
The United States Central Command is setting up a military headquarters to oversee operations in and around the Horn of Africa. Led by a Marine officer, Maj. Gen. John Sattler, the headquarters will initially be based on the amphibious command ship Mount Whitney, but it will probably be moved ashore.
About 800 American Special Operations forces and other American troops have already moved into Camp Lemonier, a former French barracks near the Djibouti airport that the Americans have turned into a bastion.
The military is not the only American organization that has found Djibouti to be a convenient launching pad. The Central Intelligence Agency is flying classified missions from an airfield in Djibouti using the Predator, an pilotless drone equipped with Hellfire missiles, according to Western officers.
The C.I.A. missions include a recent strike in which a car was blasted in a Predator attack in a remote area of Yemen, killing a Qaeda operative and five other occupants of the vehicle.
The clandestine flights have occasionally thrown a scare into the Western navies who operate in the region and who have at times mistaken the drone for a possible terrorist kamikaze. With a diverse array of American and European naval, air and land forces, and a variety of security agendas, the Horn of Africa is becoming an increasingly complex military arena.
This is not the first time that the American military has used Djibouti. AC-130 gunships were stationed here during the American military intervention in Somalia. Navy ships also stopped here for fuel until the refueling operation was shifted to Aden, Yemen. (The decision was made to build ties with Yemen's government and provide a more secure environment for replenishing Navy ships, but backfired when the U.S.S. Cole was targeted by terrorists in 2000.)
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the subsequent war in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa became an important hub for military planners.
Worried that Qaeda fighters would flee Afghanistan for Somalia and other lawless regions in Africa, the United States and its allies organized Task Force 150, a naval unit that patrols Africa's eastern coast.
Task Force 150, now under Spanish command, has never captured a Qaeda operative or intercepted a terrorist arms shipment. But while the Horn of Africa does not appear to have become a refuge for Al Qaeda the region is still of great interest for American defense officials.
Yemen, a known Qaeda haven, is just a short hop from Djibouti. There is also is concern that Al Ittiyad Al Ismalia, a militant group that operates in southern Somalia and is linked to Al Qaeda, could emerge as a more serious threat. There are also bandits and smugglers in the region that could be exploited by Al Qaeda, Western officials said.
"It is the job of the special services - ours, the American and the European - to track it and determine if there is something that is happening in the region," Djibouti's president, Ismail Omar Gelleh, said in an interview. "There is always a danger that there is a residue of terrorist cells in the region."
For the Marine Corps, which may be called on to fight in Africa, Yemen or Iraq, Djibouti is also one of the few nations that will let them come ashore in their amphibious landing craft, drive their armored vehicles and trucks from the beach, fire their large weapons and simulate a small war.
More than 1,500 marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit are here for a major exercise. They left Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in August on three amphibious ships led by the Nassau.
The approximately 3,000 forces in the group is a mixture of Navy sailors and pilots, who operate the amphibious warships, and a Marine unit that spends its time lifting weights, studying military procedures - and waiting for their chance to storm the beaches and swing into action.
After leaving North Carolina, the marines did a stint in Kosovo. But the mood changed in October when the Nassau and its sister ships passed through the Suez Canal and moved south through the Red Sea.
During the trip, Capt. Russell P. Tjepkema, the commander of the Nassau, said he became concerned about a merchant ship whose captain indicated that the vessel had mechanical problems. But the ship seemed to be maneuvering in a way that would force the Nassau to sail closer to Yemen, where several speed boats were clearly visible.
Worried that Al Qaeda might be laying a trap, Captain Tjepkema warned the other vessels to stay away and ordered Super Cobra gunships from the Nassau to fly over them. Captain Tjepkema said he was still not sure whether he averted a terrorist attack or simply kept curious locals at bay. "You can't tell and that is the dilemma we have when we operate in this area," he said.
With merchant traffic, coastal graft and potential terrorist threats the Nassau group often has to contend with such ambiguities.
After transiting the Red Sea and emerging in the Gulf of Aden the American ships used classified techniques to disguise their identity as a military flotilla. Last week, the flotilla moved closer to the Djibouti shore for the amphibious landing.
For Capt. Terry O'Brien, the Navy officer who was in charge of the three-ship flotilla, the exercise was an opportunity to practice a land to sea assault.
The Tortuga, one of the ships in the flotilla, moved into position a mile and a half from shore so its amphibious armored vehicles could roll into the water and start moving toward shore. The Austin, another ship in the group, released large amphibious hovercraft that can zoom at 50 miles an hour and maneuver onshore.
The Nassau set loose amphibious landing craft that look like throwbacks to World War II. To launch the landing craft, the Nassau lets water stream into its ballast tanks to lower the stern of the ship. On the Nassau's flight deck, Marine Harrier jets and helicopters took off for missions over Djibouti.
All the while, the Nassau had armed helicopters flying and picket ships at sea to fend off a terrorist attack. While the landing was an exercise, protecting the force against possible terrorists attacks was a real military mission.
Captain O'Brien said his ships would try to use deception when they could to keep potential foes off balance. "And when we can't or don't need to we will come in with force," he added. "So, if you are looking to target, we are not a soft target."
Wearing helmets and flak jackets, the Marines quickly secured the beaches and a pier in Obock, a town north of the capital. But they soon ran into a problem when the residents became alarmed that the marines might occupy the dock and interfere with Obock's supply of khat, a plant that many of Djibouti's men chew for its amphetaminelike effects. After a rowdy demonstration by local residents, a tense standoff ensued. The dispute was defused after the Djibouti military arrived and the marines moved off the dock.
Then the marines began to drive north engulfed in a veil of dust. A military camp was erected in a desolate wasteland, protected by a sand berm and supplied by thousands of gallons of water trucked in from a plant the Marines erected to desalinate sea water. A Cuban-American officer dubbed the base Camp Havana.
The main order of business for the marines was the chance to maneuver and fire their heavy weapons. For Fox Battery, the Marine artillery unit, it was the first time the battery had fired its howitzers since it left Camp Lejeune as well as an opportunity to carry out combined arms exercises with other Marine forces.
In one of the battery's combat exercises, a Marine infantry unit was trying to advance on a determined foe. A forward air controller called in an airstrike. The role of the battery was to fire an illumination round to mark the target for Harrier jets, which would mount a bombing attack, and then to fire a barrage against the enemy's air defenses to keep them from shooting down the Marine planes.
"We are coordinating our artillery, our mortars and our air, along with maneuvers, to engage targets," said Capt. Mike Landree, the artillery battery commander.
As the exercise unfolded, one of the battery's howitzers hurled an illumination round 22,000 feet in the air. It took 80 seconds for the round to land and begin to burn. Before it landed another of the battery's howitzers fired the first of its suppression rounds to disrupt the enemy's air defenses.
Some of the artillery rounds rattled some of the livestock that forage in the desert. But Colonel Mills, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, placated an anxious herder by buying three shell-shocked donkeys for $250 apiece.
With a new headquarters in the region and a growing focus on the Horn of Africa it is likely that Djibouti will become a familiar venue for future Marine expeditionary units, or M.E.U.'s.
"It offers things that are difficult to find, that is your ability to employ your heavy weapons systems," Colonel Mills said. "Ranges for that are disappearing all over the world as areas are getting developed. I think that M.E.U.'s possibly in the future will make this a regular stop."
-------- arms sales
US strategy in Gulf: Arms for military bases
States given approval for major arms purchases
Nov 17, 2002
Straits Times
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraq/story/0,1870,155374,00.html
MUSCAT (Oman) - A strong if silent supporter of the United States for three decades, the Sultan who rules this Persian Gulf nation has become a major beneficiary of a Bush administration policy to let friendly nations in the region buy billions of dollars of high-tech American weaponry.
As the US shops for allies willing to assist in its war on terrorism - including a possible attack on Iraq - the administration is employing a time-honoured strategy of using weapons sales as an inducement, analysts say.
Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Saudi Arabia - all countries where the US has military forces - have been given approval for major arms purchases. In some cases the purchase requests had been stalled for years.
Qatar, where the US bases refuelling and transport planes and has built a command-and-control centre for a possible air war against Iraq, is developing a 'shopping list'. Bahrain, home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet, is buying upgraded radar and advanced missiles. US President George W. Bush has declared the island-nation a 'major non-Nato ally', which will speed further purchases.
Kuwait, from which the US may launch a ground offensive against Iraq, is buying 400 Hellfire missiles and 16 Apache Longbow attack helicopters. The Fighting Falcon, capable of flying at twice the speed of sound and is hard to detect or hit because of their small size, formed the backbone of the last Gulf War's aerial campaign.
The UAE, which allows US warplanes to use its airfields, is buying 80 Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighters to be fitted with electronic gear to jam an adversary's radar.
Oman is buying 12 Fighting Falcons for its small air force, laser-guided bombs, Harpoon, Maverick and HARM missiles, and technology that can turn a 'dumb' bomb into a precision-guided weapon.
Ms Rachel Stohl, senior analyst with the Washington-based Centre for Defence Information, which is often critical of military spending, has warned that 'these sales are just the tip of the iceberg.
As an unspoken quid pro quo, these 'host' nations are expected by analysts - and many US officials - to permit the American military use of bases within their boundaries even if the US strikes a fellow Arab country such as Iraq. --Washington Post
-------- biological weapons
Tucson to Stage Bioterror Drill
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterror-Drill.html
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Hundreds of volunteers will pretend to be victims of bioterrorism this week in a large-scale drill focusing on the dispensing of antibiotics and vaccines.
The three-day training exercise and conference will test the abilities of local, state and federal agencies to respond to a widespread assault involving a bioterror agent. In particular, it will test the distribution of medications from the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile.
``How well are we prepared?'' said Dr. Elizabeth MacNeill, the health director for Pima County. ``How well did we train our staff and the folks working with us, and what do we need to do differently? The other thing is how many people can we see in what period of time?''
A key will be to ``get all the players to work in the same sandbox,'' said Randall Ogden, a Tucson Fire Department battalion chief and one of the exercise's principal organizers.
He expects the exercise to expose weaknesses in areas such as communication and in transporting people.
The exercise will be watched by hundreds of observers, led by Surgeon General Richard Carmona and Justice Department evaluators. Carmona, a former Tucson trauma doctor, helped develop the Pima County emergency response plan that is being tested.
After the mock attack planned for Wednesday, Pima County supervisors will declare an emergency and ask Gov. Jane Hull to request an aid package from the national stockpile.
A 6-ton training package of equipment and mock medications from the stockpile will be shipped from one of 10 secure sites around the country to the Arizona Air National Guard, and local health officials will use the contents to ``immunize'' about 1,000 volunteers acting as people exposed in a bioterror attack.
In a real attack, the package would be a 50-ton emergency supply called a ``push package'' containing antibiotics, antidotes, vaccines, syringes and other supplies. It would be delivered within 12 hours of the attack and is intended to last two or three days until other federal help arrives.
A related exercise Thursday in Mesa will involve real inoculations against tetanus administered to up to 5,000 high school students.
On the Net:
Public Health Emergency Preparedness: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/index.asp
Tucson Bioterrorism Exercise: http://www.cityoftucson.org/hottopics/bioterrpractice.html
-------- britain
U.K. Denies Reported Gas Attack Plot
By BETH GARDINER
Associated Press Writer
Nov 17, 2002
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRITAIN_TERRORISM_ARRESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Three men are charged in London with terrorist offenses. (Audio)
LONDON (AP) -- Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott denied a newspaper report Sunday that three men arrested on terrorism charges were planning a poison gas attack on the London Underground.
"It doesn't appear to be that there is any evidence whatsoever there was going to be a gas attack or indeed use of bombs regarding the three people who have been arrested," Prescott told the British Broadcasting Corp. He said police had no evidence the men possessed bombs or gas.
The Sunday Times newspaper reported that the men had been plotting to release poison gas, possibly cyanide, on the London subway system.
Scotland Yard said Saturday that Rabah Chekat-Bais, 21, Rabah Kadris, in his mid 30s, and Karim Kadouri, 33 - all of no fixed address - were charged under the Terrorism Act with possessing materials for the "preparation, instigation or commission" of terrorism.
Police would not comment on the report and declined to specify what the materials were, but said they did not find any gas or other poisonous substances when they arrested the men. According to the BBC and the national news agency Press Association, the illegal materials were false identification papers.
Sunday Times Assistant Editor Nicholas Rufford told Sky News television the group had been infiltrated by MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service.
The Sunday Newspaper in France, citing an unidentified source it said was close to anti-terrorist agencies, identified Kadris as having links to the al-Qaida network and said he had been to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. The paper said Kadris had been arrested with false French identification papers.
The three appeared at Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London last week. They were being held until their next court appearance on Monday.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, speaking on Sky News, declined to comment on the circumstances of the arrests but said, "So far as I know, it's fully safe to use the Underground."
"Very, very rarely do we get a piece of information which says that X atrocity is about to happen at Y place on Z date," he said. "Things don't work like that."
Bob Crow, general secretary of the Underground train drivers' union, said the Tube was safe.
"We will not be telling our members not to use the Tube on a normal day, because these attacks could have taken place at a museum or football ground or anything of that nature," he told BBC radio Sunday.
Last week Prime Minister Tony Blair said barely a day went by without new intelligence about a threat to British interests - some reliable but some likely misinformation or gossip.
He advised British people to be vigilant against terrorism, but not allow fear to distort normal life.
-------- iraq
Hussein Defenders Seen As Hard Corps Loyalists
U.S. Officers Say Special Republican Guard No Pushover
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64314-2002Nov16?language=printer
Despite doubts about the overall fighting capability of the Iraqi military, the Pentagon considers Iraq's Special Republican Guard a formidable combat force willing to fight and die defending President Saddam Hussein, according to senior U.S. military officers.
Overseen by Hussein's son, Qusay, the Special Republican Guard consists of 15,000 troops whose mission is to protect the president and secure Baghdad, the Iraqi capital. It is the most loyal military component of the system under which Hussein maintains power. The system is dominated by intelligence, security and military units comprised largely of members of Hussein's al-Bu Nasir tribe, its three clans and soldiers from Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Should President Bush launch a war against Iraq, attacking these interlocking power centers will be a focus of the U.S. war effort, according to defense officials.
Overall, the Iraqi military is but a shadow of what it was at the start of the Persian Gulf War. Its 430,000 troops are less than half of the million-plus soldiers in uniform 11 years ago, and its fighting equipment -- minus 1,200 armored vehicles destroyed during the war -- is old and decrepit. But the U.S. military's respect for the loyalty, discipline and fighting capabilities of the Special Republican Guard and, to a lesser extent, the 80,000 troops of the Republican Guard, remains high.
"I don't think the folks I'm dealing with are thinking this is going to be a cakewalk; it never is," said one four-star general. "Anybody with a gun in his hand who is defending his town or his tribe can be a pretty tough opponent, especially when he's in his own back yard."
The first of Hussein's security rings to be encountered by U.S. forces, should the Bush administration launch an invasion, will be the 17 divisions of the regular army.
This force consists of about 300,000 conscripted troops in 11 infantry divisions, three armored divisions and three mechanized infantry divisions. Most analysts inside and outside the military see the Army as poorly trained, led and equipped and believe only parts of it, notably the six heavier divisions, will show much resistance and effectiveness when attacked.
The 80,000 troops of the Republican Guard make up the next ring. Organized in six divisions around Baghdad, including three armored divisions, the Republican Guard is considered a much more viable fighting force by the Pentagon and CIA. It is led by commanders from Hussein's tribe and Tikrit and equipped with all 600 of Iraq's remaining T-72 tanks.
"I certainly don't take them lightly, and I don't know anyone who might have to fight them who does," one U.S. general said of the Republican Guard. "They are a tough force, who will know the terrain and the cities. I believe they will fight hard."
Next, within Baghdad and Tikrit, are the 15,000 elite troops of the Special Republican Guard, equipped with 100 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles as well as Russian-made Sagger antitank guided missiles. Its armored forces defend entrance routes to Baghdad, and plainclothes units protect Hussein when he travels.
"They're not the best soldiers in the world in terms of being able to execute combined arms operations," said Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who became the United Nations' chief weapons inspector in Iraq in the mid- to late 1990s. "But they're tough, they're loyal and they will fight to the death."
