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NUCLEAR
U.S. Warns Global Nuclear Safeguards Under Threat
Iran says it will not manufacture Shahab-4 long range missile
Iran has given the IAEA details on its nuclear enrichment equipment
Iran Hands Over Key Drawings to UN Nuclear Agency
IRAN'S NUKE GAMBIT
Decision delayed on suspending North Korea power project
U.S. Gets Backing to Halt N. Korea Plants
U.S. Persuades Allies to Halt North Korean Atom Project
South Korea Plans to Deploy U.S. Missiles
Musharraf Ends China Visit Without Nuke Plant Deal
Congress Mostly Backs Bush on Nuke Weapons, Waste
Some Nuke Arms Cut in Congressional Talks
Ex - Nuclear Lab Whistle - Blower Sentenced
Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties?
MILITARY
Congo Practices A Wary Peace
Arms sales to Israel breach guidelines
UN protest over suspected arms smuggling in DR Congo
Report: U.S. selling missiles to Thailand
U.S. said to supply missiles to Bangkok
Group Says Guinea Sold Arms Used on U.S. Embassy in Liberia
Sri Lanka's President Declares a State of Emergency
WHO Assails Wealthy Nations on Bioterror
US crackdown on bioterror is backfiring
EU defences must not double up on NATO tasks: Schroeder
Who Comprises the Iraqi Resistance? (Part1 )
Blasts Strike U.S. Compound in Mosul
3 Blasts Seem Aimed at U.S. Compound
U.S. Shifts On Creation Of Security Unit in Iraq
Israel gets apology for peace-threat poll
Israeli Military Easing Restrictions
Arafat Stalls New Cabinet
C.I.A. Needs to Learn Arabic, House Committee Leader Says
Panel to See Prewar CIA Memos on Iraq
N. Korea, Japan in name-calling row at United Nations
Israel Brings Anti-Terrorism Resolution to U.N.
Need for more troops debated
New Battlefield Hospital Prototype a Hit
Government extends its secrecy shield
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
ATF system will let agencies share bombing, arson data
White House Told To Justify Secrecy
Illegally in U.S., and Never a Day Off at Wal-Mart
Intelligence Guide
Deported Terror Suspect Details Torture in Syria
ENERGY AND OTHER
Clean energy brings windfall to Indian village
U.K. urges polluted U.S. "ghost fleet" to turn back
Synthetic 'Good' Cholesterol Helps Clear Arteries
World Bank to Back Oil Pipeline
ACTIVISTS
Protest at Israeli checkpoint in West Bank
-------- NUCLEAR
U.S. Warns Global Nuclear Safeguards Under Threat
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-usa-russia.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Wednesday called for tighter global nuclear safeguards to prevent countries like North Korea and Iran from using treaties as a cover to build atomic weapons.
Abraham addressed a U.N. General Assembly disarmament committee together with Alexander Rumyantsev, Russia's atomic energy minister, to mark the 50th anniversary of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's ``atoms for peace'' vision.
The American secretary accused North Korea and Iran of using the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, for weapons purposes.
``The nonproliferation regime's weaknesses become woefully apparent when a state joins the NPT, professes peaceful intentions and then abuses the treaty by using it as a cover to build up a nuclear weapons capability, which it then publicly declares through abrogation of, or withdrawal from, the treaty,'' Abraham said.
Abraham proposed measures similar to ones he announced in September at an IAEA meeting. These include letting the agency implement stronger safeguards, coaxing nations to disclose more information on uranium enrichment, tightening constraints on the acquisition of dangerous materials and doing more to prevent trafficking of nuclear materials.
Russia's Rumyantsev agreed, saying, ``The growing terrorist threat obliges us to try to prevent even the smallest amount of radioactive material from falling into the hands of terrorists.''
Abraham, however, was noncommittal about more radical proposals from IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, although he said they were worth studying.
'OUTSIDE OF THE BOX'
``We would at least commend Mr. ElBaradei for trying to think outside of the box, as they say, and we are also doing that kind of analysis,'' Abraham told reporters.
ElBaradei on Monday urged the 191-nation General Assembly to consider imposing international controls on the production of nuclear material that could be used in weapons.
Among his proposals was restricting the enrichment of material that could be used in weapons to facilities under international control. He also called for stronger international rules on the disposal of spent fuel and radioactive waste.
Rumyantsev stressed Moscow's concerns about radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. ``More than 200,000 tons of spent fuel has accumulated, and that amount is growing each year by another 10,000 tons,'' he said.
``The construction of major international centers to deal with spent fuel, equipped with modern technology and protective devices, under IAEA coordination, could ensure we meet our obligation to ensure nuclear safety,'' Rumyantsev said.
The 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty was intended to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. The five acknowledged nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- were obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vowed to give up atomic weapons for good in return for help with nuclear energy programs.
ElBaradei intends to report this month on whether Iran is building nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. Iranian envoys say they plan to give the agency a letter soon accepting tougher, short-notice nuclear inspections.
North Korea pulled out of the treaty and barred IAEA inspections after disclosing a clandestine uranium enrichment program a year ago.
-------- iran
Iran says it will not manufacture Shahab-4 long range missile
TEHRAN (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105122356.ffd809xe.html
Iran has no intention of manufacturing a missile more powerful than the Shahab-3, a medium-range missile with a touted range of over 1,500 kilometers that recently went into service, the defence ministry said in a statement carried Wednesday by the student news agency ISNA.
