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NUCLEAR
The Taiwan Link
Iraq's Thwarted Ambitions Litter an Old Nuclear Plant
Iraq Says It Will Hand Over Required List of Scientists
UN Experts Talk to Iraq Scientist on Aluminum Tubes
N. Korea Moves to Activate Complex
U.N. nuke agency hits N. Korea
Atom Agency Chief Criticizes North Korea
Report: N. Korea to Expel U.N. Inspectors
North Korea to Expel Inspectors, Drawing White House Criticism
Russia-Iran nuclear waste accord to be signed next month
3 Mile Island Plaintiffs End Legal Action
MILITARY
Stocks fall on war, oil worries
Lockheed Martin Wins $3.5 Billion Fighter Contract
Iraq to Let Scientists Leave for Interviews
Iraq Says It Will Deliver Scientist List
U.S. Courted Top Iraqi Official for Defection
Allied Jets Bomb Military Site; Iraq Says Air Strike Killed 3
Experts Warn of Iraq's Improved Weapons
Israeli Raids Kill at Least 8 Palestinians
Israeli army told to 'turn up the heat'
U.S. Would Send 690,000 Troops to Korea If War Breaks Out
U.S. Navy to Renew Vieques Bombings
32 Reported Dead in Grozny Explosions
Dozens Die in Attack on Chechen Government Headquarters
Massive military force ordered to Persian Gulf
Pentagon Orders Navy to Ready for Iraq
China closes 3,300 cybercafés
Syria detains journalist for 'false news'
U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Torture Is Not an Option
U.S. Sets Record for Action on Ex-Nazis
California, drugs and Mideast terror
Paris: 4 held in anti-terror swoop
Meeting Daily, U.S. Nerve Center Prepares for Terrorists
OTHER
Religious Sect Say It Will Announce the First Cloned Baby
ACTIVISTS
Refusal to serve could be contagious
Bush Urged to Limit Weapons in Iraq
Ukraine Convicts Nationalist Protesters
Protests Resume in Venezuela
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
The Taiwan Link
Friday, December 27, 2002
Washington Post ; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42040-2002Dec26?language=printer
A Dec. 10 front-page story described an attempt by China to link a reduction in Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan to decreased U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
The nearly 400 missiles deployed in southeastern China have one function only: to compel Taiwan's surrender. Taiwan poses no threat to China, and Taiwan's elected representatives have repeatedly expressed the desire for peace across the Taiwan Strait.
We have no intention of entering an arms race with China, but Taiwan has worked hard to establish a vibrant democracy and will defend its achievement. My government hopes that China understands that sincere gestures beget genuine peace. Repackaging a one-sided, threatening stance to make it appear conciliatory does not.
STEPHEN CHANG
Director, Information Division
Taipei Economic and
Cultural Representative Office
Washington
-------- inspections
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
Iraq's Thwarted Ambitions Litter an Old Nuclear Plant
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/middleeast/27SADD.html
TUWAITHA, Iraq - Approaching from Baghdad across the flat moonscape of central Iraq, there is little to suggest what lies ahead.
About 20 miles from the capital, an offramp from an expressway spirals away to the southeast, onto a narrow, winding traffic-clogged road.
For half an hour, it meanders through a chain of ragged villages and towns, each with its kebab shops and tire-repair outfits and clothing bazaars with modish-looking jeans and jackets and shirts hanging outside, twisting in the winter winds.
The first sign that something more ambitious lurks out here in the desert comes when the traders' stalls give way to a giant earthen berm. As tall as a three-story building, it is topped with watchtowers and coils of razor wire. After running unbroken for miles, it falls away to a concrete guardhouse flanked by a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein, unnervingly genial in a sky-blue suit.
Beyond its sheer size, about equal to a medium-size American town, there is nothing, no sign at the gate, no signboards anywhere along the journey from Baghdad, no hint from frantically nervous villagers asked what lies behind the berm, to indicate that the giant earthwork forms the outer rampart of the nuclear installation called Tuwaitha.
This was Mr. Hussein's Los Alamos, the site where he hoped to build Iraq's, and the Arab world's, first nuclear weapon. Behind the berm, deep in underground bunkers, the Iraqis have now admitted, scientists came close, in the months before the Persian Gulf war in 1991, to building at least one atomic bomb the size of the one used on Nagasaki in 1945.
New teams of United Nations inspectors, returning here for the first time in four years in November, have already inspected Tuwaitha and more than 150 other formerly secret sites, of the 900 or so identified during the previous round of weapons inspections from 1991 to 1998. For a journalist following the inspectors, it has been a journey through a looking glass, into an astonishing terrain, full of intimidating sights.
To have read over the past decade about Mr. Hussein's weapons projects is one thing; to walk into the sites where the work was done, to talk to some of the scientists and engineers who were at the center of it and to see the ruins at Tuwaitha and elsewhere, is to cross into another dimension.
As a measure of its importance, Tuwaitha was one of the first Iraqi targets bombed by American aircraft in the gulf war of 1991. Here and at a score of other sites now being pored over by United Nations weapons inspectors lies a vast scrapyard of rusting missile casings, fermenters, pressure vessels, pipes, valves, fuel tanks and control panels. Altogether, billions of dollars of equipment was destroyed in American and British bombing raids, or blasted into futility by a previous generation of weapons inspectors.
At these sites - in their scale, in the impenetrable secrecy that enveloped them in the past, in their lethal sophistication - there is a story of Shakespearean proportions, for what it reveals of the scope of Mr. Hussein's goals. It was in places like Tuwaitha that he aimed to rewrite the political map of the Middle East, by equipping Iraq with weapons available to no other Arab state; by confronting American power; and ultimately - a goal avowed countless times in his 23-year rule - by leading Arab armies to obliterate the state of Israel.
Just as much, to the eye of a reporter walking through these sites, and viewing the wreckage, it is a story of hubris, of a vaulting ambition that seems to have been frustrated, as much as anything else, by Mr. Hussein's refusal to accept the limits of his power.
The next weeks may tell whether the Iraqi leader still has secret weapons, but on the evidence already available, Mr. Hussein's place in history seems likely to be that of a man whose reach outstripped his grasp - of a dictator with unlimited powers at home, convinced that no force in the world beyond, including the toughest weapons restrictions imposed on any nation since the crippling restrictions placed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, could stop him.
Iraq's top weapons official, Gen. Amir al-Saadi, whose formal title makes him an adviser to Mr. Hussein, said in early December that the night the American bombing began - shortly after midnight on Jan. 17, 1991 - marked the end of Iraq's efforts to build a nuclear arsenal.
President Bush has called this a lie, citing American intelligence indicating that Iraqi efforts to acquire weapons-grade plutonium or uranium resumed after 1991 and continued with clandestine efforts to restart its uranium enrichment program, through the purchase of high-tensile aluminum tubing, unprocessed uranium and other essentials, until at least the late 1990's.
It may be weeks, or months, before the truth emerges, if it ever does. But here at Tuwaitha and at dozens of other secret weapons sites there is a world of reality that no amount of bluster by Mr. Hussein and his associates can deny. It is a reality inscribed, inescapably, in the vast network of underground laboratories, the complex processing and measuring equipment they house and the mostly Western-trained scientists employed at the sites - most of them, by the Iraqis' account, now assigned to strictly civilian applications. Just as much, it is a reality written in the wreckage strewn here and at other sites across the desert floor.
Mr. Hussein's attempts to turn Iraq into a weapons superpower have been extensively chronicled in books by weapons inspectors and others, and in the voluminous reports they have delivered to the United Nations. But what has added an extraordinary dimension to the current drama is Resolution 1441 of the Security Council, passed in November under relentless American pressure. It allowed for tough new inspections that General Saadi, Mr. Hussein's right-hand man on weapons, has described as "draconian" and as leaving Iraq no room for "even a single mistake."
Just as traumatic for Mr. Hussein, the inspectors have been followed along the city freeways and out into the featureless deserts by a regiment of Western journalists. Normally anathema to any police state, the reporters and television teams have been encouraged by Iraq's Information Ministry, in effect, to form a second battalion of inspectors. Each day, they wait at the gates of installations like Tuwaitha until the United Nations teams' work is done, before being ushered into the secret sites themselves - as the Iraqis tell it, to bear witness to Iraq's innocence of any new cover-ups.
This has meant, in effect, that the journalists have been escorted into the heart of Mr. Hussein's thwarted ambition, at a moment when echoes of his dream can still be heard in his wistful, rambling discourses, delivered almost every week, that evoke the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Saladin and Nebuchadnezzar, Mesopotamian heroes who seized Jerusalem from the Crusaders 800 years ago, and from the Jews 1,700 years before that.
At the height of his programs, in the period before the gulf war, Mr. Hussein is estimated to have had at least 8,000 scientists working to produce nuclear, biological and chemical warheads, as well as medium- and long-range missiles that could carry them to distant targets. Many of these sites were discovered, and destroyed, by United Nations inspections teams in the 1990's. But just to list a handful of sites United Nations teams have searched in the past month is to sketch the scope of Mr. Hussein's ambitions.
Many locations, like Tuwaitha, visited at least six times since the inspections began on Nov. 27, have been so-called primary sites, central to the weapons programs. Others have included a mining complex that produced the uranium oxide, or "yellowcake," that was Iraq's first route to a nuclear weapons fuel, in the 1980's; research centers where work was done on uranium enrichment, by gas centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation; laboratories that produced deadly nerve agents like botulinum toxin and anthrax; chemical plants that made mustard gas shells and other chemical weapons; and factories that designed and assembled ballistic missiles, as well as a testing range deep in the desert west of Baghdad.
The weapons sites are mostly clustered in and around Baghdad, unsurprisingly in a country that is mostly desert, and where Mr. Hussein's ruthless secret police keeps its tightest grip. Many sites have been located, anonymously, in residential neighborhoods and soulless industrial parks. But the inspectors have also reached out to Iraq's peripheries: to Basra, a five-hour drive to the south; to Mosul, a three-hour drive north, hard up against the territory ruled as an independent fief by Iraqi Kurds; and to Akashat, site of the "yellowcake" production plant a six-hour drive away along the Syrian border to the west.
But a fuller idea of how deeply Iraq, as a state, was committed to acquiring these deadly weapons, emerges from some of the ostensibly inoffensive places the inspectors have searched. Schooled by Iraq's past record of concealing its weapons programs in "dual use" sites, the inspectors have visited plants producing baby milk, cement, steel, fiberglass, ceramics, commercial electronics and industrial chemicals like chlorine and sulphuric acid.
They have pulled lecturers out of classes at universities, demanding access to laboratories. They have taken gamma radiation readings all over Baghdad, and drawn water, sediment and vegetation samples from drainage basins along the Tigris and the Euphrates, rivers along whose banks many of Iraq's 22 million people, and much of its industry, are clustered.
Iraqi officials have been punctilious, so far, in meeting their obligation to grant immediate and unhindered access to any sites the inspectors choose. But from the beginning, the inspectors have been careful to emphasize that a readiness to comply with the procedures laid down by the new inspections mandate - a sharp break from the record of the 1990's, when Iraq did everything possible to frustrate the inspections - is only a first step.
What matters, they say, is whether any of the inspections yield evidence of hidden weapons programs. That, they say, is something the Iraqis and the world are unlikely to be told until the inspectors deliver an initial report on their findings to the Security Council, due on Jan. 27.
In public, Iraqi officials have maintained a stoic posture, saying that since they have no forbidden programs, they have no reason to fear. This is the very same position set out in Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration to the Security Council, delivered on Dec. 7, and subsequently rejected by the United States as "full of omissions" and inaccuracies.
"We're not worried; it's the other party that's worried, because there's nothing they can pin on us," General Saadi, Mr. Hussein's chief weapons adviser, told reporters at a recent news conference, referring to the United States and Britain. "All their statements have been mere allegations, unsupported by evidence."
For the moment, that may be. At weapons sites like Tuwaitha, some Iraqi officials, especially military officers, have struck a defiant posture, saying that if President Bush wants a war, he can have one, and that American soldiers will die in large numbers. "We believe we will win in the end," said Brig. Gen. Muhammad Saleh Muhammad, the 40-year-old officer who is director of the Karama missile plant in Baghdad, standing beside rubble from an American bombing raid in 1998.
But among senior scientists, the mood detectable to reporters admitted after the inspectors have left has often been one tinged with a sense that Iraq, or at least Mr. Hussein, has already lost.
Entering Tuwaitha after the first inspection there in early December, journalists drove miles down wide, four-lane boulevards landscaped with palm trees, past residential complexes that house 2,500 workers and their families, man-made hills with concrete entrances to underground bunkers and dozens of buildings that appeared to have been constructed in the lee of the hills, to afford protection against bombing.
Whatever the work being undertaken at the complex now - and Iraqi officials said it was purely peaceful - the mood among hundreds of men and women who could be seen milling about outside the buildings, free to leave under the "site freezing" powers given to the weapons inspectors only after the day's investigations were finished, conveyed a sense of deep demoralization.
To an outsider, it seemed as though the historic enterprise once entrusted to them had died, in any real sense, in the blackened rubble that is all that remains of some of the buildings struck by American missiles and bombs in 1991. Asked for his own sense of the mood among the scientists and support staff, Faiz al-Bekhdar, Tuwaitha's director, deflected the question, and spoke instead about the failed efforts to restore a water-treatment plant destroyed in the 1991 raids. But what he said could have stood as an epitaph for all else at Tuwaitha.
"We have tried to make it work again, so that we can have an assurance of clean water for the whole of this facility," he said. "But we have failed. It doesn't work, because we don't have the equipment, and I don't know when we ever will."
--------
THE INSPECTIONS
Iraq Says It Will Hand Over Required List of Scientists, but Plans Anti-U.S. Exercises
December 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/middleeast/27IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 26 - The Iraqi government will hand over to the United Nations in the next few days a list of hundreds of Iraqi scientists who have worked on nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs, a senior Iraqi general said today.
At the same time, the Iraqi Army said that militias organized by the ruling Baath Party have been holding exercises in central Iraq aimed at countering an attack by the United States, another sign that Saddam Hussein's government believes war is inevitable.
Under the toughened United Nations inspections that resumed on Nov. 27, inspectors are to speak privately with scientists and workers associated with Iraq's weapons, and are permitted under the United Nations resolution to take them abroad for interviews. American officials have said they hoped the privacy would prompt scientists to reveal hidden weapons programs.
Hans Blix, a United Nations weapons inspector chief, had asked Baghdad to provide a list of scientists by the end of December, and Iraq had already said it would comply.
"The list will be ready within two to three days and it will be sent to the U.N. Security Council at most by Sunday," Lt. Gen. Hossam Muhammad Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, told a news conference in Baghdad today.
While weapons inspectors have spoken to engineers and experts at the sites they have searched, they made their first request to interview a scientist privately on Tuesday.
The scientist, Prof. Sabah Abdel-Nour of the University of Technology, who had worked on a nuclear program that Iraq says is now closed, refused to see the inspectors alone and insisted that Iraqi officials be present, General Amin said.
He said the inspectors have not asked to interview other scientists.
General Amin said the United Nations inspectors have searched 188 sites since they began their mission a month ago. On Thursday, they returned to the University of Technology, checking equipment at the chemistry, engineering and computer departments that had been tagged during the last round of United Nations inspections.
General Amin said that during their visits, the inspectors found nothing to support American and British claims that his country harbors weapons of mass destruction. He said the teams have collected samples of raw material, soil, water and plants.
"The inspection process has been carried out sometimes in a way that is almost aggressive and has sometimes led to the freezing of the movement of people or vehicles," General Amin said.
But he added that the searches are "the only effective means to prove . . . the credibility of Iraq."
The Bush administration has threatened to attack Iraq unless it cooperates fully with the United Nations disarmament process.
Asked whether Iraq was worried about complications arising from its recent downing of a pilotless American spy aircraft, General Amin said, "They should be worried about future complications because maybe one of their planes, this time with a real pilot, would be shot down."