Ritter said Hussein has created strong bonds between his al-Bu Nasir tribe and other dominant Sunni tribes through marriage and appointment, effectively insulating his power structure from defections. In that regard, Ritter said, the Iraqi leadership structure is fundamentally different from that which kept Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in power in Yugoslavia, the setting of the 1999 U.S.-led air war to liberate Kosovo.
"Milosevic's cronies were all about wealth," Ritter said. "With Iraq's regime, it's about the tribe, it's about the family, it's about influence, it's about pride."
The Special Republican Guard is controlled directly by Qusay Hussein and the Special Security Organization, whose 5,000 members guard the president and oversee other security units, including the Republican Guard. The Special Security Organization and the Special Republican Guard are the most feared security organizations in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, oversees the Special Security Organization with Qusay Hussein, according to U.S. officials. Mahmud works closely with Jamal Mustafa Abdullah Sultan al-Tikriti, another member of Hussein's inner circle who is a cousin to the Iraqi president and is married to his youngest daughter, Hala.
Jamal Mustafa is rare among Hussein's relatives for having military experience and a reputation as a competent commander, according to Ahmed Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, a London-based umbrella group of Iraqi exiles. Jamal Mustafa's brother, Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, is a Republican Guard commander who formerly headed the Special Republican Guard.
But even these relatives entrusted with important military commands are kept on edge and constantly tested for loyalty. "Everyone is a 'blade runner,' with the possible exception of three to six people," Amatzia Baram, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, recently wrote in the Journal of International Security.
Qusay Hussein, his older brother Uday, who controls the Iraqi media, and Abid Hamid Mahmud, Saddam Hussein's personal secretary, are the "most sheltered, although not completely immune to the wrath of Saddam," Baram said. After them come Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.
Also in the inner circle are Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti, Hussein's paternal cousin, whom the U.S. government considers the "enforcer of the regime's most brutal policies," according to one high-level administration analysis. Known as "Chemical Ali," Hassan approved the use of mustard gas and nerve agents in the Kurdish villages of Halabja and Dojaila in 1988 to crush a Kurdish revolt.
Ritter said that a strategy isolating Hussein, possibly through a war crimes indictment, could succeed in fomenting internal rebellion and possibly Hussein's assassination if key military and tribal figures believed they would be able to maintain influence without him. Hussein has ordered the execution of family members he deemed disloyal, Ritter said, and presumably family members could be convinced to return the favor.
But a bombing campaign that targets Hussein and his power structure, Ritter said, would have the opposite effect of strengthening the tribal and geographic ties that bind Hussein and his regime to the palace guard and military forces protecting them.
"They have blood oath alliances," Ritter said. "If one member of the tribe betrays Saddam, the enforcement comes from the tribe. It's actually a very strong, stable power base that he has. And when you talk about a military strike, the more people you kill, the stronger you make the pyramid."
Richard N. Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, agreed that military planners "have to assume [the Special Republican Guard] will fight and fight well." But Perle said the lack of ideological loyalty binding Hussein to his inner circle makes his leadership more tenuous than some military planners suspect.
"I don't believe we'll have to go into Baghdad, because I don't believe he will survive in Baghdad for any length of time," Perle said. "Dictators like Saddam do not last very long once it's clear that they have been challenged. Once he's effectively challenged and it's clear he's finished, there's no ideological loyalty."
----
U.S. expands Iraq resolution to include no-fly zones
Saturday November 16
Reuters
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-134492.html
UNITED NATIONS - The United States said on Friday it had the option of declaring Iraq in serious violation of a new U.N. Security Council resolution if Baghdad shoots at American planes patrolling "no-fly" zones, an interpretation not even close ally Britain shares.
At issue is whether a provision in the new resolution adopted on November 8, applies to the U.S.-British unilaterally declared flight exclusion zones over Iraq, where anti-aircraft fire on U.S. planes is a near-daily occurrence.
For example on Friday, U.S. and British warplanes bombed a radar site in southern Iraq after Baghdad fired at warplanes in the no-fly zone, the Pentagon said.
The controversy over the no-fly zones was one of two major disputes in the Security Council with Russia, France and other members worried about "hidden triggers" in the resolution that would allow unilateral military action by Washington.
Under the measure, U.N. inspectors are to declare or verify any major violation by Iraq and report it to the 15-member Security Council, which must then "assess" whether it is a "material breach" -- two words that could lead to war.
But if the council takes no action on the use of force, Washington is free to move on its own.
Paragraph 8 of the November 8 resolution says Baghdad cannot "take or threaten hostile acts" against a U.N. member "seeking to uphold any council resolution".
Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in Washington that "Iraq's failure to comply with its obligations under paragraph 8 would constitute a material breach."
"This gives us the option of referring violations of resolution 1441 to the Security Council," he said.
Other U.S. officials said that while each violation of the no-fly zone could be reported, Washington would not necessarily do so. But U.N. Security Council members had insisted that the resolution did not cover actions in the no-fly zones.
BRITAIN AND RUSSIA SAY 'NO"
British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, co-sponsor of the measure, told the council before the vote that paragraph 8 referred to any personnel that the inspectors might ask to help them and not the no-fly zones, diplomats said.
And shortly after the vote, Russia's U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, in his public council speech, echoed this view, attributing it to "sponsors of the draft".
But hawks in the U.S. administration had argued for the no-flight zone to be included and this week State Department officials leaned toward this interpretation.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested last week that if the Iraqis continued to fire at the warplanes, it would constitute a violation of the new U.N. resolution.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday after a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham in Ottawa, "If they were to take hostile acts against the United States or United Kingdom aircraft patrolling in the northern and (southern) no-fly zone, then I think we would have to look at that with great seriousness if they continue to do that."
The no-fly zone in the north was instituted shortly after the 1991 Gulf War to protect Kurds rebelling against the Baghdad government. The Security Council adopted a resolution in April 1991 condemning the action but it did not authorize enforcement.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, before meeting President George W. Bush on Wednesday, said, "The United States does seem to have ... a lower threshold than others may have."
"I think the discussions in the council made it clear we should be looking for something serious and meaningful, and not for excuses to do something," Annan said.
The second controversy is whether the United States can bypass the inspectors and report a violation to the council itself, without it being verified by the arms experts. U.S. officials said they can while the other 14 council members disagree.
----
Iraq says U.S.-British airstrike killed 7 civilians
Sunday, November 17, 2002
(CNN)
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/11/16/iraq.strike/
TAMPA, Florida -- A U.S. and British airstrike in Iraq's southern no-fly zone killed seven civilians, an Iraqi military spokesman said Saturday, but the allied command said the warplanes hit an air defense communications facility after the planes came under heavy fire.
Pentagon officials said that the Iraqi anti-aircraft fire on Friday violated the latest United Nations resolution on Iraq. None of the coalition planes was hit, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The Iraqi News Agency quoted a military spokesman saying the airstrike is a "new heinous crime" committed by "American and British murderers" that led to "the martyrdom of seven civilians."
Iraqi missiles, the spokesman said, chased the planes away.
U.S. officials said they had no way to independently verify the Iraqi claims, but Lt. Cmdr. Nick Balice, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Friday from the CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, that the coalition strike "came as a result of Iraqi forces firing anti-aircraft and surface-to-air missiles."
The Pentagon said the hostile action by Baghdad was a breach of U.N. resolution 1441, Section 8, which says "Iraq shall not take or threaten hostile acts directed against any representative or personnel of the United Nations or ... any member state taking action to uphold any Council resolution."
However, military officials said, it is ultimately up to the United Nations to decide if the action was a "material breach."
At the White House, a Bush administration official said, "We consider this to be a violation of the resolution."
The official said the United States could take its complaint to the Security Council, but refused to disclose the administration's plans.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said, "Iraq should stop firing on U.S. and U.K. warplanes flying in the no-fly zones, not only to ensure the safety of inspectors flying into Iraq, but also to demonstrate its willingness to comply with its obligations under the U.N. Security Council resolution."
This week, both U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they were considering whether to declare such actions by Iraq as a material breach of the resolution, which calls on Baghdad to disclose its weapons of mass destruction and to disarm.
The United States has said it would use military force to disarm Iraq if it commits such a breach.
The strike -- which used precision-guided weapons -- hit the radar facility near An Najaf, about 85 miles southeast of Baghdad, at 2:50 p.m. ET, Balice said.
"Today's strike came after Iraq moved the SAM (surface-to-air missile) sites into the no-fly zone in violation of U.N. resolutions. Presence of the sites is deemed a threat to coalition aircraft," a Central Command statement said.
Iraq has fired on coalition aircraft more than a dozen times since last Friday, when the United Nations adopted the latest resolution against Baghdad. Friday's strike was the first since Baghdad reluctantly accepted the terms of the resolution.
U.S. intelligence officials said that Iraq has also added boosters to some of its missiles to increase their range. Coalition aircraft are adjusting for this modification, officials said.
CNN Correspondents Rym Brahimi and Frank Buckley contributed to this report.
--------
THE OPPOSITION
Iraqi Kurds Set Sights on Baghdad
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/middleeast/17KURD.html
ANKARA, Turkey, Nov. 16 - A senior leader of an Iraqi Kurdish group has said his forces intend to push all the way to Baghdad in the event of an American-led war in Iraq.
In an interview here on Friday, Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said he had no intention of limiting his group's military activities to its base in northern Iraq. He predicted that any number of the armed groups who are fighting Saddam Hussein would converge on the capital if the Americans invaded.
"We are looking to Baghdad, we are focusing on Baghdad," Mr. Talabani said on a visit to Turkey. "It is the capital. It is the main part of the country. We are not just looking through Kurdish glasses. We are looking through Iraqi glasses."
The assertion seemed to raise the prospect of a division between the Kurds and American political leaders, who are fearful that an invasion could unleash a stream of bloodletting among the country's ethnic and religious groups. While American officials have indicated that they would like to employ Kurdish forces in the event of a war, they speak of limiting the Kurds' role to their base in northern Iraq.
American officials are working to ease concerns voiced by Turkish leaders, who have been battling a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey near Iraq. Turkish leaders have expressed fears that an American attack on Iraq could embolden the Kurds on both sides of the border to form their own state.
In the interview, Mr. Talabani reiterated his often-stated claim that Iraq's Kurds would not seek independence but rather want autonomy.
Other groups that would converge on Baghdad, he said, include rebels from the majority Shiite population, as well as the minority Turkoman and Sunni Muslims. Mr. Talabani said such interventions would go a long way toward keeping the peace. If these groups can capture the main cities, he said, "this will be a good step forward to prevent civil war, to prevent chaos, to prevent clashes among various Iraqi groups."
--------
Iraq Can Make Powdered Bio - Weapons
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Vulnerable-Troops.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraqi scientists know how to make chemical weapons that can penetrate military protective clothing, and Iraq imported up to 25 metric tons last month of a powder that is a crucial ingredient to such ``dusty'' weapons.
Iraq told the United Nations the powder was destined for a pharmaceutical company that a former weapons inspector says was ordered by President Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War to work on chemical and biological weapons.
The powder, sold under the brand name Aerosil, has particles so small that, when coated with deadly poisons, they can pass through the tiniest gaps in protective suits.
Experts inside and outside the U.S. government say they are not certain Iraq has dusty chemical weapons. Declassified U.S. intelligence documents say Iraq produced a dusty form of the blister agent mustard in the 1980s and used it during its eight-year war with Iran.
If Iraq made and used a powdered form of its deadliest nerve agent, VX, it could kill U.S. troops dressed in full protective gear, according to a 1990 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. Although the military's protective suits have been improved since then, experts say dusty weapons could penetrate the new suits.
Pentagon officials refused to discuss the permeability of the new suits or whether Iraq has weapons that could pass through them. Such information is classified, they said.
The 1990 DIA document said soldiers could protect themselves by throwing rain ponchos over their chemical suits, which would reduce the fatality risk to near zero. One expert wrote later: ``One gets the sense that this was recommended in the face of few other options.''
The researcher, Eric Croddy of the private Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said dusty VX would be a serious danger to U.S. troops. VX is so toxic that, in its liquid form, a drop on the skin can kill within minutes.
``The effects of dusty VX, depending on how it gets in the body, would be somewhat faster,'' Croddy said. ``It's certainly much more injurious and much more of a severe threat.''
Dusty chemical weapons are formed by mixing a liquid chemical agent with a fine powder to coat the powder's tiny particles with the deadly poison. The particles' small size allows them to pass through the fabric of a protective suit and any tiny gaps around the seal of a gas mask.
The latest U.S. military protective suits have a layer of charcoal in the fabric to trap any poisons that might penetrate the outer covering, but particles small enough could pass through even the charcoal layer.
``The closest analogy is, no matter what happens when you go to the beach, you still get sand in your shorts,'' Croddy said.
The poisonous powder also would settle in the tiniest nooks and crannies of buildings and equipment, making decontamination extremely difficult. VX in its liquid form already is a decontamination challenge; the sticky poison is persistent and cannot be neutralized easily with substances such as bleach.
Even if dusty chemical weapons caused no U.S. casualties, they could force American soldiers to work in clumsy protective gear, decontaminate their equipment and avoid contaminated areas, giving Iraqi soldiers time to mount defenses.
U.S. intelligence reports before the Gulf War said Iraq was capable of making dusty VX. They said that during the 1980s, Iraq imported more than 100 metric tons of Aerosil, a brand of fumed silicon dioxide.
The reports said no evidence was found that Iraq had made dusty VX, and U.N. inspectors were unable to find any hard evidence of that.
In September, The New York Times quoted an Iraqi defector as saying Saddam's chemical weapons scientists secretly began producing dusty VX as early as 1994.
Aerosil, made by the German chemical company Degussa AG, has an exceptionally small particle size: 12 nanometers. That means more than 2,100 of the particles strung together would be as thick as a human hair.
U.N. documents show that Iraq's Samarra Drugs Industry sought 25 metric tons of Aerosil last year under the U.N.-run oil-for-food program, and at least some of that order was delivered last month.
American intelligence agencies were not overly worried about the shipment of Aerosil because the substance has many legitimate uses.
Richard Spertzel, a former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, was stunned when a reporter told him about the shipment. Saddam ordered the Samarra enterprise to work on chemical and biological weapons in 1989, and his government still controls the company, Spertzel said.
``Do you know how much (dusty agent) a kilogram of that stuff makes? A couple cubic feet,'' Spertzel said. ``This gives me another thing to worry about.''
Hasmik Egian, a spokeswoman for the U.N. oil-for-food program, confirmed that Iraq received a shipment of colloidal silicon dioxide in October. Egian would not identify the brand name, source or amount of the silicon dioxide delivered.
The sale was held up for three weeks by the U.N. commission that oversees the oil-for-food program, Egian said. That commission, whose members include the United States, decided colloidal silicon dioxide was not a banned substance and allowed the transaction, Egian said.
A newly created U.N. body overseeing the oil-for-food program is considering Iraq's request to import more colloidal silicon dioxide, Egian said.
On the Net: U.N. Oil-for-Food program: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/
Article by Croddy on dusty chemical weapons: http://www.nti.org/e--research/e3--20b.html
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Calls for Securing Settlements
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israeli helicopters and tanks hit Gaza City early Monday, targeting a main Palestinian security compound, while hundreds of miles away, a security guard foiled an attempt to hijack an Israeli passenger plane.
Despite all the violence and a sudden, bitter Israeli election campaign, negotiations continue over a U.S.-European plan to put an end to the Mideast conflict, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at the headquarters of Preventive Security, the main official Palestinian force, knocking down a wall, security officials and witnesses said.
As tanks moved into the city, Israeli gunboats opened fire on the shoreline, shelling the area where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office was. The complex as destroyed in an Israeli attack several months ago.
Initial reports said two Palestinian security officers were lightly wounded as they ran away from the base. However, the Palestinian security chief, Maj. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaidie, said that Israeli forces blocked roads, preventing ambulances from entering, and cut phone lines. Officials at nearby Al-Quds hospital said Israeli forces fired at one of their buildings.
A TV cameraman working for the Reuters news agency was lightly injured by tank fire, doctors said.