"As we have said on several occasions and contrary to certain statements, Iran has no programme to build a Shahab-4 missile," the statement was quoted as saying.
It was not clear what provoked the defence ministry to issue such a statement.
During a major military parade on September 22, Iran showed off six of its Shahab-3 missiles which were decorated with anti-Israeli and anti-US slogans.
According to a commentary given over loud-speakers lining the parade route, the missiles have "a range of 1,700 kilometers" (1,060 miles) and "are capable of hitting the heart of the enemy".
The development of these missiles has sparked widespread alarm in Israel.
----
Iran has given the IAEA details on its nuclear enrichment equipment
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105180749.uca7nsqb.html
Iran has given the UN nuclear watchdog drawings of the components used to make centrifuges which the United States claims were used to make weapons-grade uranium, Iran's ambassador to the IAEA said Wednesday.
Ali Akbar Salehi told AFP this was part of Iran's continuing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to disprove allegations it is trying to secretly develop nuclear weapons.
Tehran faces the possibility the IAEA will judge it at a meeting in Vienna November 20 to be in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and send the issue to the UN Security Council, which could then impose sanctions.
The main dispute is over traces of highly enriched uranium IAEA inspectors found at two sites in Iran.
The United States claims that Iran was using centrifuges to make highly enriched uranium that could be used to make the bomb but the Iranians claim the particles came from contamination from equipment they bought aboard.
Salehi said IAEA inspectors have been able to see this equipment. He said Iran had recently "revealed to the inspectors the components (used to make the centrifuges) and the original drawings for these components."
The IAEA wants to know where the equipment came from but Salehi said Iran could not supply this information since it does not know, as the parts were bought on the black market when Tehran had to be "discreet" as it was developing its nuclear program in the face of international sanctions.
Salehi said Iran would honor its promise to agree to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to allow wider, unannounced IAEA inspections.
He said a letter pledging agreement would be handed over to the IAEA before the agency's board of governors meets in Vienna on November 20.
IAEA officials had said the letter would be coming this week but Salehi said it would not be so soon.
He also said Iranian national security council chief Hasan Rohani would be coming to Europe soon but did not say if he would be in Vienna to meet with IAEA officials ahead of the board meeting.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday that the agency is ready in a report it is writing to say that Iran has failed to honor some international nuclear safeguards, his spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
"We reported breaches in the past and there will be new ones in this upcoming report," ElBaradei said.
It was the first confirmation by the IAEA that new Iranian information, filed ahead of an October 31 deadline for Iran to prove it is not developing nuclear weapons, showed Iranian failures in honoring nuclear safeguards agreements.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said the Iranians may be "cooperating until (the IAEA meeting) November 20 in order to avoid a non-compliance ruling" and when they succeed in this, "then they will break all the rules again.
----
Iran Hands Over Key Drawings to UN Nuclear Agency
November 5, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday it had handed over to the U.N. nuclear watchdog crucial drawings of equipment used in its uranium enrichment program to help prove it was not seeking to make an atomic bomb.
``We revealed all components to the agency, including (original) drawings...so there is nothing which the agency has no information on,'' Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters.
Salehi said Tehran would deliver a letter accepting tougher short-notice nuclear inspections by the IAEA within a matter of days.
The United States accuses Iran of secretly working on an atomic bomb. Tehran rejects the charge and says its program is solely for peaceful generation of electricity.
Earlier this year, the IAEA found traces of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium on components of uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Iran says the traces were from contaminated parts purchased abroad, an explanation that met with skepticism in Washington and other capitals that suspect Tehran either bought or enriched the uranium itself for use in an atomic bomb.
SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT
A diplomat familiar with the IAEA told Reuters delivery of the drawings was significant because they represented the ``building blocks of Iran's centrifuge program'' and could help the agency's investigation into the origin of the uranium.
Iran has said it was unable to provide the IAEA with names of the countries of origin of the centrifuge components because it bought them on the black market in the 1980s.
Tehran has repeatedly said it was about to hand over a letter of intent to sign a protocol accepting short-notice inspections, but has yet to do so.
``The letter has been prepared and we are going to hand it over to the IAEA Secretariat,'' Salehi said. ``I would say it's in days.''
Salahi said there was no question about Iran's intention to sign.
``We cannot specify exactly the date. But it's certainly going to be before thebecause they have to be informed before the board so they can put it on the agenda,'' he said.
The main item at the meeting is IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's report on inspections in Iran and Tehran's compliance with an October 31 deadline to make a complete declaration of its nuclear program.
After the board approves Iran's intention to sign the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran can sign the document. Tehran has said it will allow the tougher inspections even before parliament ratifies the protocol.
Salehi said Iran had not halted its uranium enrichment activities, which Washington fears are at the heart of a secret atomic weapons program, but would do so soon.
``It's being studied, but measures are being taken to start this process. (The suspension) hasn't yet started,'' he said.
Diplomats told Reuters there had been disagreement between the Europeans and Iran on what constituted a suspension.
The French, Germans and British want the massive Natanz enrichment plant to halt all operations, whereas Iran wants to only halt its enrichment centrifuges and continue research work.
Salehi said the Europeans and Iranians were close to an agreement on the definition of a suspension and the halt was ``not going to be very late in the future.''