In his remarks today, General Amin responded to accusations by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who had said that Iraq might be transferring chemical and biological weapons to neighboring Syria. General Amin called the allegation a "baseless lie."
Also today, Al Qadisiya, an army newspaper, said that Baath Party militias had practiced fighting in rural and populated areas in Babil Province and rehearsed techniques of "distracting the enemy in different directions by using light and medium weapons."
The newspaper did not say when the games were held, whether they were still under way or how many troops participated. Iraq's security forces include army units as well as armed groups organized under the party.
Fadel Mahmoud Ghareib, in charge of the party's Babil branch, was quoted as saying that the militias showed they were ready "to foil the schemes of America and its evil allies and to respond to the aggressors and bury their low schemes."
If Iraq can convince the inspectors it is not hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or the missiles to deliver them, it might avoid a strike by the United States. But the inspectors have said a weapons declaration Iraq delivered earlier this month is wanting, and the United States has dismissed it as a lie.
--------
UN Experts Talk to Iraq Scientist on Aluminum Tubes
December 27, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-inspectors.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. arms experts interviewed a key scientist with expertise in using aluminum tubes and inspected three sites in Iraq on Friday in the hunt for any banned weapons programs.
U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Iraq interviewed a metallurgist from a high-profile state company.
``He provided technical details of a military program,'' Ueki said in a statement in Baghdad. ``This program has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program.''
Ueki did not identify the scientist, his company or where the interview took place but said his answers ``will be of great use in completing the IAEA assessment'' of Iraq's nuclear program.
An Iraqi Foreign Ministry statement identified the scientist as Dr Kathim Jamil and described him as a specialist in the use of aluminum tubes deployed in the production of 81-mm missiles with a range of six miles.
It said the interview, conducted at Baghdad's al-Rasheed Hotel, was attended by an Iraqi monitoring official and lasted one hour.
The United States and Britain have raised the alarm in recent months over alleged attempts by Iraq to buy aluminum tubes that could be used to process uranium. Iraq denied the charges and said it had had the tubes since the 1980s.
Iraq admits it did have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs in the past but says it has abandoned all banned programs and now has no doomsday weapons.
The inspectors began this week interviewing scientists who could shed light on Iraq's previous and any current programs. Friday's interview was the second formal one-on-one, but no Iraqi scientists have yet been interviewed outside the country.
BREWERY, PLANTS INSPECTED
A missile team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) inspected al-Nassir al-Atheem State Company, formerly known as the Heavy Engineering State Company, in al Doura area.
A chemical team inspected another factory run by the same company in the same area. Ueki said it carried out a wide range of metalworking for both civilian and military purposes.
A biological team spent one hour in the Za'faraniya area at the Modern Chemical Industries Company, which produces arak, gin and whisky. It had been monitored by previous inspection teams because of the presence of dual-use equipment.
Jinan Roger Laso, marketing director at the company, told reporters the inspectors asked questions and checked and photographed tagged equipment at the site.
``They asked us about empty tankers and we told them it is because of the Christmas holidays as the company stops production at the end of the year,'' Laso said.
Iraqi officials said an administrative group left for Mosul, nearly 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, to set up a headquarters for arms inspectors there.
More than 100 inspectors are now in Iraq trying to uncover any evidence of weapons developed since their predecessors left before U.S.-British air raids in 1998.
A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last month gave Iraq a last chance to come clean on its weapons programs or face possible war.
Hussam Mohammad Amin, chief of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate in charge of working with the U.N. experts, said on Thursday the experts had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction during a month of inspections across the country.
He said Iraq would submit a list of hundreds of scientists who had worked on its previous weapons programs in the next two or three days.
The inspectors' next report to the Security Council is due on January 9. Their final report is due by January 27, two months to the day after they resumed their search.
-------- korea
N. Korea Moves to Activate Complex
U.N. Levies Charge Of 'Nuclear Brinkmanship'
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 27, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41913-2002Dec26?language=printer
SEOUL, Dec. 26 -- The head of the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency accused North Korea of "nuclear brinkmanship" today as it took further steps toward reactivating a nuclear complex, and the president of South Korea declared that the North's actions would not be tolerated.
"We can never go along with North Korea's nuclear weapons development," said President Kim Dae Jung, emerging from a special cabinet meeting here in South Korea's capital. "We must closely cooperate with the United States, Japan and other friendly countries to prevent the situation from further deteriorating into a crisis."
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said his government has been communicating regularly with North Korea in recent months through informal channels and remains hopeful that it can broker a face-saving agreement that will end the standoff short of military confrontation.
North Korea "used to deny any conversation with us on this issue," said the official, speaking on condition he not be identified. "But when we talk about the nuclear issue with them now, at least they listen."
Days after breaking seals on its Yongbyon nuclear facilities and taping over the lenses on U.N. surveillance cameras, North Korea today moved about 1,000 fresh fuel rods into its nuclear reactor plant in preparation for turning it back on, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
North Korea has declared publicly that it intends to restart the reactor, which it shuttered in 1994 under a deal with the Clinton administration, maintaining that its purpose is to generate electricity. Though the reactor produces very little power, it has yielded some 8,000 spent fuel rods, which continue to be stored in an adjacent pool. They contain enough plutonium to produce as many as five nuclear weapons, according to experts.
The head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, pilloried North Korea's explanation today, asserting that the Yongbyon reactor was "irrelevant" to electricity production and that North Korea had "no current legitimate peaceful use for plutonium."
"Moving toward restarting its nuclear facilities without appropriate safeguards, and toward producing plutonium, raises serious nonproliferation concerns and is tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship," ElBaradei said.
The U.N. body has scheduled a meeting of its board of governors, now tentatively planned for Jan. 6. ElBaradei said he will warn the board that North Korea's actions have left his inspectors -- two of whom remain at the scene -- unable to verify "that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices."
Today's developments further escalated a standoff that has produced echoes of the last major crisis on the Korean Peninsula, eight years ago. That confrontation was averted when North Korea promised to halt its plutonium-based weapons development program in exchange for shipments of fuel oil from the United States and its allies. In October, following disclosures that North Korea has been secretly pursuing the development of uranium-enriched nuclear weapons at a different site, the Bush administration ordered the fuel shipments halted. North Korea responded with steps to revive its Yongbyon reactor.
Arms control experts assert that North Korea, which is desperately poor and increasingly isolated, is seeking to use the only diplomatic lever it possesses -- the threat of becoming a certifiable nuclear power -- in a bid to force the United States to engage in negotiations on resuming aid and establishing diplomatic relations. Analysts say North Korea came to feel particularly insecure when President Bush labeled it part of an "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran.
But if North Korea's actions began as a kind of bluff designed to force the United States to talk, its decision to revive the reactor has taken matters to a new level, analysts said.
"North Korea is upgrading its actions," said Kim Sung Han, a North Korea expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. "Now North Korea seems to be sending dual messages: 'Okay, you guys talk to me or we'll really go and produce nuclear bombs.' "
The Bush administration, focused on preparing for possible war with Iraq, wants to solve the Korea crisis through diplomatic means. Still, administration officials have publicly ruled out any negotiations unless North Korea abandons its nuclear weapons programs and again submits to inspections. Senior officials have said the administration reserves the military option.
The problem for the Bush administration is that the U.S. threat of force is undercut by the reality that Washington lacks the regional support it would need to conduct a war. South Korea last week elected a new president who advocates continuing dialogue and engagement with North Korea, placing him at odds with Bush. The Japanese public, already largely opposed to a war with Iraq, would likely have a harder time stomaching a war with a potential nuclear adversary on its doorstep.
Security experts say this context is emboldening North Korea to press ahead with its nuclear plans, ratcheting up the threat in hopes of eventually extracting U.S. concessions.
"They're going to go as far as they can go," said Seongwhun Cheon, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government research group. "There are only two choices: deal or war."
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), incoming chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, today added fuel to the view that the United States cannot use force to solve the standoff, saying during an interview on NBC's "Today" show that military action against the North would invite a "devastating" reprisal against South Korea. "Our strategy now has to be one of multilateral engagement," Lugar said.
---
U.N. nuke agency hits N. Korea
By Christopher Torchia
ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 27, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-20021227234043.htm
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's moves to restart a nuclear reactor that U.S. officials believe was used to make one or two atomic bombs amount to "nuclear brinkmanship" and are "very worrying," the U.N. nuclear watchdog said yesterday.
North Korea, however, said it was "peace-loving" and had no plans to develop weapons at the site.
Across the fortified border from North Korea, South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun warned the North on Friday that reactivating the reactor could endanger the communist state's own safety.
He added that North Korea's defiant attitude could make it difficult for him to continue his predecessor's policy of seeking reconciliation with Pyongyang after he takes office in February
"Whatever North Korea's rationale is in taking such actions, they are not beneficial to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia, nor are they helpful for its own safety," Mr. Roh said in a statement.
On Thursday, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said his nation will never tolerate its neighbor's nuclear development. But he said the South seeks a peaceful end to a dispute that resembles a 1994 crisis over the same reactor that some say nearly led to war.
The White House, which is considering a war against Iraq, also wants a diplomatic solution on the Korean Peninsula. A prominent Republican senator said U.S. military action against the North would invite a "devastating" reprisal against South Korea.
"Our strategy now has to be one of multilateral engagement," involving nations such as Japan, China and Russia, Sen. Richard Lugar, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC's "Today."
Australia on Friday shelved plans to open an embassy in North Korea amid the rising tensions linked to Pyongyang's moves to reactivate its nuclear weapons program.
Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said Australia has told North Korea that restoring full diplomatic links could not proceed while it violates nuclear nonproliferation obligations. North Korean workers have moved 1,000 fresh fuel rods to a storage site near the Soviet-designed, 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon that was frozen in a deal with Washington that ended the 1994 crisis, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said.
A total of 8,000 such rods is needed to start the reactor. "Moving towards restarting its nuclear facilities without appropriate safeguards, and towards producing plutonium raises serious nonproliferation concerns and is tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship," Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the Vienna-based agency, said in a statement.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky called the situation "very worrying."
Since the weekend, North Koreans have removed U.N. seals and impeded the functioning of surveillance cameras at the nuclear facilities north of Pyongyang, despite international appeals for restraint.
The IAEA has called its board of governors to an extraordinary meeting tentatively planned for Jan. 6. ElBaradei said he plans to tell the board that North Korea's actions have left the agency unable to verify "that there has been no diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices."
The board could refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
North Korea is believed to be pushing the dispute to the brink of crisis in order to extract concessions at the negotiating table. The North has repeatedly called for a nonaggression treaty with the United States, though economic benefits are also a priority for the destitute country.
However, the United States has ruled out talks unless North Korea, labeled part of an "axis of evil" by President Bush, abandons nuclear development.
IAEA officials estimate it would take at least one month for North Korea to restart the reactor, which produces plutonium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, as a residue.
The U.N. agency, which has two inspectors at the site, is especially worried about a storage area holding 8,000 spent fuel rods and a laboratory used to reprocess the rods to get plutonium.
Intelligence experts say plutonium in the spent fuel rods could yield four or five nuclear weapons within months, and that North Korea already has one or two. However, the IAEA said there was no sign of North Korea activity at those two key facilities.
North Korea said it was restarting the reactor in order to provide electricity because Washington had reneged on a promise to provide energy sources.
"Our republic constantly maintains an anti-nuclear, peace-loving position," state-run Radio Pyongyang said.
ElBaradei disputed the North Korean claim, saying the reprocessing facility at Yongbyon was "irrelevant" to electricity production, and that North Korea had "no current legitimate peaceful use for plutonium."
U.S. officials have said the reactor itself would provide a negligible amount of electricity. In the deal with the United States in 1994, North Korea froze its suspected plutonium-based nuclear weapons program.
Earlier this month, it decided to restart it after Washington and U.S. allies halted fuel oil supplies as punishment for revelations in October that it had moved forward with a second nuclear weapons program that used enriched uranium.
Yesterday, Germany joined nations urging North Korea to immediately halt its activities at Yongbyon, calling the moves a "blatant violation" of its international obligations.
----
Atom Agency Chief Criticizes North Korea
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/asia/27KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 26 - The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency accused North Korea of "nuclear brinkmanship" today, after North Korean technicians broke open the sealed doors of a reactor shut down by agreement in the mid-1990's and moved 1,000 fuel rods back into it.
The reactor produces plutonium, an essential component of nuclear weapons, according to the United Nations agency. To restart it, North Korea will need 7,000 of the yardlong fuel rods.
Calling the North's moves "very worrying," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the monitoring agency, said in a statement issued today in Vienna, "Moving toward restarting its nuclear facilities without appropriate safeguards, and toward producing plutonium, raises serious nonproliferation concerns and is tantamount to nuclear brinkmanship."
The agency, the outside world's sole source of accurate information on the nuclear complex, maintains three inspectors at the site in Yongbyon, 50 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital.
North Korea is engaging the United States in a tense chess game, seeking a nonaggression pact in exchange for reshutting its reactor. Today, Pyongyang radio accused Washington of falsely stating "that our reactivation of nuclear facilities signals the development of nuclear weapons."
"Our nuclear facilities are aimed at resolving the electricity problem," the state-run radio said, referring to the North's chronic power shortfalls. "Our measure has got nothing to do with plans to develop nuclear weapons. Our republic constantly maintains an antinuclear, peace-loving position."
In response, Dr. ElBaradei noted that the five-megawatt reactor was a research reactor, calling it "irrelevant" to North Korea's ability to produce electricity.
Japanese nuclear experts have theorized that after a nearly decadelong shutdown, the Soviet-era reactor may no longer function.
The public in Seoul, seemingly inured after half a century of threats from their impoverished neighbor to the north, remained calm today. South Korean markets barely moved after the Christmas holiday.
But people here are increasingly angry with the United States and North Korea, believing them to be heading toward a confrontation without consulting South Korea, the nation with potentially the most to lose.
This issue "has gone beyond a diplomatic conflict between North Korea and the United States to become a question of South Korea's survival and well-being," the newspaper JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial today. "If the North and the United States actually go to war, the South will suffer the most damage of the three."
"No option should be left untested in trying to mediate between Washington and Pyongyang," the centrist newspaper continued. "Only then could there be hope that Washington and Pyongyang would stop considering the South as a hostage or a victim to serve their goals."
Kim Dae Jung, South Korea's departing president, warned today at an emergency cabinet meeting, "We can never go along with North Korea's nuclear weapons development."
"South Korea must play a leading role in solving the North's nuclear issue, which is a critical problem for the Korean Peninsula," Mr. Kim said in remarks released by a spokeswoman. "We must closely cooperate with the United States, Japan and other friendly countries to prevent the situation from further deteriorating into a crisis."
Weakening South's Korea's hand, the president elect, Roh Moo Hyun, is not to be inaugurated until Feb. 25. Today, Mr. Roh, who campaigned on a pledge to improve ties with the North, sent an envoy to the cabinet meeting. Once in office, he plans to exchange special envoys with the United States to discuss the nuclear standoff.
For now, however, the Bush administration is showing no inclination to enter into talks with the North. An administration official quoted by Reuters derided the North's moves today as "striptease."
"They're doing it in pieces to try to get a response out of us," said the official, who demanded anonymity. "It's like a striptease. I don't think this administration is going to play the game."
The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican, warned on the NBC News program "Today" against a pre-emptive attack on North Korea, saying it could provoke a "devastating" counterattack on Seoul.
The senator called instead for the United States to join South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and other nations in a diplomatic offensive to halt North Korea's action. "My greatest concern here is nuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula and ultimately Japan, all of which is a bad idea for the U.S. and the world," he said.
In Japan, the growing nuclear threat has moved some experts to talk cautiously about a Japanese bomb, a taboo topic since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. While officials shy away from such talk, Japan's government is increasingly outspoken on the threat presented by North Korea.
"The North shouldn't underestimate the eyes of the international community," Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said today.