The Israeli military said that attack helicopters struck Gaza and tanks were involved in the operation.
The sounds of explosions could be heard all over the city of about 300,000 Palestinians. Witnesses said troops fired shells at the house of Yusuf Mukdad, a Preventive Security officer arrested recently by the Israelis on suspicion of planning attacks against Israelis.
Mustafa Mughrabi, 45, lives near the Preventive Security base and told The Associated Press by telephone that he was hiding under a bed with his children after gunfire hit his house from three directions. Outside, he said he heard ``the sound of explosions mixed with screams of children.''
Palestinian official Tayeb Abdel Rahim lives about 100 yards from the targeted base. He told the AP that his house was hit by bullets, but he was not harmed. He called the Israeli operation ``aggression'' and warned that ``security and stability for Israeli people cannot be achieved at the expense of the Palestinian people.''
So far Gaza has been spared the large-scale military operations in which Israel has taken control of most West Bank Palestinian population centers, retaliation for bloody terror attacks. However, Israeli leaders have said that militant groups operate unfettered in Gaza, and the Israeli military would confront them at some point.
Meanwhile, Turkish police were interrogating a passenger who officials say tried to hijack an El Al Israel Airlines plane just before it landed in Istanbul with 170 people on board. El Al general manager Amos Shapira told the AP that the passenger, an Israeli Arab, ``tried to reach the cockpit with what we assume now is a small pocket knife,'' but was overpowered by security guards.
The Israeli airline is known for its stringent security. Though it is frequently targeted, the last successful attack was decades ago. Shapira said airport authorities would investigate how the passenger managed to board the plane with a knife.
Though serious incidents of violence were occurring every day, and Israel was at the beginning of a fierce campaign toward a general election on Jan. 28, diplomats were still finding time to fine-tune a document aimed at negotiating a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The ``road map,'' promoted by President Bush, calls for a three-phase, three-year program that would result in a Palestinian state living in peace beside Israel.
The latest draft, obtained by the AP, contains some answers to Palestinian concerns, including a softening of a demand to name a prime minister to relieve Arafat of some of his duties. Israel has said the plan must be shelved until after its election and formation of a new government.
The so-called ``Quartet,'' working for Mideast peace, is aiming for a mid-December conference at which the final draft of the plan would be presented. The quartet is made up of the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations.
On Sunday, Israelis buried most of the 12 soldiers and security guards killed in a Palestinian ambush in Hebron on Friday night, as Israeli troops and tanks fanned out through the West Bank city.
The soldiers were guarding Jewish worshippers returning on foot from Hebron to the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba.
The Palestinian attack provoked widespread outrage. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was quoted by local media as calling for a continuous stretch of Israeli settlements from Kiryat Arba to the hotly disputed holy site at Hebron's center, a move that could mean uprooting many Palestinians. Sharon's advisers would not comment, but another Cabinet minister echoed the call.
At a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Sharon and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again disagreed on the issue of exiling Arafat. Netanyahu renewed his call for expelling the Palestinian leader, while Sharon again rejected the proposal, as he has several times in the past.
``Arafat himself is often engaged in financing and launching the terrorism,'' Netanyahu told a news conference. ``If any of us still clings to the illusion that we can deliver the task of protecting Israeli lives to the Palestinian Authority, this is an illusion.''
Other Cabinet hard-liners are also urging Sharon to take stronger action. But Sharon has argued that he must weigh such factors as the U.S. desire to keep a lid on regional tensions as it works to build Arab support for a possible war against Iraq.
-------- mideast
Saudis Warn U.S. Against War Talk
Washington Asked to Give U.N. a Chance
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64696-2002Nov16?language=printer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 16 -- Saudi Arabia warned Washington today to tone down its talk of war and give U.N. weapons inspectors a chance to resolve the confrontation with Iraq. At the same time, officials signaled they might allow the United States and its allies to use Saudi military facilities should war break out.
In separate interviews here in the Saudi capital, two senior officials said Saudi Arabia had not ruled out assistance to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq and would decide only after seeing whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein cooperates with arms inspectors. However, they said they feared that bellicose U.S. rhetoric could unravel international solidarity and sabotage a last chance for peace.
"Definitely the talk that we hear urging war is disturbing, especially when it comes at a time when there is such an optimistic . . . prospect for peace," said Prince Saud Faisal, the foreign minister. Noting the consensus that the United States mustered at the U.N. Security Council in imposing new inspections on Baghdad, Saud added, "Jeopardizing this support by talking military action when everything is going toward achieving the objective without the risk of military action seems to be precipitous."
Saudi Arabia's position on war with Iraq looms large for the United States as it heads toward a showdown with Hussein over his country's alleged efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction. The kingdom served as a key base for U.S. and coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, yet Saudi officials have been hard to pin down publicly on whether they would join a second war against Iraq.
Based on private talks with the Saudis, U.S. officials said today that they believed the government here would rule out a large presence of U.S. ground troops but would allow U.S. forces to use the military command center at Prince Sultan Air Base and grant U.S. fighters and bombers permission to cross Saudi airspace. A critical issue will be persuading the Saudis to let fuel tanker planes operate out of their territory to refuel U.S. warplanes based elsewhere as they approach or leave Iraq. U.S. officials would also like to use a Saudi port on the Persian Gulf but assume that would not be granted.
"It reminds me of the old Rolling Stones song: You can't always get what you want but you'll get what you need," said a U.S. diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We may not get our wish list, but we'll get enough."
Cooperation with a U.S. war against Iraq remains an incendiary issue throughout the Middle East, especially because many Arabs have grown increasingly angry about the Bush administration's support of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
For Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, the situation has been eased enormously by President Bush's decision to seek Security Council backing for the new program that will begin searching Iraq for evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons on Nov. 27.
"The more multilateral it is -- and I mean by that, U.N. involvement -- the easier it is for countries in the region to help," said a Saudi official who did not want to be named. "The more individual and unilateral it is, the less likely it is for countries in the region to cooperate. And that's not just Saudi Arabia, it's also Kuwait and Qatar and the rest."
That could complicate Bush's plans, depending on how the inspections go.
If Hussein fails to cooperate, Saudi officials suggested they want the United States to go back to the Security Council for more international support before launching a war, something the administration has said it would be reluctant to do. Saudi leaders also warned against declaring some minor violation in the inspection process to be sufficient cause to initiate an attack.
Prince Khalid bin Sultan, the assistant defense minister, said he worried about "jumping to war for small, unintentional problems, because in any resolution you will see unintentional problems or even small problems, but we must seek all the necessary things to disarm without war."
Saud said that it would be important that the entire Security Council agree that Iraq had committed a "material breach" in the inspection program to be led by Hans Blix rather than just let the United States set a lower threshold
While preferring to talk about prospects for peace, Saudi officials seemed to want to correct the impression that they were balking at cooperating with the United States in the event of war. In an interview with CNN this month, Saud appeared to reject U.S. use of Saudi military facilities against Iraq. He gave separate interviews today to The Washington Post and two other Western news organizations to clarify that nothing had been ruled out.
-------- nato
The Alliance That Lost Its Purpose Is Europe's Most Popular Club
By Robert G. Kaiser
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Washington Post; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61794-2002Nov15?language=printer
Just five years ago, on what now seems like a different planet, 50 prominent Americans from across the political spectrum wrote a stern letter to President Clinton warning of the gravest consequences if ex-communist countries in Central Europe were invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Adding former Soviet satellites to NATO would be "a policy error of historic proportions," wrote this imposing collection of former Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, military officers and scholars. Such a move, they cautioned, would redivide Europe, destabilize the continent and "undercut those [Russians] who favor . . . cooperation with the West." How wrong these distinguished statesmen and academics proved to be.
Whatever the merits of their argument then, it was rooted in the old-think of the Cold War era -- a view of the world that today looks downright archaic. We will be reminded of this later this week, when the heads of NATO's 19 governments (now including the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, despite that 1997 letter of warning) gather in Prague to make history. At a summit Thursday and Friday, NATO will invite seven more former communist countries to join the alliance. Three were once parts of the Soviet Union, which NATO was created to contain.
NATO has lost that original purpose. Nevertheless, it has become the club of choice from one end of Europe to the other. Even the Russians now have a kind of special membership. Albania and Macedonia are knocking eagerly at the door. For Central and Eastern Europeans, NATO is the happening place to be. More practically, it is the entrance hall to the Western world, which all these countries yearn to join for economic and political benefits, and for psychological reassurance.
NATO's evolution is part of an underappreciated surprise: The countries of the former Soviet empire have come through the first phase of their post-communist existence remarkably well. This is not a compliment to the consummation of democracy in these countries, or to the success of economic reform. Both remain incomplete. But each of these nations -- still struggling to shake off decades of tyrannical misrule, often with little support and almost no money -- has avoided the catastrophes that many predicted.
Consider one impressive list of the bad things that never happened (except in the former Yugoslavia, the one grim exception in Europe): no wars, no coups, no military takeovers, no concentration camps. This list was offered -- over lunch in Warsaw last month -- by Adam Michnik, a hero of Poland's Solidarity movement and founder of the first, best and most prosperous independent newspaper in Central Europe, the Gazeta Wyborcza.
Michnik is an optimist, a trait that helped him survive six years in communist prisons. Yet he acknowledged that he never would have predicted how well things have turned out after a decade of independence.
Some of the best news is also the most recent: the changes in Russian policy that Vladimir Putin has implemented since Sept. 11, 2001. Putin abandoned the post-Cold War game of bluff between Russia and the West, calling off the forlorn attempt to pretend that Russia could somehow use the status that the Soviet Union once enjoyed to pursue independent interests in Europe and beyond. There was no realistic basis for this pretension, despite its popularity among the Russian political elite.
Within nine months after Sept. 11, Putin took a series of steps that would have been unthinkable just a short time earlier. He signed up Russia for the U.S. war on terrorism, welcomed the establishment of U.S. bases in once-Soviet Central Asia, acquiesced to U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, accepted U.S. terms for a new treaty to reduce strategic arms and brought Russia into a new relationship with NATO. In sum, he cast Russia's lot with the West.
NATO provided the setting for one of the most stunning of these changes. The new NATO-Russia Council, established in May, created what is now called "NATO at 20" -- NATO's 19 members, plus Russia. This arrangement is producing concrete results, including joint military maneuvers, training and planning. Sergei Kislyak, Russia's envoy to NATO and a dour diplomat of the Soviet school who is known in Brussels as a relentlessly negative presence, actually uttered praise for NATO at 20 in a recent conversation: "The beginning of the process is rather encouraging," he said.
Joining the club allowed Russia to drop its objections to NATO expansion right up to its borders. Putin abandoned Russia's efforts to block admission of the Baltic republics -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. All three will be invited to join this week.
One large and important group of people would dispute the conclusion that things are going well in the former communist countries: the residents of those nations. This complicated fact is one reason why Michnik and others in Central and Eastern Europe tend to express relief rather than exhilaration.
After communism collapsed, the people in these nations dreamt of a speedy conversion to consumer capitalism. This was never realistic. Expectations -- or hopes -- far outran the plausible possibilities, which were limited by the scars of communism.
People who grow up expecting various authorities to make important decisions in their lives and protect their well-being don't quickly adapt to the need to decide and provide for themselves. It took communists decades to turn Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and the rest into dysfunctional societies with backward economies and dispirited populations. Erasing the scars will take decades more, alas.
Being free doesn't guarantee being rich, a fact that has animated the politics of Central and Eastern Europe since the collapse of communism. No government in the region has been able to make its people feel well-off; in most of these countries, the standard of living (as opposed to the standard of personal freedom) has not risen. For many it has fallen.
At the same time, elites in all these countries have thrived. Each country has a class of newly rich, many of whom acquired economic assets formerly owned by the state during chaotic processes of privatization. Those who went into politics also seem to have prospered. In polls, Central and Eastern Europeans say that corruption and connections have been keys to success in their countries. Resentment of the powerful and rich is widespread.
Ivan Krastev, an insightful Bulgarian political scientist, describes "a growing gap between the public and the political elite." Sticking to the reform policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions may improve future prospects, but the short-term impact is most often to depress ordinary citizens' standard of living. As a result, Krastev argues, democratic politics and institutions -- indeed, democracy itself -- have been discredited in Bulgaria, and in many neighboring countries.
Philip Dimitrov, Bulgaria's first liberal prime minister in 1991-92 and later ambassador to Washington, observed that the United States and its Western European allies initially did little to prepare his country and its neighbors for integration into the Western world. Japan and Germany got enormous assistance after World War II, but the Eastern Europeans were "given free choice" instead. That meant fending for themselves, Dimitrov said, with ill-prepared people leading the way, including himself. "I had very little appropriate training or experience" to be prime minister, he said. His government flopped, contributing to six years of turmoil in Bulgaria.
Then, a surprise: Bulgaria survived. In the late '90s, a reformist government led by Dimitrov's party put the country on the road to economic and political respectability. Similarly, the other former communist countries, after a decade of struggle, now enjoy macroeconomic stability. Some are growing briskly.
As their economic fortunes improved, attitudes in NATO and the European Union (EU) changed. In 1997, NATO invited the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland to join. In 1998, the EU began negotiating potential membership in Europe's economic community with those countries and others in Central and Eastern Europe. Both organizations made demands on the new applicants: NATO set "membership action plans" to push them to reform their armies, strengthen civilian control, improve security procedures and budgeting, among much else. The EU insisted on elaborate legal and administrative changes from every applicant.
The requirements were welcomed by reformers, who thought they could use NATO and the EU to change their countries for the better. Mircea Geoana, Romania's young foreign minister, put it bluntly: "We are getting into a kind of positive straitjacket that will help us do the right things."
Now the EU and NATO are acting in concert. Last month the EU announced it was prepared to admit 10 new members in 2004, including eight formerly communist nations -- the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- and to welcome Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. NATO will follow this week with invitations to Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic republics. At NATO and EU headquarters, officials agree that enlargement of both organizations is intended to consolidate democracy and free markets throughout Europe.
This is enunciated U.S. policy as well. Stephen J. Hadley, President Bush's deputy national security adviser, told a conference in Brussels last month that NATO, in conjunction with the EU, "is a critical instrument through which Europe will become whole, free and at peace for the first time in its history, and Russia will find a comfortable place in Europe for the first time in generations." Harry Truman would not recognize this description of the North Atlantic Alliance he formed in 1949 to thwart Soviet aims of expansionism.
Losing its original purpose challenges NATO now. If Cold War old-think no longer applies, and it surely does not, what is the point of sustaining a Cold War alliance whose enemy has not just disappeared, but become a kind of member of the alliance itself?
The Central and Eastern Europeans have no trouble answering that question. NATO satisfies their need for an institutional connection to the West, and for a treaty commitment from the world's one superpower to their own security. An American traveling through ex-communist Europe would be struck by the fervid pro-Americanism in the region. "Poland," said Michnik, "is the most pro-American country in the world -- much more pro-American than America."
But will the United States remain committed to an alliance that serves only symbolic purposes? This is a real anxiety in Europe now. "One could argue that NATO has lost a lot of appeal for American strategists, especially after 9/11," said Daniel Daianu, a former finance minister of Romania. This was an easy conclusion to draw from the events after the Sept. 11 attacks, when -- for the first time in its history -- NATO invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty, which commits every member to come to the defense of any other that is attacked. The United States sent a shiver through the alliance by ignoring this decision, and organizing the war in Afghanistan by itself.
In Prague this week, responding to the new geopolitics, NATO will try to agree on a multilateral rapid deployment force of about 21,000 troops that could be dispatched for up to a month against unconventional enemies in far-flung corners of the world. Countries could contribute specialized units to this force -- "niche contributions" is the new NATO catchword. The rapid deployment force is an attempt by NATO enthusiasts here and in Europe to find a way to make the organization relevant in this new strategic environment.
One last surprise: Central and Eastern European nations are eager to participate.
Robert Kaiser, senior correspondent and associate editor of The Post, recently visited Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and NATO headquarters in Brussels.
