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NUCLEAR
Spanish delegation visits Saddam Hospital
Iraq Gives the U.N. a List of 500 Weapons Experts
Inspectors revisit site on 30th day in Iraq
U.S. Readies Plan to Raise Pressure on North Koreans
South Koreans Divided on North Korean Atom Threat
Powell Says U.S. Is Willing to Talk With Pyongyang
U.S. Says No Attack Planned on N.Korea
North Korea Possesses Wide Range of Threats
Bin Laden Said to Have Sought Nuke Help
Putting a Lid on Chernobyl
Bush's Moonshine Policy
MILITARY
French Reinforcements Arrive in Ivory Coast
Insurgents Create Growing Instability in Nepal
Sharon told to use 'targeted killings' only as last resort
Saudis deny letting US use bases
China Launches 4th Unmanned Space Capsule
Kurdish Agents Play Spy Games With Iraqis on Arms Tips
Vice Policy
Saudi Arabia Said to Assure U.S. on Use of Bases
Duty Calls, and Citizens Become Soldiers
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Tribesmen Take Up Arms to Resist Afghan Drug War
Unmanned drones will guard U.S. coastlines
ACTIVISTS
Chinese Dissident Relishes a First Taste of Freedom, and Exile
Back to Iraq as a human shield
Venezuelan opposition marches again
Blacklist Grounds American Passengers
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Spanish delegation visits Saddam Hospital
Baghdad, Dec. 29, 2002,
INA (Iraq Daily)
http://www.uruklink.net/iraqdaily/10027/home8.htm
Spanish delegation for lifting embargo on Iraq headed by Mr. Carlus Varia has visited Saddam Central Hospital for Children.
The delegation has been acquainted with the patient's conditions as result of the continuing embargo, which caused high shortage in food, and medicines and the depleted Uranium used by the enemies against Iraq in their dirty war in 1991.
-------- inspections
Iraq Gives the U.N. a List of 500 Weapons Experts
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/middleeast/29IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 28 - Iraq handed over to the United Nations office here today a list of more than 500 experts involved in the development of ballistic missiles and nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, setting the stage for one of the knottiest tasks facing the renewed inspections.
The list fulfills one requirement of the United Nations Security Council's Resolution 1441, which was passed in November and re-established weapons inspections. But the extent to which these scientists will prove helpful in ferreting out any new information about Iraq's possible weapons of mass destruction remains an open question.
The second Iraqi scientist interviewed by the nuclear inspectors - even before the United Nations was given the formal list - suggested at a news conference today that all Iraqi scientists should demand that a witness from the government be present at interviews with inspectors and that no one should leave the country to be interviewed.
"How can an Iraqi man leave Iraq?" the scientist, Kadhim Mijbel, a British-educated metallurgist involved in developing light battlefield rockets, asked derisively. He noted that he had not been asked to leave but would have refused. His appearance seemingly was intended to suggest how Iraq expects all its scientists to behave.
The subject of interviewing scientists is one of the most contentious provisions of the Security Council resolution. During the previous inspections of Iraqi arms sites, from 1991 to 1998, Iraqi repeatedly declared that it had released a full, final and complete list of its weapons, only to have various defectors come along and disclose extensive hidden information.
Thus the Bush administration put particular emphasis on giving the United Nations the right to remove scientists from the country, suggesting that they would be more forthcoming out of reach of Iraq's secret police. But Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector for nonnuclear arms, has said he does not want his inspection team to be transformed into a defections agency.
The typed list, in Arabic, was delivered this afternoon to the headquarters of the weapons inspectors here and transmitted to New York as well as to the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which is responsible for inspecting possible nuclear arms sites.
Hiro Ueki, a spokesman here for the inspectors, said it was impossible to characterize the list until it had been translated and studied. He said the question of taking Iraqi scientists out of the country, as well as issues of whether their families would go with them, was still under study.
Iraq has said it will not block its scientists from leaving. But it is unclear just how popular the offer might prove.
Mr. Mijbel's position illuminates the potential pitfalls ahead.
"Only two interviews have taken place, so it's premature to conclude whether they are successful or not," Mr. Ueki said. All interviews will be voluntary, he said.
In their first interview, the inspectors talked to a scientist who had been involved in the nuclear program in his university laboratory. Mr. Mijbel, though, was given 24-hours' notice through the liaison office, the National Monitoring Directorate.
"It was to facilitate the interview," Mr. Ueki said.
Mr. Mijbel, whose name was given differently in the official announcement on Friday, said that when an official at the directorate called about the interview, he demanded that a witness be present and refused to go the United Nations headquarters at the Canal Hotel here.
"I look at this place as Guantánamo Camp," Mr. Mijbel said, referring to the base in Cuba where the United States has been holding suspected militants linked to Al Qaeda. "I am not a prisoner. I am a free Iraqi man. So I refused to meet at that place."
Instead, he met the two inspectors - Robert Kelley, the chief United Nations nuclear inspector, and Ahmed L. Gebaly - for about an hour and five minutes on Friday in a conference room at Al Rasheed Hotel. Mr. Mijbel suggested the government-owned hotel, a slightly tattered place considered Baghdad's finest, as neutral ground.
After the interview, the United Nations released a statement suggesting that the interview had been highly informative.
"He provided technical details of a military program," the statement said. "This program has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program. The answers will be of great use in completing the I.A.E.A. assessment."
Mr. Mijbel voiced outrage at that assessment today, saying he made it clear that he knew nothing about developing nuclear weapons or other intelligence matters. Mr. Ueki announced that he had not meant to suggest that the scientist had been involved in the past nuclear program nor that Iraq now had a hidden program.
The 50-year-old metallurgist said his main connection with the military was his work as a consultant trying to stem the problem of seriously corroding aluminum pipes.
----
Inspectors revisit site on 30th day in Iraq
CNN
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/29/sproject.irq.wmd/
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.N. arms inspectors revisited an engineering firm in the Iraqi capital Sunday, the 30th day of weapons inspections in the country, the Iraqi information ministry said.
The inspectors visited the central Baghdad offices of the Saad General Co., an engineering design and construction firm owned by the Military Industrial Corp. A U.N. team visited the site two weeks ago.
The firm is involved in various projects for chemical and petrochemical production facilities, according to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Inspectors examined archives and current projects and looked into the company's management and personnel.
The inspectors also visited the customs directorate in Baghdad.
Elsewhere, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected two sites -- the Eyz Company and the Salam Factory in Baghdad.
Eyz produces electronic equipment such as radio communications equipment and telephone switching boards. The Salam Factory produces communications equipment for civilian and military use.
U.N. inspectors began their work in Iraq on November 27.
The Iraqi government Saturday gave the inspectors a list of more than 500 scientists who have been associated with the country's weapons programs, a spokesman for UNMOVIC announced.
The IAEA began interviewing scientists last week. UNMOVIC, which is searching for evidence of chemical or biological weapons or high-powered missiles, has not yet conducted such interviews.
A U.N. official said several issues need to be worked out before the interviews can be done, including arrangements for secure facilities.
The Bush administration is eager to see the results of the inspections, Secretary of State Colin Powell told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
Powell said "we are positioning our military forces for whatever might be required," but in the event of a war Iraq's "oil fields are the property of the Iraqi people."
"If a coalition force goes into those oil fields, we want to protect those fields and make sure they're used to benefit the people of Iraq, and not destroyed or damaged by the failing regime on the way out the door," he said.
Coalition warplanes enforcing the southern no-fly zone over Iraq bombed two Iraqi military radar sites Sunday near Ad Diwaniyah, 75 miles south of the capital.
The strikes occurred at 7:40 a.m. ET, according to a U.S. Central Command statement. The last such strike occurred Friday near Al Kut, about 95 miles southeast of Baghdad.
The strike occurred after Iraqi forces moved the sites into the zone, making their presence a threat to coalition forces, according to the statement. U.S. military officials were still assessing the damage Sunday night. Other developments
• Coalition planes dropped 120,000 leaflets Saturday over southern Iraq, referring Iraqis to radio frequencies where they could hear anti-Saddam radio broadcasts. The drop was the 11th over southern Iraq in three months. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/12/28/sproject.irq.iraq.leaflets/index.html)
• U.S. Army tank and mechanized infantry units have been told they are going to the Persian Gulf, officials said Saturday. Soldiers from some units of the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart and Fort Benning, Georgia, have received their deployment orders, although no departure date has been disclosed. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/12/28/sproject.irq.troops/index.html)
• The U.S. Navy has been told to prepare two aircraft carriers for deployment to the Persian Gulf after New Year's Day, naval officials said Friday. A "prepare to deploy" order has been issued for a carrier to move from the East and West coasts. (Full story http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/12/28/sproject.irq.navy/)
-------- korea
U.S. Readies Plan to Raise Pressure on North Koreans
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29KORE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The Bush administration has prepared a comprehensive plan to intensify financial and political pressure on North Korea if it does not abandon its effort to make nuclear weapons and eventually confront the nation with the prospect of economic collapse, according to senior administration officials.
Under the new policy, the neighbors of North Korea would be encouraged to reduce economic ties with it; the United Nations Security Council could threaten economic sanctions, and the American military might intercept missile shipments to deprive the North of money from weapon sales.
Administration officials said the threat of growing isolation was the best way to force North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and, if it refused, to bring down the government. Officials say that under their plan, which they call "tailored containment," they are willing to negotiate with North Korea but only if it first dismantles its nuclear weapons program.
To offer new incentives, officials say, would be to reward the North Korean government for failing to live up to earlier commitments.
"It is called `tailored containment' because this is an entirely different situation than Iraq or Iran," a senior administration official said. "It is a lot about putting political stress and putting economic stress. It also requires maximum multinational cooperation."
But the Bush administration's new containment policy is coming under criticism from former United States officials and proliferation experts. They say that the allied nations are unlikely to apply the pressure that would be needed to shake the North Korean economy and that the policy lacks a vital element: an open channel for direct American diplomacy with North Korea.
"The administration's policy is a gamble that the North Korean regime will collapse before it acquires
a substantial nuclear arsenal that threatens the stability of East Asia," said Robert J. Einhorn, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who led negotiations with the North Koreans during the Clinton administration.
"It's also a gamble that our relationship with our South Korean ally can survive a lengthy period of isolating and pressuring North Korea," Mr. Einhorn said. "Engaging North Korea has its downsides, but those must be weighed against the risks of not engaging."
By most accounts, North Korea's nuclear efforts have created the most serious crisis in northeast Asia in a decade. Today the International Atomic Energy Agency said that it would withdraw two inspectors by Tuesday at the request of North Korea, which it said was acting in defiance of international obligations.
American intelligence believes that North Korea already has enough plutonium for one or two weapons. But North Korea is a position to rapidly expand its supply, no small worry given that it has long sought to make money by exporting missiles.
By reprocessing the spent fuel from the Yongbyon reactor, North Korea could acquire about five bombs' worth of plutonium in six months, or perhaps less, according to administration officials and experts outside government.
Restarting the Yongbyon reactor, as the North Koreans also seem intent on doing, would enable the country to churn out enough plutonium to build a bomb a year.
The eventual construction of a cascade network for enriching uranium would give North Korea yet another means of expanding its nuclear arsenal. The system could be finished about the middle of the decade and could produce enough fissile material for two bombs a year, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
North Korea has long been one of the most vexing foreign policy problems. The Clinton administration was faced with a similar crisis in the early 1990's when the nation removed the fuel from its research reactor at Yongbyon and indicated it might reprocess the spent fuel to produce bomb-grade plutonium.
The Clinton administration developed plans for a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea's reprocessing plant before it managed to reach an accommodation with Pyongyang. Under the deal, North Korea agreed to freeze and ultimately eliminate its nuclear program.
In return, Washington promised a multinational effort to ship fuel oil to North Korea and to build two light-water nuclear reactors, which could provide North Korea with electricity but which Clinton administration officials said would be less useful in producing bomb-grade material.
In its final year, the Clinton administration tried to negotiate an agreement that would have required North Korea to give up its long-range missiles and end its missile exports, but President Bill Clinton's term ended before the agreement could be completed.
Later, North Korean diplomats indicated that they wanted to continue the talks with the Bush administration. But new administration was far more skeptical of North Korea's intentions.
As the South Koreans expressed concern that Washington's approach would increase tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Bush administration insisted it was prepared to begin talks with North Korea anytime and anywhere.
At the same time, President Bush declared that he considered North Korea to be part of an "axis of evil" that included Iraq and Iran, a stance that surprised the North Koreans and fueled worries in the South that Washington was taking a position that was confrontational.
Earlier this year as administration officials prepared for their first diplomatic mission to North Korea, they fleshed out their negotiating strategy in a policy they called the "bold approach."
The long-term goal of the Bush strategy was the political and economic transformation of North Korea.
Under that approach, the Bush administration would not only ask North Korea to forswear efforts to make weapons of mass destruction; it would also ask North Korea to reform its dismal record on human rights and to begin to withdrawing conventional forces that are deployed near the demilitarized zone with South Korea and which threaten Seoul.
Washington never spelled out what it was prepared to give in return, but United States officials suggested it could have included economic investment and diplomatic recognition.
"The notion was that they were headed toward a dead end, that the only way out was to forgo weapons of mass destruction, change their economy and improve human rights," a United States official said. "The point was to begin The process of transforming their country and the U.S. would respond at each step of the way."
Some former officials believe that the new negotiating strategy was unrealistic. But before the Bush administration could present its new negotiating approach American intelligence received fresh evidence that North Korea had begun a clandestine program to enrich uranium to make nuclear arms.
In essence, North Korea had circumvented the agreement it made with the Clinton administration to freeze its plutonium production by moving to develop a new source of fissile material.
In October, James A. Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, for what the North Koreans thought would be the first diplomatic opening. Mr. Kelly told the North Koreans that Washington had no intention of invading North Korea but had concerns about its record on human rights and its conventional military buildup.
Mr. Kelly also indicated that North Korea intended to shelve its "bold approach" and that Pyongyang would have to dismantle its uranium enrichment program before serious talks could continue.
The two days of meetings did not go well.Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Kwan suggested that North Korea had no need for the "bold approach" and that the people and the army loved Kim Jong Il, North Korea's leader.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok Ju said that North Korea was entitled to have nuclear weapons. He said that the North Koreans needed a nonaggression pact with the United States and suggested that critical issues should be settled at a summit meeting between North Korea's leader and President Bush.
Back in Washington, the Bush administration hammered out its new containment strategy. The delivery of fuel oil was halted. Officials said the plan to build light-water reactors could be scrapped.
Other steps to increase the "stress" on North Korea's economy were planned, including having North Korea's actions referred to the United Nations Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions.
But the North Koreans did not relent. Instead of agreeing to dismantle their nuclear program, they announced that they would restart the Yongbyon reactor, expel inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, remove monitoring equipment and reopen the factory that reprocesses plutonium.
Experts have offered various theories about North Korea's motivations. Some say the North Koreans want to negotiate with Washington from a position of strength.
Others speculate that North Korea has concluded that it is unlikely to extract substantial concessions from the Bush administration, has watched the United States make invasion plans for Iraq and has concluded that its security is best safeguarded by a nuclear buildup.
"I think the Bush administration's tough rhetoric and tough policies toward North Korea have unnerved the North Koreans and perhaps led them to conclude that the only way for them to ensure security is to confront the world with a fait accompli by rapidly acquiring a substantial nuclear arsenal," Mr. Einhorn said.
There is also considerable debate about the Bush administration's strategy.
"Tailored containment was constructed to enable us to move in a number of different directions," a senior administration official said. "The main objective at the moment is to get them to give up their nuclear weapons program. If they don't, we can work with allies to increase their isolation. No one anticipates that North Korea will collapse right away. But we won't do anything to prop them up and we will let the internal forces continue to work away."
Senior Bush administration officials also say they would be giving in to blackmail by offering new incentives and that North Korea's clandestine efforts to produce highly enriched uranium demonstrates that the Clinton negotiating approach does not work.
But skeptics say the policy of relying on allies will not work in part because they are not prepared to use their full leverage to pressure and possibly encourage the collapse of North Korea, an event that they fear would sow chaos in their region.
China, American officials acknowledge, has not pressed the North Koreans as hard as Washington would like and is unlikely to support economic sanctions. South Korea's new president, for his part, has come to office on a platform that called for increased interaction with North Korea, not the increased its isolation.