Yasuo Fukuda, his chief cabinet secretary, described North Korea's refueling moves as "not good" and "particularly provocative."
Also today, France and Germany added their voices to the international chorus of those condemning North Korea's move to break the 1994 nuclear control pact.
But in North Korea's tightly sealed information environment, many officials may believe that their nuclear breakaway policy is eliciting a positive world reaction.
In a typically worded analysis in English, the Korean Central News Agency reported from Pyongyang on the nuclear standoff that "North Korea is stunning its rivals stronger than itself in a do-or-die spirit, far from yielding to them, and winning victory by employing strategies and tactics more skillful than theirs."
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Report: N. Korea to Expel U.N. Inspectors
Fri, Dec 27, 2002
By PAUL SHIN,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=2&u=/ap/20021227/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Friday it will expel United Nations inspectors and reactivate a nuclear lab where foreign officials say spent fuel rods can be reprocessed to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
In a letter sent to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, North Korea said it was reactivating the lab to give "safe storage" to spent fuel rods that will come from a reactor it plans to restart, Yonhap said, quoting North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
KCNA also said the North will expel two nuclear inspectors dispatched by the Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, Yonhap reported.
With the announcements, North Korea appeared to move even closer to reactivating nuclear facilities mothballed in a deal with the United States in 1994.
North Korea claims that it is restarting the reactor to get badly needed electricity after the United States and its allies cut off oil shipments in response to recent revelations that the North Koreans had been covertly pressing ahead with efforts to develop nuclear weapons in violation of the 1994 agreement.
But U.S. officials say that power to be obtained from the 5-megawatt reactor is negligible, and North Korea is widely believed to be pushing the dispute to the brink of crisis in order to extract concessions at the negotiating table.
Earlier Friday, South Korea's President-elect Roh Moo-hyun said North Korea's defiant attitude could make it difficult for him to continue his predecessor's policy of seeking reconciliation with Pyongyang after he takes office in February.
"Whatever North Korea's rationale is in taking such actions, they are not beneficial to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia, nor are they helpful for its own safety and prosperity," Roh said in a statement.
North Korea's government has repeatedly called for a nonaggression treaty with the United States, though economic benefits are also a priority for the destitute country.
North Korea state media accused Washington on Friday of using the nuclear issue as a pretext for invasion. An English-language commentary by the KCNA referred to recent comments by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asserting that the United States has the military strength to wage war against Iraq and North Korea at the same time.
"The U.S. much-publicized assertion that North Korea scrap its nuclear program first is nothing but a pipe-dream as it calls for disarming (North Korea) under the absurd pretext of its nuclear program and then launching a surprise attack on it to overthrow its political system," KCNA said.
During an inspection tour of U.S. and South Korean air force units, outgoing President Kim Dae-jung (news - web sites) called for a stronger military alliance between the two allies to cope with threats raised by North Korea's nuclear development.
"We should be fully prepared for any emergencies and maintain a tighter joint defense system to back up a peaceful solution to North Korea's nuclear issue," he said.
On Friday, Australia added its voice to an international chorus of concern, announcing it had shelved plans to open an embassy in the communist state.
"We have put all of our further evolution of our relationship with North Korea on hold," Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Arguing that the reclusive nation could best be influenced to become a responsible member of the world community through dialogue, Australia resumed diplomatic relations with North Korea in May 2000 and had planned to open an embassy in Pyongyang within the next six months.
Despite the international outcry, North Korea has shown no signs of backing away from its , announcement earlier this month that it plans to restart its plutonium-based nuclear program.
In the past week North Korean workers removed seals and surveillance cameras installed by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
----
North Korea to Expel Inspectors, Drawing White House Criticism
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/asia/27CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - North Korea said today that it was expelling United Nations nuclear inspectors, and the White House reacted quickly by saying that the United States would not be pressured into negotiating with the Pyongyang government.
"The United States will not negotiate in response to threats or broken commitments," a White House spokeswoman, Claire Buchan, told reporters in Crawford, Tex., where President Bush is spending the holidays.
Ms. Buchan said the United States wants North Korea "to reverse its current course" and to eliminate its nuclear weapons program "in a verifiable manner."
In addition to the nuclear inspectors' expulsions, North Korea said it was reactivating a reactor and related facilities that were mothballed in a 1994 nonproliferation pact with the United States.
The inspectors are from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been following the degree of the Pyongyang government's compliance with nuclear-safeguard treaties.
The United Nations said in a statement that North Korea had sent a letter to the atomic agency's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, notifying him that the North wanted the immediate removal of the inspectors in light of its decision "to lift the `freeze' on their nuclear facilities."
Dr. ElBaradei responded by expressing disappointment and saying that the departure of inspectors "would practically bring to an end our ability to monitor" North Korea's nuclear program "or assess its nature."
Dr. ElBaradei called the North Korean move "one further step away" from easing the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korean officials have said they need to restart the reactor to have enough electricity for the country because the United States and its allies cut oil supplies to North Korea. The oil supplies were curtailed in response to the North's disclosure in October that it had been pressing ahead with efforts to develop nuclear weapons, in violation of the 1994 agreement.
There has been widespread conjecture in recent days that given the United States' concerns over Iraq, North Korea sees an advantage in pressuring Washington now to resume shipments of oil and other aid and to enter into a nonaggression treaty.
American diplomatic and intelligence officials have dismissed as absurd North Korea's assertions that its moves to revive the nuclear program are based on the need for domestic electric power. Rather, they say, the North is moving to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to make several nuclear weapons.
The White House statements in Texas did not represent a change in posture. Earlier this week, in fact, the State Department declared that the United States would not be "blackmailed" into negotiating with North Korea. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the United States was ready and able to engage in two conflicts at the same time - against Iraq and North Korea - if there were no alternative. Mr. Rumsfeld said North Korea would be miscalculating if it assumed that the United States could not deal with two crises at once.
The expressions of resolve were accompanied by statements saying that the United States wanted a peaceful resolution to the Korean crisis - a message that the White House reiterated today.
"We seek a peaceful resolution of the situation that North Korea has created," Ms. Buchan said.
President Bush has already postponed a trip to Africa, originally scheduled for early January, in response to the tensions with Iraq and Korea, and it was clear that he was monitoring both situations at his ranch in Texas.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has already expressed disappointment with Russia and China for not pressing North Korea to curtail its nuclear ambitions. And Australia has announced that it is postponing plans for an embassy in North Korea because of Pyongyang's attitude.
-------- russia
Russia-Iran nuclear waste accord to be signed next month: official
Friday December 27, 2002
AFP
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/021227/1/362ho.html
Moscow and Tehran will next month sign an accord over the return of nuclear waste from a power plant that Russia is building in southern Iran, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said.
Negotiators have completed drafting the agreement in which "Russia pledges to deliver and Iran pledges to return" the nuclear fuel and it should be ready for signing within a month, Rumyantsev told a press conference on his return from a visit to Iran.
The final details are being worked out at the foreign ministry, Rumyantsev said. "There are no remaining obstacles to signing it," he said.
The first delivery of nuclear fuel is to be made by the construction company Atomstroiexport, which is installing the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, and subesequent deliveries will be made by the TVEL company, he said.
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami pledged Tuesday to return nuclear waste from Bushehr to Russia, reiterating that Tehran has no plans to pursue a nuclear weapons programme.
The United States, which has branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, fears the radioactive waste could be diverted to the secret development of such weapons.
Washington has voiced concern over Russian support for Iranian nuclear power plants, and Israel has said it fears that Russia's construction of the Bushehr plant could help the Islamic republic develop a nuclear weapons programme.
Rumyantsev reiterated the Russian position that Russo-Iranian cooperation in the nuclear sector was being conducted in line with international agreements on non-proliferation and was "purely civilian."
The work at Bushehr is about "70 percent completed," Rumantsyev said, noting there were about 1,200 technicians working at the site, 60 percent of them Russian and 40 percent Ukrainian.
"In the next six months, the number of technicians will increase in order to carry out the assembly of the reactor block and the turbine," he said.
Completion of the nuclear plant is scheduled for June 2004. The nuclear fuel is due to be loaded into the reactor by Russian specialists in December 2003.
Rumyantsev said there were no plans as yet to build another reactor, although earlier this year Russia signed a wide-ranging economic cooperation agreement that envisaged the building of other nuclear power units.
"There have been no agreements on constructing another as yet," he said, though he added such agreements were possible in the future.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- pennsylvania
3 Mile Island Plaintiffs End Legal Action
December 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Three-Mile-Island-Lawsuits.html
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- Attorneys for 1,990 plaintiffs who claimed their health was damaged by the 1979 reactor meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant say their legal action is over.
Earlier this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal of a lower-court decision granting summary dismissal of the claims against former TMI owner General Public Utilities Corp. and related defendants.
``There's nothing more that can be done to proceed with them, essentially,'' said attorney Lee C. Swartz. ``We doubt the U.S. Supreme Court would agree to hear the case.''
No other major litigation remains from the 1979 accident at TMI, the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident.
The plaintiffs said their health was harmed by radiation that escaped from the damaged TMI-2 plant for several days before the reactor was brought under control. An estimated 100,000 people fled the region during the crisis.
GPU and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials have maintained not enough radiation was released to cause adverse health effects, but some doctors as well as anti-nuclear activists argued that was unclear.
``It just seemed to me there was scant, if not zero, evidence of a true corollary between the radiation and the illnesses,'' former GPU president and chief operating officer Herman M. Dieckamp said Thursday. ``So it was probably the right thing for them to do.''
In 1990, a Columbia University study concluded the reported exposure levels were too low to have caused increased lung cancer and leukemia cases near the plant, which is on the Susquehanna River, about 10 miles south of Harrisburg.
But a later study by Dr. Stephen Wing and others at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Public Health used the same data and concluded ``downwind'' areas during the accident had increased cancer rates. Wing conceded his study did not prove more potent radiation releases, but said there was little else that would explain the higher cancer rates.
A spokesman for a watchdog group that monitors Three Mile Island vowed Thursday the group ``will continue to pursue and track radiogenic cancers.
``While this is a setback, I believe we'll endure and prevail, probably when I'm a very old man,'' TMI Alert spokesman Eric Epstein.
Two of the plaintiffs were Terry L. Koller and his wife, Joanne, who was pregnant when the TMI radiation plume drifted across the Susquehanna River. Their daughter, Abigayle, was born with deformed feet Aug. 12, 1979, and they filed suit in 1986.
Koller said he and his wife have known the case was ``dead in the water.'' Their daughter, who underwent two operations as a child, played basketball in high school and college and now does mission work.
``We have moved on with our life,'' he said. ``She has moved on with hers. We're not thinking about the past. The Lord gave her abilities in other ways.''
On the Net:
Three Mile Island Alert: http://www.tmia.com
Pennsylvania Department of Health: http://www.health.state.pa.us
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
Stocks fall on war, oil worries
December 27, 2002
AP
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20021227-4489280.htm
NEW YORK - Investors spooked by hostilities in Iraq and a steep rise in oil prices sent stocks lower yesterday in light post-Christmas trading.
Retailers were punished after Wal-Mart lowered its December sales expectations.
An afternoon sell-off ended a rally that had been sparked by a government report indicating that new claims for unemployment benefits were dropping. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed more than 116 points before reversing direction.
At the close, the Dow was down 15.50, or 0.2 percent, at 8,432.61. Declines in Amazon.com and Microsoft helped pull the Nasdaq Composite Index down 4.58, or 0.3 percent, to 1,367.89, while the Standard & Poor's 500 was off 2.81, or 0.3 percent, at 889.66.
The Russell 2000 Index, which tracks the shares of smaller companies, eked out a small gain, rising 1.28, or 0.3 percent, to 389.40.
Investors turned bearish after the U.S. military said warplanes from the U.S.-British coalition bombed Iraqi military command and communication targets yesterday in southern Iraq. The attack was in retaliation for the downing of an unmanned American surveillance drone on Monday, the military said.
The official Iraqi News Agency, quoting a military spokesman, said that a mosque had been hit and that three civilians were killed and 16 others wounded in the attack.
The rising tension with Iraq, a major Middle Eastern oil producer, along with the continued strike in Venezuela sent oil prices soaring. Oil prices for February delivery jumped 52 cents to $32.49, and some analysts predict the price could hit $35 soon.
Still, analysts cautioned against reading too much into yesterday's trading.
Barry Berman, head trader for Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee, noted that "when volume is light, it doesn't take much to move the market either way."
Ralph Acampora of Prudential Securities in New York attributed yesterday morning's gains to "a lack of sellers" and said trading continued a pattern of a short-term rally followed by a short-term decline.
"I think it is part of the market trying to bottom out in anticipation of a better year in 2003," he said.
Wal-Mart said it was cutting its December same-stores sales forecast and now expects sales to rise 2 percent to 3 percent. It had predicted sales at the low end of a 3 percent to 5 percent range.
Investors apparently anticipated the reduced sales figures and sent Wal-Mart shares up 6 cents to $49.76. But Federated Departments Stores Inc. fell 24 cents to $27.66, and Amazon.com dropped $1.58 to $20.30.
The decline for Amazon.com came despite the online retailer's announcement that it finished its "busiest holiday season ever." Analysts speculated that investors had been rattled by Wal-Mart's report and so didn't respond positively to Amazon's news.
Meanwhile, Pfizer and Pharmacia fell sharply after an article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the widely used arthritis drug Celebrex, made by Pharmacia, doesn't protect the stomach from dangerous bleeding ulcers as much as thought. Pfizer and Pharmacia co-promote the drug. Pfizer dropped $1.36 to $30.02, while Pharmacia was down $2.02 to $40.98.
----
Lockheed Martin Wins $3.5 Billion Fighter Contract
December 27, 2002
Dow Jones Newswires
http://smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20021227-000088-0806
WARSAW -- Poland has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) a $3.5 billion contract to deliver 48 F-16 fighter jets to the Polish air force in the country's largest-ever tender for military equipment, Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said Friday.
Lockheed Martin edged out rival bids from Europe's Dassault Aviation SA, which had offered the Mirage 2000-5 MK, and BAE Systems SAAB, an Anglo-Swedish firm offering the JAS-39 Gripen fighter.
Poland needs new fighter jets to meet its obligations to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which it joined in 1999. The country invited aircraft manufacturers to offer bids in early 2001.
As part of its effort to win a contract, Lockheed Martin in July signed preliminary deals to invest about $1 billion in five Polish companies, the Associated Press reported.
In addition, Washington pressured Poland to choose U.S. jets, backing up Lockheed Martin's bid with the offer of a weapons package, spares and support as well as a training program with the U.S. Air Force.
-------- iraq
Iraq to Let Scientists Leave for Interviews
Baghdad Hints Arms Experts Should Elect to Stay
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41897-2002Dec26?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 26 -- Iraq agreed today to allow its weapons scientists to leave the country for interviews with a U.N. inspection team, but despite calling it their "personal decision," the government seemed to signal that they should refuse to go, saying "it's not necessary" to leave Iraq to conduct the interviews.
The government promised to deliver to the United Nations by Sunday a list of scientists and technicians who have worked in fields related to ballistic missiles or chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. A senior Iraqi official said the list, requested by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, would include hundreds of names.
The issue of interviewing weapons scientists has become particularly sensitive in the confrontation between Iraq and the United States, and tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops are reportedly ready to move to the region for possible military action to destroy President Saddam Hussein's rule. U.S. officials have said an Iraqi refusal to allow the scientists to leave would violate the Nov. 8 Security Council resolution requiring full cooperation with weapons inspectors -- and thus could be construed as a reason for war.
The Bush administration has pressured U.N. inspectors to take key scientists and their families out of Iraq, saying they would offer more candid disclosures without the fear of retaliation. For weeks, Iraq declined to commit to the idea, citing concerns about human rights and international law and pushing for interviews to be conducted here, even if government witnesses were not permitted.
At a news conference today, the chief Iraqi liaison to the inspectors said the government would not block scientists from traveling abroad for interviews. But he left little doubt that he thought they should decline to go.