-------- pakistan
Tough Politicking as Pakistani Parliament Opens New Chapter
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/asia/17STAN.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 16 - Parliament convened today for the first time since Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup three years ago, a first step in what is intended to be a return to democracy. Yet, in a stark signal of who remains in charge, General Musharraf was sworn in during a separate ceremony today to a new five-year presidential term that he arranged under a much criticized referendum earlier this year.
No political party has been able to form a coalition government, so there is no prime minister yet. General Musharraf issued a decree overnight announcing that he would retain his powers as chief executive until a new government is formed and a prime minister named.
Five weeks after general elections, Pakistan is mired in political wrangling, much of it stemming from the system put in place by General Musharraf as he has tried to satisfy demands for a return to democracy while retaining power for himself.
Although most hailed today's movement from military rule to a parliamentary democracy, it remains unclear just how workable the current arrangement is and how stable any government would be, with an unlikely alliance being formed between the pro-Musharraf party and his most vocal critics, an alliance of religious parties. "It's the first day of Parliament after a very long time," said Makhdoom Amin Fahim, leader in Pakistan of the main opposition party, the Pakistan People's Party. "It's a good sign for the future of Pakistan and democracy."
The president has been active behind the scenes, diplomats say, but his plans have not all gone smoothly. The pro-Musharraf party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, failed to win a majority in the general elections and has had a difficult time forming a government.
With 118 seats in the 342-seat Parliament, it cannot form a government without one of the larger parties, yet those parties have proved highly demanding, and determined in their opposition to many of the president's recent decrees.
The People's Party, led by Benazir Bhutto from exile in London, put itself out of the running by demanding that Ms. Bhutto be allowed to return, her husband freed from prison and all corruption charges dropped, something unacceptable to General Musharraf, who came to power complaining about the corruption of former civilian governments.
So the president's supporters have ended up in negotiations with an alliance of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which surprised many when it won 60 seats in the Parliament. The religious leaders have caused General Musharraf serious headaches with their furious anti-American statements and criticism of his pro-American policies.
Flush with their electoral success, they are also demanding a high price for cooperation, and have nominated Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, a pro-Taliban cleric and vigorous critic of the president, for prime minister.
The alliance is opposed to the presence of American troops in Pakistan, and Hafiz Hussein Ahmed, the alliance's deputy secretary general, repeated today its demand to halt American use of Pakistan's air bases. In a television interview after the parliament session, Mr. Ahmed said the alliance remained opposed to many of General Musharraf's constitutional amendments, his remaining president and chief of staff of the army, and to his plan for a National Security Council that would not be answerable to Parliament.
Those demands may seem too much for General Musharraf, who after the Sept. 11 attacks adopted a policy of cooperation with the United States in its campaign against terrorism. Yet a coalition between the Musharraf supporters and the religious alliance remains the most likely outcome for a government.
Further talks between the two parties are scheduled for Sunday, and Parliament has been adjourned until Tuesday to allow the parties also to reach a consensus on a speaker.
In a taste of the sort of opposition the president can expect, Parliament opened today with arguments over which constitution lawmakers would swear to uphold during their swearing-in. Some delegates said they would not recognize constitutional amendments introduced by General Musharraf since he took power in October 1999, which include the power to disband Parliament.
The president appeared to give way to their demands Friday night, announcing that the 1973 Constitution would be partially "revived." Legislators said today that they would insist on reviewing all laws adopted since the coup.
"The really important thing is the legality and supremacy of Parliament," said Qazi Hussein Ahmed, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest party in the Muslim alliance.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechens kill, abduct law enforcers
November 17, 2002
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021117-123837-6900r.htm
MOSCOW, Nov. 17 -- Chechen militants killed two policemen and abducted three others in the rebellious province over the weekend in the most recent campaign of violence against the Kremlin-installed law enforcers continued, RIA Novosti news agency reported Sunday.
A police unit searching for the assassins of Lt. Gen. Igor Shifrin, who was killed late Friday in Grozny, was ambushed by a group of gunmen in Grozny's Oktyabrsky district. Two policemen were killed and two others wounded in the ensuing firefight. The attackers also suffered losses but the exact figures were unavailable.
Another incident in the capital involved the kidnapping of two policemen who were guarding a Grozny's gas supply station. The attackers also seized the policemen's Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Late Saturday, kidnappers broke into the home of local policeman Isa Dudayev in the town of Urus-Martan and took him to an unidentified location. Dudayev's submachine gun and pistol were also gone, RIA Novosti reported.
In both cases, the kidnappers wore masks, a spokesman for Chechnya's Directorate for Interior Affairs told the agency.
On Friday, Chechnya's pro-Kremlin administration chief Akhmad Kadyrov told his government that in the previous "several days" 48 people had been kidnapped in Chechnya.
A sudden surge in rebels activity is regarded as an attempt to retaliate for the Kremlin's plan to proceed with setting up Chechnya's Interior Ministry staffed primarily with ethnic Chechens.
The bid is part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy to gradually transfer duties of maintaining security and order in the province from federal troops to locally recruited police forces.
The rebels have threatened a number of times that they would strike at both fellow-Chechen civilians and law enforcers in case they cooperated with the federal authorities or were loyal to Moscow.
Despite controlling the greater portion of Chechnya and installing loyalist administrations across the restive province, Moscow still struggles to restore peace and order in Chechnya as the rebels keep inflicting casualties on a daily basis through ambushes and bombings.
-------- ukraine
Ukraine's critical period
By Natalia A. Feduschak
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 17, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20021117-8429686.htm
KIEV - After two years of scandals and accusations of government corruption, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and the country he leads have entered what many here say is the most critical period in Ukraine's 11-year post-Soviet history.
At stake is whether Ukraine evolves into a full-fledged democracy that successfully integrates into Europe or moves toward authoritarian rule.
"Ukraine doesn't have a healthy political model," said Victor Yushchenko, the reformist former prime minister who is the country's most popular politician. "We have a crisis of authority that has turned into a parliamentary crisis. The government can't understand it is the people who choose the government. This is extraordinarily dangerous, and leads to an oligarchic and clannish form of government."
In the past two years, Mr. Kuchma, who was elected in 1994, has been plagued by charges that he approved the sale of a high-tech radar system to Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions, called for the death of an Internet journalist on secretly recorded tapes and allowed government corruption to flourish.
"The first condition of finding a way out of the crisis is that all political forces should sit down and begin a political discussion," said Mr. Yushchenko, who leads Ukraine's largest political grouping in parliament and is the leading contender for the 2004 presidential elections. "What Ukraine needs are systemic changes," he added. "Everything else is details."
When Ukraine broke from the Soviet Union, its future looked bright. With a strong industrial and agricultural base, the country was expected to shift from communism to democracy and integrate into Europe.
Unlike those of many of its neighbors, though, Ukraine's leaders made the mistake of not introducing systemic changes that would allow democracy to flourish. So though the economy has continued to grow, an independent press and fair elections have not taken root, allowing government, as Mr. Yushchenko put it, "to work under the carpet."
This situation has given rise to a parliamentary stalemate, calls for Mr. Kuchma's resignation, and Ukraine's further isolation from the West.
The president's most immediate challenge is to disprove that he gave the go-ahead for the sale to Iraq of the early-warning Kolchuga radar system. On recordings secretly made by a former bodyguard who was given political asylum in the United States, Mr. Kuchma is said to be heard approving a $100 million sale of four radar systems through a Jordanian intermediary.
The Kolchuga system silently tracks aircraft and ground vehicles by detecting and triangulating their radio signals. Western officials worry it could threaten aircraft in the event of military action against Iraq.
The 90-second recording, purported to have been made July 10, 2000, also disclosed a method of shipment: hiding the radar equipment in crates typically used to export Ukrainian trucks.
Mr. Kuchma has repeatedly denied that he authorized any such sale. Ukrainian officials say the tape is a fake. The FBI has certified the conversation as genuine. Washington recently suspended $54 million in direct government aid until the Kolchuga question is resolved.
Seeking to prove his innocence, Mr. Kuchma opened Ukraine to a team of 13 inspectors from the United States and Britain who visited the sites where components of the Kolchuga system are produced. Their report, issued two weeks ago, was inconclusive.
Investigators could neither prove nor disprove that the system was in Iraq but indicated that Ukraine had not been as forthcoming during the investigation as had been promised.
Washington and London have requested more information about the system and want to question several more people.
Mr. Kuchma said he was willing to accept officials from other countries, such as Russia and Austria, for further investigation. "Anyone else is welcome," Mr. Kuchma said. "Ukraine wants a 'period' put on this problem."
Appealing to the presumption of innocence, Victor Medvedchuk, the president's chief of staff, who is also a lawyer, told parliament last week that Ukraine did not have to prove it is not guilty. Ukraine has asked the United Nations to widen the scope of the inquiry; the U.N. has refused for now.
A growing number of politicians here have become frustrated by Washington's stance toward Kiev, saying the Americans have been quick to accuse Ukraine of illicit sales without having enough supporting evidence. Mr. Kuchma's national security adviser, Yevhen Marchuk, said part of the brouhaha over the Kolchuga system could be attributed to the West's not wanting to let Ukraine into the lucrative weapons market.
"This is a highly competitive market," Mr. Marchuk, a former KGB chief, told reporters. "The entry of Ukraine with its serious potential hasn't been greeted with applause. Competitors will use all methods" to ensure Kiev is kept out of international arms market, he said.
Even Mr. Kuchma's critics worry that U.S. policy is only pushing Ukraine further from the West and dangerously personalizing politics.
"In this situation, Ukraine needs the support of the West," said Andriy Shkil, leader of an opposition nationalist party, who has called for Mr. Kuchma's resignation.
"In this case, the West needs to understand we're not just dealing with the question of Iraq. The mentality of Ukrainians is absolutely close to the West. We don't need to go anywhere. We are in Europe. Ukrainians aren't anti-Western."
Even Mr. Yushchenko, who has tried to compromise with Mr. Kuchma on several political issues, indicated in an interview that if the radar sale is proven, the West should seek a "political" solution rather than imposing direct sanctions against Kiev.
Ukraine, however, is already feeling the negative effects of the Kolchuga scandal. Even before the U.S. and British team submitted its report, Western leaders uninvited Mr. Kuchma from next week's NATO summit in Prague, where the alliance will offer membership to several former Soviet bloc countries, including Romania and Bulgaria.
The summit was supposed to celebrate a closer relationship between Ukraine and the West. A timeline for Kiev to begin submitting a plan for entry into the military alliance was to be on the agenda.
A Ukraine-NATO meeting is still expected to occur but at the foreign minister level. Mr. Kuchma, however, has asked his security council to determine whether it would be appropriate for the foreign minister or anyone else to attend.
Mr. Kuchma had indicated he would go to Prague as a member of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, a NATO-affiliated group that will meet during the summit.
The danger of personalizing the relationship between Washington and Kiev, politicians here say, is that as international pressure on him grows, Mr. Kuchma is feeling increasingly cornered. Consequently, the president is turning more often to Moscow for diplomatic support.
"There is a tendency in American foreign policy to overemphasize the personal dimension at a cost to the strategic dimension," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under former President Carter.
Although there have been problems in the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship in the past, Mr. Brzezinski said, they shouldn't be personalized to the detriment of long-term strategic relations.
Many Ukrainian politicians fear that a warmer relationship between Moscow and Kiev would pave the way for closer economic and political ties, undermining Ukraine's independence.
"Ukraine has found itself in the shadow of Russia," said Borys Tarasyuk, a former foreign minister who leads the parliamentary committee for European integration. "It is finding itself pushed away to the margin of European policy."
Russian companies already have a significant stake in Ukraine's economy, including the important energy sector. Kiev and Moscow have established a consortium to transport Russian energy sources across Ukrainian territory into Western Europe. Germany was to be part of the deal but has been reluctant since recent elections.
So much secrecy has surrounded the deal that political insiders said even high-ranking officials don't know its details. Opposition figures worry that Kiev will give up its last economic trump: its transportation corridor.
"The West has no economic leverage by isolating Kuchma," said Myron Wasylyk, vice president of the PBN Co., a U.S.-based public relations firm with offices in the former Soviet bloc. "An isolationist policy will allow Russia a free hand in furthering its economic interests in Ukraine."
Rep. Bob Schaffer, Colorado Republican who recently wrote President Bush asking him keep Mr. Kuchma from the Prague summit, said he thinks U.S. assistance should focus on helping Ukraine's people and institutions.
"At this point, as I have suggested in my letters to President Bush, America should increase and concentrate its foreign-aid efforts on nongovernment programs to promote education, public health, a free press, democracy and economic expansion," he said.
What has worried many observers in Ukraine is how the tapes secretly recorded by the former bodyguard, Mykola Melnychenko, are being used.
The tapes were made public two years ago, after the headless body of an Internet journalist, Georgy Gongadze, was found in a forest 90 miles outside Kiev. Mr. Gongadze had written stories accusing the government of corruption. Mr. Kuchma is reportedly heard telling aides "to get rid" of Mr. Gongadze.
Their disclosure at the time caused Ukraine's worst political crisis since independence.
Mr. Melnychenko said last year that he recorded Mr. Kuchma because he could no longer stand the corruption in the Kuchma administration. He also said he worked alone in taping the conversations.
Most observers here said they find that assertion dubious. Given the tight security within the presidential quarters, no one could have recorded Mr. Kuchma without help.
They also wonder about the timing of public releases of segments from the tapes. For instance, although Washington knew of the purported conversation about the Kolchuga sale when it was made public in Ukraine in May, the Bush administration only announced its belief in its validity on the eve of September street demonstrations planned by Kuchma foes in Kiev.
U.S. officials have maintained that they wanted to be certain the tapes were real. Many Ukrainian insiders suspect more sinister motives.
The latest accusations of wrongdoing by the president, however, have only raised political tensions. Since its election in March, Ukraine's parliament has been paralyzed by the split between pro-Kuchma and opposition forces. Mr. Yushchenko's bloc, which won the popular vote and has the largest faction in parliament, has effectively been shut out of decision-making.
Pro-Kuchma factions recently put together a parliamentary majority, which is expected to vote in a new government as early as this week.
Mr. Yushchenko said that although he believes the present parliament is more democratic than its predecessors, it is becoming a political vehicle to fulfill the will of the Kuchma administration, steered by Mr. Medvedchuk, the president's chief of staff. Mr. Medvedchuk's political party, the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United), placed last among the six parties voted into parliament.
Many politicians, including those who initially supported Mr. Medvedchuk, say they have become disillusioned with him. They say he has sharply curtailed access to the president, and is promoting his own political agenda and business interests.
Lawmakers, political observers and business people said many of the current political problems stem from the time when Mr. Medvedchuk was appointed Mr. Kuchma's chief of staff in June.
"Prior to Medvedchuk, the doors were open to all various political parties," said Mr. Wasylyk of PBN, the American public-relations firm. "The president needs to hear different points of view. Right now, Medvedchuk has cut that off."
Businessmen with the wrong political orientation say they are beginning to feel pressure from the government, including tax inspectors.
"Today the country is divided into two camps," said Yevhen Chervonenko, founder and honorary president of Orlan, one of Ukraine's largest soft-drink and transport companies. "This is our Boston Tea Party."
Orlan is embroiled in a tax problem the company said was initiated by Mr. Medvedchuk's brother, who leads the tax authority in the western Ukraine city of Lviv.
"In one camp is the old 'nomenklatura' [Soviet-era big shots] like oligarch Medvedchuk. They have nothing to show Arthur Andersen," said Mr. Chervonenko, who was a minister in Mr. Yushchenko's government. "We want equal rights for everyone."
Mr. Medvedchuk's office declined repeated requests for an interview.
-------- us
Distancing Tradition, Marines Eye Role in Special Operations
Jones: Shed the Word 'Amphibious'
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64488-2002Nov16?language=printer
A series of recent initiatives by the Marine Corps in response to the administration's war on terrorism represents an intensified effort by the Pentagon's smallest military service to demonstrate its continued relevance by branching away from such traditional missions as beach-landings and emergency rescue operations, according to Marine officials.
Over the past year, the Marines have moved to relieve some of the burden on overtaxed Army and Navy Special Operations forces by offering to take on more commando tasks, overcoming past resistance to assigning Marines to the Special Operations Command.