----
IRAN'S NUKE GAMBIT
By AMIR TAHERI,
November 5, 2003
NEW YORK POST
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/9956.htm
REMEMBER you read it here first. Iran is now on course to force its way into the nuclear club within the next two to three years. When it does, it will owe part of its success to a European Union diplomatic maneuver that has spared Iran the prospect of direct confrontation over its illicit nuclear program with the international community.
The maneuver, which led to the signature of a memorandum between the Islamic republic and three EU members in October, appears to have defused the latest crisis.
As things stand, it is almost certain that the International Atomic Energy Agency will soft-pedal the procedure that could have led to a confrontation between Tehran and the United Nations over Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The European Union has exacted no more than a vague promise from the leadership in Tehran to temporarily halt a secret project to enrich uranium and produce plutonium.
The temporary halt, if it does materialize, may be linked more to Iranian domestic politics than to a sudden desire on the part of the Khomeinist regime to honor the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Iran is already in campaign mode in anticipation of the general election next March. A foreign-policy crisis at this time could upset the the establishment, which appears determined to purge the so-called reformist faction and impose a "Chinese-style" system of political repression and economic opening.
The establishment feared that the nuclear issue might force the European Union to line up behind the tougher Iran policy preached by the Bush administration.
Playing the European card against Washington is a tried and true tactic of the Khomeinist regime. Tehran used it in the 1980s by seizing and then liberating European hostages in exchange for pledges by the European powers not to join U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran. In the 1990s, Tehran used the same tactic by tempting European oil companies with mouth-watering oil and gas contracts.
One other factor may have contributed to Tehran's decision to play the European card again. The selection of Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human-rights lawyer, as this year's Nobel Peace laureate is seen in Tehran as a signal that Europe's "soft powers" are ready to help provide a "soft" face for the opposition against the Khomeinist regime. Such an opposition could make it easier for the European powers to win the support of their own public for a policy of regime-change in Tehran.
Thus the piece of paper that Tehran has just signed with three European foreign ministers is unlikely to affect the Khomeinist regime's strategy of building an arsenal of nuclear weapons within the next two to three years.
There is little doubt that the Europeans know this. So, why did the three European wise men, traveling west to east, agree to get the Khomeinist regime off the hook?
Each of the three had his reason:
- France's Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is desperately looking for any opportunity to show that Paris still has a say in Middle East politics. He would love to be able to claim that his "soft power" diplomacy did in Iran what American "hard power" tried to do against Saddam Hussein in Iraq - and, according to de Villepin, failed.
- German Foreign Minister Joshcka Fischer had a slightly different motive. While continuing his country's close alliance with France, Fischer is also anxious to avoid a situation in which Berlin finds itself alone with Paris. The presence of the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the trio helps Fischer avoid such a situation. At the same time Fischer would be able to tell the German public that the Schroeder government is still capable of playing a role in diffusing regional crises.
Fischer and de Villepin also hope to see a change of occupant at the White House in 2005.
- Straw's motives are equally complicated. In his heart of hearts, he knows that the only language that the Khomienists understand and respect is force. But he also knows that Tony Blair's government is passing through its worst crisis since it came to power in '97.
At a moment of crisis over Iran, Blair might find himself facing a choice he wishes to avoid: parting ways with the Americans or risking a political revolt within his Cabinet.
All this means is that the Khomeinist regime may well get yet another chance to have its cake and eat it, too. According to Hassan Ruhani, a mullah who speaks for the High Council of National Security in Tehran, Iran is determined to dot itself with "the entire range of nuclear science and technology at all levels."
Iran's nuclear program started in 1956. The strategic decision to develop nuclear weapons was taken in 1989. The regime has spent an estimated $12 billion on all aspects of this ambitious program so far. It is not something that Tehran will give up after a session of tea and sympathy with the EU trio.
E-mail: amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com
-------- korea
Decision delayed on suspending North Korea power project
05 November 2003
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/55618/1/.html
NEW YORK : An international consortium set up to build two nuclear reactors for North Korea under a now ruptured 1994 pact delayed a decision on a US request to suspend the project, a spokesman said.
Executive board members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO) which comprises the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union decided to refer the matter to their governments.
"The executive board discussed the future of the (Light Water Reactor) project including an approach to the question of suspension," KEDO spokesman Roland Tricot said.
"The executive board decided to refer this to capitals. The Executive Board agreed to announce a decision on the future of the LWR project no later than November 21," he said, refusing to answer questions.
The United States said it was seeking a suspension of the project, mandated by the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework, which Washington considers was broken by Pyongyang's renewed attempts to develop nuclear weapons.
"It is our position that the KEDO executive board should agree to formally stop work on the light water reactor project," said State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
"But suspension of that project is a matter for the KEDO executive board to decide."
Under the deal North Korea froze a plutonium processing facility in return for regular heavy fuel shipments from the United States. South Korea and Japan were to pay for the bulk of the reactor construction.
The Bush administration signalled its determination to kill the deal in September, when it offered 3.72 million dollars to finance administrative costs for KEDO, but stipulated none of the cash should be used for construction.
It cut fuel shipments to North Korea late last year and no money for KEDO was included in the 2004 US budget.
The five billion dollar project to build two 1,000 megawatt light-water reactors was well behind schedule even before the eruption of the nuclear crisis last year threw it further into doubt.
The executive board meeting opened on Monday, and its timing was sensitive as intense behind the scenes diplomacy continues designed to convene a new round of six-nation talks aimed at defusing the North Korea nuclear crisis.