"It's up to them. You can ask the scientists one by one," said Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate and a weapons specialist. "I'm one of them. I can answer you on my case only. I will not go."
Asked why, he said, "Because I don't like to leave my country. If there is any important question to be addressed to me, let them address it to me here in Iraq. Why this complicated procedure? I don't believe in this complicated procedure."
Amin added, "It's not necessary to meet scientists outside Iraq. The issue of meeting is a personal one, and the National Monitoring Directorate cannot force anyone to do this because everyone is free to do what he wants and we as the National Monitoring Directorate are not supporting or refusing this."
U.S. warplanes, meanwhile, attacked several sites in southern Iraq's "no-fly" zone. The Pentagon said it acted after Iraqi airplanes violated the zone, imposed after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Iraq said the bombing killed three civilians, injured 16 others and damaged a mosque. U.S. officers said their planes hit military command-and-control facilities, not civilian sites.
In apparent preparation for a military conflict, Iraq's trade minister announced the government would help Iraqis stockpile food. The government has been providing Iraqis with two months of rations at a time instead of the usual one. "We are going to increase the quantity in the coming months so that everybody is secured in this regard," Trade Minister Mohammed Mehdi Saleh told the Reuters news agency.
Military preparations are also underway, with militia units staging exercises in central Iraq to prepare to defend against a U.S. invasion. Just as U.S. troops have conducted high-profile war games in the Middle East, in part to pressure Iraq, the militias advertised their dress rehearsals. Troops practiced fighting in urban and rural areas, according to the newspaper Al-Qadissiya, which is published by the Iraqi army.
The moves appeared to reflect a conclusion that war may be inevitable. "It's coming," Mohammed Muthafar Adhami, dean of political science at Baghdad University and a member of the Iraqi parliament, said in an interview. "All the evidence shows they are going to attack."
U.N. inspectors are scheduled to report to the Security Council Jan. 27 on the progress of their search for banned weapons or weapons production programs. U.S. officials have said that could be a date for President Bush to decide on moving further toward war.
Inspectors returned to work here on Nov. 27 after a four-year absence and have reported cooperation by Iraq without drawing any conclusions about their findings. Amin, the Iraqi liaison, took the inspectors' silence to mean they have not uncovered anything suspicious, and he asserted that the first month of inspections has exonerated Iraq. Inspectors have visited 188 sites, he said, including munitions factories, chemical facilities, university complexes, laboratories, hospitals and distilleries.
"All these activities did not support any direct or indirect evidence that the American and British allegations are correct," Amin said. "On the contrary, the results of the inspections reiterate the credibility of the Iraqi declaration" on its weapons programs submitted to the Security Council. "Iraq is clean of weapons of mass destruction," he said.
Amin said that if the inspection teams turn up no evidence of Iraqi weapons development in three to six months, the United Nations should lift the economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Amin dismissed a suggestion by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel that Iraq has hidden banned weapons in neighboring Syria, calling it "just absolute lying" for domestic consumption during Israel's election campaign.
Inspectors returned to Baghdad Technology University to talk with its dean about specialists on his staff and the school's activities. On Tuesday, inspectors sought to interview a member of the staff, Sabah Abdul Nour, in private, the first time they have made such a request, according to Amin. He said no scientist has reported being asked to leave Iraq.
Abdul Nour refused to meet with the inspectors without an Iraqi government official present. He said he told inspectors that Iraq has made no effort to reconstitute its nuclear program in the four years of their absence.
Amin expressed approval of how Abdul Nour handled the matter, saying scientists might be worried about meeting with inspectors without a government official. Simply having a tape recorder would not be good enough, he said, "because it can be manufactured or can be changed. But if there is a human being in the role of witness this will keep the rights" of the scientists.
----
Iraq Says It Will Deliver Scientist List
Fri Dec 27, 2002
By NADIA ABOU EL MAGD,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=4&u=/ap/20021227/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq will hand over to the United Nations (news - web sites) in the next few days a list of hundreds of Iraqi scientists who have worked on nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs, a senior Iraqi general said Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi army said Thursday that militias organized by the ruling Baath party have been holding exercises in central Iraq aimed at countering a U.S. attack, another sign that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government may believe war is inevitable.
Under the toughened U.N. inspections that resumed Nov. 27, inspectors can speak privately with scientists and workers associated with Iraq's weapons - and even take them abroad for interviews. U.S. officials have said they hope the privacy would prompt scientists to reveal hidden weapons programs.
Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix had requested that Baghdad provide a list of scientists by the end of December, and Iraq had already said it would comply.
"The list will be ready within two to three days and it will be sent to the U.N. Security Council at most by Sunday," Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, told a news conference in Baghdad.
While weapons inspectors have spoken to engineers and experts at the sites they have searched, they made their first request to interview a scientist privately on Tuesday.
University of Technology professor Sabah Abdel-Nour, who had worked on a nuclear program that Iraq says is now closed, refused to see the inspectors alone and insisted on the presence of Iraqi officials, Amin said.
He said the inspectors have not asked to interview another scientist.
Amin said the U.N. inspectors have searched 188 sites since they began their mission a month ago. On Thursday, they returned to the University of Technology, checking equipment at the chemistry, engineering and computer departments that had been tagged during U.N. inspections years ago.
Amin said that during their visits, the inspectors found nothing to support U.S. and British claims that his country harbors weapons of mass destruction. He said the teams have collected samples of raw material, soil, water and plants.
"The inspection process has been carried out sometimes in a way that is almost aggressive and has sometimes led to the freezing of the movement of people or vehicles," said Amin.
But he added the searches are "the only effective means to prove ... the credibility of Iraq."
The Bush administration has threatened to attack Iraq unless it cooperates fully with the U.N. disarmament process.
Asked whether Iraq was worried about complications arising from Iraq's recent downing of a U.S. drone spy aircraft, Amin said: "They (Americans) should be worried about future complications because maybe one of their planes, this time with a real pilot, would be shot down."
Amin called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s accusations that Iraq may be transferring chemical and biological weapons to neighboring Syria a "baseless lie."
Also Thursday, the army's Al-Qadissiya newspaper said Baath party militias had practiced fighting in rural and populated areas in Babil, and rehearsed techniques of "distracting the enemy in different directions by using light and medium weapons."
The newspaper did not say when the games were held, whether they were still under way or how many troops participated. Iraq's security forces include army units as well as armed groups organized under the Baath party.
Fadel Mahmoud Ghareib, in charge of the ruling Baath party's Babil province branch, was quoted as saying that the militias showed they were ready "to foil the schemes of America and its evil allies and to respond to the aggressors and bury their low schemes."
If Iraq can convince the inspectors it is not hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or the missiles to deliver them, it might avoid a U.S. strike. But the inspectors have said an Iraqi weapons declaration is wanting, and the United States has dismissed it as a lie.
----
U.S. Courted Top Iraqi Official for Defection
Iraq Says Nuclear Arms Pioneer Declined Offer
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 27, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41840-2002Dec26?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 26 -- When a senior Iraqi delegation arrived in New York on May 1 to finish plans for the resumption of U.N. inspections in Iraq, a key member of the team was missing. Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, widely regarded as the father of Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program, had been held up by American officials at the U.S. embassy in Amman, Jordan, and questioned for several hours before he was given a visa.
The British-trained physicist had been "singled out for interrogation" by U.S. officials in Jordan and would not be arriving until the following day, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri in the opening meeting with a U.N. delegation. Iraqi diplomats subsequently told U.N. officials that U.S. officials also offered money to Jaffar and other Iraqi officials in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade them to defect, according to Iraqi and Western diplomats.
The disclosure suggests that Washington may have already begun an aggressive campaign to identify key Iraqi officials for defection several months before U.N. inspectors arrived in Iraq to question Iraq's weapons experts. In recent weeks, the United States has stepped up efforts to encourage new defections, demanding that weapons inspectors invite Iraqi scientists for interviews abroad, where they will be provided with an opportunity to request political asylum.
Information about the alleged defection effort in May came originally from Iraqi officials, who have a stake in portraying the United States as a disruptive force in the inspections process. Still, the Iraqis complained about it at the time -- before the issue became so highly charged -- and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan took the claims seriously enough to change the venue of the next round of talks to Vienna.
While the Iraqi claims that the United States had targeted several officials for defection have been generally known, until now their names were unpublicized. In addition to Jaffar, the diplomatic sources said, the Americans also targeted Gen. Amir Saadi, a senior adviser to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who was also instrumental in developing Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The third individual was Mehdi Labidi, a midlevel technical expert, according to a report Tuesday by the London-based Arab language newspaper Asharq al-Awsat. The newspaper, citing Iraqi officials as sources, reported that U.S. intelligence agents had repeatedly phoned Iraqi officials at their hotels in New York and sought to lure them into defecting with a case filled with cash.
A Bush administration official declined to comment, saying, "We don't comment on intelligence matters." A CIA spokesman declined comment.
The Bush administration, which succeeded in persuading two Iraqi diplomats at Baghdad's U.N. mission to defect in the summer of 2001, has argued that well-placed defectors are the key to unearthing fresh insights into Iraq's secret weapons program. The CIA has a program aimed at encouraging such defections.
But Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, has expressed concern about the United Nations running a defector program. He has said that the United States has yet to come up with ideas for how the international organization can select Iraqi scientists and their families, and take them out of the country for interviews.
The defection of Jaffar would have constituted the most significant intelligence coup on Iraq's weapons program since Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed, who headed Iraq's secret weapons program, fled Iraq in 1995, prompting the government to hand over millions of pages of secret documents related to its banned weapons program. A former deputy to Hussein Kamel, Jaffar had been at the center of Iraq's secret effort to develop nuclear weapons for more than 20 years. A trusted member of Hussein's inner circle, Jaffar would have likely been a pivotal figure in any recent efforts to restart the program.
"He's extremely significant. He knows more than anybody else, because he is trusted by the top level and he was very involved in all the different programs" in the nuclear field, said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). "He also should have known about all the chemical, biological and missile programs."
The May episode led to an appeal from the Iraqi government to Annan to hold future meetings on weapons inspections in Geneva or Vienna. But the Iraqi government did not go public with the outlines of the story until June, after Washington ordered the expulsion of an Iraqi diplomat in New York -- Abdul Rahman Saad -- on the grounds that he was recruiting U.S. citizens to spy for Iraq.
Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammed Douri, told reporters that Washington was simply retaliating because Baghdad had lodged a complaint with the United Nations over U.S. "harassment" of three members of the Iraqi delegation, whom he declined to identify. "This is vengeance," Douri told the Associated Press in June. "They have been asked to stay in the United States -- to defect."
Albright said that Jaffar would have been a natural target for U.S. intelligence agents. A member of Iraq's former royal ruling class, Jaffar was imprisoned and tortured by Hussein until he agreed in the early 1980s to help build the Arab world's first nuclear bomb. But Jaffar also prospered under the regime, increasing his wealth and rising to the post of minister without a portfolio.
"Here's a guy who they tortured to force him to work in the program. I don't see him having a tremendous loyalty to them if he had a choice," Albright said. But "it may be that he is so intertwined financially with the regime, so he has in a sense no way out."
Khidhir Hamza, a former aide to Jaffar who defected to the United States, said that the United States and the United Nations are potentially endangering the lives of Iraqi scientists. Jaffar's flight would have placed his family in peril. The Iraqi regime had responded to previous acts of betrayal mercilessly. After luring Hussein Kamel back to Baghdad, he was gunned down outside his home along with other family members.
Hamza said the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to conduct an initial round of interviews with Iraqi scientists in Iraq before narrowing a list of key figures for questioning abroad is particularly dangerous. "Talking to scientists with minders is meaningless; without minders it is an endangerment," he said. "The mere fact that [an individual] is interviewed and chosen will tell the Iraqi government that he is ready to cooperate, and that could endanger him and his family."
That fear has already had a chilling effect on the interviews. One Iraqi scientist, Sabah Abdel-Nour, who participated in Iraq's previous nuclear energy program, told the French press agency that he declined to be interviewed without the presence of an Iraqi official. "The inspectors asked me for a personal interview and proposed that it be in private," he said. "I apologized and asked for the presence of a member of the National Monitoring Directorate."
If Jaffar had any intention of betraying the Iraqi regime, it was anything but evident when he finally arrived in New York for an afternoon meeting with U.N. nuclear experts on May 2. Jaffar complained that his luggage was missing and that he was wearing the same outfit as when he left Baghdad. "He said the [U.S. intelligence] agencies are probably going through every single piece of clothing," according to a U.N. official.
Jaffar then began a tirade, saying the United Nations falsified reports on Iraq's efforts to dismantle its nuclear weapons. "He went ballistic," the official said. "Some people in the meeting thought that he was probably being aggressive with us to show his own government that he had no intention of defecting."
At one point, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, threatened to stop the discussions when Jaffar insulted ElBaradei's chief aide, Jacques Baute, the French head of the IAEA's Iraq action team, criticizing his command of English. One U.N. official said Jaffar said, " 'My English is much better than yours, Baute, so don't come play with words in English. Though I must admit that since you married a British national, your English is improving.' "
----
NO-FLIGHT ZONES
Allied Jets Bomb Military Site; Iraq Says Air Strike Killed 3
December 27, 2002
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/middleeast/27STRI.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 - Warplanes from the American-British coalition enforcing no-flight zones over Iraq bombed a military command-and-control post about 175 miles southeast of Baghdad today, officials said.
The strike, near Tallil, was ordered after Iraqi warplanes crossed into the southern no-flight area, the United States Central Command said in a statement issued from its headquarters in Tampa, Fla.
In Baghdad, the official Iraqi News Agency said that the attack killed 3 people and wounded 16 others, and that the bombs or missiles struck civilian targets, including a mosque.
"The evil criminals in the evil American administration and its humble servant Britain added a new crime to their black record against civilization and humanity and the houses of God," the news agency said.
The statement by the Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Persian Gulf, said, "Coalition aircraft never target civilian populations or infrastructure and go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and damage to civilian facilities."
The United States, France and Britain set up the no-flight zones to enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions and cease-fire agreements from the Persian Gulf war.
France no longer sends its aircraft on the enforcement missions.
--------
Experts Warn of Iraq's Improved Weapons
December 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Biological-Weapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Biological weapons are among the few capabilities Iraq has improved since being defeated by a U.S.-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, government officials say.
Working under the noses of U.N. inspectors from 1991 to 1998, President Saddam Hussein's government probably developed mobile germ warfare labs and processes to create dried bacteria for deadlier and longer-lasting weapons, U.S. officials and former weapons inspectors say.
Pentagon officials say Iraq's biological arsenal could do the most damage, physical and psychological, if it were used to retaliate immediately against a U.S. invasion rather than in later stages of battle.
Although U.S. troops are being vaccinated against anthrax and smallpox and have protective gear, a biological attack cannot be detected until after exposure. Even if a biological attack did not kill U.S. troops, it could kill many civilians and create a logistical mess that would slow an American advance and strain the military's medical capabilities.
``The most frightening thing is Iraq's biological program,'' said David Kay, a former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations. ``Even in my inspection days, it was the program we knew the least about.''
What inspectors eventually learned was disturbing. After the 1995 defection of Saddam's son-in-law, who ran the germ weapons program, Iraq acknowledged brewing thousands of gallons of deadly germs and toxins and loading some of them in bombs, missile warheads and rockets.
The weapons included anthrax, the germ that killed seven people in last year's U.S. mail attacks; botulinum toxin, nature's most deadly poison; Clostridium perfringens, a flesh-eating bacterium that causes gas gangrene; and aflatoxin, a fungal poison that causes liver cancer.
In late 1998, frustrated by Iraq's refusal to cooperate, the inspectors withdrew shortly before the United States and Britain began ``Operation Desert Fox,'' a bombing campaign to compel compliance by Iraq. Saddam refused to let the inspectors return.