In Afghanistan, the Marines have flown troops far from support ships in the Arabian Sea, seizing an airfield about 600 miles inland near the southern city of Kandahar. And while Marine ground forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan, the Corps has left behind at Bagram air base about half-a-dozen AV-8B Harrier jets to support other service operations, despite a longtime Marine preference for keeping combat jets linked to their own ground forces.
Most recently, they have assumed command of a new task force in the Horn of Africa, sending about 400 Marines to join 800 U.S. Special Operations troops to hunt down al Qaeda members and provide security assistance and training to regional militaries.
Each of the moves has involved more of an increased emphasis on existing Marine Corps capabilities than development of new ones. And only a small fraction of the Corps has been involved. But taken together, Marine officials say, the initiatives represent a significant evolution in the Corps' focus and strategy.
"I think this is a fundamental change in the direction of the Marine Corps," said Gary Solis, the Corps' chief of oral history. "It takes us from being an amphibious force tied to the littorals and gives us a new strategic role projecting force."
In a series of interviews ahead of his departure next month as Marine Corps commandant, Gen. James L. Jones has called attention to the trend, arguing that for the service to survive, it must make itself useful to regional commanders in combating terrorists and other operations.
"Marines have to shed a 20th-century mentality -- and shed the word 'amphibious,' which is a legacy term -- and really understand the power of expeditionary warfare in support of the joint war fighter," Jones said. To this end, he added, Marines must take steps to be able to respond more quickly, project power farther and sustain operations longer.
As the smallest of the nation's military services with 175,000 troops, the Marines have often found change not only easier to come by but politically necessary.
"We've always been the stepchildren, at least in our own minds, and therefore paranoid about our survival," said Tom Wilkerson, a retired Marine lieutenant general. "We're always trying to stay a step ahead."
With the Special Operations forces of other services stressed by the administration's war on terrorism, the Marines have promoted use of their own amphibious groups, several of which are deployed around the world at any given time. These groups, each consisting of about 2,200 Marines, are largely trained for general-purpose missions but can conduct some basic Special Operations tasks, including searching and seizing ships, rescuing downed pilots and conducting reconnaissance operations. Additionally, the Marines bring a substantial amount of logistical support with them.
"For the foreseeable future, there's a requirement for more Special Operations-like forces," Jones said. "My argument is, if you already have a fair amount of those [in the Marines], don't reinvent the wheel, use what you already have."
Institutionally, the Marines have tended to stand apart from the Special Operations Command, preferring their separateness and regarding the command's creation in the mid-1980s as largely an Army operation. "The bridges between the two communities have always been extremely fragile," Jones said.
But the joining of Marine and Special Operations forces in securing a base in southern Afghanistan a year ago provided the impetus for closer cooperation. Soon afterward, Jones signed a memorandum of understanding with Gen. Charles R. Holland, the head of Special Operations Command, opening the way for Marines to contribute forces to the command for the first time.
The arrangement still faces resistance from traditionalists on both sides.
"There are people who think we're too hard to work with and we're just after their funding," Jones said. "The Marine naysayers, on the other hand, say we're a general purpose force, and if we do this, we're going to diminish our end strength and we'll be a shadow of our former selves in five years."
So far the relationship has been limited to the dispatch of a one-star Marine general and 85 Marines to Holland's command. But leaders on both sides expect the cooperation to grow. And Marine officials say they will continue to look for fresh opportunities to showcase their forces.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
No U.S. domestic spy agency, Ridge says
By Richard Tomkins
UPI White House Correspondent
November 17, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021117-011755-6325r.htm
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Formation of a domestic intelligence-gathering agency similar to Britain's MI-5, prompted by the need to prevent terrorist activity and attack, is not under consideration by the Bush administration given provisions of the U.S. Constitution, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Sunday.
Reported surveillance of Iraqi nationals and people of dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship was also being conducted under constitutional strictures, he said, as would domestic intelligence operations if the United States was to go to war with Iraq.
"We need to remind ourselves from time to time as Americans, we do operate under a rule of law," Ridge said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer." "We are guided by a Constitution, and we're not going to -- as difficult as this war on terrorism would be, as difficult as it would be for this country if we would engage Iraq militarily, those measures that we take internally still have to be consistent with the Constitution of the United States.
"We know that and we expect it as Americans.
"There are lessons to be learned from how MI5 operates, but I don't think you're going to see a similar organization be developed in this country."
Britain does not have a written constitution. It's MI-5, the domestic equivalent of its foreign intelligence service MI-6, has been over the years heavily involved in countering activities in Britain by the Irish Republican Army and its sympathizers.
Speculation over creation of a U.S. equivalent arose earlier over Ridge's visit to Britain to meet with MI-5 officials and news reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was having difficulty transforming itself from a law enforcement entity to an also intelligence-gathering one to fulfill its new mission in the war on terrorism.
The FBI, with the Central Intelligence Agency, brief President George W. Bush every morning on threats to the country.
"We have made enormous progress in combining domestic and foreign intelligence gathering capacity in this country," Ridge said. "CIA and the FBI are working closer together than ever before."
Ongoing consultations and discussions, however, were necessary he said to continually attempt to improve counter-terrorism efforts.
Ridge, repeated his remarks on several other interview shows Sunday, fronting the administration's insistence of progress in the war on terrorism, a stance under attack by Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and others.
"If you're looking at a measure of success, take a look at the success the military's enjoyed in Afghanistan: There are no longer any training camps, we basically liberated a country," Ridge said on the CNN program. "We're working with our allies, we've frozen over $100 million worth of their assets. Working with our allies we now have nearly 2,700 people under detention, we get more information about their threats and operational capability."
Other issues broached by Ridge:
--The latest threat of a "spectacular" attack on the United States: "I think the document that the FBI put out a couple of days ago was basically summarizing some of the threats we've heard during the past two months. And 'spectacular' -- we know spectacular, we've got the sights and the sounds of Sept. 11, 2001, in our hearts and in our minds. But we also know that they have the capacity, we've seen it around the rest of the world, to operate in isolated events where you don't have mass casualties. But we need to be prepared, as a country, to prevent the entire range of potential attacks. And from time to time, we do get the threats of a potential spectacular attack. But there has never been a time and a place and a means associated with those general threats," he said on ABC television.
--On a new tape from al Qaida, with a voice believed to be that of Osama bin Laden, indicating the suspected terrorist mastermind was alive despite U.S. efforts in Afghanistan: "We believe it's likely (his voice) and we certainly are going to act as if it is. But again, the fact that we either get taped messages, video messages, or paper messages, we know we are at war. We know that this is a decentralized organization that has cells around the country. We know they plan. We know they from time to time go from the planning stage to the operational stage, as we've seen over the past three or four weeks," Ridge told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.
"And we know that in spite of the fact that it is a global organization and our allies and friends around the world are at risk, the United States has been and will remain the number one target."
Ridge also said he would be willing to serve as secretary of the proposed Department of Homeland Security if the president asked him. There had been speculation that Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania, did not want the post in the new agency, which will combine some 22 government agencies and departments and employ 170,000 people.
Legislation creating the department has passed the House and is expected to be approved shortly in the Senate, where an earlier version stalled in a dispute over workers' union rights.
----
Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/politics/17INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of the Baghdad regime, senior government officials said.
The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending American universities or working at private corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United States-led war against Iraq, officials said.
Some of the targets of the operation are being electronically monitored under the authority of national security warrants. Others are being selected for recruitment as informants, the officials said.
In the event of an American invasion of Iraq, officials would intensify the program's mission through arrests and detentions of Iraqis or Iraq sympathizers if they are believed to be planning domestic terrorist operations.
The government officials who confirmed the outlines of the program did so in an apparent effort to rebut critics in Congress and elsewhere who have complained in recent days that American intelligence agencies are failing in their war against terror. Senior Democratic senators have said the problems are demonstrated by the government's inability to find Osama bin Laden and to identify specific threats since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Iraqi domestic intelligence program is an addition to the government's continuing effort since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to identify citizens of Middle Eastern countries who represent a potential threat. Those efforts have also been stepped up as the country prepares for the possibility of war.
Next week, federal authorities plan to begin interviewing Arab-Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to Iraq, a senior government official said. The interviews will be voluntary, but in the past, such efforts have been criticized by Arab-American groups. The F.B.I. is planning to meet with Arab-American civic leaders to explain the nonclassified aspects of the operation, officials said.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House Office of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the surveillance program, which is classified.
The effort by intelligence agencies, particularly the F.B.I., to strengthen and expand their counterterrorism programs comes at a time of serious discussion in Congress and in the Bush administration about whether to create a domestic intelligence agency like MI-5, the British agency that collects information about internal threats.
Senior Bush administration counterterrorism officials gathered on Veteran's Day at a White House meeting directed by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to discuss whether to strip the F.B.I. of its domestic security responsibilities. The meeting was first reported today by The Washington Post.
No one in the administration has formally proposed creating a domestic intelligence agency. Several officials said dismantling the F.B.I. remained an uncertain prospect, but they said a wide range of ideas were likely to be considered with the creation of a Homeland Security Department.
Another part of the new intelligence operation involves a focused effort to assess whether the regime of Saddam Hussein has engaged in any actions, through alliances with Middle Eastern terrorist organizations or efforts to obtain weapons, that could threaten American interests in this country or abroad. The operation is also tracing the movement of money by the Iraqi government, and organizations sympathetic with Iraq, around the world.
The officials said the monitoring operation had not detected any specific threats in the United States or against American interests overseas.
The operation draws on the experience of a smaller program that was undertaken in the gulf war with Iraq in 1991, a conflict that resulted in little immediate threat of terrorism in the United States. During the war, the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization Service conducted thousands of interviews with Iraqis and other Arab-Americans in the United States and investigated hundreds of Iraqis who had entered the United States on visitor's visas and had not left when their entry permits expired.
A large number of government agencies are part of the new operation, including the Pentagon, the F.B.I., the Central Intelligence Agency, the immigration service, the State Department and the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications around the world, officials said.
Officials said the operation would also step up monitoring of Iraq's foreign intelligence service, which they believe operates under diplomatic cover from Baghdad's mission at the United Nations.
"This is the largest and most aggressive program like this we've ever had," said one senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We think we know who most of the bad guys are, but we are going to be very proactive here and not take any chances."
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is departing as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview this week that American intelligence agencies, in particular the F.B.I., had failed to consider the full range of threats that might stem from a war with Iraq.
Mr. Graham said that beyond threats from Al Qaeda, American intelligence agencies had not adequately assessed threats posed by other Middle Eastern terror groups that are likely to be inflamed by a war with Iraq, among them Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"I think we make a mistake when we assume that the threat is only Al Qaeda," Mr. Graham said. "There are a lot of terror groups out there, some of them with a large presence in the United States, who shouldn't be dismissed because in the past they have not attacked in the United States."
Intelligence analysts said that for years the authorities have tracked the movements of Islamic militant groups in the United States. The groups were subjected to scrutiny because they engaged in fund-raising or criminal activity that brought them into contact with law enforcement agencies, the officials said. In contrast, Qaeda operatives like the 19 hijackers lived quietly and, except for a handful of minor traffic violations, did not break the law.
But Mr. Graham said that F.B.I. officials, in closed sessions with the committee, had been unable to provide basic information about Islamic militant groups with a presence in the United States.
"The kinds of questions that I've asked are: how many operatives are in the United States, where are they distributed, what is their infrastructure - financially, logistically and with communications," Mr. Graham said. "It's the same inability to answer."
For 90 minutes on Friday, Mr. Graham met with Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, to discuss his concerns. Mr. Mueller presented the senator with a briefing of current counterterrorism operations in the United States, officials said.
"Mr. Mueller was more forthcoming than in past sessions, and that seemed to satisfy the senator," said Paul Anderson, a spokesman for Senator Graham.
However, Mr. Anderson said that Senator Graham believed the F.B.I. "has a long way to go" in its domestic counterterrorism efforts, "and very few days in which to get there," a reference to the possibility that a military confrontation with Iraq could occur within three months.
American officials contend that the Iraqi intelligence service learned a lesson from its failure to engage in anti-American terrorist activities during the first gulf war. Iraq's efforts were disrupted by the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and it was unable to mount any successful terrorist attacks against American interests.
After the gulf war, Iraq botched an attempt to assassinate former President George Bush on a visit to Kuwait in 1993, prompting President Bill Clinton to order a cruise missile strike at the Iraqi intelligence headquarters building in Baghdad. Since then, according to the C.I.A., there is no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist activity against the United States.
The Bush administration has said it has evidence of contacts over the years between Iraqi intelligence and Qaeda operatives, and there have been reports that some Qaeda operatives moved into Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. But American intelligence officials say there is no evidence that Iraq has become involved in Qaeda terrorist operations, and the Bush administration has never found hard evidence that Iraq played any role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Instead, Iraqi intelligence devotes much of its efforts overseas to tracking and harassing Iraqi dissidents, and seeking secret arms and oil deals for Saddam Hussein's regime.
--------
China's Salt Police Enforce Monopoly
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Salt-Police.html
HUIANBAO, China (AP) -- As soon as they saw the empty truck brake suddenly on the deserted rural highway, the four men in dark-blue uniforms jumped into action.
The truck likely was a scout, slowing to phone a warning to smugglers close behind. Piling into a white van, the officers roared down the two-lane road until they found a heavily laden truck struggling to turn around to avoid the police trap.
``We got him just after he got the call on his cell phone,'' said Li Yanming, recounting the chase in China's northern Ningxia region.
On board, the officers found 14 tons of white, powdery contraband -- salt.
Li and his colleagues are in China's salt police, 25,000 officers with red epaulettes and gold badges in the shape of salt crystals who enforce one of the oldest economic policies in the world: the Chinese government's exclusive right to produce and sell salt.
Although China first imposed the salt monopoly 2,600 years ago, the police force was created just eight years ago to help fulfill a modern public health goal.
In 1994, China launched a national campaign to fortify all salt with iodine, a mineral needed for healthy brain development in fetuses.
The salt police were set up to enforce the monopoly, shutting down hundreds of private producers and merchants who had appeared during the market reforms of the 1980s. The officers also patrol remote regions like Ningxia where smugglers sell illegal salt that is cheaper, but not iodized.
As is often the case under the communist regime, the tactics are heavy-handed. But experts say they have helped China achieve one of the biggest health successes in recent history.
By 2000, 90 percent of China's 1.3 billion people were eating iodized salt, up from 10 percent in the 1980s. That means more than 18 million of the 20 million children born annually in China have a better chance of good brain development.
By contrast, iodized salt accounts for only 70 percent of consumption in the United States. America started adding the mineral to salt in the 1920s to prevent goiter. That was before the link with mental development was known.
As recently as the 1980s, researchers were finding entire villages just miles from Beijing where the average IQ was 60, well below the norm of 100. A third of villagers suffered from cretinism, a severe form of mental retardation that often involves stunted growth and loss of speech and hearing.
More than 80 percent of the 10 million mentally disabled people in China are victims of iodine deficiency, said Wang Zhilun, a researcher on endemic diseases at Xi'an Medical School in Shaanxi province.
Studies in China in the 1980s and early '90s by foreign and Chinese scientists were among the first to establish the connection between iodine and brain development. They found that just a teaspoonful consumed over a lifetime prevented cretinism and raised IQs by 10 to 15 points.
China's success with iodine is a lesson in what it takes to get things done in this increasingly freewheeling, market-driven society. Resistance by underfunded, and often indifferent, local governments was overcome only by a top-down push from the central leadership.
``It's a classic Chinese story,'' said Dr. Ray Yip, a UNICEF adviser in Beijing. ``If you can convince the right person, something can happen.''
After years of lobbying by health officials, the breakthrough came at a 1993 conference in Beijing attended by then Vice Premier Zhu Rongji, said Glen Maberly, a researcher who was at the conference.
Maberly, now a professor of international health at Emory University in Atlanta, says the researchers repeatedly told Zhu that China was losing tens of millions of IQ points a year.
``At one point, Zhu said, `We will solve this problem,''' recalled Maberly. ``And that's what it took.''