There are fears, especially in South Korea, that an angry North Korean reaction to a decision to suspend the project could complicate the bid to launch new nuclear crisis talks.
China hosted the last round of inconclusive talks in August also involving North Korea, Russia, South Korea, the United States and Japan.
The reactors would produce significantly less weapons-grade nuclear material than an older nuclear plant built during the Soviet era, and were to be provided under the Agreed Framework, under which Pyongyang undertook to freeze its nuclear program.
----
U.S. Gets Backing to Halt N. Korea Plants
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
Nov 5, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States won support from key allies Wednesday to halt construction of two nuclear power plants in North Korea for at least a year because of the communist state's atomic weapons program.
The executive board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization - a U.S.-based consortium building the reactors in North Korea - met in New York on Monday and Tuesday and discussed suspending the $4.6 billion project for the impoverished nation.
KEDO has been building two light-water reactors as part of a 1994 accord between Washington and Pyongyang in which North Korea promised to freeze its suspected nuclear weapons development. But the deal went sour in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted running such a weapons program.
The four-member executive board of KEDO said it would make its final announcement before Nov. 21 after consulting with the member nations' governments.
On Wednesday, however, the project's halt looked inevitable, as all key members of the board favored pulling out hundreds of workers, many of them South Koreas, who have been building the two light-water reactors at the isolated northeast corner of North Korea. Washington says it sees "no future" for the project.
U.S. officials have been increasingly unhappy with the project, saying they cannot provide North Korea with a cheap and steady source of badly needed energy unless it dismantles its nuclear weapons program.
Other consortium members, notably South Korea, had wanted to keep it alive, fearing a suspension might further provoke North Korea in the yearlong confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Last week, North Korea agreed "in principle" to return to multination talks aimed at ending the nuclear crisis.
The United States and other KEDO members settled for a compromise at their New York meeting, working out an agreement to "suspend" the project for one year, according to South Korean officials.
"The U.S. made clear its long-standing position that there is no future for the reactor project," the State Department said in a statement Tuesday. But Washington "also indicated that we could agree to a one-year suspension, after which resumption of the project would require unanimous executive board decision."
The European Union - a small partner in KEDO, providing $22.9 million a year - is "leaning towards" a one-year suspension, so as not to aggravate Pyongyang but keep open all avenues of dialogue with the government of North Korea, an EU official said.
"No final decision has been made. ... However, we are listening very carefully to the arguments of a suspension of construction," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
South Korea, which has shouldered 70 percent of the construction costs, insisted that the project not be shelved completely. It wants to use the prospect of reviving the project as leverage to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.
The light-water reactors are the biggest construction project in the North, coveted by the communist regime. They are for power-generation, and it's extremely difficult to use them for weapons purposes. "Our government's position is suspending the project for one year on the premise of resuming it," South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan. "Resuming the project will be decided then, considering situations surrounding the North Korean nuclear issue."
In Tokyo, Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima indicated his government supports a suspension as well, adding that such an move would not hamper efforts to resume six-nation talks on the North's nuclear arms program, according to the Kyodo news agency.
"In light of the current situation, I doubt a continuation of the project would be effective," Takashima was quoted as saying.
The United States and South Korea said resuming work on the reactors after a one-year suspension would depend on whether North Korea agrees to scrap its nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administration and its allies had already cut off 147 million gallons of annual free oil shipments - also part of the 1994 deal. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. nuclear watchdog. Last month, it said it was building more atomic bombs besides one or two bombs it already is believed to posses.
Representatives of the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia met in August in Beijing to discuss ending the nuclear crisis. But the meeting ended without agreement on a next round.
Last month, North Korea agreed "in principle" to return to the six-nation talks, although no date has been set.
Despite the U.S. doubts, South Korea has kept 605 South Koreans, 353 Uzbeks and 99 North Koreans working to build the two reactors in the North. South Korea has already sunk $850 million into the project, and it fears that scrapping would trigger an uproar at home. Japan has paid at least $393 million so far.
Also Wednesday, South Korea said new U.S.-made missiles would be deployed next month near its border with the North. With a range of about 190 miles, the Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles can hit targets across most of North Korea, including its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang.
--------
U.S. Persuades Allies to Halt North Korean Atom Project
November 5, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/asia/05KORE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - The Bush administration persuaded its Asian and European allies on Tuesday to suspend a multibillion-dollar project to build two nuclear power reactors in North Korea, in what appeared to be the last step in the dissolution of the 1994 accord that temporarily froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
After a meeting in New York on Tuesday, representatives from the international energy consortium set up under the agreement said that by Nov. 21, Japan, South Korea, the United States and the European Union would announce the fate of the project. "The executive board decided to refer this to the capitals," the Korean Energy Development Organization said.
But officials who attended the meeting said that the announcement was a formality, and that the decision to suspend the project had been reached. That will probably kill it because, according to senior officials in Washington, Mr. Bush has no intention of ever reviving a nuclear energy program in North Korea, even if an agreement is reached on controlling its nuclear weapons program. The United States has raised the possibility of helping with non-nuclear energy efforts as part of a North Korean accord to disarm.
The State Department made clear on Tuesday that whatever the diplomatic wording about suspension, the project is dead. "Our view is that we want an end to the program," said Adam Early, the department's deputy spokesman.