"The third parties do not seem to want to put a lot of pressure on North Korea," said Joel Wit, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former State Department specialist on North Korea.
--------
South Koreans Divided on North Korean Atom Threat
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29SEOU.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 28 - As United Nations inspectors packed their bags in North Korea today, expelled from country's main nuclear center, many young South Koreans said here they did not object to North Korea having a nuclear bomb.
"I should not say this here, but, I hope North Korea has nuclear weapons," Shim Wan Kyu, a 31-year-old financial worker said while taking a cigarette break outside his office. Asked about a nuclear threat to this affluent society, he retorted: "They wouldn't attack South Korea with it. It is not for attack, but for defense."
On a busy shopping street, Kim Hyo Jin collected signatures urging the United States to negotiate with North Korea. "A country that is threatened by nuclear weapons has the right to have nuclear weapons," said Ms. Kim, a 26-year-old university student. "If North Korea would be threatened by the United States with nuclear weapons, North Korea can also have them."
In past crises, North Korean military brinkmanship has produced "panic gaps" between Washington and Seoul, with the South Koreans largely inured to half a century of North Korean bluster.
This time, many younger South Koreans, whose memories are of steadily rising affluence instead of the hardships of the Korean War, believe that Korean blood is thicker than political ideology.
On Dec. 19, it was largely voters in their 20's and 30's who overwhelmingly elected as president Roh Moo Hyun, a 56-year-old liberal who advocates a relationship with North Korea based on aid, trade and dialogue. As soon as the election was over, North Korea moved to free its nuclear program from international controls.
Although South Korea and the United States are military allies, South Korea's primary concern is keeping peace on the peninsula. The United States, though, also wants to stop North Korea's worldwide sales of missiles, its top hard-currency export, and to prevent it from marketing nuclear weapons.
Instead of standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States, many young South Koreans see themselves as caught in the middle of a fight between North Korea and the United States.
"We would love to function as a middleman, as a mediator on the issue," Yu Jay Kun, a California-trained lawyer who is the president-elect's top foreign policy adviser. "If things go in the wrong direction, there will be a clash. And if there is a clash on the Korean peninsula, it will be Koreans who are going to die."
Looking out a cafe window at cars and taxis filled with post-Christmas shoppers, he mused, "People look calm and not much bothered by this."
"But I can't sleep, I am so worried about this," continued Mr. Yu, who has attended two emergency National Security Council meetings in two days on the nuclear crisis. "I feel numb. I feel shaken."
Mr. Yu, who witnessed the destruction of the Korean War as a teenager, voiced the widespread concern here that the Bush administration would bomb North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex after the United Nations inspectors leave. "A pre-emptive strike would be really dangerous for the Korean people," he said.
North Korea's Chosun Central Broadcasting Station announced Friday night that the government will open its nuclear reprocessing plant by the end of January.
If that happens, said Henry Sokolski, executive director of Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a nonprofit group in Washington, North Korea could have enough plutonium to make five bombs by May 1.
In an effort to forestall such an outcome, a South Korean diplomat said, Seoul decided today to send special envoys to Russia and China, two countries believed to have the greatest outside leverage with North Korea.
"Our assessment of the situation is very serious," the diplomat said. "For now our focus is on dissuading North Korea from restarting" the reprocessing lab.
In the downtown area of the South Korean capital, about 70 protesters held a rally today against North Korea's nuclear program.
But a far larger group, several thousand largely young people, turned out for a candlelight vigil outside the United States Embassy. Their demands ranged from a more equal partnership between Seoul and Washington to the expulsion of the 37,000 American troops stationed here.
Earlier in the day, President-elect Roh met with the protest leaders, hoping to turn off the anti-American movement that helped him win the election. "I earnestly appeal to you to stop the candlelight demonstrations," Mr. Roh said, adding, "You should not demand a U.S. surrender." Protest leaders said they would continue to organize protests.
One Korean who, according to news reports, did have a relaxed day was North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, who attended a concert, where an army choir praised him in song.
"Kim Jong Il congratulated the artistes of the chorus," reported North's Korean Central News Agency, a state media outlet. Mr. Kim, the report said, "highly appreciated the feats they have performed in encouraging the army and people in their sacred struggle to defend the socialist system of the country."
--------
Powell Says U.S. Is Willing to Talk With Pyongyang
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, seeking a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis, said Sunday the United States is ``looking for ways to communicate with the North Koreans'' but will do nothing to help Pyongyang unless it changes its behavior.
Making the rounds of Sunday talk shows, Powell said the United States emphasized the need to peacefully reverse North Korea's decision to restart its weapons program and expel U.N. inspectors monitoring its main nuclear complex.
``We cannot suddenly say, 'Gee we're so scared. Let's have a negotiation because we want to appease your misbehavior.' This kind of action cannot be rewarded,'' Powell said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``We are looking for ways to communicate with the North Koreans so some sense can prevail.''
Powell seemed to present a subtle change in the administration's tone by holding out the prospect for talks and stressing that military action is not being contemplated.
``There are ways for them to talk to us. We know how to get in touch with them,'' Powell said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''
A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Powell was not referring to face-to-face talks, but to diplomatic channels open to North Korea, such as South Korea and the United Nations. President Bush has prohibited negotiations with Kim Jong Il's government while North Korea's nuclear program is active.
Powell, meanwhile, announced that Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will go to South Korea next month to talk to U.S. allies -- but not North Korea ``at this time.''
North Korean officials, for their part, urged the United States to sit down with them to negotiate.
``It is quite self-evident that dialogue is impossible without sitting face to face and a peaceful settlement of the issue would be unthinkable without dialogue,'' said a government spokesman quoted on KCNA, the North's state-run news agency.
The problem, Powell said, is that North Korea is seeking concessions in exchange for ending its nuclear weapons program.
``What they want is not a discussion,'' Powell said on ABC's ``This Week.'' ``They want us to give them something for them to stop the bad behavior. What we can't do is enter into a negotiation right away where we are appeasing them.''
Several lawmakers, though, urged the United States to open talks with the North Koreans.
``We ought to be confident enough of our strength -- and we are, after all, the strongest nation in the world -- to go right back to direct negotiations with them,'' said Senate Armed Services Committee member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., on CBS' ``Face the Nation.'' ``And I'd put the military option on the table as part of those negotiations.''
Incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said there eventually will be discussions, albeit they may not be face-to-face talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
``I suspect that there are going to be negotiations,'' Lugar said on NBC. ``They may not be directly between the United States and North Korea. It could very well be through the Chinese, through the South Koreans, through the Japanese, through a combination of multilateral international community.''
Democrats added that the Bush administration deserves part of the blame for the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the president was wrong to have cut off talks with North Korea when he took office.
``We should not be afraid to talk,'' Levin said on ABC. ``We're not going to negotiate giving them anything for doing what they already promised to do, but they should hear from our lips how significant their missteps have been. We're not going to appease them but there's nothing wrong with talking to them.''
Powell, however, said North Korea had restarted its nuclear weapons program during the Clinton administration, which the United States learned about last October.
``This program was not started during the Bush administration; it was started during the previous administration,'' Powell said on ABC. ``We inherited this problem.''
In all of his appearances, Powell argued against depicting the North Korean issue as a crisis, saying the United States was not gearing up for war and there was plenty of time to find a diplomatic solution.
``We have no hostile intent toward North Korea, and we hope they will come to their senses,'' he said on ABC. On CBS he added: ``Nobody is mobilizing armies, nobody's threatening each other yet.''
One possible diplomatic route is through the United Nations; the International Atomic Energy Agency has scheduled a Jan. 6 meeting where the board of governors could refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
In the meantime, he said, North Korea is only hurting itself.
``This is a country that's in desperate condition,'' Powell said. ``What are they going to do with another two or three more nuclear weapons when they're starving, when they have no energy, when they have no economy that's functioning?''
AP White House Correspondent Ron Fournier contributed to this story from Crawford, Texas, where Bush is vacationing.
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U.S. Says No Attack Planned on N.Korea
Reuters
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51217-2002Dec29?language=printer
WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States tried to discourage talk of conflict with North Korea on Sunday and said it was ready to wait to see if diplomacy can persuade the communist state to abandon its nuclear program.
Both sides said they wanted a peaceful end to the crisis but have ratcheted up tensions after North Korea announced it would expel U.N. nuclear arms inspectors and reopen a reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while military action was always an option the United States was not planning any attack on North Korea, which vowed it would not give in to U.S. pressure.
"We are not planning a pre-emptive strike," Powell told NBC television. "The United States has a full range of capabilities -- political, economic, diplomatic and, yes, military. But we are not trying to create a crisis atmosphere by threatening North Korea."
"Military action is always an option, but it is not an option that is in the forefront of our thinking right now, because it doesn't seem necessary or appropriate," he told ABC, in a separate television interview in Washington.
But Powell also ruled out immediate talks with the North Koreans, who want direct talks with Washington, arguing that would reward Pyongyang for violating international agreements.
The Bush administration has labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil," along with Iran and Iraq.
ECONOMIC PRESSURE
U.S. officials said on Saturday that Washington favored what they called a "tailored containment" strategy including economic pressure and possibly stopping cash-strapped North Korea's missile exports by intercepting them at sea.
Powell avoided a question on intercepting missile exports on Sunday and did not elaborate on the economic measures, which drew a defiant reaction in North Korea.
"The imperialist reactionaries are seriously mistaken if they think they would bring the Korean people to their knees with pressure," the state-owned KCNA news agency said on Sunday, quoting an editorial in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
But the editorial added that the government was keen to settle the crisis in a peaceful way. It did not give details.
On Saturday, 10,000 people turned out in a state-sponsored protest in Pyongyang to denounce Washington over its hardline policy on the North's steps to revive a nuclear program that might have already produced one or two atomic bombs.
North Korea has ordered inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to leave, the latest escalation of a crisis analysts say is aimed at goading Washington and its allies into giving aid to the starving nation of 22 million.
"This is a country in defiance of its international obligations," said IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei in a statement, after the watchdog agency said its inspectors would quit North Korea on New Year's Eve. "It sets a dangerous precedent for the integrity of the non-proliferation regime."
WEAPONS-GRADE PLUTONIUM
Besides the interdiction of shipments, the United Nations, with U.S. backing, may threaten sanctions if the secretive, army-backed regime takes further steps to restart the plant that could produce weapons-grade plutonium, U.S. officials said.
"If they don't turn it around, this is where we're going to end up. Nobody wants this to happen. But the North Koreans aren't giving anybody much to work with," one official said.
"Our strategy is to stick together and to step up pressure," the official said. "The North Koreans are isolating themselves."
The Bush administration, which is keen to keep its focus on Iraq, is pushing for the U.N. Security Council to take up the crisis on the world's last Cold War frontier by January 12.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has expressed confidence that the military could win wars with Iraq and North Korea, as well as the war on terrorism, but military analysts said there would be numerous difficulties in facing such a triple threat.
South Korea, whose president and president-elect favor the "sunshine policy" of aid and dialogue in dealing with the North, said it would discuss strategy with the United States and Japan in January. The North has large forces ranged along the border, just a short distance from the South Korean capital, Seoul.
North Korea announced on Friday it was firing up a reprocessing laboratory that could convert spent fuel into the plutonium needed for making nuclear bombs and had begun moving fresh fuel rods to the five-megawatt research reactor in Yongbyon, 88 km (55 miles) north of Pyongyang.
North Korea told the IAEA its inspectors must leave as a 1994 agreement, under which it was given fuel oil in exchange for compliance on non-proliferation, had broken down.
The United States and its allies cut off the oil after North Korea told a visiting U.S. official in October it had a covert nuclear program.
----
North Korea Possesses Wide Range of Threats
Missiles, Large Army Bolster Nuclear Option
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 29, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48894-2002Dec28?language=printer
SEOUL, Dec. 28 -- In its escalating conflict with the United States, North Korea possesses a vast array of potential threats which U.S. and South Korean officials fear could soon be employed to ratchet up the tension beyond the current dispute over the reactivation of the mothballed Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex.
"This game can be done in so many ways," said Kim Tae Woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, a research group affiliated with the South Korean military. "They can threaten to resume test-firing missiles, and then they could follow through with those threats. They could put their military forces on higher alerts. The question is, will the United States offer a big enough quid pro quo to shut down the game? If not, North Korea can prolong it. All the possibilities are out there."
Some 600 to 750 missiles capable of hitting South Korea and Japan with nuclear and conventional weapons lie inside reinforced bunkers and atop launchers that can be driven from one place to another to avoid detection, according to South Korean and U.S. military intelligence.
Rocket launchers capable of pounding South Korea's capital with conventional artillery, as well as chemical and biological weapons, are clustered near the demilitarized zone that has separated the two halves of the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War.
About 3,700 tanks are deployed throughout North Korea, according to U.S. and South Korean estimates. About 700 outmoded but effective 1960s-era Soviet-built fighter jets could easily bomb Seoul, and a small but historically confrontational North Korean navy patrols disputed waters west of the peninsula. Not least, North Korea has roughly 1 million uniformed soldiers -- the third-largest standing army in the world. Its reserves swell its total fighting strength to 8 million, according to South Korean estimates.
Finally, at scattered sites throughout the country, North Korea is pursuing a project about which the outside world knows little, though enough to cause alarm: building a facility that could produce enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
Disclosures about this project in October prompted the Bush administration to cut off fuel shipments to North Korea, which responded by reactivating the nuclear reactor. The confrontation escalated on Friday when North Korea said it would expel U.N. inspectors and reopen a plant capable of extracting weapons-grade plutonium. The Yongbyon facility had been closed under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.
North Korea has not shifted its military forces in any noticeable way since resuming activity at the reactor, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Seoul who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But defense experts say North Korea has many options if it wants to prolong and deepen the confrontation. It could shift troops, mass armaments near the demilitarized zone or conduct naval exercises. It could threaten to lift a moratorium on missile tests in place since 1999, or merely appear to be preparing for new tests for the benefit of U.S. intelligence satellites. This would generate unease and uncertainty in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, increasing pressure on the Bush administration to talk.
"North Korea started with the intention of pressing the United States to come to the negotiating table," said Kim Sung Han, an arms control expert at the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security, a government-affiliated research group in Seoul. "But the United States has not responded, and now North Korea is upgrading its actions."
If the nuclear card does not succeed in engaging the United States, he added, North Korea might then shift into other areas, such as breaching waters claimed by South Korea or test-firing a missile in the hope of forcing dialogue.
For now, the tension is concentrated at the Yongbyon complex of more than 200 buildings some 55 miles north of North Korea's capital, Pyongyang. At least one month of work is required, perhaps two, before the five-megawatt reactor can be switched back on, according to Shin Sung Taek, a nuclear expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.
Two larger reactors -- a 200-megawatt plant and a 50-megawatt plant -- were frozen in the early stages of construction in 1994 and will not be useable anytime soon, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog whose inspectors remained at the plant through Friday.
Once the existing reactor is operational again, fresh fuel rods could be inserted and left to burn for about three months, according to Shin. At that point, they would contain plutonium. After being removed and placed in an adjacent cooling pond -- essentially, a big swimming pool -- the spent fuel rods could be transferred to a nearby reprocessing plant designed to extract weapons-grade plutonium. The pool is already stocked with enough spent fuel rods to build three to six nuclear bombs, Shin said. In 1994, the Clinton administration pressed for a provision in its agreement with North Korea that would have removed this cache to a third country. But North Korea refused, and the Clinton administration signed off on the deal anyway, seeing it as the best chance to halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
Extracting plutonium from spent fuel rods is a complicated process that would take several months, Shin said. Inside the reprocessing plant -- a linked series of large buildings -- the rods are chopped into pieces, then broken down with chemicals.
How long that process would take depends on the condition of the reprocessing plant, Shin said, and that is unclear. When it was shut down in 1994, the facility was only partially completed but already operational. North Korea told the IAEA that it had successfully extracted a small quantity of plutonium, though far less than that needed to build a single bomb. An investigation by the IAEA found evidence that North Korea had extracted a lot more. But before the inspectors could determine how much more, North Korea restricted their access.
The CIA estimates that North Korea produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs before the plant was shut down. North Korea is believed to have used the plutonium to manufacture warheads now stored at the Yongbyon complex, the U.S. intelligence official said.