The following year, the government revived the salt monopoly, which, though officially still in effect, had fallen into neglect during the market openings of the 1980s. Salt monopolies have existed in China off and on since the 7th century B.C., when emperors first used salt revenues to finance strong central government.
Since 1994, China has spent more than $100 million to install iodine-adding technology at salt mills and improve distribution by state-owned salt companies.
The newly created salt police were put under the control of each region's state-run salt companies -- an unusual arrangement that gives a producer the power and incentive to go after smugglers.
The result: Iodine deficiency was quickly eliminated in the cities and many densely populated eastern provinces.
``The monopoly has caused higher prices, but it was necessary to get the salt into iodine-deficient areas quickly,'' said Chen Zupei, a Ministry of Health adviser.
The monopoly has struggled, however, in areas where natural salt is cheap and abundant, or where local governments continue to be indifferent.
Here in Ningxia, officials estimate only a fifth of salt is bought from the monopoly. The rest is smuggled in from neighboring Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, which have vast salt lakes.
Residents of this wind-swept region of grasslands and cattle and goat herds welcome the smuggled salt because it costs just 1 mao (13 cents) a pound -- one-ninth the salt monopoly price.
Most smuggled salt crosses Yanchi, an eastern county that borders both Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. Sixteen salt police officers patrol its 2,850 square miles, spending most of their time in ambush along lonely roads, scanning every passing vehicle.
Yang Xingjun, 51, was the smuggler captured near the village of Huianbao, an area where the blacktop highway and crumbling remains of the Great Wall are the only features visible on the endless plains.
A former farmer who made less than $60 a year coaxing cabbage and potatoes from dry earth, Yang said in an interview he jumped at the chance to earn $50 a night driving a salt truck in from Inner Mongolia.
He said he knows of iodine's benefits from state education campaigns. But health is a luxury Ningxia's poor can't afford.
``We have no money,'' Yang said. ``We can't worry about these things like city residents can.''
On the Net:
Program Against Micronutrient Malnutrition site on iodine deficiency: http://www.sph.emory.edu/PAMM
------- spies
CIA Feels Strain of Iraq and Al Qaeda
Some Gaps Filled By Shifting Staffs
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 17, 2002; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64313-2002Nov16?language=printer
Shortly after last year's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the CIA pulled about 160 analysts from their jobs watching global political, economic and military trends and turned them into counterterrorism specialists.
The transfer of the 15 units made certain things easier on the intelligence agency. The units already had offices and computers, and they knew how to work as a team. But there were costs. Analysts who scrutinized the Russian leadership, for example, began devoting 16 hours a day to tracking al Qaeda cells, and most were novices to the terrorism world.
On top of that, the CIA's small paramilitary unit and other covert operators were called upon to spearhead the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, in Afghanistan as well as to lead the effort to track down terrorists around the globe.
Now, with the possibility of an invasion of Iraq only months away, top intelligence officials face a much stiffer challenge: hiring and training more CIA fighters for Iraq and finding more case officers and analysts to devote to a major conventional war.
"I have no more whole units to move to a war footing," one senior intelligence official said. "With a deep breath, it's doable. But it's not going to be easy." That sentiment was echoed in interviews with a dozen senior intelligence officials and by another dozen former officials who maintain close ties with the agency.
Administration officials publicly say they are optimistic they can fight a war with Iraq and continue the global war on terrorism even as its unfinished nature was highlighted last week by an audiotape of Osama bin Laden indicating he is still alive. On Friday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice sought to assure the public that terrorism, not Iraq, remains "a central focus of this administration."
President Bush "does not begin his day on Iraq; he begins his day [with briefings] on the war on terrorism," Rice said. It "is fought aggressively every day, every hour by this administration."
But senior administration officials have acknowledged that the challenges are real.
CIA Director George J. Tenet testified on Capitol Hill on Oct. 17 about the strains facing the agency as it seeks to adjust to the new threats posed by global terrorism while it wages a counterterrorism war on multiple fronts.
"What we still don't have are enough people," Tenet said.. "So we're going to keep robbing people. We have 900 people in the counterterrorism center today. It's probably not enough. We have got hundreds more sitting overseas working this target almost exclusively. And what we need to keep calibrating is how much more can we do to do everything we know how to do to stop the next attack."
To enlarge intelligence agencies' ability to go after terrorist networks, Congress increased their funding after Sept. 11, 2001, from $30 billion a year to about $35 billion. But the agencies still haven't been able to find all the qualified employees they need, especially in the critical areas of spies, Arabic-speaking linguists and analysts, and paramilitary fighters.
To make up the difference, the agencies have hired contractors -- usually retirees -- at a pace and quantity that Maurice A. Sovern, chairman of the CIA's retiree association, has never seen. He calculates that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies have been able to increase some of their specialized work staffs by as much as one-third with contractors.
But if there is a war with Iraq, Sovern said, the shortage will become even more acute because many of these retirees are also military reservists who most likely would be called up for duty. "You've already ramped up" for the war on terrorism, he said.
Intelligence has become a dramatically more central component of conventional warfare -- from new targeting techniques that rely heavily on behavioral analysts to predict how enemy leaders will react to airstrikes to the stream of images and real-time information that helps military units set coordinates for precision-guided bombs.
After the 1991 war on Iraq, the commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, complained that intelligence agencies had failed to be helpful enough. By 1999, when the United States prosecuted a 78-day air war against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, 800 intelligence analysts were assigned to the Kosovo mission, according to Tenet.
"High-quality intelligence is the American 21st-century version of mass," said Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency, whose eavesdropping equipment and digital communications collectors will be vital to any war against Iraq. "With it, we have replaced mass on the battlefield with knowledge and precision."
Besides the demise of the CIA's Russian leadership analytical unit, former and current intelligence officials said, units once considered central to the CIA's mission have been dramatically scaled back to add more people to counterterrorism. The counternarcotics section, the counterintelligence group and the weapons proliferation office, in particular, have been decimated, they said. "They're on life support," one source said.
"We're not going to take away from counterterrorism," a senior CIA official said. "But it's going to be very hard. The people who do proliferation, counternarcotics, regional concerns, they will have to come from there."
"We are definitely going to have to reprioritize assets somewhere," said Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, who retired this summer as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "While it could affect the war on terrorism, it will most certainly impact other intelligence priorities currently not at the top of the list, but which are still important to our national interests."
Senior officials at the main intelligence agencies -- the CIA, DIA, NSA and National Imagery and Mapping Agency -- said they have developed plans that draw heavily on retirees, contractors and shifts of existing personnel.
"We have it down to which people go where," said NIMA's director, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. The agency produced 60 million maps for government use during the Afghanistan war, and a half-million electronic maps.
Many foreign intelligence agencies have pledged to backstop the U.S. anti-terrorism effort during an Iraq war, even some that do not publicly support a war in the Persian Gulf. "It is easier to help us out with intelligence," which can be done without public notification, than with troops, a senior official said.
To find the extra analysts needed, the CIA's analytic division ordered a list of all former and current agency analysts with experience in the Persian Gulf. A two-inch thick "skills inventory" printout lists people with Middle East experience, students of military or petroleum issues and speakers of relevant languages.
Clapper, who was the Air Force's chief intelligence officer during the Gulf War, said the ultimate effect of an Iraq war on the war against terrorism is unknown.
"We'll find out," he said. "Will we be stressed? Yes. But I'm pretty confident we'll be able to rise to the occasion."
----
'Spy': The F.B.I.'s Worst Mole
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By EVAN THOMAS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/books/review/17THOMAST.html
They seemed like a big catch. Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin were a pair of K.G.B. spies working out of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Recruited by the F.B.I. in 1983, ''M&M,'' as they were called by the agents, were expected to tell all about Soviet spying in the United States. As it turned out, there wasn't much to tell. Though Moscow sent the K.G.B.'s Washington station a long wish list of secrets to steal, the Russian spies didn't try very hard. They were afraid that if they got caught, they would get kicked out of Washington. The K.G.B. men loved the city, with its comfortable, consumer-friendly lifestyle. So they mostly went through the motions. One of the turncoats told his American handlers that ''if they could send something to Moscow Center 24 hours before it appeared in The Washington Post, they were heroes.''
David Wise reports the complacent cynicism of the Russian spies, but only in passing, as an amusing footnote to a tale of monstrous treachery. Robert Hanssen, the F.B.I. agent who sold out M&M and dozens of others, was a monster all right. Over two decades of spying for the Russians, Wise writes, Hanssen ''betrayed an astonishing 50 human sources or recruitment targets.'' (Martynov and Motorin were summoned back to Moscow and shot.) At ''dead drops'' in suburban Virginia parks, Hanssen, a career counterespionage officer in the F.B.I., left double-wrapped black plastic bags stuffed with secret documents, including a C.I.A. assessment of Soviet nuclear war fighting capabilities. An amateur hacker, Hanssen seemed to have no problem breaking into government computers to steal secrets, which he bartered to the Russians for diamonds and cash. Espionage aficionados are still debating whether the F.B.I.'s Hanssen or the C.I.A.'s Aldrich Ames was the worst mole ever.
A relentless reporter and true expert on the world of spying, Wise recounts Hanssen's story and the hunt to catch him in precise, if sometimes overwhelming detail. One of several books published about the Hanssen case, ''Spy'' is the most authoritative. By marshaling the evidence with prosecutorial thoroughness, Wise seeks to shock with the enormity of Hanssen's betrayal. ''Spy'' is meant to be read as tragedy, but at times it reads more like farce. Lives were lost, the pressures and the risks were enormous. And yet the game, as played by the plodding careerists on both sides, seems oddly trivial, more like faculty politics in its pettiness than a superpower struggle.
All the intelligence services portrayed by Wise -- the F.B.I. and C.I.A. and their Russian rivals, the G.R.U. (military intelligence) and K.G.B. (later renamed the S.V.R.) -- come across as exhausted and bumbling. The F.B.I. had long believed that its best G.R.U. source, code-named Top Hat, had been betrayed to the K.G.B. by Aldrich Ames in the mid-1980's. Only after Hanssen was arrested in 2001 did the bureau learn that Hanssen had actually fingered Top Hat to the G.R.U. six years earlier. But the G.R.U. never moved against its own turncoat. Top Hat wasn't arrested and executed until the K.G.B. learned of his perfidy from Ames. Apparently, the G.R.U. never told the K.G.B. that one of its generals had been turned. Wise is not sure why, but he suggests that fear of professional embarrassment was at least a factor. ''The K.G.B. and the G.R.U. were bitter competitors who barely spoke to each other,'' Wise writes. ''The K.G.B. looked down on the G.R.U. as 'the boots' or sapogi, a term of derision. . . . The expression implied that the boot-wearing military men lacked subtlety.''
The C.I.A. and F.B.I. weren't much more cooperative or respectful of each other. ''Spy'' is the latest in a parade of books to obliterate what is left of the F.B.I.'s reputation as a crack crime-fighting and intelligence-gathering organization. It took more than two decades for the F.B.I. to uncover the traitor in its midst, even though Hanssen left plenty of clues. He was guilty of poor tradecraft, refusing, for example, to vary his dead drop sites. (Nonetheless, the hapless Russians never discovered the real identity of Hanssen, who identified himself only as ''Ramon.'') Hanssen's brother-in-law, an F.B.I. agent, suspected that Hanssen was working for the Russians and told one of his superiors. The warning was ignored.
The F.B.I. knew that there was a mole somewhere in the American intelligence community -- agents were being burned right and left -- yet pigheadedly assumed that the mole must work for the C.I.A. Indeed, for almost two years the counterspies targeted the wrong man, a C.I.A. case officer named Brian Kelley. His career and life nearly ruined by the investigation, Kelley received only grudging apologies when the gumshoes finally stumbled onto the real culprit. The bureau refused to recognize that it had been sold out by one of its own until the mole hunters heard a tape recording of Hanssen talking to his K.G.B. handlers. The tape was provided by a disaffected former K.G.B. man who had quit the Russian intelligence service at the end of the cold war. The Russian walked out of K.G.B. headquarters with ''insurance against a rainy day'' -- the K.G.B.'s file on its secret mole inside the F.B.I. The Russian sold the file to the Americans for $7 million.
The story of the search for the wrong man is one of many subplots in ''Spy'' that have been touched on by earlier accounts but never before fully documented or fleshed out. Wise is generally described as the best-sourced, most knowledgeable author of books on espionage. A former chief of the Washington bureau of The New York Herald Tribune, he is the co-author of the first really important expose of the C.I.A., ''The Invisible Government,'' back in the early 1960's, and he has written a number of well-regarded histories of the spy wars over the past two decades.
Among Wise's fans was Robert Hanssen. Sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, Hanssen allowed Wise to interview his court-appointed psychiatrist, David Charney. Hanssen's decision to grant Wise such exceptional access was motivated partly by anger at an earlier psychiatrist, who prattled to the press about the F.B.I. mole's ''sexual demons,'' but also out of a professional spy's respect for an author's expertise. In a footnote, Wise quotes Hanssen telling his lawyer, Plato Cacheris, that ''David Wise is the best espionage writer around.''
Wise is no John le Carre. His writes in an old school, just-the-facts-ma'am journalistic style that is occasionally leaden. But he seems to know the code names and case files of every mole hunt and spy scandal of the last half-century, and he is careful not to overreach in his conclusions. One wishes he had written with more flair and feeling about the troubled culture of the intelligence services, but the mere facts of Hanssen's life make for gripping reading.
Hanssen was evil in a banal way. He was a creepy ''lurker,'' the sort of person who appears in a doorway and just stands there. By all accounts a devoutly faithful Catholic, Hanssen somehow managed to go to confession for years without coming to grips with his murderous betrayal. He was, to all appearances, a good family man, and yet he arranged for a friend to watch him having intercourse with his wife. (He also pondered giving her a date-rape drug so the friend could have sex with her.) He took a stripper to Hong Kong -- but, aside from one fumbling encounter, rebuffed her advances.
His psychiatrist suggested that Hanssen was scarred and twisted by his father. During prison interviews with Charney, Wise writes, Hanssen ''talked at length about the punishments and humiliations his father had imposed, such as wrapping him in a mattress so that his arms were pinned, or making him sit with his legs spread.'' Hanssen's fellow F.B.I. agents offer another explanation for his deviance: they note that he liked to play with guns and pretend that he was James Bond. (He carried so many guns in the trunk of his car that a friend called him ''Machine Gun Bob.'') Most of Hanssen's assignments in the bureau, however, were in the backroom, working on budgets and shuffling paper, not out on the street chasing spies and criminals.
It's hard to imagine that Hanssen betrayed his comrades, his family, his faith and his country because he was bored. But that seems to be the truth. At the ''anthill'' -- the nickname F.B.I. agents bestowed on the bureau's New York field office, where Hanssen was stationed when he first began selling secrets to the Russians -- the end of the cold war produced a kind of moral weariness. It was apparently this numbed sense of pointlessness that turned Robert Hanssen into a traitor and a spy.
Evan Thomas is an editor at Newsweek and the author of ''Robert Kennedy: His Life.''
-------- terrorism
Kuwait arrests senior Al-Qaida member
November 17, 2002
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021117-020017-2532r.htm
LONDON, Nov. 17 -- Kuwait has arrested a senior Al Qaida member who has identified those who were behind last month's attack against a French supertanker off Yemen, Kuwaiti dailies reported in their Sunday issues.
The newspapers said the Kuwaiti suspect, identified only as "Mohsen F.", headed Al Qaida operations in the Arabian peninsula and was in touch with the militant network's operatives in the Gulf and Yemen.
A security source said that Kuwaiti authorities passed information obtained from Mohsen to the United States and France one week ago.
This included the names of two men who allegedly planned the Oct. 6 attack on the tanker Limburg which gutted the ship and killed one crewman.
It was not clear if Mohsen, born in 1981, was the high-ranking unidentified Al Qaida leader who U.S. government sources said had been captured in the past week or so and was in U.S. custody.
The security source said that one of the men named by Mohsen was also allegedly involved in the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S. warship USS Cole in Aden Harbor which killed 17 U.S. sailors.
"Mohsen also confessed that he had prepared with his group a plan to carry out a suicide attack on a hotel in the Yemeni capital Sanaa with American guests," the source said.