Iraq claimed it destroyed all its biological weapons. U.N. inspectors concluded in 1999 that probably was a lie, because Saddam's scientists could have made thousands of gallons of biological weapons without declaring them. U.S. officials say Iraq's latest weapons declaration does not clear up discrepancies.
``Before the inspectors were forced to leave Iraq, they concluded that Iraq could have produced 26,000 liters of anthrax. That is three times the amount Iraq had declared,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said recently. ``Yet the Iraqi declaration is silent on this stockpile, which alone would be enough to kill several million people.''
The omissions, U.S. officials and former inspectors say, are strong evidence that Iraq has retained at least some of its biological arsenal.
Iraq's development of anthrax-drying technology makes that arsenal even more dangerous than it was during the Gulf War. Its earlier biological weapons efforts relied on a liquid slurry of anthrax, which let the spores clump together and made it difficult to get the fine aerosol needed to get the germs into people's lungs.
U.N. inspectors in the late 1990s found Iraq had drying machines that could be used to make a powdered form of anthrax.
The Iraqis claimed they were making a biological pesticide from a worm-killing bacteria known as BT, said former inspector Jonathan Tucker. But they were making particles so small they would float through the air, not settle onto crops like a biopesticide should, Tucker said. Inspectors believed Iraq was using BT, a relative of the anthrax germ, as a testing stand-in for anthrax, Tucker said.
Evidence also suggested that Iraq was experimenting with drying anthrax in combination with bentonite, a compound that would help the anthrax particles stay aloft. Iraq also has imported hundreds of tons of fumed silicon dioxide, another substance that would give anthrax an aerosol quality.
Dried anthrax is easier to disperse as a weapon, easier to get into a target's lungs and lasts longer in storage, Tucker and another former U.N. inspector, Richard Spertzel, said. Particles small enough could penetrate even the U.S. military's protective gear.
``Quite clearly, Iraq knew exactly what needed to be done,'' Spertzel said. ``Their contract with the spray dryer company showed they knew what to go for and how to do it.''
Although U.S. troops are inoculated against anthrax, a high enough concentration of anthrax spores still could make them sick, Tucker said.
``If you're exposed to a massive dose, it could overwhelm a vaccination,'' said Tucker, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Iraq has missiles that could carry biological weapons to Israel, Kuwait or U.S. troop concentrations within Iraq, Pentagon officials say.
Iraq also has experimented with turning small jet airplanes into remote-controlled drones. U.S. officials fear those drones could be fitted with spray tanks to deliver biological weapons.
``Iraq developed these drones because I think they realized their air force wouldn't be flying long if there was a war,'' Tucker said.
On the Net: CIA's Iraq page: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Raids Kill at Least 8 Palestinians
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 26 - Israeli troops shot and killed at least eight Palestinians in scattered incidents across the West Bank and Gaza today, and re-entered Bethlehem after a brief hiatus for Christmas celebrations.
At least 30 Palestinians were injured and 7 were arrested, while 4 Israeli soldiers were wounded, officials said.
The surge in violence ended a period of relative calm that had lasted several days; it reflected the Israeli strategy of attacking suspected Palestinian gunmen before they can strike first. Israeli officials say they believe the strategy has helped curb suicide attacks, which have not occurred in more than a month.
Palestinian leaders say the Israeli operations are part of an effort to assassinate important Palestinians. They and others accuse Israel of trying to torpedo an Egyptian-led effort to persuade the main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, to cease the killings of civilians inside Israel.
"At a time when the Palestinians are trying with Egypt's help to reach an agreement for a calming down, Israel is fueling the cycle of violence," said the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Maher.
Palestinian leaders also accused Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, of trying to deflect attention from a political scandal that is damaging his party's reputation.
There were signs that Israel was planning even more aggressive action to crush the 27-month-old uprising. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported today that the Israeli Army had begun building special security zones around some Israeli settlements in the West Bank to protect them against Palestinian attacks. Under the plan, watchtowers and fences would mark off the zone; Israeli soldiers would be permitted to fire on anyone stepping inside.
Palestinian leaders charged that the real intention of the project was to expand Israeli settlements and thereby sabotage an American-sponsored plan to create a Palestinian state by 2005.
"Sharon wants to make sure by 2005 that it will be impossible to create a Palestinian state because of the settlements," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told The Associated Press.
Earlier this week, in a speech kicking off the Likud Party's parliamentary campaign, Mr. Sharon said that a "victory" over the Palestinians would enable him to strike a peace deal.
For their part, various Palestinian groups swore revenge tonight, raising the possibility of a new round of violence. "The Sharon government, the Israeli occupation army and Israeli assassination teams committed a series of savage crimes against the Palestinian people," the Palestinian leadership said in a statement tonight.
On re-entering Bethlehem today, Israeli troops reimposed a curfew as well, pushing the Palestinian residents back into their homes. Israeli forces now occupy virtually every major Palestinian town in the West Bank.
Today's fighting flared up in pockets across the occupied territories, illustrating the systematic nature of the Israeli sweeps. The troops, many dressed in civilian clothes, surrounded homes, cars and a hospital in what witnesses described as lightning-fast operations.
The first encounter occurred just after midnight, when Israeli officials said their troops spotted two militants approaching the Israeli settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. The soldiers opened fire, killing the two men. Afterward, the soldiers said one of the men had been wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying an AK-47 assault rifle. The second man, the Israeli sources said, was taken away in a Palestinian ambulance but was believed to have been killed.
Palestinian sources said one of their fighters had been killed and another was missing.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces swooped into the village of Kabatiyah and encircled the home of a man suspected of being a leader of Islamic Jihad. Israeli officials said the soldiers opened fire and killed the suspect, Kahlik Abu Roub, after he threw grenades at them. Four soldiers were reported wounded.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad confirmed that one of its fighters had been killed, Reuters reported.
In the West Bank town of Nablus, Israeli officials said soldiers killed two militants after coming under heavy fire. But Palestinian sources said one of the dead men was an unarmed 18-year-old shot during a demonstration that broke out today.
Hospital officials said at least 20 others were wounded.
In Ramallah, three Palestinians were killed in separate incidents. In the first, Israeli officials said soldiers killed a suspected Hamas fighter, identified as Bassam Ashkar, when he resisted arrest and drew a gun. Palestinian sources said Israeli soldiers walked up to a car that Mr. Ashkar was sitting in and sprayed it with bullets.
Palestinian sources also said Israeli soldiers killed an unarmed teenager during a riot that broke out later in the day. An Israeli Army official said the man was killed when he tried to throw a brick at an Israeli soldier.
Also in Ramallah, Israeli officials said their soldiers tried to arrest a suspected militant working as a guard in the local hospital and shot him as he tried to flee.
In another West Bank incident, in Tulkarm, Israeli military officials said they killed a suspected Palestinian militant when he tried to evade arrest.
--------
MIDDLE EAST
Israeli army told to 'turn up the heat'
Marius Schattner
Fri, 27 Dec 2002
AFP
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/198060.htm
One of the most violent days of the intifada in recent weeks, with nine Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, came as the Israeli government ordered the army to "turn up the heat" on the Palestinians.
Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz commanded the military to "step up the pressure and act with all the force required against terrorists wherever they are," the ministry said on Friday.
A spokesperson for the ministry of defence added that the order to "turn up the heat" on the Palestinians was issued by Mofaz during a meeting with the country's top brass and the Shin Beth internal security services on Thursday.
The fresh crackdown on suspected Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which has been reoccupied since June and systematically raided and combed by the army, followed one day after Christmas and after a four-week lull in attacks inside Israel.
Nine Palestinians were killed in the occupied territories on Thursday as the army seized the initiative in its bid to "dismantle terrorist infrastructure".
Most of the violence stemmed from Israeli commando operations to snatch militants during the lifting of the daytime curfew in West Bank towns.
The bloodshed fuelled fears militant groups would escalate their own attacks in revenge after more than a month without a major bombing or shooting in Israel.
Most of the main Palestinian factions are currently engaged in talks aimed at harmonising their positions and halting suicide attacks, while many commentators also suspect Palestinians are curbing their violence to bolster the centre-left Israeli Labour party in upcoming elections.
Following the killing of one of its leaders near the northern West Bank city of Jenin Thursday, the hardline Islamic Jihad group vowed "this ugly crime will not go unpunished."
Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP that Israel was "reverting to its policy of assassinations and house demolitions for electoral reasons and with the goal of sabotaging the efforts being deployed to ease the situation."
After clashes which left two Palestinians dead and around 30 wounded in Nablus, the head of the northern West Bank city's intelligence services Talal Dwikat accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of adopting get-tough policies to curry favour with Israeli right-wingers ahead of January elections.
"With the elections coming up and despite four weeks of calm, Sharon wants to revert the situation to a cycle of violence, and operations by undercover units are aimed at provoking a reaction from Palestinian groups," he told AFP.
Since the summer, the army has switched from sweeping and hard-hitting operations to long-term less spectacular deployments, with daily pinpoint arrest campaigns and house demolitions.
The Israeli army continued to operate on its daily rhythm Friday, rounding up 15 militants from Islamic groups in the Jenin area, Palestinian security sources.
Sharon's tough policies have earned him strong popular support through his term as prime minister, and with the elections four weeks away, they seem to be paying off again.
The latest poll published Friday by the Yediot Aharonot daily showed his Likud party has hardly suffered from the graft scandal.
Labour leader Amram Mitzna, who will challenge Sharon in the January 28 legislative elections, accused his rival of sowing panic among the population to divert attention from the corruption allegations which have marred Likud's march to re-election.
But the accusations appeared to have had little effect on Sharon's popularity ratings, as Likud remained steady. The Yediot poll predicted the party would muster 35 seats in the next parliament, compared to a meager 22 seats for Labour.
-------- korea
U.S. Would Send 690,000 Troops to Korea If War Breaks Out: Report
Dec. 27 2002
Yonhap News, S.Korea
http://www.yonhapnews.net/Engnews/20021227/200000000020021227170228E9.html
Seoul -- The United States would deploy some 690,000 troops to augment the 37,000-strong American military presence already here if war should break out on the peninsula, a Defense Ministry report showed Friday.
The augmented forces would comprise of Army divisions, carrier battle groups with highly-advanced fighters, tactical fighter wings, and marine expeditionary forces in Okinawa and on the U.S. mainland, according to the "1998-2002 Defense Policy." The ministry published the report instead of a white paper.
-------- puerto rico
U.S. Navy to Renew Vieques Bombings
December 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. Navy informed Puerto Rico's government Friday that a new round of bombing exercises could start as soon as Jan. 13 on the outlying island of Vieques.
The Navy said in its letter to the U.S. territory's government that it would conduct the maneuvers for up to one month. Previous military exercises involved ship-to-shore shelling and aerial bombing.
Gov. Sila Calderon, who opposes the training, sent a letter to President Bush on Friday calling the plan ``patently offensive.''
Demonstrators routinely break onto Navy lands to thwart the exercises, saying the maneuvers harm the environment and health of Vieques' 9,100 residents. The Navy denies that claim.
Bush has pledged the Navy will leave Vieques by May 2003. Calderon and dozens of U.S. congressional representatives have urged Bush to put his promise in writing, as concerns mount that the United States could need the island as it prepares for a possible war with Iraq.
The U.S. Navy, which owns about one-third of the outlying Puerto Rican island, has used the bombing range for six decades.
A security guard was killed on the range in 1999 by errant Navy bombs, and the military has used only dummy bombs in the maneuvers ever since.
The last round of training was held on the Caribbean island in September.
-------- russia / chechnya
32 Reported Dead in Grozny Explosions
Fri, Dec 27, 2002
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&ncid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20021227/ap_on_re_eu/russia_chechnya
MOSCOW - At least 32 people reportedly were killed when two suicide bombers drove trucks into the Chechen government compound in the regional capital of Grozny on Friday and detonated them.
Reuters Photo Reuters Slideshow Slideshow: Chechnya Conflict
Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Tsakayev told the Interfax news agency the bombs were contained in a truck and an off-road vehicle that broke into the government compound. Tsakayev said authorities still were trying to determine the number of casualties, which he characterized as "significant."
Chechen prosecutor Valery Kravchenko said 14 bodies had been found and more were feared buried under the rubble.
ITAR-Tass quoted a source in the Chechen prosecutor's office as saying that at least 25 people were killed, presumably including the two truck drivers. The news agency quoted the Grozny ambulance service as saying about 20 people were killed and 40 others wounded, while Rosa state television said 30 people were killed and up to 50 more wounded.
The Chechen Interior Ministry later said the death toll reached 32, ITAR-Tass reported.
The explosions hit around 2:30 p.m. local time, just after the traditional lunch break. Imran Vagapov, Chechnya (news - web sites)'s main inspector, said the building was full of employees and visitors. NTV said as many as 200 people normally worked in the building.
The larger truck exploded next to the building, while the smaller vehicle blew up in an adjacent parking lot used by government cars, ITAR-Tass said.
The explosions had the force of one ton of TNT and left a 20-foot-wide crater, Kravchenko said.
NTV television showed stunned and bleeding people stumbling out of the rubble of the administration building, one of the few in the war-shattered Chechen capital to have been renovated completely. Other people were dragged out by their hands and feet, while bloodied soldiers tried to establish order.
The administration headquarters, where the civilian government is based, was damaged severely. NTV showed windows blown out and a sea of building wreckage and burned-out cars in the adjacent square.
Neither the head of the Chechen administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, nor his deputy Mikhail Babich were in the building, NTV said. However, many other Chechen government workers were there.
Kadyrov, who was in Moscow, told Interfax that one of the trucks broke through three guard-post cordons surrounding the government headquarters. He said one explosion occurred inside the building, and the interior of the building was "practically destroyed."
The nearby Chechen Finance Ministry also was damaged badly, Kravchenko said.
It was the biggest suspected Chechen rebel attack since militants seized a Moscow theater in October, taking about 800 people hostage. All 41 attackers were killed, as were 129 hostages, all but two of whom succumbed to a knockout gas used by Russian authorities to incapacitate the assailants.
The last large attack in Grozny occurred in October, when rebels blew up a Grozny police precinct house, killing at least 25 people. Militants also exploded a passenger bus in September, killing 19 people, mostly civilians.
The Russian government has insisted that Chechnya is returning to normal, and the military campaign there is nearly complete. But the rebels have continued unleashing small-scale attacks on Russian troops and Chechens perceived to be collaborating with them. There also have been occasional larger explosion of military trucks, police stations and other symbols of Russian authority.
Rebels also have shot down several military helicopters this year. In one incident, at least 119 people were killed.
--------
Dozens Die in Attack on Chechen Government Headquarters
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/international/europe/27CND-CHEC.html
MOSCOW, December 27 - Suicide bombers plowed two explosives-laden vehicles through a military perimeter today and blew up the headquarters of Chechnya's pro-Russian government in Grozny, killing at least 46 people and wounding scores more in two terrific blasts.
It was one of the deadliest bombings in more than three years of war in Chechnya, and it sent another powerful signal that militants seeking to split the semiautonomous republic from Russia were far from being subdued. The regional government office, opened to great fanfare barely 20 months ago, was among the most heavily protected buildings in the region.
Russian television showed pictures of civilians and soldiers, many soaked in blood, stumbling or being carried outside the wreckage of the four-story concrete building. A huge crater near the entrance, more than 12 feet deep, marked the site of the explosions.
Chechnya's acting prosecutor, Vladimir Kravchenko, said that about 40 people had died in the explosion. Later, Russian television reported that at least 46 people were dead and at least 70 people had been taken to hospitals, some gravely injured.
An official of Russia's emergencies ministry said the toll of injured could reach 200 because the blast had heavily damaged a nearby canteen as well as the main building, where as many as 200 people were said to work on an average day.
Chechnya's first deputy finance minister, Stanislav Tershchuk, said the second building was crowded with finance ministry workers reconciling Chechnya's government accounts on what was, for many, the last working day before New Year's, Russia's biggest holiday.
"I didn't hear the second blast. The first one was too strong," Mr. Tershchuk, clearly dazed, said in a television interview. "Our information and technical section room caved in. I am sure one of my people was there. We had just hired him."