Once North Korea extracts enough plutonium for new weapons, it could fashion warheads in two to three months, Shin said. North Korea has already logged more than 130 successful tests of the high-power explosives that must be built into a bomb to make the plutonium detonate, according to Kim Tae Woo.
Each stage in North Korea's continuing move toward restarting the reactor amounts to an opportunity to intensify the concerns of its neighbors and the United States. "They will keep us guessing," said Han Sung Joo, South Korea's foreign minister during the last outbreak of nuclear brinkmanship eight years ago. "In all probability, it will get worse before it gets better." Negotiations probably cannot take place until "it becomes obvious to everyone there's no alternative to a showdown of some kind," he said.
Some defense experts say North Korea is not merely using its reactor complex as a diplomatic lever, but now genuinely wants to produce plutonium-based weapons to better deter any potential U.S. attacks.
"This whole series of events this last week shows that they are really committed to moving beyond the red line if they are not checked," said Seongwhun Cheon, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a government-affiliated research group in Seoul. "They're going to go as far as they can go."
The United States and its allies know far less about events at the uranium-enrichment site, and are not even certain of the location. Uranium enrichment requires vast quantities of energy. According to the U.S. military intelligence officer, North Korea appears to have buried much of the infrastructure for the program, including electrical generators, making it difficult to detect the surges of energy that might reveal its location. The United States believes the project cannot render any useable fissile material for a bomb until at least the end of 2004, he said.
North Korea's military capabilities place great emphasis on chemical and biological agents, including deadly sarin gas, anthrax and smallpox, according to South Korean and U.S. defense experts. North Korea holds large-scale chemical warfare exercises each year in the northwestern province of Pyungnam, according to Kim Tae Woo.
"They consider chemical [weapons] as a normal tool in their arsenal," said the U.S. military intelligence officer. He estimated that about one-fourth of North Korea's missiles carry such weapons.
Those facts, combined with leaps in North Korean ballistics technology, make missiles a particularly useful tool for Pyongyang in raising alarm among its neighbors.
According to South Korean and U.S. intelligence, North Korea has 500 to 600 Scud missiles, which were developed in the 1980s and can reach targets 150 and 300 miles away. In 1993, North Korea first tested its No Dong missile, expanding its reach to 800 miles, thus bringing Japan into range.
On Aug. 31, 1998, North Korea test-fired the three-stage Taepo Dong-1 missile, with a range of approximately 1,250 miles, over Japan. The missile's first stage splashed down in the Sea of Japan, and a second stage crossed over Japan's main island of Honshu and landed in the Pacific Ocean.
A third stage, which U.S. intelligence agencies detected only a few weeks later, broke into pieces and traveled 3,450 miles downrange. Another such test would reverberate loudly in Asia and the United States.
-------- terrorism
Bin Laden Said to Have Sought Nuke Help
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bin-Laden-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- A leading Pakistani nuclear scientist, barred by his government from talking to reporters, has made it known through his son that Osama bin Laden approached him before the Sept. 11 attacks for help in making nuclear weapons.
The al-Qaida leader was rebuffed, the son, Azim Mahmood, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
``Basically Osama asked my father, 'How can a nuclear bomb be made and can you help us make one?''' he said. ``My father said, 'No, and secondly you must understand it is not child's play for you to build a nuclear bomb.'''
The scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, is under a gag order from Pakistani intelligence officials, but his conversations with bin Laden in meetings in 2000 and as late as July 2001 were reconstructed for the Associated Press by his son.
The conversations as described by Azim Mahmood clearly show bin Laden was interested in developing nuclear weapons. They don't, however, shed any light on whether the terrorist mastermind had taken even the first steps on that complex technological challenge.
The U.S. Embassy declined to discuss Mahmood's story. American officials in Washington also would not comment.
There has been previous evidence of al-Qaida's interest in nuclear weapons.
Computers found by journalists and U.S. troops at a variety of facilities in Afghanistan indicated al-Qaida had sought to obtain and develop nuclear and other potent weapons. An AP reporter saw anthrax and other chemical concoctions at an al-Qaida laboratory outside Kabul.
During a New York trial two years ago stemming from bombings at two U.S. embassies in Africa, a former bin Laden aide testified he was ordered in 1993 to try to buy uranium on the black market for an effort to develop a nuclear weapon. Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl said al-Qaida was prepared to spend $1.5 million, but he didn't know if a purchase was ever made.
In addition, U.S. officials have said captured al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah told American interrogators the terrorist network was working on a ``dirty bomb,'' a conventional bomb that would scatter radioactive material. Such a radiological weapon would be far less deadly and damaging than a nuclear explosion.
Authorities also have said that Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member charged with plotting with al-Qaida, attended two meetings in Karachi, Pakistan, at which senior al-Qaida operatives discussed the possible use of a ``dirty bomb.''
A United Nations report issued by experts monitoring al-Qaida movements warned that al-Qaida has the potential to obtain nuclear material and build ``some kind of dirty bomb.''
``Our concern is you can actually get the stuff,'' said Michael Chandler, the British expert who heads the monitoring group.
The conversations related by Azim Mahmood confirm bin Laden's nuclear ambitions. But they also offer a glimpse at the nexus of science and conservative Islam at a high level in Pakistan, one of the world's newest nuclear powers along with neighboring India, whose own leaders follow a Hindu fundamentalist philosophy.
The elder Mahmood, who has been questioned by the FBI and is under close Pakistani surveillance, is a deeply conservative Muslim who espouses the same puritanical brand of Islam as Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers.
Enraged over Pakistan's plans in 1998 to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, he resigned from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and devoted his time to his charity, the Holy Quran Research Foundation.
Last December, President Bush labeled the charity a terrorist group and Mahmood a terrorist. His assets and those of his charity were frozen.
``Even my father's pension is blocked. At the moment he has nothing,'' said Azim Mahmood, a physician in his 30s who also adheres to a strict Islam.
For years, Pakistani peace activists and liberal academics have fretted about Islamic hard-liners in Pakistan's nuclear organization.
``We have always expressed our fear that a large number of people in the nuclear establishment would be ideologically motivated to share Pakistan's nuclear weapons technology,'' said Dr. A.H. Nayyar, a nuclear physicist and research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, an independent Pakistani group.
Azim Mahmood said his father met with bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, ``and definitely this question of building a nuclear bomb came up.''
The father was detained in November 2001, questioned and freed in February, but has to carry a mobile phone at all times so Pakistani intelligence can track his movements, the son said.
He said his father's American interrogators were particularly intrigued by one of his books, ``Doomsday and Life After Death,'' and wanted to know whether it meant he had some kind of inside knowledge of what al-Qaida was planning.
Mahmood first met bin Laden in 2000 while visiting Afghanistan to build a school, the son said. He wanted to help the Taliban, because he was angry at the international criticism of the regime's brand of Islam, the son recalled.
``My father shared the Taliban thinking. He liked their system of government. He wanted to help them.''
When bin Laden learned a nuclear scientist was in Kabul, he sent an al-Qaida operative, Abu Bilal, to the Pakistani's hotel to arrange a meeting, the son said.
``My father went to meet him and he said, 'Why don't you come and help us build these things?''' Azim Mahmood said, adding that the two men met several times in the Afghan capital and the discussion invariably returned to nuclear weapons.
The al-Qaida leader wanted a nuclear device, Azim Mahmood said. ``Al-Qaida also wanted a person who could train their people, and who could get them enriched material for their weapons.''
Experts say, however, that making a nuclear bomb requires a cadre of highly trained, experienced scientists and technicians.
In a separate interview, a former senior Taliban official said bin Laden was trying to obtain nuclear materials, but he could not say whether the al-Qaida leader succeeded.
Mullah Mohammed Khaksar, who renounced the Taliban last year but had made contact with U.S. officials in 1999, said he knew of several mysterious shipments that entered Afghanistan and were stored at a warehouse in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. One was a balloon-like container covered in aluminum and others were capsules the length of a man's hand, he said.
Azim Mahmood said his father was uncertain what nuclear material, if any, al-Qaida possessed.
``At one meeting they brought a box, a thing that someone had sold to them for a huge amount of money, but my father laughed and said it was nothing,'' he said.
-------- ukraine
Putting a Lid on Chernobyl
200 Tons of Uranium Lie in Ruins of Derelict Reactor
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48331-2002Dec28?language=printer
Engineers are completing plans for what may be the largest movable structure ever built -- a 20,000-ton steel shell to enclose Chernobyl Reactor 4, site of an apocalyptic nuclear accident whose consequences are still being felt more than 16 years later.
By next summer an international consortium led by Bechtel International Systems Corp., of San Francisco, will finish the conceptual design for a hangar-shaped arch nearly 370 feet high -- the height of a 35-story building -- that would be slid into place along greased steel plates to cover the ruined remains in a snug, weather-tight shelter.
Inside, robotic cranes and, where possible, live workers will then begin prying apart the wreckage, removing radioactive dust from twisted girders, storing pieces of radioactive core in shielded canisters and cutting old steel into manageable lengths.
The whole job -- design, construction and "stabilization" of the derelict reactor 80 miles north of Kiev -- is part of a fully funded 10-year plan set in motion by the Group of 7 industrialized nations in 1997. The $768 million project, including the shell, is scheduled for completion in 2007, according to officials involved with the project.
And then the world will wait.
The shelter is designed to keep water out and dust in for 100 years, or for as long as it takes the Ukrainian government to designate a permanent storage facility and dispose of more than 200 tons of uranium and nearly a ton of lethally radioactive plutonium that remain inside the ruins.
Most of the fuel-containing material lies as a solid "lava" formed by the fusion of molten fuel, concrete, 30 tons of fuel dust and 2,000 tons of combustibles.
In the basement, rainwater and fuel dust have mixed together in a dangerous radioactive "soup." Lethal chunks of the reactor core lie unseen in the rubble and in the earth alongside the building. More pieces of core were boxed and buried in a "cascade wall" built and bulldozed into place by Soviet workers in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.
"We will need a lot of shielding," said Vincent Novak, director of the Nuclear Safety Department for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, overseers of the project. "If it weren't for the radioactivity, I could almost call the job 'a piece of cake,' but the radiation makes it hugely complex and extremely difficult."
The Chernobyl explosion occurred April 26, 1986, when an out-of-control nuclear reaction blew off the roof of the steel building and spewed tons of radioactive material into the air, releasing 30 to 40 times as much radioactivity as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs combined in 1945.
It was the worst nuclear accident in history. Thirty workers died immediately at the facility, and 135,000 people were evacuated from the surrounding "Exclusion Zone." As recently as 2000, the Ukraine government was spending 5 percent of its gross domestic product to mitigate consequences of the disaster.
In the six months immediately following the explosion, the Soviets erected an improvised shelter known as the "sarcophagus," but within 10 years scientists became alarmed because of leaks and the building's threatened collapse. The walls were weakening, Novak said, and there was tremendous uncertainty because "it was almost impossible to determine" the real dangers.
In 1997, the Group of 7, plus Russia, the European Union and Ukraine, set up the Chernobyl Shelter Fund with the European reconstruction bank in charge. The bank established a shelter implementation plan, estimated the project cost at $768 million, and funded it with donations from 28 nations, ranging from $170 million from the United States to Iceland's $10,000.
In the first phase, completed in 1999, the sarcophagus's roof and structural pillars were strengthened, and the reactor's rickety ventilation stack, jutting more than 150 feet above the sarcophagus, was stabilized. The stack was an added concern, because it was shared by the contiguous Reactor No. 3, which was still operating.
But these were emergency measures. "Safety analyses show there are still about 1,000 square meters [1,200 square yards] of holes in the roof and sides," said Eric Schmieman, chief engineer for environmental technology at Battelle Memorial Institute's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. "A significant amount of water can go in, and dust can go out, and birds and squirrels and birds come and go all the time."
The Bechtel-led consortium designing the $250 million structure to cover the sarcophagus had to make several decisions early. None of the three design contractors, including Battelle and the French state utility Electricite de France, will be allowed to bid on the actual work.
Doubts arose as to whether a steel structure could last a century. With lethal levels of radiation inside the shell, opportunities for repair and maintenance could be limited.
"It's doable," said Bechtel's Matthew Wrona, project manager. "There are paints that last a long time and maintenance techniques for harsh environments." The Eiffel Tower is perhaps the best-known large, century-old steel structure fully exposed to the elements, but Wrona noted that several large suspension bridges are aging elegantly.
The team also avoided experimental technologies in favor of the tried and true.
"We're trying to build it for 100 years, and using brand-new technologies increases the risks," Schmieman said. "If a human being has to intervene, there's a consequence. We need to minimize the danger."
The team settled on a steel arch 40 feet thick. The inside dimensions would be 803 feet -- almost three football fields -- across and 330 feet high. Up to that point, planning was relatively simple, because "it had all been done before," said Philippe Convert, technical manager for Electricite de France, but the next steps were a different story: Lethal gamma rays escaping from the reactor's damaged core would make the center of the arch too hot for humans to work. Building the arch in place was impossible.
Instead, the team decided to construct the arch in four 120-foot sections, then link the sections together and slide the entire structure along a track made of steel plates built on each side of Reactor No. 4. When completed, the project managers believe the new shelter will be the largest movable structure ever built.
One end will be fully enclosed, while the other will be a "cutout" that fits snugly over Reactor No. 3's building, which connects to the ruins. Current plans call for the stack to be taken down, and the junction between the arch wall and Reactor No. 3 to be sealed.
The new shelter will not "contain" the core's radioactivity but will be weatherproof.
The tracks will be made by driving piles into the ground at relatively close intervals, then filling the gaps with concrete. The planners want to avoid seating the concrete in a deep trench, for fear of unearthing radioactive material during excavation.
The concrete will then be covered with stainless steel plates and coated with a lubricant, while the bottom of the new steel shell will have Teflon pads for easier sliding. Convert said the sliding technique is used extensively to move heavy machinery.
While workers will be able to enter some parts of Reactor No. 4 and work on the wreckage in relative safety, the most routine tasks can suddenly turn deadly.
"Surprises are inevitable," Novak said. During the initial roof and structural repair, "we found a large piece of core embedded in the wall. Everything stopped until we could build a device and get the shielding to handle it. Each case is different."
To help deconstruct parts of the reactor building and the sarcophagus, the new shell will have four ceiling cranes designed to pluck heavy steel beams from the old reactor and to wrestle pieces of twisted metal from the ruins. They will also be equipped with hydraulic cutters to chop wreckage into manageable chunks.
One unusual problem is the need to manage the new shell's microclimate. "It's so big, it could even rain inside, so we have to keep the moisture down," Wrona said. Air conditioning would be prohibitively expensive, so "we'll try to use natural air currents. It's like the inside of an automobile on a cold morning."
-------- us politics
Bush's Moonshine Policy
By Mary McGrory
Sunday, December 29, 2002
Washington Post; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46120-2002Dec27?language=printer
George W. Bush ends the year with a genuine nuclear crisis on his hands. He has been assiduously trying to foment one with Iraq, dropping bombs on the country and expletives on its leader. But North Korea, which is not just suspected of working on the bomb but of having at least two, has muscled Saddam Hussein off the front pages and made our crusade against Baghdad seem crass: We're starting a war not just for oil or for Ariel Sharon but because we can win it.
North Korea is a different story. It has a million men under arms. It has a built-in hostage situation at hand in the presence of 37,000 U.S. soldiers who guard South Korea. Kim Jong Il, the Communist leader of North Korea, almost makes Saddam Hussein look like Rotarian of the Year. While Hussein is welcoming U.N. arms inspectors, Kim is throwing them out. He has dismantled the international surveillance equipment installed by a treaty in 1994; he has announced he is going to make all the weapons-grade plutonium he wants. He is, in short, behaving like the radioactive lunatic he is.
And what is George W. Bush, defender of the free world, scourge of terrorists, doing about all this? As of this moment, nothing.
As far as we can see, he seems to feel that not speaking to the North Koreans is the solution. "Isolation" and "marginalization" will bring these rogues to heel? A leader who will starve his own people to feed his military machine, whose father invaded his neighbor, who shows no acquaintance with reality, will be cowed by a snub from Washington?
The president has asked North Korea's neighbors to warn Kim Jong Il of the consequences of his horrendous behavior. Up to now, the Japanese have reported themselves as scared to death. Russia and China seem to have a million other things to do. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), says we should "talk and talk and talk" to the outlaws. His is a lone voice.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld exhibited a reflex swagger response. The North Koreans better watch out. They mustn't think for a minute we couldn't wage war against them. Just in time for Christmas, he brought our war list up to three -- the one against al Qaeda, which we seem to have forgotten, the one brewing in Iraq -- and now Pyongyang?