The announcement would effectively be the death knell for the 1994 accord, the so-called Agreed Framework, which was reached after the Clinton administration and North Korea appeared headed toward a confrontation over the North's nuclear weapons program.
The accord has long been a target of hawks inside the Bush administration, who insist that North Korea began cheating on the agreement almost as soon as the ink was dry. They also were critical of provisions that had American taxpayers financing the supply of fuel oil for North Korea in return for its agreement to freeze, but not dismantle, the program. Still, about 550 workers - about 100 North Koreans and several hundred workers from Uzbekistan and engineers from South Korea - have been busy preparing the ground for the first nuclear reactor.
The South Korean government had argued in favor of keeping the construction going - even at a slower pace - to keep the North talking about dismantling its nuclear programs. Mr. Bush refused, saying that the North abrogated its rights to the reactors when it secretly started a second weapons program, based on uranium-enrichment technology it obtained from Pakistan.
[The South Korean foreign minister, Yoon Young Kwan, said at a press briefing on Wednesday: "The position was based on the premise that the project could resume a year later. It is no more or no less than that. It was not an official decision, which is expected before Nov. 21.
["With no response from North Korea so far, it would be inappropriate to make predictions," he said. "It would be inappropriate to predict what impact this would have on future six-way talks."]
Mr. Bush began the squeeze on North Korea by cutting off the American-supplied fuel oil. North Korea responded by restarting the plant that fabricates weapons fuel. Nevertheless, construction workers kept digging and building at the huge nuclear site in Kumho, on the North Korean coast, because that project, worth $4.6 billion, was largely financed by South Korea and Japan. It is the largest, most expensive construction project in North Korea, a desperately poor country, and it is unclear how the North Korean government will react to its suspension.
While Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has frequently said the Agreed Framework may have prevented North Korea from building scores of nuclear weapons over the past decade, others have criticized it harshly. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has often argued that Mr. Clinton erred by not insisting that all nuclear material be shipped out of North Korea, and by offering energy aid before the North had fully disarmed.
The man who negotiated the treaty, Robert L. Gallucci, now dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, said in an interview on Tuesday that the program probably should have been suspended a year ago, when North Korea admitted to violating the nuclear freeze. But he argued that announcing its complete demise was a mistake.
"There is no reason to bury it, and to project a posture of no interest in regenerating the deal," Mr. Gallucci said. "We need every carrot we have with the North Koreans - and saying that it is dead is gratuitous, an appeal to a domestic audience."
A senior Asian official said tonight that while the final announcement later this month will refer to the suspension of the agreement, the United States and it allies understand that if no substitute agreement is reached in six-nation negotiations with the North, "there is no chance this program will be revived."
--------
South Korea Plans to Deploy U.S. Missiles
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Korea-US-Missile.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea will begin deploying U.S.-made missiles next month that can strike most of North Korea, a defense ministry official said Wednesday.
The Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles, made by the U.S. company Lockheed Martin, has a range of 186 miles and will be deployed near the Demilitarized Zone -- a 2 1/2 mile-wide border separating the two nations.
``We plan to start deploying the missiles next month,'' said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
South Korea has already purchased an undisclosed number of the weapons and intends to buy a total of 111 Army Tactical Missile System Block 1A missiles by 2004. It bought the early version of the system with a range of 102 miles in 1997.
South Korea has expressed wishes to develop missiles with a longer range. It obtained U.S. approval in 2001 to develop missiles with a range of up to 186 miles.
Under a 1979 accord with the United States, South Korea had been barred from developing missile with a range longer than 112 miles.
Missiles with a range of 186 miles are capable of striking Pyongyang and other parts of North Korea including, Yongbyon, where the North says it is using spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic bombs.
North Korea is believed to be armed with missiles capable of covering all South Korea and parts of Japan. It alarmed the region by firing a long-range missile in 1998 which flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific.
The Koreas were divided in 1945 and fought the 1950-53 Korean War.
------ pakistan
Musharraf Ends China Visit Without Nuke Plant Deal
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-pakistan.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf bagged a half-billion dollar loan from China and commitments to boost trade, but flew out Wednesday without an expected nuclear power plant cooperation deal in hand.
``No agreement has been signed on nuclear'' plant cooperation, a Pakistan embassy spokesman said. ``It was just speculation.''
Before Musharraf left for China, a Pakistani Foreign Ministry official said it was possible a deal would be finalized whereby China would help Pakistan build a nuclear power plant on the banks of the Indus River.
If it goes ahead, it will be the second nuclear power plant in Pakistan to be built with Beijing's assistance.
``I was surprised it wasn't one of the deals they signed,'' said a Western diplomat.
During Musharraf's visit, his first to Beijing since a sweeping leadership transition in China, seven official agreements, including an extradition treaty and a preferential trade agreement, were signed.
He also secured a $500 million loan for bilateral trade and economic cooperation, the China Daily newspaper said.
About 20 other deals -- joint ventures, letters of intent, memoranda of understanding -- were also signed between Pakistani and Chinese companies.
China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Tuesday the two sides had discussed the power plant and ``reached a consensus,'' but declined to explain what that meant.
Still, Musharraf spoke highly of his trip on the third and final day during meetings with Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan and the head of the powerful Central Military Commission, former president Jiang Zemin.
``We had an excellent time here in China for the last three days. In fact, we feel very much at home here in China,'' Musharraf, a general who swept to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, told Cao.