Wounded government workers were still being removed from the canteen and the building tonight, and three cranes were lifting concrete rubble in search of victims.
"We do not know so far how many people are still under the wreckage," Mr. Kravchenko told the Interfax news service.
The head of Chechnya's civil administration, Akhmad Kadyrov, and the new prime minister, Mikhail Babich, were both out of the building and were not hurt.
President Vladimir V. Putin ordered his emergency minister to speed all possible aid to the victims, and Russian troops sealed off roads around Grozny, Chechnya's capital.
The blast, the fourth major strike against Russia's presence in Chechnya in five months, suggested that militants might increasingly be resorting to headline-grabbing acts of terror to press their cause.
Two months ago, more than 40 Chechen militants seized a theater in the heart of Moscow, provoking a costly rescue effort by Russian forces that left both the militants and nearly 130 civilians dead. Also in October, 22 died when a bomb destroyed a Grozny police station. In August, 121 people died after guerrillas shot down an overloaded military transport helicopter at the main Russian military base outside Grozny.
The military warned last month that suicide bombers were planning a series of strikes in Grozny and central Russia, with their principal targets likely to be government buildings, including the one hit today.
In today's attack, the bombers struck shortly before 2:30 p.m. Moscow time, barreling through the fortified perimeter surrounding the government headquarters in a heavy truck and an off-road vehicle. The subsequent blasts devastated the main government building, blowing out all its windows and extensively damaging its front and the adjacent canteen. The offices of the regional prosecutor and the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the K.G.B., were also damaged.
It was not clear how the bombers had gained access to the government complex, which was deliberately set on a barren stretch of land far from other buildings to increase security against attacks. The Russian television network TVS reported tonight that drivers of heavy trucks are required to have a special pass to enter downtown Grozny, raising the prospect of a security breakdown.
The Russian television network ORT reported that the heavy truck carried military license plates and might have been driven by a woman.
Mr. Kadyrov told Interfax that officials would search for security lapses that might have allowed the bombing, but he despaired that it would do much good.
"We have done this so many times, and what's the use?" he said. "Terrorists still rule in Grozny."
Indeed, the same building was bombed in September 2001, less than five months after it opened, when an explosive device left in a women's restroom went off, killing a cleaning lady.
-------- us
Massive military force ordered to Persian Gulf
12/27/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-27-us-iraq_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon has ordered a major military force to the Persian Gulf in preparation for a possible war with Iraq. The aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, surrounded by French tugboats, leaves the harbor of Marseille, France on Friday. By Jean Paul Pelissier, Reuters
Thousands of troops, two aircraft carrier battle groups and scores of combat aircraft have received orders since Christmas to ready themselves to head to the region in January and February, defense officials said Friday. Military personnel will go to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, among other locations.
The Bush administration waited until after the holiday to issue the orders, which alert units across the United States and possibly overseas to prepare for deployment to the Persian Gulf, officials said. Officials said tens of thousands of military personnel will receive orders to go to the region, but a precise figure was unavailable.
Some of the units being sent to the region are combat-ready, including infantry units, warships and strike aircraft, officials said. Many more are logistics, engineering and support teams, which will prepare for the arrival of even larger combat units in the months ahead, officials said. They will add to the 50,000 U.S. military personnel already in the region.
"We don't comment on specific unit deployments. However, forces will be flowing to the region to be in place should the president decide to use them," said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command, which would oversee operations in Iraq.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week such deployments will "reinforce diplomacy." The Bush administration hopes the threat of military action will increase the pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to fully disclose his efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon ordered the Navy to prepare two aircraft carrier battle groups and two amphibious assault groups to go to the region, defense officials said. The orders, sent in the last two days, require the Navy to have the vessels ready to sail to the seas around Iraq within 96 hours after a certain date in January, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. They did not specify that date.
One of those carriers, the USS George Washington, has already been selected to head to the region. The ship just arrived home to Norfolk, Va., from the Persian Gulf region and has remained ready to return. The second carrier will either be the Everett, Wash.-based USS Abraham Lincoln, which is currently in port at Perth, Australia, having just left the Persian Gulf region, or the USS Kitty Hawk, currently in port in Japan.
An aircraft carrier battle group includes six to eight surface escorts, including cruisers, destroyers, frigates and other vessels, dozens of strike and support aircraft and about 7,500 sailors. An amphibious ready group has about 2,200 Marines.
The defense officials said the amphibious assault groups have not yet been selected. Those groups center on a large, carrier-like vessel that can launch helicopters and carry Marines.
Already in the region is the carrier USS Constellation and the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau, and their escorts, officials said. The Nassau group carries another 2,200 Marines.
A fourth carrier group, centered on the USS Harry S. Truman, is in the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort is expected to put to sea from its home port in Baltimore next week and prepare for action, military officials said Friday. It will be headed to Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean where the United States bases numerous military aircraft, to support any potential conflict with Iraq.
The 1,000-bed floating hospital will initially sail with a crew of 61 civilian mariners and 225 Navy personnel, including enough doctors to support two operating rooms, said Marge Holtz, spokeswoman for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. Hundreds more will be flown to the ship as needed, she said.
Air Force officials said units from five U.S.-based combat wings have received orders to prepare to deploy. They include F-15 fighters from Langley Air Force Base, Va.; F-15E Strike Eagles from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.; B-1B bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; rescue helicopters and Predator drones from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.; and C-130 cargo planes and possibly more rescue helicopters from Moody Air Force Base, Ga.
Air tankers and transport aircraft are also expected to take part, officials said. Dozens of fighters already based in the Persian Gulf fly daily patrols over most of Iraq.
The size of the Army deployment was not clear, but it included infantry as well as support units, officials said. The Army also keeps air defense units in the region.
Last week, officials said the Army was expected to deploy troops from the 1st Armored Division and 1st Infantry Division, both based in Germany, as well as an air mobile unit.
The main Marine Corps contingent is likely to be the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. The 1st MEF's headquarters unit already has moved to Kuwait to prepare for combat operations.
A Coast Guard unit, based in Tacoma, Wash., that operates six small patrol boats has been deployed to the Persian Gulf, according to the office of Sen. Patty Murray.
--------
Pentagon Orders Navy to Ready for Iraq
December 27, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon has ordered a major military force to the Persian Gulf in preparation for a possible war with Iraq.
Thousands of troops, two aircraft carrier battle groups and scores of combat aircraft have received orders since Christmas to ready themselves to head to the region in January and February, defense officials said Friday. Military personnel will go to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, among other locations.
The Bush administration waited until after the holiday to issue the orders, which alert units across the United States and possibly overseas to prepare for deployment to the Persian Gulf, officials said. Officials said tens of thousands of military personnel will receive orders to go to the region, but a precise figure was unavailable.
Some of the units being sent to the region are combat-ready, including infantry units, warships and strike aircraft, officials said. Many more are logistics, engineering and support teams, which will prepare for the arrival of even larger combat units in the months ahead, officials said. They will add to the 50,000 U.S. military personnel already in the region.
``We don't comment on specific unit deployments. However, forces will be flowing to the region to be in place should the president decide to use them,'' said Jim Wilkinson, a spokesman at U.S. Central Command, which would oversee operations in Iraq.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week such deployments will ``reinforce diplomacy.'' The Bush administration hopes the threat of military action will increase the pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to fully disclose his efforts to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon ordered the Navy to select and prepare two aircraft carrier battle groups and two amphibious assault groups to go to the region, defense officials said. The orders, sent in the last two days, require the Navy to have the vessels ready to sail to the seas around Iraq within 96 hours after a certain date in January, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. They did not specify that date.
The Navy has determined that one the carriers will be the USS George Washington. The ship just arrived home to Norfolk, Va., from the Persian Gulf region and has remained ready to return. The Navy has not yet decided on the second carrier, but officials said it will either be the Everett, Wash.-based USS Abraham Lincoln, which is currently in port at Perth, Australia, having just left the Persian Gulf region, or the USS Kitty Hawk, currently in port in Japan.
An aircraft carrier battle group includes six to eight surface escorts, including cruisers, destroyers, frigates and other vessels, dozens of strike and support aircraft and about 7,500 sailors. An amphibious ready group has about 2,200 Marines.
The defense officials said the amphibious assault groups have not yet been selected. Those groups center on a large, carrier-like vessel that can launch helicopters and carry Marines.
Already in the region is the carrier USS Constellation and the amphibious assault ship USS Nassau, and their escorts, officials said. The Nassau group carries another 2,200 Marines.
A fourth carrier group, centered on the USS Harry S. Truman, is in the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort is expected to put to sea from its home port in Baltimore next week and prepare for action, military officials said Friday. It will be headed to Diego Garcia, a British island in the Indian Ocean where the United States bases numerous military aircraft, to support any potential conflict with Iraq.
The 1,000-bed floating hospital will initially sail with a crew of 61 civilian mariners and 225 Navy personnel, including enough doctors to support two operating rooms, said Marge Holtz, spokeswoman for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. Hundreds more will be flown to the ship as needed, she said.
Air Force officials said units from five U.S.-based combat wings have received orders to prepare to deploy. They include F-15 fighters from Langley Air Force Base, Va.; F-15E Strike Eagles from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.; B-1B bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; rescue helicopters and Predator drones from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.; and C-130 cargo planes and possibly more rescue helicopters from Moody Air Force Base, Ga.
Air tankers and transport aircraft are also expected to take part, officials said. Dozens of fighters already based in the Persian Gulf fly daily patrols over most of Iraq.
The size of the Army deployment was not clear, but it included infantry as well as support units, officials said. The Army also keeps air defense units in the region.
Last week, officials said the Army was expected to deploy troops from the 1st Armored Division and 1st Infantry Division, both based in Germany, as well as an air mobile unit.
The main Marine Corps contingent is likely to be the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif. The 1st MEF's headquarters unit already has moved to Kuwait to prepare for combat operations.
A Coast Guard unit, based in Tacoma, Wash., that operates six small patrol boats has been deployed to the Persian Gulf, according to the office of Sen. Patty Murray.
On the Net:
DefenseLink: http://www.defenselink.mil
USS George Washington: http://www.spear.navy.mil/gw/
U.S. Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil/
-------- propaganda wars
China closes 3,300 cybercafés
Friday, December 27, 2002
Associated Press
http://rtnews.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/tech/RTGAM/20021227/gtchin/Technology/techBN/
Beijing - China has closed more than 3,300 Internet cafés in a safety crackdown launched after a fire in June at a Beijing café killed 25 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Nearly 12,000 other Internet cafés have been closed temporarily while they make improvements, Xinhua said Thursday.
The fatal fire June 16 in Beijing's university district came amid complaints by some officials that such businesses were endangering the safety and morals of young people.
Many Internet cafés were unlicensed and had no fire exits or other required safety features. Officials complained that they also gave young people access to pornography and other harmful material on-line.
The crackdown adds to efforts by the Communist government to control how Chinese use the Internet, even as it encourages the spread of online activity for business and education.
Special filters block Web surfers from seeing sites abroad run by Chinese dissidents, human-rights groups and news organizations.
Under new rules that took effect Nov. 15, minors are banned from Internet cafés. Managers are required to keep records of customers' identities and to close by midnight.
Two teenage boys accused of setting the June fire in Beijing were sentenced to life in prison. Authorities said they had argued with café employees.
China has tens of millions of Internet users, many of whom until recently relied on cybercafés for access. With the falling price of home computers, however, more small businesses and families can afford their own, and many customers now use cybercafés to play computer games rather than getting on-line.
----
Syria detains journalist for 'false news'
By Thanaa Imam
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
December 27, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20021227-085056-6112r.htm
DAMASCUS, Syria, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- The Syrian authorities have arrested Ibrahim Hmeidi, bureau chief of the Saudi Al-Hayat newspaper in Damascus, on charges of publishing false news reportedly about Syrian preparations to give refuge to some 1 million Iraqis in case of an attack against Baghdad, according to the official Syrian News Agency on Friday.
The agency said Hmeidi, a 33-year-old Syrian journalist who disappeared three days ago, was being interrogated for "publishing unfounded news" and thus "violating the Publication Law, especially Article 51."
It said he will be referred to the judicial authorities in compliance with the regulations. If convicted, Hmeidi will face a jail sentence and a fine.
Last year, the Syrian government adopted a Publications Law that imposed harsher sanctions for any violation targeting army movements, harming the country's relations with friendly states and publishing false news. Violators could be sentenced to three years in prison and fined $20,000.
The Syrian news agency did not specify the false news Hmeidi was accused of having published in the London-based al-Hayat newspaper. But Hmeidi's friends said he was apparently detained for publishing an article in al-Hayat on Dec. 20 about Syrian official preparations on the border regarding an expected 1 million refugees in case of a U.S.-led military strike against Iraq.
His friends, who did not want to be identified, told United Press International that the Syrian authorities have been annoyed by the figure he gave about the estimated number of Iraqi refugees who could flee to Syria because it might create panic in both countries.
They said intensive efforts were being exerted to release Hmeidi and believe "the matter is about to be settled."
Hmeidi joined al-Hayat as its correspondent in Syria in 1994.
----
U.S. Revises Sex Information, and a Fight Goes On
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By ADAM CLYMER
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/politics/27ABOR.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 - The National Cancer Institute, which used to say on its Web site that the best studies showed "no association between abortion and breast cancer," now says the evidence is inconclusive.
A Web page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to say studies showed that education about condom use did not lead to earlier or increased sexual activity. That statement, which contradicts the view of "abstinence only" advocates, is omitted from a revised version of the page.
Critics say those changes, far below the political radar screen, illustrate how the Bush administration can satisfy conservative constituents with relatively little exposure to the kind of attack that a legislative proposal or a White House statement would invite.
Bill Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, scoffed at the idea that there was anything political about the changes, saying that they reflected only scientific judgments and that department headquarters had had nothing to do with them. "We simply looked at them, and they put them up," he said of the agencies involved.
The new statements were posted in the last month, after news reports that the government had removed their predecessors from the Web. Those reports quoted administration officials as saying the earlier material had been removed so that it could be rewritten with newer scientific information. The latest statements are the revisions.
Those statements have drawn some criticism, as did the removal, though like the issue itself it has gone largely unnoticed. Fourteen House Democrats, including Henry A. Waxman of California, senior minority member of the House Government Reform Committee, have written to Tommy G. Thompson, secretary of health and human services, charging that the new versions "distort and suppress scientific information for ideological purposes."
Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the new statement on abortion and breast cancer "simply doesn't track the best available science."
"Scientific and medical misinformation jeopardizes peoples' lives," Ms. Feldt said, adding that any suggestion of a connection between abortion and cancer was "bogus."
The earlier statement, which the National Cancer Institute removed from the Web in June after anti-abortion congressmen objected to it, noted that many studies had reached varying conclusions about a relation between abortion and breast cancer, but said "recent large studies" showed no connection. In particular, it approvingly cited a study of 1.5 million Danish women that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1997. That study, the cancer institute said, found that "induced abortions have no overall effect on the risk of breast cancer."
The Danish research, praised by the American Cancer Society as "the largest, and probably the most reliable, study of this topic," is not mentioned in the government's recent posting, which says the cancer institute will hold a conference next year to plan further research.
Dorie Hightower, a press officer at the cancer institute, attributed the revision to the institute's periodic review of fact sheets "for accuracy and scientific relevance." Asked whether the institute now thought that the Danish study failed on either count, Ms. Hightower said no. But she said there was no scientist available to explain the change.
As for the disease control centers' fact sheet on condoms, the old version focused on the advantages of using them, while the new version puts more emphasis on the risk that such use may not prevent sexually transmitted diseases, and on the advantages of abstinence.
Posted on Dec. 2, the new version begins, in boldface: "The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse, or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and you know is uninfected. For persons whose sexual behaviors place them at risk for S.T.D.'s, correct and consistent use of the male latex condom can reduce the risk of S.T.D. transmission. However, no protective method is 100 percent effective, and condom use cannot guarantee absolute protection against any S.T.D."