Mohsen allegedly said he had received a call four months ago about "one land operation and one sea operation", the source says, and that $127,000 had been transferred from Kuwait to another capital in the Gulf and then Yemen.
The papers said Mohsen, who received training and fought in Afghanistan and Chechnya, was arrested at his house after close monitoring of 10 mobile telephone numbers he had been using.
--------
Ridge Says There Are No New Threats Against U.S.
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Homeland-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the Senate set to approve the agency he's expected to lead, President Bush's homeland security adviser on Sunday played down as ``really nothing new'' an alleged al-Qaida threat of attacks in New York and Washington.
Tom Ridge also said he doubted the Bush administration would create an agency separate from the FBI to gather domestic intelligence. Several senators said the White House should not pursue that idea without congressional input.
Ridge declined to discuss whether he wants to become secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. A senior administration official confirmed Sunday that Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor and close friend of Bush, is the president's choice for the job.
Appearing on three Sunday morning talk shows, Ridge tried to minimize the alleged al-Qaida threat.
``We're familiar with that piece of information. There are no new threats. There are the same old conditions,'' Ridge told ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``It's just part of the continuing threat environment that we assess. It's really nothing new.''
A correspondent for the Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera told The Associated Press he received an unsigned, six-page document on Wednesday, a day after the station broadcast an audiotape believed made by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
The United States and other governments blame bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network for the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon in Washington, killing more than 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
While the correspondent says he is certain the statement came from al-Qaida's leadership, Ridge said the administration was unsure of its source, but recognizes that the United States is a primary target.
``The war on terrorism has come to our shores. We have to deal with it,'' he said.
Ridge said a recent visit he made to MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, was ``very revealing,'' but added that he thought it was unlikely the administration would create something similar. He and several senators noted that FBI Director Robert Mueller is working, under orders from Bush, to reorganize the FBI to improve domestic intelligence gathering.
Ridge said powers given to MI5 would be unacceptable under the Constitution.
``I don't think you're going to see a similar organization be developed in this country,'' he said on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``That's not to say that not on a regular basis we don't sit down and see how we can improve our intelligence-gathering capacity domestically and how we share it.
Top senators said urged caution -- and consultations with Congress.
``A lot of things have been done in the name of national security, particularly in the 20th century, that we've regretted retrospectively,'' said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''
``It would have to be something that would have to be sold to a majority of Congress before the first steps are taken,'' he said.
Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was not sure the FBI is up to the job of domestic spying.
If the FBI cannot the job, ``We're either going to have to create a domestic intelligence service, by standing alone, or we're going to have to put it into Homeland Security,'' he told CNN's ``Late Edition.''
Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., the panel's outgoing chairman, agreed. ``We ought to look seriously at an alternative'' and follow the British example once the threat of war with Iraq passes, he said.
Ridge sidestepped questions about surveillance of Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify possible terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, as reported by The New York Times. Shelby endorsed the previously undisclosed program.
``We should do everything we can to disrupt and destroy any cells, any activity that would do us harm in this country,'' the senator said on CNN.
Passage of the homeland security bill could come Monday before Senate the adjourns this week. The House approved the bill last week after the White House agreed to some concessions to Democrats concerned over the labor rights of the 170,000 employees of the new agency.
Ridge took issue with Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's criticisms of the fight against terrorism, saying the South Dakota Democrat has a ``different frame of reference'' than most people.
Daschle said last week that the administration's inability to catch bin Laden raises questions about ``whether or not we are winning the war on terror.''
Ridge said the military has basically liberated Afghanistan and disrupted al-Qaida training camps, and that the United States, working with its allies, has frozen more than $100 million of al-Qaida assets and detained nearly 2,700 people for questioning, among other efforts.
``We will get bin Laden, we're committed to that,'' Ridge said.
He also said that an unidentified senior al-Qaida leader who, U.S. officials said, recently was captured overseas and is in American custody, is helping the United States.
--------
The Warning Overdose
November 17, 2002
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/opinion/17SUN1.html
Fourteen months after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, the American people deserve a more effective warning system about possible new assaults than the Chicken Little alerts the Bush administration is providing. Once again last week, Washington, in effect, warned that the sky was falling, and officials did a good imitation of Henny Penny as they analyzed the latest intelligence data about Osama bin Laden. This is no way to conduct the affairs of the most powerful, technologically advanced nation on the planet.
The only thing warnings this vague are good for is providing political cover in case of disaster. They offer no specific information about the location, timing or method of attack, and are all but useless to the average citizen, or even to local law enforcement officers. If there is another terror strike, however, we can be sure that the White House, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency will be quick to remind everyone that they saw it coming this time and did their best to prevent it.
Last week's F.B.I. warning was at once frightening and painfully obvious - Al Qaeda wants to kill as many Americans as possible in spectacular fashion. The prime targets, the bulletin said, "remain within the aviation, petroleum and nuclear sectors, as well as significant national landmarks." It doesn't take a more than $30 billion intelligence budget and new Department of Homeland Security to figure that out. If places like airports and nuclear power plants need special scare tactics to put them on alert after all that's happened, the country is in more trouble than another F.B.I. bulletin can fix.
Despite the new alert, the government's color-coded threat level barometer was not adjusted to a higher setting. That oddity was supposedly explained by the fact that the F.B.I. notification was sent to state and local law enforcement agencies but was not meant to be made public. Apparently someone in Washington actually believed that a message sent to hundreds of police departments would remain secret.
The terror threat against the United States is too critical and too lethal to be handled in this ludicrous manner. We recognize the difficulty of sorting through the daily blizzard of intelligence data, and appreciate that much of the government's effort to combat terrorism has to be conducted in secret. The broadcast last week of an audio message that appears to come from Osama bin Laden and indicates that he may still be alive underscored how hard it will be to prevail in the war against terrorism. Nevertheless, the Bush administration must devise a more useful, calibrated method of putting the nation on alert.
The place to begin is with a candid acknowledgment to Americans that the C.I.A. and F.B.I., for all their redoubled efforts, have found it exceedingly difficult to detect and disrupt terror plots as they are unfolding. Given the shortage of specific information, the government would better serve the country by not rushing forward with every new indication that trouble is brewing. Instead, it should reserve alerts for moments when concrete information can be given to specific communities that appear to be targeted. The danger of the present system, apart from the sowing of generic fear, is that people will stop paying attention. That's exactly what the terrorists want.
-------- ACTIVISTS
90 Arrested at Army Base Protest
By ELLIOTT MINOR
Associated Press Writer
Nov 17, 2002 2:14 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MILITARY_SCHOOL_PROTEST?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Minor reports there are thousands of demonstrators outside Fort Benning. (Audio) http://customwire.ap.org/audio/20021117093315-110.ra
Photo: Protesters light fire to an upside-down U.S. flag in front of the security checkpoints set up to screen demonstrators entering the area in front of Fort Benning, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, in Columbus, Ga. Thousands of protesters attended workshops and religious ceremonies Saturday prior to Sunday's demonstration against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, a military school that trains Latin American soldiers at Fort Benning, superseding the former School of the Americas, which they say is responsible for human rights abuses in Latin America. (AP Photo/Allen Sullivan)
http://customwire.ap.org/photos/GAAS101111620-big.jpg
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) -- More than 90 people, including at least six nuns, were arrested for marching onto Fort Benning grounds Sunday during an annual protest of a U.S. military program that trains Latin American soldiers.
"I feel anger at the deliberate teaching of violence," Caryl Hartjes, a nun from Fondulac, Wis., said as she entered the compound, where she arrested. Advertisement
About 6,500 protesters gathered for the 13th annual demonstration by the School of the Americas Watch, which continues to protest the Nov. 19, 1989, killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador. Protesters said they demonstrate because people responsible for the killings were trained at the School of the Americas, a Fort Benning-based program that was replaced last year by a new institute. Protesters say the change was only cosmetic.
The demonstrators Sunday passed through the base's gates, including one where they cut the padlock and slipped through fence posts to get onto the property.
Inside, a line of military police guided protesters up a hill where they were arrested. Illegally entering base property is a federal offense that can carry up to six months in prison.
"I don't want to give up my freedom and I would enjoy peace and justice more, but as a person of faith, I can't stand back and watch the atrocities," Dorothy Pagosa, a 48-year-old nun, said as she was arrested.
"The atrocities that have happened have brought shame on this country," she said.
About 7,000 protesters took part in the protest last year. Twenty-eight later pleaded guilty or were found guilty of trespassing - including three nuns over the age of 67 - and most of them served their sentences in federal prison.
Demonstrators Sunday carried American flags and crosses honoring the alleged victims of the abuses in Latin America. Three protesters carried a mock-coffin draped in black. Others wore shirts that said "No War in Iraq."
"We're here to support the voices that are trying to make our country's international actions more just," said Bill Quigley, a lawyer representing the protesters.
The Army's School of the Americas was replaced last year by a new institution operated by the Department of Defense and supervised by an independent 13-member board that includes lawmakers, scholars, diplomats and religious leaders.
Officials say the new school, known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, still trains Latin American soldiers, but also focuses on civilian and diplomatic affairs. Human rights courses are mandatory.
----
PLAIN FOLKS FOR PEACE
By Guy Ashley
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Sun, Nov. 17, 2002
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/4541817.htm
Hometown pride swept over Jane Hyde one afternoon last month as she stood at an intersection in leafy Lafayette, rallying with a swarm of moms, dads, sons and daughters.
The crowd had gathered to change minds -- not about a pending school bond measure or drivers who run red lights on city streets, but about the Bush administration's possible march toward war with Iraq.
Hyde and nearly 100 other suburbanites were airing their opposition to pre-emptive military strikes when a passing driver in a shiny sport utility vehicle issued a challenge: "Go back to Berkeley."
The comment nearly caused Hyde, 43, to go after the driver with her "Soccer Mom Against War" picket sign.
Then she realized he was missing the point. This wasn't Berkeley, or San Francisco, or some other left-leaning college town. This wasn't the regular assortment of button-wearing activists who cover their hybrid vehicles and VW buses with bumper stickers.
This was a quiet, comfortable suburb -- the kind of place President Bush might choose for a Bay Area stop.
This was the real battleground in the war of public opinion over war.
"I grew up in Pacific Heights and now I live in Orinda," she said. "My husband's a Republican."
The pocket of activism that came to life in Lafayette has counterparts in outlying communities throughout Northern California, indeed around the country.
While there's no way to know how deep the opposition is, or whether it will match pro-war sentiments -- the awakening to anti-war activism is giving hope to veteran peace activists desperate to find reason to believe war with Iraq can still be averted.
"It's when you see significant numbers of middle-class suburban people rallying to the cause that you know, eventually, it's going to win," said Stephen Zunes, associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.
Like politicians and pundits everywhere, Zunes was struck by the size, breadth and passion of anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco last month.
But more distressing for forces promoting military action would have been the scenes at East Bay BART stations before the march, where suburbanites in sneakers jammed trains toting baby backpacks, walkers, cameras, bullhorns and peace placards in preparation for their anti-war adventure in the big city.
"They've got to see we're not fringy, flaky people," said Terry Leach, an attorney, mother of three and die-hard Democrat from Orinda who has found herself at the center of building resistance to war in Contra Costa County.
Widespread phenomenon
It isn't just the hard-core protest crowd sparking this wave of opposition. It has included 300 Bay Area religious leaders standing hand in hand on the Golden Gate Bridge to express opposition to the president's pre-emptive strike policy.
The movement also has embraced parents and grandparents attending tea parties in East Bay homes and churches to energize anti-war activism. It has spawned the transformation of an Orinda book club into a women's group for peace that peppers local legislators with e-mails and leads local demonstrations.
"A lot of us live in places like Martinez, Antioch and Pittsburg," said Jeanelyse Doran, director of the Mount Diablo Peace Center in Walnut Creek. "And we look just like you."
That isn't to say that peace groups traditionally at the center of anti-war movements are ceding their places at the table. Groups like the Mt. Diablo Peace Center and California Peace Action say membership, and financial contributions, have jumped markedly since the push toward war began hitting the front pages in September.
"We're booming,'' said Peter Ferenbach, executive director of California Peace Action, a 45-year-old peace group in Berkeley with 35,000 dues-paying members throughout the state.
The group, whose 40 staff members lead a legion of volunteers in a door-to-door peace campaign, said member contributions will fuel a surge in its annual budget next year, from $1.4 million to $1.9 million at a time of economic downturn.
Stalwarts in the search for alternatives to war say they're energized by signs of citizens from all walks rallying to their cause. But they balk at being called leaders of the anti-war movement.
"In a very real sense there are no leaders," said Medea Benjamin, founding director of the San Francisco human rights group Global Exchange.
Instead, she sees activists of many stripes joining together. There are anti-globalization forces who believe the military would be used to enhance U.S. corporate might; those leading fights for a living wage, improved child care and access to affordable housing who say that billions spent on war will drain resources for their causes; and religious leaders who say pre-emptive military strikes are immoral.
"It's coming from the bottom up," said Jackie Cabasso, chairwoman of the People's Nonviolent Response Coalition, an East Bay peace group initiated after Sept. 11, 2001, but galvanized by the move toward war. "This movement did not materialize because some big organization in Washington issued a decree."
Anti-war 'cells'
Ferenbach said his group has spent much time lately responding to and nurturing anti-war activities, not fomenting them. In recent weeks, California Peace Action has provided literature, speakers and other resources to opposition groups springing up in Grass Valley, Bakersfield, Albany and Ventura.
Decentralized leadership does not result in a rudderless ship, anti-war activists say. Some veterans of the movement to stop the Vietnam War say cell-based opposition could be a force much more difficult to suppress.
"It's a completely new ballgame," said David Wellman, a professor of community studies at UC Santa Cruz who, as a graduate student, was active in Students for a Democratic Society during the Vietnam War. "We had known identifiable leaders. They could be arrested and you could cripple the movement by harassing its leadership."
A decentralized movement is not only more difficult to infiltrate, Wellman said, "they don't know who the leaders are."
That's not to say that activating a multilegged movement is a simple task.
Peace organizers everywhere worry their message might become cluttered or that extremists might commandeer the anti-war coalition.
Todd Gitlin, a Columbia University sociologist and a high-profile veteran of the 1960s peace movement, said far-left groups whose ideas mainstream America would find impossible to swallow could easily hijack today's anti-war movement.
His was among many dire predictions that dogged preparations for the big Oct. 26 demonstrations across the country. The San Francisco and Washington, D.C., rallies were organized by International Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, or ANSWER Coalition. That group's frontman, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, is on the committee defending Slobodan Milosevic against war crimes charges in The Hague.
The coalition is an outgrowth of the International Action Center, which in the past has been seen as an apologist for the Iraqi and North Korean governments. Indeed, America's peace movement suffered bitter divisions during the gulf war due to the center's refusal to condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Prior to the Oct. 26 rally, Gitlin went so far as to say the anti-war movement would crumble as soon as it got off the ground, because of extremist views espoused by groups like ANSWER.
But Gitlin said he has been flooded with positive reviews from anti-war groups on both coasts.
"The desire to turn out against the war may indeed be so large that the views of any one group are immaterial," Gitlin said. "But the danger still lurks that this movement will be usurped by groups who are unable to address the anti-war feelings of a great majority of people who oppose the war, including conservatives."
Technology and organization
The task of distilling a constellation of viewpoints into a cogent anti-war movement is fraught with difficulty, said Ferenbach of California Peace Action. But what would have been impossible in the days of Vietnam is within reach today.
"It has to do with technology -- with cell phones and the Internet," UC Santa Cruz professor Wellman said.
As Congress debated the Bush administration's war resolution, e-mails, faxes, petitions and phone calls from hundreds of thousands of constituents deluged House and Senate members.
Many of these anti-war voices were spurred to action by online campaigns coordinated by groups such as UnitedforPeace.org, and the faith-based EndtheWar.org.
Jane Hyde said she prefers the online activism site ActforChange.com.
"It's probably the only way I could be activated in this way in my life right now," said Hyde, a married mother of two soccer-playing daughters. "For me, it's the difference between being engaged on this issue and being out there alone worrying myself to death."
Many people who aren't activated online find inspiration to participate through church.