UNDER PRESSURE
The United States, entangled in a year-old crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, has repeatedly urged China to stop its nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, but Beijing and Islamabad stress their cooperation is for peaceful purposes.
Pakistan has also been accused of helping North Korea with its nuclear arms ambitions in return for missile parts. Washington sanctioned a Pakistani laboratory in March for arranging a transfer of nuclear-capable missiles to Pakistan from North Korea.
Pakistan has also been accused of sharing expertise with Iran that could help Tehran develop nuclear weapons. The United States has grouped Iran, North Korea and pre-war Iraq in an ``axis of evil.''
Pakistan has said the allegations are false and Iran has consistently denied it has plans to build nuclear weapons, saying its program is for peaceful civilian use.
Analysts say China played a crucial role in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
Energy experts say the 300 megawatt nuclear power project, agreed in principle during a visit by Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali to Beijing in March, is estimated to cost $600 million and will take at least six years to complete.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Congress Mostly Backs Bush on Nuke Weapons, Waste
November 5, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-arms-usa-nuclear.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives and Senate negotiators on Wednesday agreed to give President Bush money to study new types of nuclear weapons, as critics warned the move could spark a new nuclear arms race.
The funds were approved as part of a $27.3 billion bill for energy and water programs next year which also includes spending for a controversial nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert that opponents have vowed to block. Advertisement
Both chambers are expected to clear the spending bill soon and sent to Bush to sign into law.
The bill would give Bush half of the $15 million he had sought to develop an earth-penetrating nuclear warhead for use against deeply buried bunkers and all of the $6 million he wanted to research small, low-yield nuclear weapons.
Critics argued that small nuclear weapons are dangerous because policy-makers may see them as a usable adjunct to conventional arms, heightening risks of nuclear escalation.
``This is just a horrible message to send to the rest of the world,'' said North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan.
The House initially cut almost all of the funds for the programs. But most were restored at the Senate's insistence.
``We have compromised rather substantially,'' said New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici.
Both chambers are now expected clear the spending bill soon and send it to Bush to be signed into law.
Congress is scrambling to finish its overdue budget work before it adjourns for the year, and the House was due later on Wednesday to clear the latest in series of stopgap measures to keep the federal government open until Nov. 21.
The spending bill would also provide $580 million for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal project in 2004, around $11 million less than Bush had requested but far above a $425 million limit earlier endorsed by the Senate.
The plan aims to site the first permanent U.S. nuclear waste repository in the desert northwest of Las Vegas and is bitterly opposed by the state of Nevada, whose senators have generally succeeded in capping its funding in past years.
While Congress has given final approval for the project, scheduled to open in 2010 and hold up to 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, the state has launched multiple lawsuits seeking to block it on safety grounds.
The spending bill would commit around $11 million next year to a proposed new factory to make the plutonium ``pits'' at the heart of U.S. nuclear weapons. The last U.S. facility manufacturing the nuclear triggers closed in 1989.
It also contains nearly $25 million to fund an effort to cut the time it would take to again begin testing U.S. nuclear weapons from three years to two years. The United States has observed a nuclear test moratorium since 1992.
--------
Some Nuke Arms Cut in Congressional Talks
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Congress-Spending.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House and Senate bargainers agreed Wednesday to halve President Bush's request for studying ``bunker buster'' nuclear warheads and make other cuts in research into a new generation of nuclear weapons.
The negotiators also decided to provide nearly all of what Bush wanted to continue preparatory work on a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.
The money was included in a compromise $27.3 billion measure financing energy and water projects for the government's new budget year. Lawmakers hoped to push it through Congress in the next few days.
The decisions came as legislators struggled to meet a self-imposed Nov. 21 deadline to adjourn Congress for the year. So far, they have approved only four of the 13 must-pass spending bills, although the House voted 417-5 to send the Senate the fifth, a $9.3 billion measure for military construction.
Bargainers on the energy-water bill decided to provide $7.5 million for work on the bunker busters, bombs that would burrow through earth and rock to destroy underground targets. The administration wanted twice that amount.
The bill would provide all $6 million Bush proposed for research into ``mini-nukes'' of less than 5,000 tons of TNT, or one-fourth the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. But $4 million of that amount would be provided only after the administration submits a report on the status of the country's nuclear weapons stockpile.
The lawmakers agreed to provide enough money to shorten the current three-year lead time needed to resume underground testing of nuclear weapons to two years, not the 18 months the administration requested.
They also accepted only $11 million of the $23 million that the Energy Department wanted for preliminary studies for a plant to make plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. The department says the triggers are needed for the country's aging arsenal of warheads.
The House version of the bill had made even deeper cuts in the nuclear weapons work, while the Senate had agreed to give all the administration had requested.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee that wrote the bill, called the decision a compromise. But opponents of nuclear testing complained that the final version went too far.
``I have the most profound objection to this reopening of the nuclear door,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
The measure also provided $580 million for this year's work at Yucca Mountain, an underground site envisioned as the ultimate home for 77,000 tons of used reactor fuel and other highly radioactive waste now accumulating around the country. Its cost is expected to exceed $50 billion.
Bush had requested $591 million for this year. Though Bush and Congress decided last year to proceed with the project, Nevada lawmakers are still trying to kill it.
``Yucca Mountain will never come to be,'' predicted Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., one of the bargainers, citing problems in transporting waste to the site.