A different Web page maintained by the centers, referring to studies of uninfected people at risk of H.I.V. because of sexual relationships with infected people, does say on the other hand, "The studies found that even with repeated sexual contact, 98-100 percent of those people who used latex condoms correctly and consistently did not become infected."
But the recently revised page warns that evidence on condom use and other sexually transmitted diseases is inconclusive, though it says the uncertainty demonstrates that "more research is needed - not that latex condoms do not work."
The new version also omits a passage on sex education and condom use that appeared in the earlier document. "Studies of specific sex education programs," the earlier version said, "have shown that H.I.V. education and sex education that included condom information either had no effect upon the initiation of intercourse or resulted in delayed onset of intercourse."
In an interview, Dr. David Fleming, the disease control centers' deputy director for science, defended the new version. "We try as hard as possible," Dr. Fleming said, "to state objectively what is known about condom efficacy without nuancing language beyond what is supported by the science."
He said that the document reflected consensus of the centers, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and that none of its conclusions had been influenced by those agencies' parent, the Department of Health and Human Services.
The letter to Secretary Thompson from House Democrats said that by alteration and deletion, the disease control agency "is now censoring the scientific information about condoms it makes available to the public" in order to suit abstinence-only advocates. And it said the breast cancer document amounted to nothing more than "the political creation of scientific uncertainty."
"Information that used to be based on science," the lawmakers said, "is being systematically removed from the public when it conflicts with the administration's political agenda."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Torture Is Not an Option
Friday, December 27, 2002
Washington Post; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42024-2002Dec26?language=printer
WHEN ISRAEL had a policy of applying what it euphemistically termed "moderate physical pressure" to detainees suspected of terrorist links, the United States knew what to call it. "Israeli security forces abuse, and in some cases torture, Palestinians suspected of security offenses," reads the State Department's human rights report for 1998. Times have changed. The Israeli High Court of Justice in 1999 struck down the policy that the State Department had described as "often [leading] to excesses." But the United States -- suddenly engaged in a struggle against Islamic terrorism -- now has detained thousands of suspected Islamic terrorists abroad. And suddenly, practices that bear a striking resemblance to the old Israeli policy are taking on an American face.
That, at least, is the concern induced by an eye-opening story by Post staff writers Dana Priest and Barton Gellman. They report that CIA interrogations of captured al Qaeda and Taliban fighters employ tactics such as depriving them of sleep, forcing them to assume "awkward, painful positions," and "softening them up" with beatings by military police and soldiers. Interrogators may threaten to turn over noncooperative detainees to brutal foreign intelligence services, and in some instances they have actually done so. Interrogators have also selectively withheld pain medication from those already wounded when captured, the story reports.
But unlike the Israelis, for whom moderate physical pressure was open public policy, the new tactics -- whatever they may be -- are being kept secret. The government, in fact, denies it is torturing anyone, insisting that all detainees are being held in a manner consistent with the principles of international law. But what, then, to make of anonymous comments from officials involved in the detentions? One is quoted in the story as saying, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job"? Another says that "our guys may kick them around a little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath" of their capture. And while the government denies that its purpose in transferring prisoners to foreign custody is so that other intelligence services can torture them, still another official says, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them, we send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."
Al Qaeda terrorists mean America great harm, and it is essential that intelligence operatives obtain as much information as possible from them. That process, at times, will not be easy. These grillings may not be governed by the same rules that cover domestic criminal investigative interrogations. Foreigners detained abroad fighting against the United States are not entitled to the protections of the Bill of Rights, after all.
But there are certain things democracies don't do, even under duress, and torture is high on the list. Some of the alleged tactics, while aggressive, may be legitimate: deceptions, for example, or psychological pressure. Others -- bright lights and lengthy interrogations that interfere with sleep -- straddle the line between acceptable and unacceptable conduct. Without knowing more about what exactly is happening, it's hard to judge. But beating prisoners is entirely out of bounds. The critical first step is for the administration to clarify what tactics it is using and which are still off limits. If administration officials have decided that moderate physical pressure -- once an abuse -- is now to be the norm in terrorism cases, the American people ought to know and ought to be able to respond through their representatives and through individual and organizational voices. It shouldn't be the administration's unilateral call.
----
U.S. Sets Record for Action on Ex-Nazis
Justice Department Sought Citizenship Revocation or Deportation in 10 Cases
Associated Press
Friday, December 27, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41809-2002Dec26?language=printer
The Justice Department set a single-year record by seeking to revoke the citizenship of or deport 10 former Nazis in 2002. Investigators took advantage of recently opened archives in former communist countries and better computer databases to find suspects in the United States.
The latest case was filed yesterday, when the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn asked a judge to revoke the U.S. citizenship of Jaroslaw Bilaniuk, 79, of Queens, N.Y. Prosecutors said in a complaint that he persecuted Jewish civilians while serving as an armed guard at a Nazi slave labor camp in Poland.
The previous record of nine civil prosecutions in a year had been achieved twice, said Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations.
Seventy-one people who assisted in Nazi persecution have been stripped of U.S. citizenship and 57 others have been deported since the OSI began operations in 1979. More than 160 suspected Nazi persecutors have been blocked from entering the United States, according to the office.
Rosenbaum, who has worked in the Nazi-hunting program since it began, said the record is remarkable considering that many ex-Nazis die of old age every year. He attributed the success to several factors:
• Investigators have completed their time-consuming project to track down assets and property the Nazis looted from Holocaust victims.
• OSI has quick access to government records and commercial databases and can compare names, including variations of possible spellings in English.
• Investigators are able to pore over the archives of the former Soviet bloc countries, developing leads.
Rosenbaum said investigators found documents in Europe last year that dealt with planning for a massacre of Jews and listed the Nazis assigned to the killings in Minsk, Belarus. Back in the United States, the names were compared to databases, and a match was found with a Florida man, Michael Gorshkow, 79.
In July, a federal judge in Pensacola, Fla., stripped Gorshkow of his U.S. citizenship for not responding to a Justice Department complaint that he did not disclose his wartime activities when he became a citizen in 1963.
Rosenbaum said that in the past, investigators had to give officials in communist countries names of suspects and wait for a response -- a painstakingly slow process.
Even with the improved techniques, "time is our greatest enemy," he said. "We race the grim reaper and Mother Nature, and sometimes Mother Nature wins."
Efraim Zuroff, the Jerusalem-based Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles, called the single-year prosecution record "an absolutely outstanding achievement."
"My sense is OSI will be able to maintain the high level of activity over the next few years because of the opening of records in Europe and the documentation," he said.
Zuroff said other nations have not duplicated the success of the United States, partly because of a lack of will but also because some countries chose the more difficult path of criminal prosecutions. The United States concentrates on stripping ex-Nazis of their citizenship and deporting them for crimes committed in other countries, he said.
Zuroff said thousands of ex-Nazis are still alive.
In the latest complaint, the Justice Department said Bilaniuk trained for Nazi service at the infamous Trawniki training camp in Poland. Recruits there were part of Operation Reinhard, a plan to kill Jews in Poland.
According to the complaint, during his training at Trawniki, Bilaniuk was an armed guard at a slave labor camp for Jews adjacent to the training facility.
The complaint also charged that Bilaniuk misrepresented his true wartime activities when he applied for a U.S. immigration visa in 1949. According to the complaint, he falsely claimed to have worked as a carpenter in Poland from 1941 to 1944, and on a farm in Germany from 1944 to 1945.
-------- drug war
California, drugs and Mideast terror
Robert Charles
December 27, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021227-38920508.htm
Occasionally, you bump into a truly compelling policy argument. Here is one that emerges out of facts that came to light this past month. On data that has recently surfaced, there can no longer be any doubt about a direct link between drug-trafficking money from the buyers of illicit drugs in the United States and leading terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda, Hamas, also known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, and Hezbollah.
This puzzle piece is added to another: Colombian FARC terrorists have long funded their operations with cocaine and heroin revenue. New this autumn is a riveting development: Clear and convincing evidence has emerged that California's methamphetamine "super labs" are, in fact, a significant source of revenue not only for Mexican drug traffickers, but also to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations based in Yemen and Jordan. That revelation is significant. It should have resounding policy implications for law makers in both parties and the administration.
In the words of Attorney General John Ashcroft last month, "The war on terrorism has been joined with the war on illegal drug use." More to the point, Congress must seriously grapple with properly funding - and clearly articulating the reasons for funding - a full bore effort to take down the infrastructure surrounding California's unique phenomenon of methamphetamine "super labs." This is not an excuse for massive new funding across 50 states; this is an immediate threat posed by one state. Nor is this a "get to it in Fiscal Year 2004" sort of affair; this is a "get to it now" challenge.
Evidence has long simmered, just short of a full boil, that major Middle Eastern terrorist organizations were drawing substantial revenues from the sale of high potency narcotics on U.S. streets and in U.S.schools. The link was always ironclad in the case of Colombian terrorists, not least because their links to cocaine and heroin traffickers were both transparent and repeatedly surfaced in public documents. Not so, however, with the California methamphetamine gusher.
In recent years, two mistaken presumptions have characterized federal efforts to end the methamphetamine production glut. First, California's meth problem has mistakenly been deemed no worse, proportionally, than any other state's. The implication is that meth produced in the source country we call California will stay there - only it does not. We now know that more than 85 percent of California's meth ends up in other states, north to New Hampshire, East to Virginia, south to Florida, and through states like Texas and Illinois. The second mistake has been assuming that Mexican cocaine cartels had locked up California meth production. That also turns out to be only half the story.
In a first glimpse of the Middle Eastern connection to U.S. drug profits, indictments were handed up last month against two Pakistanis and an American once from India for "an alleged scheme to use profits from illicit drug sales to finance the purchase of Stinger [shoulder-fire] missiles for the al Qaida terror network." They had sought to buy four Stinger missiles on profits from illegal drugs in San Diego. But that is not the kicker. Nor is the fact that terrorists coincidentally tried to bring down an Israeli jet airliner with a shoulder-fire missile.
This autumn, the California Department of Justice internally documented an elaborate review of finance transactions in a report entitled "Narco-Terrorism in California: The Middle Eastern Connection." The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center specifically found, perhaps to its surprise, that evidence of the meth link to Middle Eastern terrorists abounds. The analysis found that "Yemeni, Jordanian and Palestinian psudoephedrine traffickers are the primary groups operating in California."
It also found that these same traffickers transport precursor chemicals from Canada to California via Illinois and Michigan, and that the pivotal California nexus with meth distribution nationwide is "transnational cell structures" located in California.
Perhaps most revealing, the report confirms that "funds derived from these organizations are funneled to the Middle East through a Middle Eastern inter-communal process that bypasses traditional government methods of recording and tracking the funds." And finally the report nails the issue with this assessment: "Points of destination for these funds include Yemen, Israel, Brazil and Jordan - countries that have been infiltrated by terrorist organizations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas; Hezbollah; and al Qaeda."
What should this finding mean for the administration and new Congress, which will consider fresh the unfinished Fiscal Year 2003 appropriations bills, including those affecting anti-terrorist and anti-drug funds for states like California?
It should mean that, in addition to fully funding strong international anti-terror and anti-drug programs like Plan Colombia, which has begun to make progress against the towering terrorist threat to our immediate south, Congress should aggressively fund the California effort to turn off and take down terrorist-funding operations that pivot on the meth superlabs across that state.
In the larger context, if Congress now commits to take down these California superlabs, the entire nation gets a two-for-one benefit. By supporting a critical state program with a mere $18 million - the amount necessary to sustain California's program against these superlabs - it appears that Congress would both save more chlidren's lives and turn off a major source of terrorist revenue.
Congress could - and the administration in its budget request should - turn an important page in the fight against terrorism, acting aggressively to end what we now know is a significant source of funding for Jordanian, Palestinian and Yemeni terrorists.
Whether to beat drugs or beat terrorism, policy arguments seldom come more compelling than that.
Robert Charles is a former staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House National Security subcommittee and chief staffer to the U.S. House Speaker's Task Force on Counter-Narcotics. He is currently president of the Charles Group, a Maryland consulting firm.
-------- terrorism
Paris: 4 held in anti-terror swoop
France has stepped up security over the Christmas and New Year period.
Friday, December 27, 2002
Soldier
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/12/27/france.arrests/
PARIS, France (CNN) -- France's counter-terrorism agents have arrested four suspected Islamic militants alleged to be planning attacks in Paris.
The agents discovered electronic components and an unidentified substance hidden in a hair product bottle during a raid on an apartment in the northern Paris suburb of Romainville on Tuesday, judicial sources said.
The mysterious substance is being analysed by government experts on Friday, the officials said.
The four could appear before magistrates on Friday. One of the four was identified as the brother of Mourad Ben Chelali, a French national arrested by the United States and currently being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Both Mourad and his brother are believed to have spent time in Afghanistan, the sources said.
The sources said the four are believed to be linked to the same terrorist cell as three men and a woman arrested on December 16 by France's anti-espionage agency DST during a raid on an apartment in nearby La Courneuve.
Like the suspects in the previous round of arrests, the latest four taken into custody are believed to be linked to Islamic extremists in Chechnya.
Possible bomb-making equipment was allegedly found at La Courneuve including a suit to protect against nuclear, chemical and biological attacks. Also among the items were false identity papers and diagrams of formulas that could be used for a chemical attack, officials added.
France has stepped up security over the festive period, especially at department stores and train stations.
----
Meeting Daily, U.S. Nerve Center Prepares for Terrorists
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/national/27HOME.html
PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. - At about 8:45 most mornings, in a conference room at this base at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and a dozen other federal agencies meet to debate how the Pentagon should respond if terrorists strike again in the United States.
The meeting's host, Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart of the Air Force, a four-star general who is now the nation's top officer responsible for domestic security, mulls over doomsday scenarios for a new wave of attacks by Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group.
"By air or ship or truck or suicide bomber," General Eberhart said in a recent interview, listing the threats that he must be ready to confront as the head of the military's new Northern Command. "Medical scenarios: smallpox, you name the disease that we might be involved in in terms of quarantine."
"What if an airport is attacked, or a seaport?" he continued. "You name the infrastructure. It could be a bridge, it could be an oil refinery, the list goes on and on. We can all envision the terrible things that might happen."
For up to an hour each day in what is blandly called "the commander's situational awareness meeting," General Eberhart asks representatives of each of the 14 agencies - a roster that also includes the State Department, the National Security Agency, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration - for updates from their experts, and advice on what he should do if the worst happens.
"What we're trying to prepare ourselves for is the God-awful possibility that there could be two or three at the same time, and they could be different in nature," General Eberhart said.
For now, officials say, the daily discussion is speculative: imagining and preparing for whatever terrorists might unleash within American borders.
But there is every expectation back in Washington and certainly here, in the headquarters of the Northern Command, that if terrorists strike again inside the United States, General Eberhart and his deputies will find themselves directing a large part of the federal government's response.
In a large-scale terrorist attack, especially if there is any threat of the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons that could overwhelm the ability of state and local governments to respond, the Northern Command would probably take charge of the scene, directing the response from a command post bored deep in a mountain a few miles from this installation in Colorado Springs.
"I guess you could conjure up a situation where it was so bad that no one else had the capability to be in charge," General Eberhart said. "We could be in charge at that point."
His emergency command center, part of a 4.5-acre bunker complex buried 2,000 feet into Cheyenne Mountain, was built in the 1960's to enable the United States to detect and respond to a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.
Today, video screens in the command center that once monitored activity in Russian missile silos and the location of Soviet bombers instead display the air-traffic control network for thousands of civilian planes flying over the continental United States.
A legacy of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Northern Command began operations in October to coordinate the military's response to threats against the United States and its territorial waters.
While it has few troops under its direct control, the command now has a staff of about 500 people, both military and civilian, and can draw on tens of thousands of troops in a matter of hours if there is a domestic emergency demanding the Pentagon's response.