"It's not just the Quakers and the usual cast of characters this time," said Alan Jones, chairman of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. "This is the broad middle of the religious community that finds the notion of pre-emptive war morally unacceptable."
Bob Edgar, a former congressman and chairman of the National Council of Churches, said the religious community's quick activation to oppose war with Iraq is remarkable, considering it took 12 years for mainline churches to oppose war in Vietnam.
One '60s anti-war activist said he found the broad spectrum of resistance to war with Iraq astounding, especially given the relative quiet on the college campuses that ignited opposition to the Vietnam War.
In his day, campuses were full of activists who had honed their organizing skills in the Free-Speech and civil rights movements, said David Harris, an author and former Stanford student body president who spent 20 months in federal prison for dodging the draft.
"The movement today is still finding its way," Harris, 56, said. "In large part, I believe it's because there is not a big supply of trained organizers with time on their hands -- i.e., the young. So far it has fallen on the old farts of my generation who are locked into mortgages and have limited time and resources."
But that will change as the push toward war intensifies, Harris said.
"Hey, this is comparable to 1964."
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Kyrgyzstan Police Crush Protest, Detaining 100
November 17, 2002
New York Times
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/asia/17ASIA.html
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Nov. 16 (Reuters) - The police in Kyrgyzstan today detained about 100 opposition protesters demanding the resignation of the president, and the authorities warned that the country could be heading for civil war.
The political situation in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished, largely agrarian nation of five million people, has been volatile since March 17, when five opposition protesters were killed and dozens wounded in fierce clashes with the police in the country's rebellious south.
Tussles broke out today as the police tried to stop a column of more than 100 opposition supporters marching to a central avenue from a bustling market place in the capital, Bishkek, to hold a rally there.
The police, who were unarmed, finally managed to drag nearly all the protesters into buses and drove them away. Bishkek, a city of 800,000, appeared calm later, but reinforced police units patrolled main streets and government buildings.
Officials quickly condemned the opposition action. "The actions of political schemers, several parliamentary deputies and a bunch of intriguers, are aimed at destabilizing the situation," Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev said at a news conference. He accused the protesters of trying to seize power "by unconstitutional means."
Hundreds of protesters arrived from the south earlier in the week for the unauthorized rally, which they called a people's congress, hoping thousands of Bishkek residents would support their call for President Askar Akayev's resignation and punishment of those guilty of the March deaths.
The authorities have branded the rally planners "a mob" and the rally a "motley gathering" staged by "political extremists."
The government resigned in May after Mr. Akayev acknowledged that top officials were to blame for the civilian deaths in March. The opposition then spurned an invitation to join a coalition cabinet.
They also scorned an amnesty law intended to placate the opposition by absolving both sides involved in the March clashes. Finally, opposition leaders ignored a constitutional assembly convened by Mr. Akayev in an effort to restore calm by promising to delegate some of his powers to Parliament.
Despite the tough standoff, Mr. Akayev, an urbane 58-year-old physicist, still enjoys strong support in his native north and from the sizable Russian-speaking minority.
An opposition leader, Azimbek Beknazarov, whose arrest led to the clashes with the police in March, said today that the opposition would press ahead with its banned congress despite the restrictions and security precautions taken by the authorities.
"We will meet either in Osh," a southern regional center, he said, "or beyond the country's borders, or secretly in Kyrgyzstan."
First Deputy Prime Minister Kurmanbek Osmonov said of the opposition tactics today: "What is going on now is mere political blackmail. Their actions look like mutiny."
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Iranian Scholars Protest
November 17, 2002
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/middleeast/17IRAN.html
TEHRAN, Nov. 16 (Agence France-Presse) - Twenty university department chiefs have resigned in protest after a pro-reform colleague was sentenced to death for blasphemy, the student news agency ISNA said today.
In an open letter to Tarbiat-Modarres University, where the lecturer, Hashem Aghajari, worked, the academics said they no longer felt safe enough to carry out their duties.
Mr. Aghajari was arrested this month after he called for religious reforms and said Muslims were not "monkeys" who should blindly follow the teachings of clerics.
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Hard-Line Hindus Plan Rally, Defying Indian Government's Ban
November 17, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/international/asia/17INDI.html
AHMEDABAD, India, Sunday, Nov. 17 - The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee cracked down today on Hindu extremists here, as state riot police arrested for the first time the leader of India's World Hindu Council and set up roadblocks to prevent his supporters from reaching the site of a train fire last spring.
The police arrested Pravin Togadia, the international general secretary of the World Hindu Council, a hard-line ultra-nationalist group, and about a dozen supporters as he emmerged from prayer services at a Hindu temple here in the state of Gujarat in western India.
The arrest of Mr. Togadia came as members of his group gathered here in defiance of a government ban to march on the city of Godhra, a two-hour drive away, where a train packed with the group's supporters caught fire on Feb. 27 during a confrontation between Hindus and local Muslims. Hindus blamed Muslims for the fire and, in rioting afterward, about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
The police also sealed off Godhra today because the World Hindu Council had urged its supporters on Saturday to reach the city by any means possible.
Plans for the rally had posed a challenge to Mr. Vajpayee, who personally called on Friday for the rally to be canceled.
The issue is difficult for Mr. Vajpayee because his ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, came to power espousing a combination of Hindu nationalism and secularism.
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Protesters Arrested at India Rally
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-Religious-Strife.html
GODHRA, India (AP) -- Hundreds of Hindu protestors were arrested Sunday as police broke up a banned pre-election rally in western India, where religious clashes killed at least 1,000 people this year.
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had asked the Hindu nationalists not to hold the procession, even though it could help win more votes for his Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules Gujarat state.
Elections in the state are scheduled for Dec. 12.
The independent Election Commission also banned the rally and local authorities on Saturday outlawed the entry of senior leaders from the World Hindu Council into Godhra and said they would not let the rally go ahead.
Pravin Togadia and Dharmendra Maharaj, key officials of the council, were taken into custody in Ahmadabad, Gujarat's largest city, shortly after they made aggressive speeches kicking off the rally. The two leaders were released eight hours later.
Police arrested at least 158 others in Ahmadabad as they began assembling for the rally, police said.
In Godhra, 104 miles west of Ahmadabad, two local ruling-party leaders were arrested and other party members were beaten back with bamboo truncheons as they tried to enter the rally site, said police official Vivek Srivastava.
At least 216 other Hindu activists were arrested in Godhra, Srivastava said.
In February, Muslims in Godhra set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, killing 60. The riots that followed killed nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.
Approximately 80 percent of India's more than 1 billion people are Hindus. Muslims, the largest minority, are 12 percent.
Muslims who lost homes and family in the rioting say the Hindu leaders are stoking religious passions and expressed fears of renewed clashes.
Government officials vowed they would take tough measures against any rally participants.
``All entry points into the district are being manned round the clock. We are not taking any chances,'' said Manoj Agarwal, the local administrator. ``We will not allow either the procession or the rally to take place.''
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Thousands Protest for Haiti President's Resignation
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-haiti.html
CAP HAITIEN, Haiti (Reuters) - Thousands took the streets of Haiti's second-largest city on Sunday to demand the resignation of the country's embattled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The march, sponsored by a local umbrella-organization known as the Citizens Initiative, began at the city's center and continued on through the historic city gates, increasing manifold as it went along. Police sources estimated the crowd at around 8,000 people.
As the march progressed, with opposition politicians, former members of the Haitian military and civil society figures at its head, thousands of ordinary citizens spilled out of the city's populous slums to join in chants of ``Down with Aristide'' and ``Down with Lavalas criminals,'' a reference to Aristide's ruling Lavalas Family political party. Others smiled and clapped, pumping their fists from rooftops and balconies.
``Aristide is a thief!'' some shouted. ``Send him to prison!''
``We want Aristide to leave because he has given us nothing, no work, no rice, only hunger,'' said a frail peasant man from the nearby hamlet of San Raphael, lifting up his shirt to show his emaciated rib cage.
The marchers then scaled a monument commemorating an historic battle in the city where rebellious Haitians defeated colonial French forces in 1803, raising the Haitian flag as march organizers addressed the cheering throng.
``All those who want to build hope for the country, raise their hand; all those who want to get rid of Aristide, raise their hand; all those who want to respect human rights, raise their hand!'' shouted Evans Paul, an opposition politician, to the thunderous applause of the crowd assembled.
Paul, a member of the Democratic Convergence opposition coalition and former mayor of the capital, Port-au-Prince, continued: ``We will fight against dictatorship, we will fight for liberty! Citizens alongside citizens, without division, without violence.''
SECOND PROTEST IN THREE DAYS
The march proceeded under police protection, and the heavily outfitted riot officers were cheered by the crowd at the march's end.
``We thank the Haitian National Police for providing security for the people today,'' said Himmler Robu, a former officer in the army that ousted Aristide in a military coup in 1991. Aristide disbanded the army when he was returned to power by a U.S.-led multinational force in 1994.
``The struggle begins today, and it requires intelligence, determination and a clear head,'' Robu said.
The protest comes on the heels of a large march in the capital Friday by university students protesting against what they said was the government's interference in the country's state university system.
The students stormed and occupied the university's rectory, then marched to the gates of the National Palace, demanding Aristide's resignation and new elections.
Aristide began his second term as Haiti's president in February 2001 and has since been locked in a two-year dispute with the Convergence coalition over May 2000 legislative elections that his opponents contend were biased to favor Aristide's Lavalas party.
The deadlock has stalled over $500 million in international aid.
Inflation in Haiti has risen 16%, and the Haitian currency, the gourde, has lost 40% of value in the past year.
A pyramid investment scheme collapsed last summer, wiping out the life savings of tens of thousands of Haitians and a rumor that the cash-strapped government was planning to convert dollar bank accounts to the Haitian currency at a low rate recently resulted in a run on banks that saw depositors withdraw $20 million in three days.
The country has also seen a marked increase in political violence over the past year, including an attack by unidentified commandos on the National Palace, anti-government riots in the capital and elsewhere, and increased threats to press freedom by government supporters.
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Greeks Protest Against War in Nov 17 Rally
November 17, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-greece-protest.html
ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of Greek protesters denounced a possible U.S. attack on Iraq on Sunday during an annual march marking a 1973 student revolt which led to the birth of the feared November 17 guerrilla group.
Police briefly detained 10 demonstrators after using teargas to disperse groups of self-styled anarchists who hurled firebombs and rocks near the U.S. embassy, disrupting the otherwise peaceful event. There were no reports of injuries.
Police said more than 10,000 people marched from the central polytechnic school, site of the revolt, to the U.S. embassy, which has long been blamed for supporting Greece's former military leadership -- the target of the student protest 29 years ago.
``No to War in Iraq'' and ``Americans -- Killers of Nations,'' read several of the banners carried by demonstrators.
U.N. arms inspectors, backed by a U.S. threat of war, are expected in Baghdad on Monday to relaunch a search for any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About 5,000 police, including riot squads and special forces, guarded the march route in anticipation of heavy turnout, boosted by a roundup of suspect members of the radical leftist November 17 group earlier this year.
Members of the group, which was born in the wake of the bloody clampdown on the 1973 student uprising, had eluded capture for decades.
Now in custody the 18 suspects have called for supporters -- mainly small groups of anarchists -- to take to the streets on Sunday to demonstrate moral support.
Police said more than 500 demonstrators shouted slogans for the release of the guerrilla suspects.
The student protest on November 17 marked the beginning of the end for Greece's 1967-74 military rule, and pro-democracy and victim groups have also vowed a big turnout to show violence in Greece is over.
November 17 members have claimed responsibility for killing 23 Greeks and foreigners. Their first victim was the Athens CIA chief shot dead in 1975.
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Police, Protesters Clash in Greece
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Greece-Uprising-Anniversary.html
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Protesters demanding freedom for Greece's most notorious terror suspects burned storefronts and pelted riot police with rocks and firebombs Sunday during an annual pro-democracy march to the U.S. Embassy.
Police used tear gas and arrested about a dozen of the protesters -- part of a small but violent contingent among more than 10,000 marchers commemorating the student-led Nov. 17, 1973, uprising crushed by the military regime that ruled the country from 1967 to 1977. The student revolt, in which at least 23 people died, is credited with accelerating the junta's downfall.
Police fired tear gas and arrested rioters, who were among the more than 8,000 marchers commemorating the Nov. 17, 1973, crushing of a student-led uprising against Greece's 1967-1974 military regime. The student revolt, in which at least 23 people died, is credited with accelerating the junta's downfall.
Self-proclaimed anarchists and sympathizers in Sunday's crowd denounced the detentions of suspected members of the November 17 terrorist group, which takes its name from the date of the student rebellion.
At least four businesses were set aflame and rioters made barricades from chairs taken from outdoor cafes near the embassy, which was blocked off by police. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries.
Police have arrested 18 alleged members of the November 17 group, blamed for 23 killings and dozens of other attacks since 1975. The group's victims include four Americans, two Turkish diplomats and prominent Greek political and business figures.
The group's most recent victim, British defense attache Brig. Stephen Saunders, was killed in 2000.
November 17, which mixed hard-line Marxism and nationalism, outwitted authorities for decades until a botched bombing in June triggered a series of arrests. The suspects' trials are expected to begin early next year.
The U.S. Embassy is the traditional focus of the annual march, led by the Greek Communist Party, because of American support for the junta. Violence during the march has diminished in recent years but authorities were on alert this year because of the terrorist crackdown and anti-U.S. sentiment over Washington's showdown with Iraq.
More than 5,000 police officers manned the march's route through central Athens.
Last week, about 60 anarchists gathered at a police cordon outside the high-security prison in Athens where the November 17 suspects are held. The protesters -- some wearing ski masks -- chanted slogans supporting the suspects.
On Friday, attackers smashed car windshields and hurled gasoline bombs in central Athens streets in connection with the annual march. There were no injuries and no arrests.
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Venezuela Opposition Stages March
November 17, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Venezuela-Police-Politics.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Hundreds of people banging pots and pans faced off against National Guardsmen at a police station Sunday to protest President Hugo Chavez's order to take over the Caracas police.
The protesters, who gathered outside several other precincts as well, shouted, ``Get Out! Get Out!'' and ``Coup Plotters!'' as they waved Venezuelan flags.
About 100 soldiers equipped with shields and tear gas formed a chain to keep protesters from entering the station, home of an elite motorcycle unit in the hills overlooking Caracas.
Police refused to accept the takeover and control of the force remained in question.
On Saturday, the government took command of the 9,000-strong police force to end a 1 1/2-month labor dispute between officers loyal to Chavez and others who support the outspoken mayor of Caracas, Alfredo Pena.
Chavez deployed soldiers in armored troop carriers to Caracas' 10 police stations in what critics said was a move to weaken Pena.
Police Chief Henry Vivas, appointed by Pena, refused to step down, even after Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello named Gonzalo Sanchez Delgado as the new chief.
Speaking during his weekly radio program ``Hello President,'' Chavez said the government ordered the takeover because disputes within the force had become ``unbearable'' and Pena had failed to resolve the situation.
``This has been done without violence, without violating anybody's rights,'' Chavez said. ``We have to impose authority.''
The crisis raised concerns that police would not be able to guarantee security during the country's frequent political demonstrations.
The Democratic Coordinator movement, a coalition of opposition groups pushing for a referendum on Chavez' rule, condemned the takeover.
``We must tell (Chavez) that he can't intimidate us with armored personnel carriers. We must show that we will restore constitutionality in Venezuela,'' the group said in a statement.
Pena accused Chavez of trying to create chaos and ruin negotiations mediated by the Organization of American States so that the president could declare martial law.
Opponents say Chavez has divided the military, dragged the nation into recession, and polarized the country. Venezuela's largest labor confederation said it may call a general strike this week.
Venezuela's opposition accuses Chavez of trying to avoid a nonbinding national referendum on his rule. Opponents say his public support has fallen substantially since his 1998 election and re-election to a six-year term in 2000.
Chavez accuses the opposition of seeking another coup. He denied that the takeover violated constitutional norms.
``Some are calling this a coup. Let them say what they will ... It is up the executive to see that the laws are observed,'' said Chavez.
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