We should perhaps remember that President Bush has never liked talking to Koreans. His first overseas visitor was the estimable Kim Dae Jung, whom Bush snubbed.
Bush, as he was eager to demonstrate, was not a fan. Kim's sin? He was instituting a sunshine policy with the North, ending a half-century of estrangement. Bush, who looked upon North Korea as the most potent argument for his obsession to build a national missile defense, saw Kim, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, as nothing but trouble. He sent him home humiliated and empty-handed.
Kim's successor, Roh Moo Hyun, may be even worse. He is a passionate advocate of the sunshine policy, and he seeks "a more mature relationship" with the United States -- bad news for Bush.
This ugly international set-to occurs just when the president has scored his most dazzling domestic political triumph. The hullabaloo over Trent Lott, the prospective leader of the Senate, was caused by Lott's letting the cat out of the bag on the subject of the Republicans' covert Southern strategy. Lott told a birthday party for Strom Thurmond what everyone has always known: The strategy was based on race. Republicans were mortified.
Then Bush apprentice Karl Rove stepped in and saved the day. Bush and Rove engineered Lott's resignation and the substitution of glamorous Bill Frist of Tennessee, literally a medicine man, who spends his off-time flying his own plane to Africa to minister to AIDS patients. Bush issued a sharp criticism of Lott's remarks and nourished the Frist boomlet into a surge, all the while insisting through his spokesman that he did not think Lott should resign.
Republicans are delighted. In an assembly largely given over to small minds and big egos, Frist's aura as a healer and his proclivity for rendering first aid on Capitol Hill make him a romantic figure. It's like getting Lord Byron on your condo board.
The finesse of the operation was universally applauded. The qualities displayed -- the regard for the other guy's sensibilities, the willingness to forgo credit, are ones that can be successful in foreign policy negotiations. Bush could never send Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton to represent him in the deadly and proliferating tension in North Korea -- he blames them for coddling Pyongyang. But he might send Karl Rove. He knows how the game is played.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
French Reinforcements Arrive in Ivory Coast
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/africa/29IVOR.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Dec. 28 (Reuters) - Hundreds of French reinforcement troops landed in Ivory Coast today, as rebel leaders warned that if France wanted a war here in its former colony, it would get one.
The French troop-landing ship Foudre docked in Abidjan, the main city, after a 10-day voyage from France with about 20 trucks, a dozen jeeps, more than 30 light armored vehicles and 5 helicopters.
The reinforcements raise France's force in this West African country to about 2,500 troops. It is France's biggest intervention force on the continent since the 1980's when it sent 3,000 soldiers to Chad to halt a Libyan-backed uprising.
"There are hundreds of soldiers, mostly paratroopers," said a French Army spokesman, Benoit Suire, on board the Foudre. "There will be two kinds of mission - one to the border and cease-fire lines, while the other stays in Abidjan."
The civil war began in this once stable nation on Sept. 19, when there was a failed coup by soldiers. The uprising led to four weeks of fighting that left hundreds of people dead, and the rebels continue to control the largely Muslim north.
The main rebel group signed a truce in mid-October, but peace talks in Togo made little headway since then. Last month, two new rebel factions not bound by the truce emerged in the west.
French soldiers in Ivory Coast were originally ordered to protect the 20,000 French citizens here. France's involvement broadened as its troops clashed with the Western splinter rebel groups, which are believed to include foreign fighters.
One of the new groups, the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Far West, has clashed with French troops three times. A spokesman for the faction said today that he could not rule out more confrontations with French.
"We will fight to defend our area," said the spokesman, Felix Doh. He contended that France was taking sides, helping government forces and mercenaries he said had been hired by President Laurent Gbagbo.
"If France wants a war, France will get a war," Mr. Doh said.
Foreign Legion paratroopers repulsed a rebel column a week ago using heavy weapons on a dirt road near the western town of Duekoue, killing six. In the latest fighting, on Friday, a group of about 30 rebels attacked a small French patrol just north of the junction town Duekoue.
-------- asia
Insurgents Create Growing Instability in Nepal
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29NEPA.html
BHIMSEN NAGAR, Nepal - His former neighbors describe him as "kindhearted" and "generous." His junior high teacher changed his name to "Lotus Flower" because he was so gentle and handsome. His father still shows off pictures of him as a grown man tenderly placing his hand on his mother's forehead as she lay dying of leukemia.
"It was his habit to make people smile," said his father, Mukti Ram Dahal, in a rare interview with a foreign journalist. "He used to do it with everybody."
But to the rest of Nepal and to the outside world, the man now known by the nom de guerre Prachanda, or "the fierce one," is the leader of a violent Maoist insurgency that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 1996 in this mountain kingdom that sits as a buffer between India and China.
The United States has grown so concerned that it is providing $17 million in military equipment and sending American soldiers to train Nepal's army, a move that has Chinese officials worried about American meddling in their backyard.
A post-Mao, quasi-capitalist Beijing disowns the rebels and accuses them of "usurping the name of the leader of the Chinese people." Indian officials, meanwhile, fear a rising tide of refugees and what a Maoist victory could do to re-energize sputtering insurgencies in their own country.
The insurgents, who call themselves the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), modeled after Peru's own Maoist Shining Path guerrillas, have seized control of 40 percent of Nepal and paralyzed its economy and political system.
Their success has been led by Prachanda, 48, who has managed to deepen the support for his movement by portraying himself as a Nepalese Robin Hood facing down corrupt and ineffective governments.
Brilliant and charismatic to his followers, fanatical and opportunistic to his enemies, Prachanda, the son of a poor but upper-caste farmer, demands the eradication of chronic rural poverty and abolition of Nepal's constitutional monarchy, which he calls a "eunuch parliamentary monarchy." His war has exposed Nepal's vast inequalities, self-interested elite and, to the surprise of many longtime Western residents, potential for savagery.
"Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is undefeatable because it is a system based on truth," Prachanda said in an interview with a Nepalese newspaper in 1997, a year after he declared a "people's war" on "imperialists" and "reactionaries." "Marxism says the reactionaries continue to create problems until they are eliminated."
Since then, the Maoists stand accused of killing 800 civilians deemed "enemies of the revolution," kidnapping, extortion, forced conscription and the use of child soldiers. The Royal Nepalese Army, dispatched a year ago to crush the insurgents, has proven no kinder to its people, human rights groups say. Government troops are accused of secret detentions, torture and killing as many as 2,000 civilians and unarmed prisoners in the past year.
Since the army joined the fight a year ago, the number of deaths has increased from hundreds a year to 4,300 in the last year alone. A once peaceful tourist destination now stands as one of the world's bloodiest corners.
While their ideology may seem antiquated, the group's members have emerged as master tacticians and motivators who quickly surround government posts with 1,000 to 2,000 fighters before overwhelming them. They have also shown a keen, and in some ways curious, interest in how they are perceived.
The group sent an open letter last March to foreign tourists explaining that they would not be attacked in Nepal. It begins "warmest greetings from the materially poor but spiritually rich people of Nepal." A letter sent to world leaders blaming the government for the failure of peace talks last year concludes with the line "looking forward to cordial and mutually beneficial relations in the days to come."
Chhabi Lal Dahal, as Prachanda was known then, was born in a mountain village near the town of Pokhara in central Nepal in December 1954, the eldest of eight children. The timing of his birth was considered propitious; in Nepalese astrology, having an eldest son in December signals good things to come.
When Prachanda was 6 or 7, the family moved along with hundreds of thousand of others from the mountains of central and northern Nepal to the country's fertile southern plains after King Mahendra, the Hindu kingdom's ruler at the time, decreed democratic elections and large-scale land reform. A year later, the king reversed his decision, dissolved Parliament and arrested top political leaders. The family was left stranded in this village of 25 families, today a jumbled and impoverished mix of the country's many ethnic groups and castes just outside of Bharatpur.
Balaram Bishwakarma, a lower-caste Dalit, or "untouchable," recalled how Prachanda bounced him on his lap when they were both children. "He treated every other kid as one of his brothers," he said.
Umanath Lamichhane, a 60-year-old farmer, glowed when he spoke about him. "He was such a kind-hearted man," he said.
Neighbors recalled asking Prachanda to settle petty disputes and seeing him move dozens of landless families to vacant, government-owned grazing areas. His leadership abilities quickly emerged.
"Everyone who met him would be very quickly impressed, and would stand to listen to hear what he had to say," said a former Maoist activist who attended a local agriculture college with him.
By the time Prachanda graduated in 1978, he held a bachelor's degree and a radical Maoist perspective.
Chinkali Shrestha, headmaster of a high school where Prachanda later went to teach horticulture, recalled being struck by his absolute confidence that Maoism would triumph.
Prachanda and other Maoist leaders took their hard-line Communist faction underground in 1996, after winning only 9 of the 205 seats in Parliament in earlier elections. Government officials initially scoffed at the group. But within months, Prachanda and other leaders had created a highly organized insurgency.
They overran isolated police posts to obtain weapons. They robbed banks to obtain money. They banned drinking, gambling, trafficking in women and domestic violence. They staged plays that depicted caste and ethnic discrimination to recruit cadres. They soon became active in more than half of the country's 75 districts, forming shadow "people's governments" in 22 of them.
At first, civilian government officials countered the insurgents with brutal police sweeps. The corruption, ineffectiveness and harsh methods of successive governments also aided the insurgents' cause.
Over time, the Maoists' methods, too, grew more brutal. Villagers were forced at gunpoint to join their cause and pay a war "tax." Teachers and local activists were kidnapped and murdered. Mainstream politicians were beheaded. A recent poll found that if the Maoists were to put down their arms today, they would win at best 10 percent of the seats in Parliament - double their showing before, but not enough to control the government.
While both Prachanda and government leaders frequently express a willingness to talk, negotiations have yet to materialize. Infighting between the country's king, Gyanendra, and its mainstream political parties has also hindered the peace effort.
A recent photo captured by the army shows Prachanda as a bearded, pot-bellied man who scarcely resembles the rail-thin figure who cared for his dying mother. Critics joke that his belly symbolizes his own corruption. Prachanda's son, Prakash Dahal, who is in his 20's and apparently part of the movement, stands a few feet away from him.
Asked about how he felt about his son, Prachanda's father said in the interview that he feared for his son's life but also that he was proud that "this great revolutionary leader is a son of mine." He also added a caveat that echoed the sentiment of many in Nepal as the death toll soars.
"I also would like some kind of settlement to this problem," he said. "I'd also like to see a situation where people from either side are not killed."
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon told to use 'targeted killings' only as last resort
12/29/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-29-israel-palestinians_x.htm
JERUSALEM (AP) - An 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed Sunday by Israeli gunfire during a demonstration in the West Bank, while Israel's attorney general told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that "targeted killings" of wanted Palestinians may be used only as a last resort.
The ruling came after recent violence raised concerns about a new escalation in Israeli-Palestinian fighting ahead of Israel's Jan. 28 parliamentary elections.
The Palestinian child, the second killed by Israeli soldiers in as many days, was shot when a group of schoolchildren pelted troops with rocks and bottles in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Troops responded with rubber-coated bullets, also wounding another Palestinian boy, Palestinian witnesses said.
The military said non-lethal methods were used. These methods often include the rubber-coated bullets, which can kill if used from short range.
In the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians say a 9-year-old girl was killed by Israeli gunfire on Saturday, soldiers opened fire in the direction of about 150 Palestinian demonstrators as they neared an Israeli checkpoint.
A freelance cameraman for Associated Press Television News, Tamer Ziara, was struck in the back of the head, apparently by a ricochet. Doctors said Ziara, 20, was not seriously injured.
Israeli army spokeswoman Capt. Sharon Feingold said the soldiers opened fire on the crowd because they felt endangered. The military said the demonstrators were in an off-limits zone, and soldiers had received warnings about an impending attack there. The military is investigating.
The Palestinians were protesting against severe Israeli travel restrictions on Palestinians in the area, which is near a bloc of Jewish settlements. The area is the scene of almost nightly exchanges of fire between Israeli forces guarding the settlements and Palestinian gunmen from nearby refugee camps.
During the weekly session of the Israeli Cabinet, Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein instructed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to use the practice of killing suspected Palestinian terror suspects only as a last resort.
The ruling followed reports that Sharon had ordered an increase in the practice as part of attempts to stop Palestinian violence.
Israel's so-called "targeted killings" have been criticized by human rights groups and denounced by Palestinians as a policy of assassination. With methods that included exploding phones and helicopter-launched missiles, Israeli forces have killed at least 82 suspects and 52 bystanders that way in 27 months of fighting.
The instance that raised the most criticism came on July 23, when an Israeli warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of senior Hamas figure Salah Shehadeh, killing him, his bodyguard and 13 bystanders, including his wife, daughter, and eight other children.
An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that Sharon favored an increase in the killings. The official said that they were ordered only when arrest was impossible or when the suspect was a "ticking bomb" and an immediate danger to Israelis.
Also Sunday, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that in the past two months, Israeli forces have arrested more than 1,200 suspected Palestinian militants. He called it an unprecedented campaign.
Palestinians claimed the Israeli goal was to sabotage Egyptian-led truce efforts. Egypt has been hosting talks between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement and radical groups, aiming for a deal ending attacks on Israeli civilians, at least within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
Sources close to the talks said the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups have promised to try calm the situation, provided Israel halts targeted killings of militiamen. Israel has refused to make such a promise, saying it could not agree to a partial moratorium on attacks that excludes the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said Sunday that Egypt would convene all Palestinian factions for a meeting in Cairo in the first week of January to try to work out a joint political platform.
Armed with such a program, the Palestinian Authority would try to negotiate a two-stage truce that would first take hold in Israel and - after an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian towns and cities - would extend to the West Bank and Gaza, Shaath said.
-------- saudi arabia
Saudis deny letting US use bases
BBC
Monday, 30 December, 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2614635.stm
Saudi Arabia has denied reports that it will make its airspace, airbases and an important operations centre available to the US for a possible war against Iraq.
In remarks on Monday, both the foreign minister and the deputy defence minister said there was no change in Saudi Arabia's position.
"We have no commitments on any matters towards Iraq" - Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz Deputy Defence Minister
The kingdom remains opposed to a war against Iraq, but has said it may review its options if the UN passes a resolution explicitly authorising the use of force.
Senior US officials quoted by the New York Times newspaper have said they had been given private assurances that they would be allowed to use a command centre outside the country's capital, Riyadh, rights to overfly Saudi territory - and ultimately mount airborne attacks from Saudi bases.
BBC regional analyst Roger Hardy says the Saudi rulers are nervous about domestic opposition to a war - but anxious to repair their relations with the Americans, badly strained since the 11 September 2001 attacks.
No change
According to the New York Times, US officials said that allied refuelling, reconnaissance, surveillance and cargo planes would be permitted to fly from Saudi bases and to use the nation's airspace for missions in an Iraq war.
Military officials told the newspaper they were confident that Saudi Arabia would ultimately permit airborne attack missions - the most politically sensitive military issue - to be flown from their soil.
But the senior Saudi officials were unequivocal in their denial of any agreement with the US on Iraq.
President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah Saudi Arabia is a key strategic US ally "The truth is what I said, not what the [New York Times] newspaper reported," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters during a visit to Sudan.
"Even if the [UN] Security Council issues a unanimous decision to attack Iraq, we hope a chance will be given to the Arab states to find a political solution to this issue," Prince Saud said.
Deputy Defence Minister Prince Abdul-Rahman bin Abdul-Aziz said the New York Times remarks were "incorrect".
"We have no commitments on any matters towards Iraq," Prince Abdul-Rahman was quoted as saying by the daily Okaz.
Although the US has been upgrading a base in neighbouring Qatar as a possible alternative, it would still like to use the Saudi base to co-ordinate an air campaign against Iraq, our analyst says.
He says that, characteristically, the Saudi ruling family does not like the issue to be talked about in public.
Thaw
Saudi Arabia was a launch pad for the US-led Gulf War in 1991 that drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait after a seven-month occupation.
Washington has already stepped up its preparations for a possible military offensive, ordering thousands more troops and dozens of fighter aircraft to the Gulf region in the coming weeks.