The Northern Command coordinated the deployment of Army RC-7 airborne reconnaissance low-surveillance planes to the Washington area during the sniper attacks this fall. It dispatched maritime forces off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where President Bush attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in October.
The command is operating on a budget of $81 million this fiscal year, which is expected to grow by about $20 million a year through 2008.
The staff includes full-time representatives of civilian agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the State Department, that otherwise rarely answer directly to the Pentagon.
The F.B.I. representative is a former Air Force officer with a background in countering domestic terrorism; the C.I.A. representative is a former undercover officer who has held assignments for the agency in Asia and Central America; and the State Department adviser is a career Foreign Service officer who was recently posted in Afghanistan. (All agreed to be interviewed on condition they not be named.)
The close ties that are being established here between the Defense Department and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have already given pause to civil liberties groups that the military will be given too much authority to intrude in the lives of American civilians as it fights terrorism.
Among those advising General Eberhart is Col. Jarisse J. Sanborn, the senior legal adviser, who is asked to weigh whether the command's proposed duties might interfere with federal laws that restrict the domestic role of the military. In particular, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bars troops from direct involvement in domestic law enforcement duties, like arrests and detentions.
"Everything we do has to be looked at," Colonel Sanborn said.
General Eberhart, a decorated combat pilot, says that he is sensitive to the concerns of civil libertarians and that he would respond to a terrorist attack only at the express direction of the White House and the Pentagon, and at the request of local authorities.
"We also understand Civics 101," he said. "I really don't think, based on those checks and balances, that we're going to get into a situation where the military will be doing things that should be done by other agencies, either in the federal government or by state and local governments."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- genetics
Religious Sect Say It Will Announce the First Cloned Baby
December 27, 2002
New York Times
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/27/science/27CLON.html
A religious sect that contends that space travelers created the human race by cloning themselves said yesterday that it would announce today that the first cloned human baby had been born.
A representative of the group, the Raëlians, said the announcement would be made at a news conference in Florida by Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, who directs a Bahamian company formed to clone humans and is scientific director of the sect. Dr. Boisselier's spokeswoman, Nadine Gary, would give out little information but said the baby had been born by Caesarean section and was a clone of the woman who gave birth to her. Neither mother nor child will be at the news conference "for medical reasons," Ms. Gary said.
This year, three groups - a fertility clinic in Italy, an embryology laboratory business in Kentucky and the Raëlians - announced separately that they were on the verge of overseeing the births of cloned humans. Dr. Boisselier said she had five clone pregnancies under way and the first birth was expected before 2003.
Animal-cloning experts said it was theoretically possible for a human to be cloned but any such effort would probably have had dozens of failures before a successful birth.
They said it should be relatively easy, using the same type of DNA tests that are used in court, to prove that a child was a duplicate of his or her mother. An independent test would be crucial to proving that the announcement was not a hoax, they said.
Ms. Gary said Dr. Boisselier "would verify the DNA fingerprint of the baby" and had "been speaking to an independent inspector who would make the proof."
Raëlians are followers of Raël, a French-born former race-car driver who has said he met a four-foot space alien atop a volcano in southern France in 1973 and went aboard his ship, where he was entertained by voluptuous female robots and learned that the first humans were created 25,000 years ago by space travelers called Elohim, who cloned themselves.
Raëlians consider cloning an opportunity to meld religion and science and say they have 55,000 members. They have never named the scientists doing their work, where it is done or how it is paid for. In 1998, Dr. Boisselier announced that the group had signed up "about 100" clients who would have to pay $200,000 each to be cloned, and the group later said a couple who lost a 10-month-old child in 2000 had offered a large amount of money to resurrect their child's genes from saved tissue.
Dr. Boisselier, a former research chemist in France, teaches chemistry at Hamilton College in upstate New York.
Until Dolly the sheep was cloned in Scotland in 1997, many scientists assumed that cloning a mammal would be impossible, but mice, cats, goats, pigs and cows have been successfully cloned. Primates have not, but scientists argue that the techniques of human embryo manipulation have been refined in the dozens of in-vitro fertilization clinics, making it theoretically easier to clone a human than a monkey.
The typical success rate with animals is about 2 percent, said George Seidel, a researcher at Colorado State University who has cloned cattle, "so one would have to have at least 50 such operations."
Also, Dr. Seidel said, cloned animals have a high rate of unexplained defects, including malformed kidneys, hearts and lungs, and often die within days of birth. "Ten percent abnormalities might be acceptable for cloning cows," he said. "But it's completely unacceptable for human children."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Refusal to serve could be contagious
By Elia Leibowitz,
Ha'aretz (Israel),
Friday, December 27, 2002 Tevet 22, 5763
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=245185&contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
For many months, it looked as though the upper echelons of the Israel Defense Forces were letting the direct commanders of the refusenik soldiers deal on their own with the problem of refusal to serve. And in fact, the fate of the various refuseniks differed from one unit to the next. Everything depended on the conscience, the world view, and mainly the intelligence of the direct officer on the spot. In certain cases, the refusal was accepted, if not with understanding then at least with wisdom, by the unit commander. Unnecessary conflict, which is wasteful and useless to the army, was prevented by channeling the military service of the refusenik reservist to tasks that he was able to carry out.
In other cases, under different commanders, the reflex of refusal=detention was at work. Refuseniks were sent to military prison for periods of time usually meted out for ordinary refusals to follow orders, such as the refusal to peel potatoes in the kitchen, or the refusal to get up for guard duty in the wee hours of the night. So that dozens of refuseniks found themselves wasting their time - usually the time of people who are among the most creative and productive in the Israeli economy and society - sitting in prison for periods ranging from seven to 30 days, depending on how annoyed their direct commanding officer felt.
In recent months, there has apparently been a change in the IDF's attitude toward the phenomenon of refusal and toward the refuseniks. Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon has recently expressed himself publicly and sharply against reservists who refuse to serve in the territories, and the army's attitude towards the refuseniks is becoming increasingly inflexible, merciless and harsh.
At present there are several refuseniks who have been sitting in jail for weeks and even months on end, and as soon as one period of punishment ends, they are thrown back into jail for another period of punishment, without limit and without a break. To the outside observer, it looks like a deliberate campaign of revenge, a systematic vendetta being conducted by the army against these people.
Alongside the significant increase in the severity of the IDF's attitude toward the refuseniks, the army continues to declare, increasingly loudly, that the phenomenon of refusal to serve in the territories is marginal, is typical of antisocial types found on the narrow political fringes, and has no operational significance. The professional word to describe such a contradiction in the physical world between a statement, a thought or a belief, and an activity and a reaction is "dissonance"; and as any professional will testify, in many cases it stems from fear.
If the noticeable change in the army's attitude toward refusal, which testifies to increasing dissonance in the behavior of this system, does in fact come from above, it is hard to avoid the question: What is the chief of staff afraid of? Why, for example, was the head of the "fighting spirit" department in the IDF sent to make a speech against the refuseniks, to an audience of young citizens of the country? Why does the army consider selective refusal, which is limited only to a very specific type of activity, on the part of about 500 young men, a great danger to the fighting spirit of the army - more so than total failure of tens of thousands of other young people, who are physically and mentally fit, to serve in the reserves, and even in the regular army?
The truth is that the fear in the top command is not without foundation. It's true that the non-service of 500 people in an army that numbers hundreds of thousands, is of no strategic significance. The army can operate effectively, and in fact does so, even without the service of tens of thousands, and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of fit young people. But the chief of staff and the army understand that the problem of "political" refusal, as some people call it, is not those same 500 soldiers that the IDF is missing in its activities beyond the Green Line. The danger in this refusal is that it is contagious, since there is no effective vaccination against it. It differs from any other refusal or avoidance of army service in the past or the present, whether individual or organized, sectoral or religious.
The great danger in today's refusal to serve in the territories is its great potential for spreading. The chief of staff understands that it is quite possible that one of these days it is liable to spread among a much wider population. That's a justified fear, since the carriers of the disease are morality and common sense.
----
Bush Urged to Limit Weapons in Iraq
Human Rights Groups Warn of Harm to Civilians From Land Mines, Cluster Bombs
By Peter Slevin and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 27, 2002; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41810-2002Dec26?language=printer
Humanitarian organizations are petitioning President Bush not to use antipersonnel land mines or deadly cluster bombs in a military campaign against Iraq, arguing that the danger to civilians and allied soldiers during and after a war outweighs the benefits.
The use of land mines designed to kill individuals -- in contrast to mines intended to destroy vehicles -- could endanger U.S. personnel and Iraqi citizens, as well as slow the rehabilitation of Iraq, wrote Kenneth H. Bacon, president of Refugees International, in a letter to Bush.
"Unexploded landmines are hidden killers that inflict damage long after the fighting stops," wrote Bacon and the organization's chairman, Virginia businessman James V. Kimsey. They said U.S. attempts to eliminate dangerous Iraqi weapons "will be undermined by the use of weapons of indiscriminate destruction."
Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch said organizations have been lobbying U.S. allies in the NATO alliance and beyond to urge the Bush administration not to use antipersonnel mines if it attacks Iraq. "The United States is isolated on this," Goose asserted yesterday.
The Bush administration's policy on the military's use of land mines is "under review," National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton said yesterday. Pentagon officials offered no comment, but military planners have not publicly foresworn their use. They considered them effective in limiting enemy movements in the 1991 Gulf War.
Pentagon officials point out that modern land mines, known as "smart mines," are equipped with timing devices that defuse a mine at varied intervals from a few hours to 15 days.
A separate hazard is posed by cluster bombs, which scatter 202 small bomblets designed to explode on impact. When they fail to detonate -- 5 percent are typically duds -- they effectively become antipersonnel mines.
Attempts to pressure the United States into avoiding the use of antipersonnel mines in Iraq are part of a wider effort to limit the possible war's destructiveness. Humanitarian groups have been meeting with the Pentagon and the United Nations to plan relief efforts, while the U.S. military has been urging Iraqi officers not to fight back if war erupts.
In its letter to Bush, Refugees International noted a General Accounting Office warning that the self-destruction mechanism on land mines failed to work in an unexpectedly large number of cases. The mines "often explode after the battle is over," the letter stated.
"In Iraq, this could pose risks to U.S. troops, Iraqi civilians -- including returning refugees -- and humanitarian workers," wrote Bacon, chief Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton administration. "Malfunctioning land mines could also endanger road building and reconstruction crews working to rehabilitate the country after a war."
The U.S. military has not used antipersonnel mines since the Gulf War, when U.S. forces deployed about 118,000 self-destructing land mines in Iraq and Kuwait, according to the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. They were typically scattered across battlefields by aircraft and artillery shells.
Eighty-one U.S. military personnel were harmed by exploding land mines during the 1991 conflict, the GAO said, although none of the casualties was connected to U.S. mines.
The Pentagon maintains a stockpile of about 18 million land mines, including 15 million of the newer, self-destructing mines designed to kill individuals or destroy vehicles. The U.S. government has not endorsed a 1997 treaty signed by 146 countries that bans the production, use, stockpiling and transfer of antipersonnel mines.
The United States believes that the convention "does not adequately address U.S. security requirements and international responsibilities," said a State Department spokeswoman. In recent practice, however, the Defense Department has been guided by two Clinton administration directives.
One directive, issued in June 1996, restricts the use of M-14 and M-16 antipersonnel mines -- old weapons that do not self-destruct and thus remain active threats for years -- to U.S. forces in Korea. The second, issued in 1998, directs the Pentagon to develop alternatives to antipersonnel land mines and to end the use of all antipersonnel land mines outside Korea by 2003.
Cluster bombs are often used by U.S. forces. Human Rights Watch estimated in a recent report on Afghanistan that 12,400 unexploded bomblets remain on the ground and have killed or injured 127 civilians since October 2001. The group urged the Pentagon to stop using cluster bombs until the "dud rate" is reduced from more than 5 percent to less than 1 percent of bomblets.
"If that call is not listened to," Goose said, "we have said that, at the very least, if you do use them, you should not use them near populated areas." The organization said 2.2 million unexploded bomblets left on the battlefield in Iraq killed 1,600 civilians and injured 2,500 more in the first two years after the Gulf War.
-----
Ukraine Convicts Nationalist Protesters
Associated Press
World In Brief
Friday, December 27, 2002
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42073-2002Dec26?language=printer
ASIAKIEV, Ukraine -- A Ukrainian court has convicted 18 Ukrainian nationalists of staging riots during last year's anti-government protest, a news agency reported.
The Holoseyevo district court in Kiev sentenced the convicts late Wednesday to prison terms of two to five years, the Interfax news agency reported. Four of the 18 received suspended sentences.
The convicts belong to the UNA-UNSO, a leading nationalist group that has played a part in protests against the government of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
They were accused of staging clashes with police during a protest outside Kuchma's office in March 2001.
----
Protests Resume in Venezuela
25 Days of Strikes Send World Oil Prices to 2-Year High
By James Anderson
Associated Press
Friday, December 27, 2002; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41619-2002Dec26?language=printer
CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 26 -- After a brief Christmas break, thousands of people renewed protests across Venezuela today as a strike to force President Hugo Chavez to call elections went into its 25th day. The political friction sent the price of oil to a two-year high.
Striking oil executives and workers demonstrated in Caracas and other cities under a new rallying cry: "Freedom!" More marches were planned to the headquarters of the state-owned oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, which has been paralyzed by the stoppage.
The executives shouted "Not one step back!" and "We are not afraid!" and an array of opposition leaders denounced government firings of striking oil workers and arrests of tanker crews.
The strike has all but stopped exports from the world's fifth-biggest oil supplier, which normally provides 14 percent of U.S. oil imports. Many people fear it will drag on well into 2003.
Coupled with the threat of war in Iraq, concerns about disrupted supplies from Venezuela have caused oil prices to rise. The price of crude oil for February delivery climbed 52 cents, to $32.49 per barrel, on the New York Mercantile Exchange -- its highest level since November 2000. At the pump, the average price of gasoline in the United States was $1.40 per gallon in the week ending Dec. 23, up about 4 cents from the previous week and 33 cents from a year ago.
The strike, which began Dec. 2, has shut most gasoline stations, factories and many stores, causing fuel and food shortages in this nation of 24 million. Activists say they are fed up with an economy deep in recession and accuse Chavez of abusing democratic rights.
Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton said the government won't back down. "I suppose those who are on strike want the government to give in, and we want them to give in. We want to win this battle," he said.
The oil monopoly's president, Ali Rodriguez, has said that total exports for December were 2 million barrels, down sharply from a pre-strike average of about 3 million barrels a day.
Rodriguez said Venezuela's gas shortage would end in January. But oil executives say that is unlikely because 35,000 skilled and striking workers cannot simply be replaced, and the giant oil company cannot just restart operations.
Oil workers have ignored a Supreme Court injunction ordering them to work until the court decides whether the strike is legal.
Chavez's government looked abroad for food and fuel.
Venezuela will pay oil for food from the Dominican Republic after the strike ends, Agriculture Minister Efren Andrade said. The deal includes a recent rice shipment. Brazil's state oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro, is shipping 520,000 barrels of gasoline to Venezuela.
Timoteo Zambrano, an opposition negotiator at talks sponsored by the Organization of American States, said the opposition wants Chavez to quit or call a nonbinding referendum in early 2003 and, if he loses, call presidential elections. It also wants guarantees of job security for striking oil workers.
Venezuela's opposition delivered 2 million signatures demanding the nonbinding vote. The national elections council scheduled the vote for Feb. 2 and is updating voter lists, although it is unknown whether Chavez's government will abide by or pay for a vote. It has challenged the validity of council members in what critics call a tactic to delay a vote.
Chavez, whose six-year term runs until January 2007, says calling early elections would require changing Venezuela's constitution, a task for the National Assembly, which is dominated by Chavez.
The president has welcomed the possibility of a binding referendum on his presidency in August 2003, halfway into his term, as permitted by the constitution. Opponents cite a clause allowing Venezuelans to not recognize a government they consider undemocratic.
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