One of the last disputes that had delayed the military construction bill was resolved when bargainers agreed to split earmarks -- money directed to specific home-district projects -- 53 percent for the Senate and 47 percent for the House. Earlier versions of the bill set aside roughly $700 million for Senate projects and $400 million for House earmarks.
Controlling the House, Senate and White House for a full year for the first time since 1954, the GOP had hoped to efficiently churn out all 13 annual spending bills by Oct. 1. That is when the government's 2004 budget year began.
But five weeks into the new fiscal year, fights over overtime pay for workers, media ownership, school vouchers and other issues have tripped up Republicans hoping to demonstrate their efficiency in running the government.
They are also trying to find about $3.6 billion in additional funds for updated voting equipment, AIDS assistance abroad, veterans health care and education.
The eight unfinished bills cover the budgets of 11 Cabinet level departments and dozens of other agencies.
To keep them functioning, the House voted 418-5 to finance those agencies through Nov. 21. Quick Senate passage also was expected for the third such bill lawmakers have passed this year.
The Senate also debated an initial version of a $17 billion agriculture bill. In one vote, senators rejected a bid by Feinstein to tighten federal controls over energy trading and energy markets.
On the Net:
The energy-water bill is H.R. 2754, the temporary spending bill is H.J. Res 76, and the military construction bill is H.R. 2559. Information on the bills can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- tennessee
Ex - Nuclear Lab Whistle - Blower Sentenced
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Whistle-Blower-Prison.html
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- A former whistle-blower who gained national attention more than a decade ago by noting problems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was sentenced to 41 months in prison for trafficking guns.
Senior U.S. District Court Judge James Jarvis said he found Charles ``Bud'' Varnadore unrepentant.
``I don't know if the man has yet to come to the realization he was violating the law,'' Jarvis said at a sentencing hearing Tuesday.
Varnadore, 61, was convicted in July of conspiring to sell guns without a license at flea markets. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Jennings said Varnadore was responsible for illegally selling more than 200 guns.
Varnadore was among 23 people caught last year in a one-year sting operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that targeted unlicensed dealers at flea markets, gun shops and homes. Federal agents bought more than 600 guns and seized another 1,000 during the operation.
The alleged gun traffickers, most of whom have pleaded guilty, were older men from rural communities, ATF Agent in Charge James M. Cavanaugh said.
Varnadore's alleged co-conspirator, Anthony McCabe, testified against him and told jurors he sold guns at a flea market supplied by Varnadore. McCabe has since received probation.
The judge refused a request to let Varnadore remain on bond pending an appeal of his conviction and sentence.
As a lab technician at the Oak Ridge lab in the early 1990s, Varnadore was among the first people to draw nationwide attention to safety concerns for workers in nuclear facilities. He later claimed he was the target of hostility and retaliation for his whistle-blowing. He won several legal battles on that issue but ultimately lost his case on a technicality.
-------- us politics
Issue for Bush: How to Speak of Casualties?
November 5, 2003
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/campaigns/05STRA.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - When the Chinook helicopter was shot down on Sunday in Iraq, killing 15 Americans, President Bush let his defense secretary do the talking and stayed out of sight at his ranch. The president has not attended the funeral of any American soldiers killed in action, White House officials say. And with violence in Baghdad dominating the headlines this week, he has used his public appearances to focus on the health of the economy and the wildfires in California.
But after some of the deadliest attacks yet on American forces, the White House is struggling with the political consequences for a president who has said little publicly about the mounting casualties of the occupation.
The quandary for Mr. Bush, administration officials say, is in finding a balance: expressing sympathy for fallen soldiers without drawing more attention to the casualties by commenting daily on every new death.
White House officials say their strategy, for now, is to avoid having the president mention some deaths but not others, and so avoid inequity. (Mr. Bush does send a personal letter to the family of every soldier killed in action and has met privately with relatives at military bases.)
"He never wants to elevate or diminish one sacrifice made over another," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.
Or, as another White House official put it: "If you're the brother or mother of a soldier who was killed on Saturday, and nothing was said, and then the president says something on Sunday? Unless the president starts saying it for all of them, he can't do it."
Republicans also acknowledge that White House officials, mindful of history, do not want Mr. Bush to become hostage to daily body counts, much as President Lyndon B. Johnson was during the Vietnam War. Concern about being consumed by the headlines, administration officials say, is another reason the president did not specifically address the downed Chinook on Sunday.
"If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?" Mr. Bartlett said. The public "wants the commander in chief to have proper perspective and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball. At the same time, they want their president to understand the hardship and sacrifice that many Americans are enduring at a time of war. And we believe he's striking that balance."
So Mr. Bush is continuing to refer as broadly as possible to the sacrifice of all, as when reporters asked him in California on Tuesday to comment directly on the attack against the helicopter.
"I am saddened any time that there's a loss of life," replied Mr. Bush, who added that the soldiers killed had died "for a cause greater than themselves," the campaign against terrorism.
Some Republicans say they are concerned that the White House strategy leaves the president open to accusations from Democrats that he is isolated from the real pain of war.
"I have to say, I think we have to note tragedies of this magnitude," the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, told reporters on Tuesday, referring to Sunday's attack. "I think it needs to be expressed over and over by the president, and I think all deference ought to be given those dead and wounded who return home."
David R. Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton White Houses, called the subject a "tender" one. He said he understood the White House concern about allowing Mr. Bush to be drawn into every death in Iraq, and recalled past presidents who were advised by their staffs not to meet with the families of American hostages.