US-Saudi relations became strained after it was revealed that most of the hijackers involved in the 11 September attacks came from Saudi Arabia.
There was further US anger when the wife of the Saudi ambassador to America was accused of indirectly financing two of the hijackers.
Saudi Arabia has often been accused by the US of not doing enough to combat international terrorism.
But US officials still insist Riyadh is an ally.
-------- space
China Launches 4th Unmanned Space Capsule
December 29, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Spacecraft.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China's fourth unmanned space capsule blasted into orbit early Monday in a test launch that soon could lead to a manned flight, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The Shenzhou IV spacecraft blasted off at 12:40 a.m. local time from a launch pad in the Gobi desert and entered a preset orbit, Xinhua said. It did not say when the craft would return.
The capsule carries all the equipment for manned flight, and life support and other systems will be tested while it is in orbit, Xinhua said.
Beijing has invested prestige and an undisclosed amount of money in its secretive, military-linked space program. A successful manned launch would make China only the third country, after Russia and the United States, to send a human being into space on its own.
``The successful blastoff was of great significance,'' Xinhua quoted China's No. 3 leader, Li Peng, as saying after witnessing the launch.
Li, chairman of the national legislature, also called for more hard work from the space program.
Monday marked the second Shenzhou launch in 10 months -- the shortest period yet between capsule test flights and a possible sign of growing Chinese confidence.
The launch ``laid a solid foundation for the country's future task of sending Chinese astronauts to outer space,'' Xinhua said. The step ``could soon lead to its (China's) manned space voyage.''
China launched its first unmanned Shenzhou space capsule in November 1999. The capsule -- whose name means ``Sacred Vessel'' -- is based on Russian Soyuz technology with extensive modifications by Chinese designers.
The communist government does not announce launches in advance and has not publicly set a date for manned flight. But state media have indicated that astronauts could be sent up soon.
Su Shuangning, commander and designer of the astronaut system for China's manned space program, was quoted as saying, ``With tough training in basic theories, professional skills and flight procedures and tasks, the astronauts are absolutely capable of making their maiden voyage to outer space.''
A corps of astronauts drawn from China's air force has been training for several years. Xinhua, citing space program officials, said they used the Shenzhou IV for their first training aboard a capsule.
The third Shenzhou flight, launched in March, carried a mannequin in a space suit. After the drum-shaped capsule landed in China's northern grasslands, officials said the 10-day flight showed that humans could survive.
China has sent at least two astronauts to Russia for training, and foreign experts believe they now are training others. Officials of the manned space program, code-named Project 921, refuse to release their identities or details of their training.
Monday's launch was controlled from a base in the Chinese city of Xi'an and four tracking ships anchored in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, Xinhua said.
All Shenzhou flights have followed the Russian tradition of returning to earth on land.
In preparation for manned flight, emergency landing zones at sea and on land have been set up and crews have performed practice rescues.
-------- spy agencies
Kurdish Agents Play Spy Games With Iraqis on Arms Tips
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/29KURD.html
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec 28 - The Kurdish security official sat at his desk, handling letters from his informants. Each contained a tip that might change the future of Iraq. Or maybe he was being played for a dope.
He held a sheet of paper aloft.
"This one says the Iraqis built a mosque in Tuz Khormatu, but under the ground is a hollow place," he said. "The mosque has no guards, people go there and pray, but underneath them chemical weapons are stored."
He picked up another.
"This one is about a shoe and plastics factory in Baghdad where all of the workers were removed before the weapons inspectors returned, and new workers replaced them," he said. "It is in a neighborhood called Hay Jameela. It is very strange."
While United Nations inspectors search Iraq for prohibited weapons, a parallel operation is taking place in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Kurdish officials here are evaluating a stream of tips about where Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons and illegal missiles are said to be hidden, and pondering how to handle them.
Throughout the region there is a lively internal debate about whether the tips are authentic or part of a deliberate counterintelligence campaign by Mr. Hussein's security services. Kurds wonder if they have uncovered definitive evidence against the Iraqi government, or become ensnared in a circular game of spy versus spy.
"One way that Saddam has always worked is that he has sent information into an area through his agents, and it is the wrong information," said a security official in Erbil. "Believe me, the information we have received about all of the places he has hidden weapons is enough for the whole world to be busy searching. He leaks this information."
Back in Sulaimaniya, the official with the hand-scrawled tips said he believed them, because they were delivered by informants who had been reliable in the past.
"I am not new at this business," he said. "I know whom I work with."
Dr. Barham Salih, prime minister of the eastern zone of northern Iraq, leaves open the possibility that both views are right.
"We know that the Iraqi government has chemical weapons and is involved in a very elaborate concealment effort," he said. "And we know that Saddam Hussein is capable of such decoy operations and misinformation campaigns."
Whether true of false, the tips have a receptive audience. Fear of chemical attack is part of the Kurdish psyche. These are people who Mr. Hussein's forces attacked in the 1980's with nerve and mustard gas. Kurds are certain the Iraqi leader retains prohibited weapons, and that he intends to use them again. The leaks carry great emotional power.
But emotional power and intelligence value are not the same thing, and officials say they worry about the damage planted information might cause, including damage to their own credibility, since some of the tips that Kurdish officials deem reliable have been shared with American intelligence teams working in northern Iraq.
"Saddam wants us to leak his misinformation to the U.N., so the U.N. will go there once, twice, three times, and waste their time, and lose respect for the credibility of the Kurds," the official in Erbil said.
Kurds also worry that the meager intelligence means at their disposal means they cannot fully evaluate or corroborate the material at hand. They claim to have networks of informants, but acknowledge that this "human intelligence," as it is called, has limits.
"Kurdish intelligence is not that clever or smart to determine if these are lies or true things," Faraidoon Abdulkader, interior minister in the Kurdish eastern zone.
All the while, leaks keep surfacing, coming through informants, circulating in villages along the border between northern and southern Iraq, and being passed to journalists.
Karim Agha, chief of the Hammond tribe, whose people straddle the border region at nearby Chamchamal, said that earlier this fall a smuggler who often passes through the lines saw Iraqi soldiers with heavy equipment digging holes at night in remote gullies, and burying metal containers.
Mr. Abdulkader said that two weeks ago he received two separate tips of people burying materials at night under a military guard, and has been given descriptions of four trucks that are thought to be mobile biological labs.
The official with the reports on his desk said that the sheer volume of the tips, and the debate about what to do with them, meant that information was allowed to go stale. He said his informant on the storage site at Tuz Khormatu complained. "He asked me, `Why are you not coming to this mosque?' We give you this information, why are you not coming here?' "
The tension and frustration is high enough in the region that at least one tipster has approached outsiders, although he seemed motivated more by opportunism than public service. An unshaven man in a suit visited an ABC News producer in his hotel room here in late November, seeking $50,000 to arrange the smuggling of what he called suspicious bottles out of a weapons factory in Baghdad.
The man said the region was overrun with spies, and that he did not want to notify the Kurdish government because he might be interrogated. He also hinted at fears that he might be killed by the Iraqis.
The producer, Kevin McKiernan, declined the offer and notified his office. He wrote in his journal that the visitor "seemed angry when I told him that news reporters don't buy materials."
The surge of tips has a familiar past. Another Kurdish official, who worked as a liaison to the United States military during its relief operation in northern Iraq in the early 1990's, said he helped sort and assemble reports for American officials in Dohuk and Erbil.
Each report was filled with detailed tips about illegal activities in Mr. Hussein's Iraq. The official said the volume was enormous, and reading through them was often a frustrating chore.
"I assumed that 10 or 20 percent were correct," he said. "The rest I just crossed out, or wrote a note on the papers we gave them: `From an unreliable source'."
Iraqi Exile Offers Information
TEHRAN, Dec. 28 - An Iraqi opposition leader based here in Iran said today that his group had evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and offered to share the information with the United Nations if the world organization established ties with it.
"We have information about the modernization of weapons of mass destruction by the Iraqi regime and we have detailed information about some of the sites, as well as some of the ways in which the Iraqi regime tries to hide them," said Abdelaziz al-Hakim, a representative of a Shiite opposition group.
----
Vice Policy
The hidden policies of the United States
by Aaron M. Esquivel •
Sunday December 29, 2002
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1555619.php
Its time for us all to wake up. To realize our own foreign policy. The see how it hurts other, and us. From Terrorism, to oil, to drugs, and political prisoners we have our hands in it all. This book will finally relieve all the terrible policies of the U.S.
Vice: An evil, degrading, or immoral practice or habit; A serious moral failing; Wicked or evil conduct or habits; corruption.
Terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Imperialism: The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.(2) The system, policies, or practices of such a government.
civil liberties: Fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, protected by law against unwarranted governmental or other interference.
The United States' idea of how to stop or answer the Challenge of terrorism and how to 'secure' our interests has changed little over the years. The theory the US has, is that with enough well placed bombs, with enough key figures taken down, the attacks with just stop, and our interests secure. The idea is that we go in, take down governments unfavorable to us, to our interested, and of course supporting "those who hate freedom" (George Bush). Then set up our own. We feel that force should be answered with yet, more force, that it is America's way, or get the hell our of our way.
We should be able to crush any opposition to are ways, are freedoms our securities, right? Could one possibly argue that we are using all our power with any real type of responsibility? Sure we provide aid, etc. However those are just scratching the surface. When you look past all the glimmer and shine, you see a different us of power. Soon the abuse of power comes to light. The truth is, it's there. It's an ugly fact of our past, and present we must live with. A fact we can no longer ignore. For decades, ever since the end of the second world war, the United States has been involved in millions of killings around the world. Many like Vietnam, and Korea you here about in history class. The killing fields didn't exist with American involvement there alone. Other countries were greatly effected in negative ways by the United States Foreign police.
If I think American foreign policy is to a product American geographic, cultural and intellectual isolation, combined with a belief in American cultural supremacy, a near xenophobic disregard for foreign ideas, and a tendency to understand nationalism in only the most jingoistic terms, does that make me anti-American? The question ultimately revolves around what it means to be American. I don't think that it is so easy to separate the guilt of America's leaders from the people who created them, elected them and supported them. True, America's politicians do not and never have encompassed all that America is. To say that many Americans have the flaws I named in the first paragraph is not to say that America has no virtues. However, I am hard pressed to say that America's virtues are truly American while it's faults are only the faults of its leadership.
The US is not a dictatorship, even dictatorships, usually, need public consent to survive. People in Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered and died because of the policies of their Un-eleceted leaders. Americans have to take at least some responsibility for their elected leaders.
(Note: Taken from GNN. The other sources used By Anthany Lappe Listed on the last page) Philippines(Yes, its pre-WWII, but it sets the whole tone) "The 1899 Filipino-American War is one of those nasty little conflicts that you won't find a lot about in your high school history textbook. Call it the first Vietnam. During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U.S. help the Filipinos gain independence from Spain. Then they declare the country an American colony. A brutal war follows. Many of the scorched-earth tactics used in Vietnam are first used here. More than 100,000 Filipinos die. A large anti-imperialism movement starts in the U.S. "We do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem," wrote early celebrity activist Mark Twain.
In 1945, the Americans come back to the Philippines. Even though they have a common enemy - Japan - America fights leftist forces known as Huks. The U.S. defeat the Huks, and install a series of puppet presidents, culminating in the absurdly corrupt Ferdinand Marcos. He and his high-heel-obsessed wife bilk the poverty-ridden country dry for three decades, until retiring comfortably in Hawaii. "
Iran "1953 - The CIA's first big takedown. The democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh had to go. He was talking crazy talk, like nationalizing Iran's oil. A CIA-sponsored coup restores the Shah to absolute power that begins 25 years of repression and torture. Iran's oil is returned to its rightful owners, the Americans and British. This, of course, sets the stage for a radical Islamic revolution in 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini takes over, holds Americans hostage, burns many American flags, and pisses off rednecks across America. "
Guatemala "1953 - Jacobo Arbenz also had to go. The progressive democratically elected president is also talking that crazy talk - you know, land reform, civil liberties, nationalizing the Washington-connected United Fruit Company. The CIA organizes a massive disinformation campaign and coup. Next up: 40 years of bad, bad things you don't even want to think about - American-trained death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions. Victims: 100,000+."
Middle East "In the 50s, the Eisenhower Doctrine stated the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." In other words, no one is allowed to fuck around in the Middle East or its oil fields except the United States. The U.S. tries to overthrow the Syrian government (twice), lands 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspires to overthrow and assassinate Arab nationalist Nasser in Egypt. U.S. supports Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon. "
Indonesia "1957 - President Sukarno is another troublemaker. He takes back Indonesian companies from their former colonial master, the Dutch. He takes a trip to Moscow. He refuses to crack down on communists. The CIA launches a disinformation campaign, tries to blackmail him with a fake sex film, plots his assassination, and hooks up with dissident military officers to start a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno, unlike many on the Agency's hit list, somehow survives. 1965 - Sukarno is finally overthrown by General Suharto. The U.S. helps him track down anyone suspected of being communist. The New York Times calls what follows "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." Up to one million die. "
Cambodia "1969 - Nixon and Kissinger begin their secret "carpet bombings" of Cambodia. They say it is to kill Vietcong hiding out in the Cambodian jungle. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians die. 1970 - Washington finally helps overthrow troublesome Prince Sihanouk in a coup. The U.S. enlists the genocidal maniac Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to help fight the Vietcong. Five years later, Pol Pot takes over, declares "Year Zero," kills anyone with an education, or even wearing glasses, and sends everyone to the countryside to work in agricultural labor camps. More than two million die in his "killing fields""
The Congo/Zaire "1960 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But the Belgians don't quite leave. They keep their hands on the vast mineral wealth in the Katanga province, where the Americans also have a piece of the action. Lumumba is defiant, calling for the Congo's economic and political liberation. In other words, he is doomed. In January 1961, he is assassinated with help from the CIA, under orders from Eisenhower himself. His body is chopped up into little pieces and burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Even his CIA handlers are amazed at his cruelty. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d'Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million. "
Cuba "1959 - The Americans begin a comically disastrous campaign to oust Castro. They help launch a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs and are crushed. They launch gunboat attacks, bombings, biological warfare. New evidence has just come out that the CIA even considered committing terrorist acts and then blaming them on Cuba as a pretext to invade again. They try to send Castro exploding cigars. Spray poison on his beard. The U.S. issues sanctions and a trade embargo that, more than anything, ensures Castro remains in power. "
Chile "1973 - Salvador Allende was a "dangerous" man. He was popular, democratically elected, and a leftist. Against the objections of many inside the US State Department, the CIA, pushed by Kissinger, helps the military overthrow the government. Allende is killed. General Pinochet closes off the country to the outside world. Tanks roll in, soldiers round up students, stadiums turn into execution fields, the country is gripped by fear. For two decades, Pinochet rules with a brutal hand, and thousands of students, union organizers and other bad apples are "disappeared".
East Timor "December 1975 - Indonesia invades the small island of East Timor, which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal left. The day before, U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were in Indonesia meeting with Indonesian President Suharto. Amnesty International estimates that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The U.S. supplies Indonesia with aid, guns, and training throughout. "
Nicaragua "1978 - the leftist Sandinistas overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. Reagan becomes obsessed with taking out the Cuba-and-Soviet-friendly government, enlisting an army of mercenaries, drug dealers and ex-Somoza National Guardsmen. The Contras attack schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, and bombing. When Congress cuts off funds, Reagan's "freedom fighters" are financed by CIA drug-dealing and secret arms sales to Iran in what comes to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair. "
El Salvador "During El Salvador's bloody civil war (1980-92), the U.S. funds, trains, and secretly fights alongside a military that operates less like a traditional army than a loose confederation of homicidal fraternities. By the end of the war, 75,000 Salvadorans are dead. "
Panama "During the 80s, Manny Noriega was George Bush's boy. On the CIA payroll, he helped the U.S. run drugs, launder money and ship arms to its operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Turned out he was helping Castro, laundering money for Pablo Escobar, and talking smack about U.S. imperialism. Plus he knew way too much about the whole Iran-Contra scandal. In December 1989, Bush sends in the Green Berets to arrest him for drug dealing. A whole Panama City barrio is leveled. The official body count is 500-something, others say 3,000. Noriega sits in a Florida jail feeling confused."
Iraq "In the 80s, Saddam Hussein is America's ally. The U.S. sends him weapons and money as he fights a seemingly endless war against Iran, murders his political opponents, and gasses the Kurds. In 1991, Saddam is pissed off at neighboring Kuwait (a country invented by Britain) for undercutting the price of oil. He invades. The U.S. forms an international coalition to "liberate" Kuwait. Saddam sends an army of barefoot conscripts. For more than 40 days and nights, 177 million pounds of bombs fall on Iraq - the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. The U.S. uses cancer-causing depleted uranium weapons; they bury soldiers alive; they bomb retreating troops and civilians. At the war's end, the U.S. turns its back on the Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces. While Saddam remains in power, U.S. sanctions and continued bombing keep food, medicine, and clean water from everyday Iraqis. According to the UN, over one million Iraqis have died, half of them children."
Afghanistan "Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. pours billions of dollars into overthrowing a pro-Soviet government. The CIA funds, trains, and arms a guerrilla army of Islamic extremists known as the Mujahideen. The Soviets are driven out, in their version of Vietnam. More than a million Afghan are dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees. The country slides into civil war in which an even more radical group of Pakistan-educated students and uneducated hillbillies known as the Taliban take over. The country becomes a haven for anti-American terrorists groups and women-haters. Lies flourish. While outwardly criticizing the Taliban, behind the scenes the CIA and American oil companies jockey for leverage to build a pipeline across the country." Colombia "2001- Colombia's three-decade-old civil war is still going strong, despite, or one might say, as a result of $1.4 billion of U.S. military aid. The country is a chaotic death trap. Marxist rebels hold large portions of the country; American mercenaries and defense department front companies like DynCorp are covertly helping the inept Colombian military; right-wing paramilitaries are massacring civilians; and everyone has their hands in the super-lucrative drug trade. Most people don't know that American forces have been around for while. In the early 90s, a secret group code-named Centra Spike launch a covert operation to take out Pablo Escobar, a major cocaine lord who made the fatal mistake of giving money to the poor and talking shit about American imperialism. The Colombian government and the secret American unit go into business with Escobar's rival the Cali Cartel. Escobar is finally killed. The Cali Cartel's power is solidified and the flow of cocaine into the U.S. only increases. "
This type of foreign policy plays into terrorism, hatred and criticisms of the US. Yes, it is very true, terrorism is practiced by the ones who the power. Such as Osama Bind Laden. Poverty does not breed terrorism. The sentiment of the Third World countries is still the same: 'We are not happy with the way the more power nations (European Union, US, Canada, Etc.) treat us' If our country goes in to the streets of any Third World nation, there are those who will object. However, their voices are often lost with in the sea of the bias main-stream media, and are made to be the outsiders. We need to view the world through a different set of eyes. Paul Martin for example said: " We've got to understand that our way is not the only way of looking at the world."
Since S-11, the date that has been considered the moment when the whole western world was menaced. There have been many statements about Islam being the root of the problems. That no other country, or set of countries has had reactions such as these. The example of Latin America is used. Well the truth is it occurs within these countries as well. The west is just seemingly blind to these facts. Of course those living the powerful western nations will cringe when they hear these facts. The victims relatives will be outraged. When putting things into perspective, we only feel these tragedies from our own home-front. We tend not to care about those half way around the world.
We care not who are bombs fall on, who our sanctions kill, who are puppet governments oppress. As long as we have our interests secured, and our freedom "protected". These people are hundreds, or thousands of miles away. The facts we must face, is that no matter how powerful the west is, we must weigh what we do carefully, or else we will risk more attacks, more criticism, more hatred of our land, government and people. This is not about poverty. Poverty does not breed terrorism. It is about justice, for a countries sovereignty. While the means of terrorism can not be justified, it can be, at least, no provoked. The War on Drugs
While evil is abroad in the land, as it most definitely is in contemporary America, it is wrong to be silent, to look the other way, as the "good Germans" did during the Nazi persecutions. To ignore this evil that is obviously present around you is to allow it to flourish. Is to allow this evil to create the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands on your fellow citizens. Their crime, might you ask, is addiction.
This war of evils, is not something that is easily remedied. During the past few decades a group of a select few have lied and deceived the American people. This small unscrupulous people, addicted to money and power is the evil. Through this groups willingness to destroy American resolve to understand why it exists and why it continues to exist. The solution is best summed up as, "Just Say Know" Knowledge is power. It shall be the sword we Wheeled, you finely eliminate this evil in our land, our world.
This campaign of questioning and reform shall begin here. Why does this war on drugs persist? Through the foreign policy of the US, the need to acquire large sums of money is obvesly seen by now, if you have read any of this book. Congress won't sanction money for all operations around the world. Nor, is congress told of all the operations, bother militarily and politically carried out around the world. The simplest answer to these money woes, is the super-lucrative drug trade.
Anyone willing to take the time to do some research can find evidence of this. The world wide, US sponsored drug prohibition, a.k.a. the war on drugs, is the primary tactic for keeping the prices of items such as crack, cocaine, and heroine high. This ensures high profits, despite the social and personal damage done. These actions will, of course, continue until their are no "threats" to US interests, allies and freedoms. Again the answer to the problem is question, and reform, both socially and legally.
When the world's traditional inebriative substances become illegal commodities, they become worth as much as precious metal, precious metal that can be farmed. ... Illegal drugs, solely because of the artificial value given them by Prohibition, have become the basis of military power anywhere they can be grown and delivered in quantity. To this day, American defense contractors are the biggest drug-money launderers in the world.
Any means may be used to attain the end. One useful means is the exploitation of the urge humans have to modify their consciousness by eating, drinking, smoking or snorting substances found to produce desirable effects. Humans have done it for ages. Bring in a capitalist socio-economic system and you have a sure way to make a lot of money. Especially if consumer prices can be jacked way up.
The US War on Drugs seemingly has lasted forever. Year after you it becomes crazier and crazier. This, so called war ruins more and more lives, and drives the US deeper to the pit of social disaster. How is it possible that this insanity persists (even though intelligent and rational people have been pointing out for many years how crazy and evil it is)for an understanding of what lies behind this monstrosity.
America, with less than 5 percent of the world population, has a quarter of the world's prisoners. There are six times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries that make up the entire European Union, even though those countries have 100 million more citizens than the United States.
In August 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the number of men and women behind bars in the U.S. at the end of 1999 exceeded two million and the rate of incarceration had reached 690 inmates per 100,000 residents - a rate Human Rights Watch believed to be the highest in the world
This unrelenting war on drugs continued to pull down hundreds of thousands of drug offenders into the criminal justice system: 1,559,100 people were arrested on drug charges in 1998; approximately 450,000 drug offenders were confined in jails and prisons. According to the Department of Justice, 107,000 people were sent to state prison on drug charges in 1998, representing 30.8 percent of all new state admissions. Drug offenders constituted 57.8 percent of all federal inmates. - Human Rights Watch World Report 2001: United States
The real problem with drugs in the modern world is that they are illegal. Put simply, the Drug War exists primarily to support - financially and otherwise - the maintenance of the criminal status of the possession of certain drugs so that those (mostly on the payroll of the federal government) who profit big - directly or indirectly - from the supply of prohibited drugs can continue to do so, at the expense of everyone else, and especially at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned for "victimless" crimes.
This is a scandal, and a disgrace of the first, magnitude. It will become for the United States of America a source of enduring shame and infamy. By the end of the 1980's it was calculated that the illegal use of drugs in the United States now netted its controllers over $110 billion a year. - Modern Times CIA, Propaganda and Drugs
The well established facts of the CIA are interfearence in international politics, as well as a disregard for international law(the same law we like others to follow). However, the less know fact of the CIA is that the intelligence agency conducted the same covert operations at home. In breach of its own charter and the National Security Act of 1947.
Operatives with academic cover have worked extensively with agency for years, on campuses around the world. They have written books, articles and reports for Use on the US. All done with CIA sponsorship and control. They have spied on foreign nationals at home and abroad. The CIA has regularly recruited students and teachers for the agency. Conferences have been hosted with secret CIA backing under the cover of scholarly, to promote disinformation. They collect extensive data under the disguise of research of Third World movements, opposed to US interference.
In 1956 the Asia Foundation, established by the CIA provide $88 Million in funding each year. For years this foundation sponsored research, supported those lovely disinformation conferences, ran academic exchange programs, funded anti-Communist academics in Various Asian countries. A large number of American academics also participated.
From 1955 to 1959, Michigan State University was under a $25 million contract with the CIA to provide academic cover to five CIA agents stationed in South Vietnam. Their jobs included drafting the South Vietnamese government's Constitution and providing police training and weapons to the repressive Diem regime.
According to John P. Littlejohn, the CIA's deputy director of personnel, approximately 1,000 CIA employees are hired each year from campuses and two to three hundred of these become clandestine officers. Since the 1950s, the CIA conducted extensive operations within newspaper, magazine and television organizations, maintaining liaison relationships with about 50 American journalists and U.S. media organizations. An uncensored portion of the Senate's Church Committee investigation into the CIA stated: "They [the 50] are part of a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of foreign newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers and other foreign media outlets."
The Agency also established close links with book publishing houses and media organizations in the U.S. Between 1947 and 1967, the CIA produced, subsidized or sponsored well over 1,000 books, many of them published by cultural organizations backed by the Agency. After taking office, President Bush greatly increased the CIA's secret budget for internal spying and the number of academics on the Agency's payroll expanded sharply.
In 1982, the CIA brazenly proposed that all scientific research papers written in the United States by U.S. academics be submitted to the Agency for "prior review." And in 1986, Robert Gates, the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence, told university professors at a public speaking engagement that the CIA would "continue to strengthen the kinds of programs it ran in universities in the past", and "We need your help." One example of this was the case of Professor Richard Mansbach, head of the political science department at Rutgers, who assigned an undergraduate class to do data-intensive research on Western European political culture. The studies that the students carried out on Western Europe's disarmament, labor, women's and environmental movements were secretly passed on to the CIA.
Professor Nadav Safran was forced to leave his director's position at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Affairs in 1986, when it was revealed that he was on the CIA's payroll. He had received over $100,000 from the Agency to write a book on Saudi Arabia and $50,000 to organize a university conference on Islam. Just a year earlier, the director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington, was also uncloaked as a CIA asset, having worked secretly with a CIA consultant and published documents that were funded by the Agency.
It is safe to assume that only a small number of CIA academics are ever exposed, while the great majority remain secret. It is difficult to typecast the CIA scholar. Gustav Hilger, a CIA academic who held posts at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, was a former member of the Nazi Foreign Office. But even liberal professors have been inducted into the CIA.
James R. Hooker of Michigan State's African Studies Center was regarded as left thinking; he spoke publicly against the Vietnam War and was friendly with leaders of liberation movements in Africa and the Caribbean. However, as a CIA researcher, Hooker traveled to Africa to document the support of various political parties and eventually gave his support to UNITA and the FNLA in Angola. In 1987, Harvard University agreed to take on a $1.2 million study in conjunction with the CIA to study problems in intelligence assessment and foreign policy, using the Philippines as a model.
Just as the FBI's illegal actions against U.S. citizens did not stop with the supposed termination of its COINTELPRO program, so the termination of the CIA's Operation CHAOS never ended the Agency's criminal activities against domestic dissidents. President Reagan extended the CIA's domestic operations dramatically and the following Bush administration and CIA head William Webster both announced the need to again target political enemies of the U.S. for assassination.
The CIA is not the only U.S.-based organization with frightening domestic surveillance capacities. Using a computer system called HARVEST, the National Security Agency (NSA) can monitor thousands of phone conversations simultaneously, honing in on and recording specific conversations according to pre-programmed "trigger words" such as "Cuba," "CIA," or "protest."
FEMA developed a secret contingency plan, written as part of an Executive Order signed by President Reagan, for use in a "severe crisis." The plan calls for suspension of the Constitution, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments, and declaration of martial law. Such a "crisis" situation includes "domestic opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad."
Much of what was done outside the law under the COINTELPRO and CHAOS programs has since been legalized by Executive Order No. 12333, signed by the President on December 4th 1981. This gives the CIA extended license to carry out domestic operations in the United States and limits the public's access to information about these operations.
Also under Executive Order 12333, government infiltration "for the purpose of influencing the activity of domestic political organizations" has received official sanction. The CIA's methodology, applied so ruthlessly abroad, has now been given full legislation for use at home... Now under the call of fighting terrorism, and for freedom, more agencies gain great powers to spy on American Citizens. Money Laundering, Black funding, Drugs, The CIA
Well hidden from the public eye, leading banks have connections with organized crime, and the intelligence community. They gladly turn a blind-eye to the misdeals of their clients, in order to reap huge commissions from laundering money. $6 trillion circulates around the world's financial markets. Of this $1.5 trillion is illicit, $500 billion, relates to narcotics trade. More money is spent globally on drugs then food. $200 billion of the narcotics are shipped to the U.S. each year.
How does this tie into the CIA? The CIA Needs "black" funds to finance is covert operations. They founds can not be founded by official or legal channels. They need to be virtually free of finance records. Arms and other military hardware are exchanged for narcotics. In turn these are soled for money that is used to finance further black operations.
In 1981, the Posse Comitas Act of 1878 war modified, explicitly allowing for military support for anti-drug efforts. This new legislation permitted the pentagon to provide information, equipment, training and facilities to law enforcement worldwide. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued a secret opinion that US military personal could apprehend accuse drug traffickers abroad. A new power not even allowed at home. The Military was also allowed to act with out host country consent.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act also of 1981, called for a significant increase in military aid to countries involved in the US "anti-drug" programs. This act also exempted Columbia from a 1974 Foreign Assistance Act ban on aid to foreign police. Further more, it authorized $15 million of military equipment for Colombia, to supposedly fight drugs. In reality it was to fight against leftists.
The results of America's drug war are plain to see. For example, in Colombia, on August 18th 1991, members of the army's counterinsurgency XIII Brigade burst into the home of political activist Antonio Palacios Urrea, murdered him and three of his children, and tortured other family members.
Military documents were leaked to Amnesty international, and confirmed that the counter-narcotics funding was going to this unit. Defense Department documents showed that all but one Colombian Amy brigade participated in massive human rights violations. They all had received US aid.
Colombian and US military documents showed that in 1991 the CIA was directly involved in designing and funding 41 intelligence agencies for the Colombian Defense Ministry. According to a leaked, classified ministry order, the networks' only function was to target "leftist subversion."
Regional commanders overseeing linked airstrips, in Peru received $10,00 per shipment of drugs. The shipments were load by soldiers onto planes bound for Colombia. McCaffrey's visit to bestow Washington's seal of approval on Montesinos was preceded by a personal letter from President Clinton praising Peru's human rights record and its "admirable progress in the war on drugs." The Problems do not live there alone. Drug trafficking with CIA involvement take place everywhere from Russia, to Canada, to Britain.
Many government's intelligence services have close relations with narcotics traffickers. Instead of reducing or repressing the drug supply, they have secretly protect them. Insuring the agency's further operation. They often eliminate the rivals of the traffickers they favor. As special counsel Jack Blum put it: "The problem is, if you go to bed with dogs, you get up with fleas. If you empower criminals because empowering them happens to be helpful at the time, the criminals are sure to turn on you next." Under Reagan and Bush, 70% of the federal drug budget was aimed at law enforcement while only 30% was focused on education, prevention and treatment. Under Clinton, two thirds of the budget was still focused on law enforcement.
America's drug prohibition is much the same as the that of the 1920's and 1930's. The very illegality of drugs, such as, opium allows their trade for far greater profits than any other commodity. producing enormous incomes for criminal networks, with which they can purchase enough protection - politically and militarily - to survive any attempt at suppression. Many academic, drug experts and politicians in the U.S. and abroad support the radical alternative to drug prohibition and the "War on Drugs" - Legalization.
With just a stroke of the politician's pen, the spread of drug-related street crime would recede and the drug gangs would lose their markets. Unless such policies are applied with some urgency, the real war on drugs will never be won.
The findings on the CIA alone should be summed up as follows: The literature that exists of the CIA's illegal domestic operations is by no means complete, since it describes only those activities that have been uncovered, and most of those have only come to light years after the fact, because of unauthorized leaks or Freedom of Information Act requests. There is good reason to believe that the number of operations has escalated, rather than diminished
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Saudi Arabia Said to Assure U.S. on Use of Bases
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/middleeast/29SAUD.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - Saudi Arabia has told American military officials that the kingdom would make its airspace, air bases and an important operations center available to the United States in the event of war with Iraq, senior military officials say.
Saudi Arabia was the main staging area for American forces in the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but conflicting public statements by top Saudi officials over the past several months have cast doubt on Saudi Arabia's support for military operations against Iraq this time around.
American commanders now say they have been given private assurances in recent weeks that they will be allowed to run an air war against Iraq from a sophisticated command center at Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital. It is the same command post that ran the air campaign in Afghanistan.
Because of its nearness to Iraq and large, modern facilities like the Prince Sultan base, Saudi Arabia offers crucial advantages as a staging area for military operations. But because of uncertainty about Saudi cooperation, the Pentagon proceeded with plans to build an alternate air command post in Qatar, where the overall American command for Iraqi operations will be headquartered.
American commanders now say allied refueling, reconnaissance, surveillance and cargo planes will be allowed to fly from Saudi bases, using Saudi airspace on the way to missions in or near Iraq. And these officials are expressing confidence that the Saudis will ultimately allow attack missions, which are more politically sensitive, to be flown from their soil.
In a significant sign of the new cooperation, Saudi officials over the past two months have quietly permitted American warplanes based in the kingdom to bomb targets in southern Iraq in response to Iraqi violations of the no-flight zone there. Previously, those missions were flown out of Kuwait.
"I firmly believe the Saudis will give us all the cooperation we need, and every indication I have is we're getting pretty much what we've asked for," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview.
Officials in Riyadh and Washington continue to pursue delicate talks on the precise details of any Saudi support. But American officials say that all the Pentagon's requests are now on the table, even the use of Saudi ports and bases for small numbers of American and coalition ground troops.
"It's all an open question," said Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee who traveled to Saudi Arabia this month. Mr. Hagel said the broadest Saudi cooperation hinged on another United Nations Security Council resolution supporting the use of force to disarm Iraq.
"If we stay close to the U.N. and give countries like Saudi Arabia the political cover they need, yes," Mr. Hagel said in a telephone interview. "If the U.S. veers off course and moves toward a unilateral position with the Brits, then that puts those Arab governments in a very difficult spot."
American officials and Middle East experts attribute the improved Saudi cooperation to several factors. As President Bush appears to move closer to ordering an attack against Iraq, Saudi officials do not want to cross a strategic ally at a pivotal time in the countries' relationship.
"They've been longtime strategic partners with the United States," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a visit to the Persian Gulf this week.
But more broadly, Saudi officials are trying to repair the damage in American-Saudi relations stemming in part from the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States were Saudis. And Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington and his wife have been pressed to explain how payments she made to the ailing Jordanian wife of a Saudi man ended up in the hands of two Saudi men who have been under scrutiny for their close ties to hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Publicly, Saudi officials remain noncommittal about allowing their territory to be used as a staging area for war against Iraq.
Asked whether Saudi Arabia would allow the United States to use its bases in case of war, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told CNN last Sunday: "It depends on the war. If it is a war that is through the United Nations, with consensus on it, we will have to decide on that based on the national interests of Saudi Arabia."
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy here did not return two phone calls to his office.
None of this particularly disturbs senior American military officials and diplomats, who say they are accustomed to dealing with Saudi sensitivities, and the often conflicting views of the royal family, in private.
"Publicly, we'll never have the Saudis throw a parade and celebrate what they're doing for us. But in the end, they will be there," said a senior military official.
Given the past uncertainty regarding the Saudi position on use of their bases, however, the Pentagon made contingency plans in the event American forces' access was restricted.
The military built its alternate air command center at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. It is just a few miles from the Central Command headquarters at Camp As Sayliyah where Gen. Tommy R. Franks, commander of American forces in the Persian Gulf region, would direct at least the early phases of any war.
The United States and Britain are stationing dozens of aircraft at a necklace of bases in Persian Gulf countries, including Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. American officials are negotiating with Turkey for use of several bases there and plan to station B-2 stealth bombers overseas for the first time, at Britain's Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean.
But the modern facilities, excellent communications, abundant fuel and supplies, and proximity to Iraq make the Saudi bases among the most attractive to American commanders.
For that reason, American officials, including the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Robert W. Jordan, and the commander of allied air forces in the region, Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley of the Air Force, have continued discussions with their Saudi counterparts, including the Saudi ambassador here, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
"There's been an ongoing dialogue," said Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman.
American commanders said relations with their Saudi military counterparts had not suffered seriously from the political tensions in American-Saudi relations.
For example, restrictions on American training missions have been loosened in recent months, and Saudi military officers are playing an increasingly important role in the operations center at Prince Sultan, said General Jumper, who visited Saudi Arabia last month and has close ties with its senior military leaders.
"I don't think we should take, from any of the nations over there, their lack of instantly signing up to full cooperation as a sign of anything but them taking a careful approach to what they agreed to do," General Jumper said.
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THE RESERVES
Duty Calls, and Citizens Become Soldiers
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/national/29RESE.html
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 28 - If ambivalence is an expression, Bukeka Knight wears it like a grin.
One moment she looks calm as could be; the next, completely terrified.
On Friday night, in a rushed ceremony rich with the drama of romance and combat, she wed Merrith Knight, an Army Reserve specialist.
Today, Ms. Knight was on the sidelines of a high school football field with a paper program in her hands, her husband marching in formation and her eyes lost in a long goodbye.
"It's too soon," she said. "I want to be supportive. And I am proud. But I keep thinking about chemical weapons. And Merrith going off into that. It scares me you can get hurt by something you can't see."
Mixed feelings were as much on display as flags and a star-studded cake at a farewell ceremony for the 724th Military Police Battalion in Fort Lauderdale, one of the first Florida Army Reserve units to be called up as the Bush administration readies for a military campaign to disarm Iraq. About 150 soldiers, most from South Florida, will leave on Jan. 2 for Fort Dix, N.J., and then for Kuwait. While the soldiers stomped smartly around the field and belted out cheers, their families sat quietly in the stands.
What Ms. Knight and other Reserve families are experiencing here, thousands of others will soon taste. War or not, waves of reservists from across the country are being called up, first for retraining, then most likely for deployment in the Persian Gulf. They could be gone for as long as a year.
Pfc. Burke Jackson, 23, a student and an Army reservist, was celebrating Christmas with family in Mississippi when he got the call from his commanding officer. His grandmother nearly broke down.
"I had to explain to her that my time at Fort Benning gave me everything I needed to know in order to kill someone, plus what I needed to know to keep myself alive," Private Jackson said. "It wasn't what she wanted to hear, but it's true."
His mother told him "to find the biggest tree over there and stay behind it," something the family agreed might be tough in the desert.
Some 8,000 to 10,000 Army National Guard and Reserve members are expected to be mobilized over the next several days, mainly to help fill a shortage of security personnel at Air Force bases in the United States.
In addition, the Army and Navy are alerting about 27,000 National Guard and Reserve troops to prepare for duty, largely in the Persian Gulf region. Many will be military police officers, and about 1,000 are naval reservists.
The new call-up of reserve forces comes on the heels of a prolonged mobilization after the Sept. 11 attacks. Guard and Reserve mobilization peaked at 77,455 people during intense fighting in Afghanistan. The number has dipped and risen over the months and was 53,217 last week, according to Pentagon records.
If President Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the Pentagon has plans to summon as many as 265,000 members of the National Guard and Reserve.
The 724th Military Police Battalion has spent the past several weeks learning to handle prisoners of war. Soldiers also learned important phrases in Arabic.
Many younger soldiers said they were eager to go.
"When it's time to leave, it's time to leave," said Specialist Ryan Maharaj, a 20-year-old community college student.
Others are not so pumped.
"I'll be honest - I didn't want to go back," said Sgt. First Class Bob Adrian, who was a military police officer in the gulf war in 1991. "I was watching the news, hoping it wouldn't come to this. But as I've always said with the Reserves, what you sign up for is one weekend a month, two weeks a year and the occasional war."
Many soldiers said there was nothing worse than leaving during the holidays. Acts of kindness have tried to offset this. Last week, Wal-Mart chartered 17 buses to ferry Oklahoma National Guard soldiers home from Fort Carson, Colo., where they have been training since October. That allowed the soldiers a few precious days with loved ones before pushing off for a six-month deployment to Kuwait and Egypt.
After the speeches at the ceremony today, soldiers and family members crowded into a mess hall strung with balloons.
"We've learned over the years that it really helps to throw a good goodbye party," said Maj. Bill Nutter, a Reserve spokesman. "It's a morale booster."
Some soldiers clearly needed it.
Claribell Reid, 34, a corrections officer and a sergeant in the Reserves, is leaving behind a 4-month-old daughter.
"It's very heartbreaking," Sergeant Reid said. "I'm thinking how will she react when I come back. She won't know me."
To help, Sergeant Reid left a giant picture of herself in her daughter's room.
The Knights, the newlyweds, tried to make themselves happy by talking of their honeymoon.
"We're going on a cruise, a long one," Ms. Knight, 29, said.
"Don't worry, honey," Specialist Knight, 21, said. "I'll be there."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- drug war
Tribesmen Take Up Arms to Resist Afghan Drug War
December 29, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-afghan-opium.html
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Authorities were forced to stop destruction of opium poppy fields in parts of an eastern Afghan province after tribesmen took up arms to resist the move, residents said Sunday.
They said tribesmen in Shinwar, Khogyani and Achin districts of Nangarhar province opened fire when anti-drug enforcers from the provincial government showed up Saturday and an unidentified person was wounded in Achin.
Production of opium, which is used to make heroin exported to Europe and the United States, has soared to near record levels in Afghanistan since the fall of the fundamentalist Taliban regime last year.
Noor Rahman, a native of Khogyani, said tribesmen had vowed to resist future eradication efforts with force.
``The tribesmen used loudspeakers to call on people to come out of their houses to resist the plan,'' he told Reuters. ``Government troops have been forced to leave the area.''
Saifour Rahman, from Shinwar, said the tribesmen there had also vowed armed resistance, saying the government had failed to provide alternatives to opium growing.
The Taliban succeeded in implementing a near total ban on production, but this collapsed after its overthrow.
The United Nations has forecast Afghanistan's opium production will reach a near record 3,400 tons this year, making it the world's biggest producer once more.
More than a third of Afghanistan's drugs come from Nangahar, which border's Pakistan's tribal belt.
Authorities in the provincial capital Jalalabad said the tribal resistance was only a temporary problem.
``People can't stop this effort,'' Jalalabad governor Haji Deen Mohammad said in reaction to the events.
However, it appeared a setback for President Hamid Karzai's government, which is under pressure from its Western backers to halt opium cultivation.
Karzai ordered a ban on drugs production when he came to power and promised farmers $350 for each acre of poppies destroyed. But many farmers complain they have yet to see any compensation and have flouted the ban.
In the spring, several dozen opium farmers were killed in a battle with government forces in the southern province of Helmand.
Diplomats say current erradication efforts may achieve little since poppies plowed up so soon after planting have time to grow again.
They say farmers in debt to moneylenders often find they have no choice but to grow opium, sometimes at the behest of powerful local figures who profit most from the trade.
-------- terrorism
Unmanned drones will guard U.S. coastlines
Fri, Dec. 27, 2002
BY DEREK ROSE
New York Daily News
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/4822973.htm
NEW YORK - Aerial drones have had starring roles in the war on terrorism, but a new generation of the flying robots is going to be deployed to patrol the U.S. coastline for drug smugglers, refugees and ships in distress.
The Coast Guard is getting up to 70 remote-controlled aircraft that it can launch from its cutters, extending its eyes for miles.
The first of the $3 million Eagle Eye drones, which take off like a helicopter but tilt their rotors to fly like a plane, could be on patrol by 2006.
"They'd be used for maritime homeland defense, fisheries enforcement, counter-narcotics patrols and possibly for search and rescue," said Coast Guard Cmdr. John Fitzgerald. "Right now, out at sea, you're limited to the range of a helicopter."
The Eagle Eye drones can fly up to 220 knots and have a range of 750 nautical miles - 80 percent faster and farther than the Coast Guard's short-range helicopter, the HH-65 Dolphin.
The drones also can transmit video and infrared images to the cutter and a Coast Guard command center back on shore.
"So now you've got multiple people seeing the same picture almost instantaneously, and we can react faster and better and deploy the right asset at the right time," Fitzgerald said.
Tom Sperduto, a Coast Guard spokesman based in New York, said the drones would free up personnel while extending the Coast Guard's capabilities. "We'll have another set of eyes looking at the dangers that are going on now," he said.
Known as unmanned aerial vehicles, the drones are part of a $17 billion, 20-year program modernizing the Coast Guard's aging ships and aircraft.
About half the work will be done in Moorestown, N.J., by Lockheed Martin, which won the contract in a joint venture with Northrop Grumman.
The modernization program is called Deepwater because it's aimed at extending the Coast Guard's reach far offshore.
The Coast Guard aircraft will not be armed, unlike the CIA's Predator drone that vaporized al-Qaida leaders Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi in Yemen last month and Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan last year.
As part of Deepwater, the Coast Guard also will acquire seven $35 million Global Hawk spy planes in 2016.
The Northrop Grumman planes are unmanned, just like the Bell Helicopter Eagle Eyes, but that's where the similarities end. Global Hawks have the wingspan of a Boeing 737 and fly 12 miles high, double the altitude of most commercial planes.
Global Hawks are controlled by computer, rather than by a human operator. One flew from California to Australia last year.
"They're very, very capable pieces of equipment," said Colin Robinson, a research analyst for the Center for Defense Information. "They allow you to monitor large amounts of space, but don't require an intelligent brain behind it most of the time."
During a typical mission, a Global Hawk could fly 1,200 miles to a target, linger for 24 hours and then return.
Northrop Grumman spokeswoman Cynthia Curiel said the spy plane's surveillance photos are so detailed, viewers could identify the size of a milk container on a picnic table.
"You may not be able to see the dairy name, but you could see that it is a quart-sized carton," Curiel said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Chinese Dissident Relishes a First Taste of Freedom, and Exile
December 29, 2002
New York Times
By ANDREW JACOBS
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/29/international/asia/29CHIN.html
His eggs were getting cold, but Xu Wenli, newly arrived in New York, was too riled up to eat. After spending 16 of the last 21 years in a Chinese prison for his pro-democracy activities, Mr. Xu, who was released Tuesday, was distracted by talk of capitalism, Communism and the apparent liberties that even American pigeons enjoy.
"Look at that," he said Friday, marveling at the sight of a plump bird that was holding its own against the throngs of Lower Broadway. "Here, even a pigeon can live freely. In China, he would have already ended up on someone's dinner table."
In the 48 hours after his Christmas-Eve release and exile to the United States, Mr. Xu, one of China's leading dissidents, talked nonstop: with his wife and daughter, the Chinese-language press and the American human rights advocates who had been pushing for his freedom since December 1998, when he was convicted of "subverting the state" for trying to set up the independent China Democracy Party. After serving less than a third of his 13-year sentence, Mr. Xu was unexpectedly released on what Chinese officials described as medical parole. Mr. Xu, 59, suffers from hepatitis B, which he says he contracted during his years in Beijing's Yangqing prison.
In the days since his arrival from China, Mr. Xu's daughter, Jin, has had to ply him with sleeping pills to get him to rest.
"After so many years of separation from my family, the words keep coming out," Mr. Xu said, speaking in Chinese, his hands slicing the air for emphasis. In the coming days, he and his wife, He Xintong, will go to Providence, R.I., where their daughter is an art teacher.
Mr. Xu's release is viewed as a goodwill gesture by Chinese officials eager to burnish the country's human rights record. Although the White House praised the move, human rights groups here called it a cynical attempt to curry favor with the Bush administration. Thousands of others, they say, remain in prison for nonviolent political activity.
"I'm thrilled and delighted that Xu has been freed but it's really just a token move," said Mickey Spiegel, a senior researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "From my count, there are 10 other China Democracy members still in jail and last week, the government picked up four or five people who had posted political writings on the Internet."
Mr. Xu, an electrical engineer, first ran into trouble with the authorities during the 1978-79 Democracy Wall movement, when he was editor of an unauthorized political journal. In 1981 he was arrested and for months held in secret while his family frantically sought to find him. "We didn't know if he was dead or alive," said his wife.
In 1982 he was convicted of counterrevolution and sentenced to 15 years, but was paroled after 12. The years Mr. Xu spent in prison, many of them in solitary confinement, did little to quell his passion for politics. After his release in 1993, he was relatively quiet but never lost his commitment to civil rights.
In 1998, emboldened by the impending visit of President Bill Clinton, he and several others stepped up their activities, openly calling for free labor unions and independent political parties. By the end of the year he was under arrest again and sentenced during a secret trial.
Sitting in a noisy diner on Friday morning with his wife and daughter, Mr. Xu used a napkin to sketch out the accommodations he had shared with three other men, two of them convicted murderers on death row. He drew the room where seven guards sat and the black circles that represented rotating video cameras - including one in the shower - that recorded his every move.
"There are only 200 traffic cameras in all of Beijing and they had 8 for me," he said, laughing. "I think they kicked me out because I was costing too much money."
Last week, prison guards led him into a waiting vehicle. He was unsure where he was headed until the car drove onto the tarmac of Beijing's international airport, stopping at a plane bound for Chicago. Inside, he was stunned to find his wife, also headed for the United States.
Mr. Xu said he was still unnerved by what he called a last-minute act of treachery by prison officials who secretly removed hundreds of his wife's letters and about 30 books from his luggage. The books, he said, contained personal thoughts he had scribbled in the margins over the years. "That one little cruelty provides great insight into the way the government works," he said. "They couldn't stop me from going to America but they knew they could hurt me one last time."
Over the years, hepatitis has weakened his body and poor nourishment, he said, has led to the loss of several teeth. A visit to World Trade Center site left him winded. However, the impromptu memorials reminded him of the hundreds of protesters who died during the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square.
"The young students loved their country and died for it, but there's no place in China to pay your respects to their loss," he said.
In the coming months he will seek treatment for his illness and try to learn English. "Eventually I want to see the world, see how other democracies work and then figure out how to make China more open," he said.
Asked if China's newly appointed Communist Party chief, Hu Jintao, might do more to encourage human rights than his predecessors, Mr. Xu grimaced and uttered one of the few English words he knows: "No."
Only continued economic liberalization and the yearnings of a growing middle class, he said, can bring about real change.
Despite his own good fortunes, Mr. Xu said he was haunted by the plight of friends, incarcerated or harassed, he had to leave behind. "It's hard to feel joy," he said, "when so many others are still suffering."
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Back to Iraq as a human shield
Today's Observer reports plans by peace activists to go to Iraq as human shields. In this online commentary, protest organiser and former US veteran Ken Nichols O'Keefe explains why he believes that this is the most effective way to oppose the war
Sunday December 29, 2002
UK Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866259,00.html
Day by day, the latest headlines tell us that we are moving ever closer to war with Iraq. So many people around the world are ashamed and outraged by this prospect and yet feel powerless to make their voices heard. Large rallies for peace have been held in cities around the world. Yet the bulletins quickly return to the war drums beating ever faster for what must be one of the most choreographed and longest-planned wars in history.
Those who suffer most will of course be the innocent and victimized men, women and children in Iraq who are set to endure yet another war and unknown loss of life. Their crime? Simply to be the powerless citizens of an oil rich nation with a violent dictator who no longer fulfils the needs of Western powers who supported and armed him in the past.
Yet we need not be powerless. Gandhi said that "peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds." So what would happen if several thousand Western citizens migrated to Iraq to stand side by side with the Iraqi people? Along with at first just a few hundred people - from hundreds of millions in the west - I will be going to Iraq to volunteer to act as a human shield in the interests of protecting human life. We will join our fellow citizens of the world in Iraq to bear witness for peace and justice.
We will run the risk of being maimed or killed - but it is simply the same risk that innocent Iraqis will themselves face. I would rather die in defense of justice and peace than "prosper" in complicity with mass murder and war. This is not about supporting Saddam Hussein, as our governments did in the past. It is about saving the lives of those in our human family. We will be expressing to the Iraqi people the reality that most people in the West do not support this criminal war. And we will bring home to western publics the human cost of war because, unfortunately, the death and destruction faced daily by countless millions of our fellow human beings seems somehow an unfathomable abstraction unless western lives are at stake as well.
For me, this is also an act of personal penance. In 1989, at the age of nineteen I committed the most ignorant act of my life, I joined the United States Marine Corps. In 1991 I went beyond ignorance into criminal participation in a war against the Iraqi people which ultimately included the use of depleted uranium against the civilian population. My reward as an "American Hero" was to be used by Bush Sr. as a human guinea pig along with several hundred thousand other "heroes". We have still not been told the full story about "Gulf War syndrome" or how many of my fellow soldiers died as a result, but we do know the value our own leaders put on our lives. When a nation's leaders do not even respect the lives of their own "sons and daughters," the enemy will never enter into the realm of consideration. The hundreds of thousands killed by sanctions against Iraq are seen as a price worth paying. The human costs of another war in Iraq barely seem to register with our political leaders.
But, as I understand it, we the "citizens" are responsible for the actions of "our" governments. It is we who are privileged to live in so-called "democracies" and so we are collectively guilty for what we allow to be done in our name, to both to the civilian population of Iraq and to others around the world. Ignorance is no defence. The existence of other tyrants, worse or not, is no defence.
In 1999 I renounced my US citizenship in shame and disgust having arrived at the logical, albeit belated, conclusion that my government was not worthy of my funding - through taxes - and certainly not my allegiance. Paying for roads and schools is one thing, paying for "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to the point of insanity and nurturing global oppression is another thing all together. No moral being can be compelled to fund war, death and murder.
Only the most indoctrinated can not see the irony in the United States, with its long record of intervention and around the world, prosecuting this war on terrorism. A leader of a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons - and who has declared his right to use them - is ready to pulverize one of the poorest nations on the planet on the grounds that they may be planning to develop similar weapons themselves.
This "War on Terror" is becoming the ultimate "War on Freedom", in the United States and around the world. George Bush has said that "every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make, either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
But we do not only have two choices, For the record, I am not with George Bush or with the terrorists. And that is why, when this war finally begins, I will be in Iraq - with the people of Iraq. I invite everybody to join me in declaring themselves not citizens of nations but world citizens prepared to act in solidarity with the most wretched on our planet and to join us or to support our efforts in other ways. In doing so I honour the principles and laws of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And if I should die in Iraq, it will be as a man at peace with himself because he saw the truth and acted on it.
· Ken Nichols O'Keefe of the Universal Kinship Society is leading the volunteer mission of peace activists who will be acting as human shields in Iraq. See www.uksociety.org for more information.
----
Venezuelan opposition marches again
12/29/2002
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-29-venezuela-strike_x.htm
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Tens of thousands of people took to the streets demanding the resignation of President Hugo Chavez on Sunday, the 28th day of a nationwide strike that has virtually halted oil exports and evaporated domestic gasoline supplies.
The protesters poured out of nine areas of the capital to converge on an avenue chosen for its name: "La Victoria," or victory. Politicians, businessmen and labor leaders harangued the crowd with a long list of arguments why Chavez should quit.
It's a scene that has been played out many times during the strike - so far without success.
Chavez refuses to go and insists the government is regaining control of the state oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela, where most managers are on strike. He says he will use the protest to downsize the mammoth corporation and has already replaced many strikers.
"It's a struggle to save the country between us patriots and the traitors," Chavez said during his weekly television show, held Sunday outside a gasoline distribution center where the government has replaced striking managers.
The president led the audience in a round of applause every time a gasoline truck left the installation in the western state of Carabobo.
At the rally in Caracas, his foes threatened more civil disobedience, including not paying taxes. Many also want to march on the presidential palace. The last time that happened, 19 people were killed in the ensuing clash between Chavez foes and followers. The April 11 violence provoked a coup that ousted Chavez for two days.
The strike has slashed oil exports, forcing the world's fifth-largest oil supplier to barter with other countries for food and fuel.
Ali Rodriguez, president of the state-owned oil monopoly, said Venezuela is currently producing between 500,000 and 600,000 barrels a day. But striking executives say the company is producing less than 200,000 barrels a day.
Production is normally more than 3 million barrels a day.
Venezuela received its first foreign shipments of gasoline Saturday with the Brazilian tanker Amazonian Explorer delivering 525,000 barrels, barely more than a normal day's demand.
Venezuela's largest labor confederation and business chamber called the strike Dec. 2 to demand Chavez accept a nonbinding referendum on his rule. Many in the opposition now demand early elections - which constitutionally can only take place if Chavez resigns.
They accuse Chavez of running roughshod over democratic institutions and wrecking the economy with leftist policies. Venezuela's economy shrank 6% during the first nine months of 2002. Inflation has reached 30%, and unemployment 17%.
But Chavez is still popular in the slums around Caracas where many consider him the first leader in generations to stand up for their interests.
Chavez says opponents must wait until August, when a binding referendum may be held on his rule. He was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, and his term ends in 2007.
The Organization of American States is sponsoring talks to end to the crisis. Negotiations, interrupted by the holidays, resume Thursday.
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Blacklist Grounds American Passengers
By Frederick Sweet
Intervention Magazine
Sunday, December 29, 2002
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=278
Under the rubric of airline security, the US government has established a No-Fly List to harass, frustrate, delay, and forbid the travel of more than 1,000 citizens. Will you be added to the List?
While planning an upcoming trip with my wife to Eastern Europe, I've become concerned. Writing for Intervention Magazine just might get us harassed and delayed if not grounded. Using the Homeland Security Provision, the government has established a new "no-fly" list of people and organizations deemed a risk to U.S. aviation and who are being investigated.
According to a recent article in Salon by Dave Lindorff, significant numbers of American citizens have been stopped from boarding airplanes throughout the United States under the new "no-fly" policy. Those detained and then grounded were members of organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, Peace Action, a San Francisco-based antiwar magazine called War Times, and Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential campaign.
Not all "no-fly" citizens are left wingers. A top official for the Eagle Forum, an old-line conservative group led by anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, said several of their group's members have been delayed at security checkpoints for so long that they missed their flights.
Replying to questions from Salon magazine, David Steigman, a spokesman for the new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said, "We have a list of about 1,000 people." The agency was created a year ago by the U.S. Congress to handle transportation safety during the war on terror. "This list is composed of names that are provided to us by various government organizations like the FBI, CIA and INS ... We don't ask how they decide who to list. Each agency decides on its own who is a 'threat to aviation.'"
The agency has no guidelines to determine who gets on the list, Steigman said, and no procedures for getting off the list if someone is wrongfully on it. Until TSA's Steigman confirmed the no-fly list, government agencies denied its existence.
Although FBI spokesman Paul Bresson confirmed the existence of the list, officials at the CIA and INS refused to comment about it, referring questions back to the TSA. Details of how the list was assembled and how it is being used by the government, airports and airlines are largely secret.
Flying Nun Grounded
Sister Virgine Lawinger is a nun in Milwaukee and an activist with Peace Action, a Catholic advocacy group. She had been stopped from boarding a flight to Washington last spring, where she and 20 young students were planning to lobby the Wisconsin congressional delegation against U.S. military aid to the Colombian government. "We were all prevented from boarding, and some of us were taken to another room and questioned by airport security personnel and local sheriff's deputies," said Sister Lawinger.
Steigman was asked why the TSA would bar a 74-year-old nun, Sister Lawinger, from flying. "I don't know. You could get on the list if you were arrested for a federal felony," he told Salon's Lindorff.
Sister Lawinger says she was arrested only once, back in the 1980s, for sitting down and refusing to leave the district office of a local congressman. But she was never officially charged or fined. However, another grounded person in Lawinger's Peace Action delegation, Judith Williams, says she had been arrested in 1991 and spent three days in jail for a protest at the White House.
In their 1991 protest, Williams and other Catholic peace activists had scaled the White House perimeter fence and scattered baby dolls around the lawn to protest the bombing of Iraq. She says that the charge from that incident was a misdemeanor. Such an infraction would not seem enough to establish her as a threat to U.S. aviation.
Green Party Official Grounded and Labeled "Terrorist" in Living Nightmare
Writing about his no-fly nightmare in the Fairfield County Weekly, art dealer Doug Stuber, who had run Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was pulled out of a boarding line and grounded. He was about to make an important trip to Prague to gather artists for Henry James Art in Raleigh, N.C., when he was told (with ticket in hand) that he was not allowed to fly out that day.
Asking "why not?" he was told at Raleigh-Durham airport that because of the sniper attacks, no Greens were allowed to fly overseas on that day. The next morning he returned, and instead of paying $670 round trip, was forced into a $2,600 "same day" air fare. But what happened to Stuber during the next 24 hours is mind-boggling.
Stuber arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and his first flight wasn't due out until nearly six hours later. He had plenty of time. At exactly 10:52 a.m., just before boarding was to begin, he was approached by police officer Stanley (the same policeman who ushered him out of the airport the day before), who said that he "wanted to talk" to him. Stuber went with the police officer, but reminded him that no one had said he couldn't fly, and that his flight was about to leave.
Officer Stanley took Stuber into a room and questioned him for an hour. Around noon, Stanley had introduced him to two Secret Service agents. The agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a digital camera. Then they asked him details about his family, where he lived, who he ever knew, what the Greens are up to, etc.
At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a Justice Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely terrorists -- just as likely as al Qaeda members. Stuber was released just before 1 PM, so he still had time to catch the later flight.
The agents walked Stuber to the Delta counter and asked that he be given tickets for the flight so that he could make his connections. The airline official promptly printed tickets, which relieved Stuber, who assumed that the Secret Service hadn't stopped him from flying. Wrong! By the time Stuber was about to board, officer Stanley once again ushered him out the door and told him: "Just go to Greensboro, where they don't know you, and be totally quiet about politics, and you can make it to Europe that way."
In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he could not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. Of course, at Charlotte the same thing happened: "Get this terrorist out of here" was the mode the cops were in. Then Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of trying to catch a flight.
Stuber concluded that the Greens, whose values include nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists by the Ashcroft-led Justice Department.
Blacklist Catch-22
Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about how to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The TSA says it compiles the list from names provided by other agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first reported their names. But for security reasons, the TSA won't disclose which agency put someone on the no-fly list.
The FBI spokesperson Bresson would not explain the criteria for classifying someone as a threat to aviation, but suggests that fliers who believe they're on the list improperly should "report to airport security and they should be able to contact the TSA or us and get it cleared up." He concedes that might mean missed flights or other inconveniences and explained, "Airline security has gotten very complicated."
The Law
The TSA operates under the hastily conceived and written Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Among the provisions of this law is the requirement that the new TSA:
• "establish procedures for notifying the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, appropriate State and local law enforcement officials, and airport or airline security officers of the identity of individuals known to pose, or suspected of posing, a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety;
• "in consultation with other appropriate Federal agencies and air carriers, establish policies and procedures requiring air carriers:
• "to use information from government agencies to identify individuals on passenger lists who may be a threat to civil aviation or national security; and
• "if such an individual is identified, notify appropriate law enforcement agencies, prevent the individual from boarding an aircraft, or take other appropriate action with respect to that individual ... "
These provisions sound rather straightforward -- and even sensible. The apparent intention of the law is to identify any future suicide airplane hijackers and forbid them from boarding airplanes.
But, in an atmosphere of confusion and secrecy, who decides if an individual is "known to pose, or suspected of posing, a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety"? What criteria are being used to make this determination?
When the Progressive magazine reported on the problems suffered by Wisconsin's Sister Virgine Lawinger, it quoted a TSA spokesman to the effect, "as to how you get on it, or how it's maintained, or who maintains it, I can't help you with that."
According to the Associated Press, "Dave Steigman, spokesman for the TSA, said revealing any of the reasons a name may end up on the list could jeopardize national security." And the San Francisco Chronicle just reported that "while several federal agencies acknowledge that they contribute names to the congressionally mandated list, none of them, when contacted by The Chronicle, could or would say which agency is responsible for managing the list."
Secret security procedures that single out political activists and others with vague connections to unpopular ethnic groups are clearly putting some American citizens at greater risk now than they had been before the TSA started "protecting" us. The right to freely travel is being abridged, free-speech rights are threatened and the liberty of people vaguely tagged as "suspected of posing a risk" is curtailed.
A main difference between the nightmare of McCarthy's blacklists of communist suspects in the 1950s and the Bush Administration's blacklist of risk to aviation suspects today is that at least those labeled "pinko" by McCarthy were freely permitted to travel. So far, however, dubiously labeled suspects are not losing their jobs.
- Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
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