"Even so," Mr. Gergen said, "we're now encountering deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam, and I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times like these, and for families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression."
Others say the White House strategy can add to the anguish of families who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Thomas Wilson, an uncle of Staff Sgt. Joe N. Wilson, 30, of Crystal Springs, Miss., who was killed in the helicopter attack, went so far as to tell a reporter on Monday that Mr. Bush and members of his family needed to experience Iraq for themselves. "Then he'll realize what's going on," Mr. Wilson said. "As long as they ain't over there, he don't care."
Mr. Bartlett would not discuss how much concern comments like Mr. Wilson's had created at the White House.
"The president writes a letter to every family of a fallen soldier and meets privately with families of soldiers at military bases," Mr. Bartlett said. "He grieves with them, he understands. I'm not going to judge anybody's comments made in such a difficult period. People say a lot of things."
Some close to the president say another reason he has not expressed more public sympathy for individual soldiers killed in Iraq is his determination to let families have their privacy. He was offended, his friends say, by what he saw at times as President Bill Clinton's exploitation of private grief for political gain.
Like other presidents, Mr. Clinton appeared at some military funerals. In October 2000, he attended a memorial service in Norfolk, Va., for the 17 sailors killed in the bombing of the guided-missile destroyer Cole. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan attended a memorial service at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for 241 marines killed in Beirut. President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in the failed hostage-rescue mission in Iran.
Marlin Fitzwater, who was White House press secretary to President Bush's father, recalled that the elder Mr. Bush "went to a number of memorial ceremonies" where he met with families of troops killed in action in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.
At the time of that war, the Pentagon barred media coverage of coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The ban was relaxed during the Clinton administration, but then reinforced by the second Bush administration in the run-up to the current hostilities in Iraq.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Congo Practices A Wary Peace
Former Enemies, Still Fearful, Try to Move Country Forward
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A523-2003Nov4?language=printer
KINSHASA, Congo -- One of Congo's new vice presidents, Jean-Pierre Bemba, keeps a helicopter on his front lawn in case the former Ugandan-backed rebel leader has to make a quick getaway from an assassination attempt.
Another vice president, Azarias Ruberwa, the former leader of the Rwandan-backed rebel group and once the most despised man in Kinshasa, has young rebels armed with guns and binoculars peering out from his riverside office when they aren't wandering the neighborhood in faded T-shirts emblazoned with their leader's face.
The two other vice presidents have their security quirks, too. They have to, they say, to stay alive during a peace process that has everyone afraid of war. No one can be cautious enough, in a country with four vice presidents, 60 ministers, 620 legislators and at least a dozen armed groups and factions all forming a two-year power-sharing government that brings enemies together.
"In Africa, we say there is no room for two male crocodiles to live in the same place. Well, now as the situation stands, we have five male crocodiles -- including the president -- sharing the same swamp," said Arthur Z'Ahidi Ngoma, a vice president from an unarmed political opposition group. Earlier this year, two other vice presidents wanted him removed from the government.
"I would, to be honest, call it a Congolese miracle that we are all committed to coexisting," he said, sitting in his home in the capital, with bodyguards roaming nearby. "Even if some of us wanted to see the others dead at certain points."
This is the unwieldy theater of one of Africa's toughest peace deals. Yet it is clearly one of high stakes that could set the Democratic Republic of Congo, potentially Africa's richest country, on a path to peace and a prosperity for its 55 million people, who have attempted little more than survival for decades.
The latest round in Congo's violent history was a five-year regional war that took an estimated 3.3 million to 4.1 million lives, mostly from disease and hunger, in a human catastrophe fought largely outside the view of the West.
Pockets of fighting continue, and the country must form an army out of enemy fighters. But never before has there been this much hope for a lasting peace in the country formerly known as Zaire. It is in this atmosphere that President Joseph Kabila is visiting the United States this week, talking with World Bank officials and meeting with President Bush on Wednesday. Diplomats say he hopes to benefit from the pressure of the international spotlight.
"Are we out of the woods yet? No. But we are headed to the savanna," Kabila said last week in an interview at the presidential palace here in Kinshasa. "This is quite an important moment. We are turning the page on a very dark chapter. It has given hope after 40 years of misrule. The process of unification is underway. People who at different times were shooting at each other on the front lines, who each believed they had their own kingdom, are now sitting together."
But the complexity of making peace a reality in this vast country is a uniquely Congolese drama, he said. "We have been in more or less a confused state throughout modern history, with a century of abuse and foreign powers launching unjust wars on the Congolese people. Everyone all along has taken Congo's resources," said Kabila, 32, a soldier who came to power after the assassination of his father, President Laurent Kabila, two years ago.
This central African nation is rich in diamonds, gold, coltan, cobalt and other minerals. After a period of rule by the Belgians, who were criticized for exploiting Congo's resources, the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko continued to squander the country's minerals for personal gain.
Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu in 1997, and civil war erupted a year later. Rwanda invaded, saying Kabila was protecting Hutu fighters responsible for the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Those fighters fled across the border into eastern Congo.
Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia entered the conflict on the side of the Congolese government. Rwanda and Uganda joined forces to help rebels trying to seize power, but their cooperation soon disintegrated into a contest for control of the minerals of the northeast, fought largely by their local proxies.
The plundering is reportedly continuing. Human rights groups say that the Rwandan government has permitted polishing plants to be set up in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, for diamonds taken from Congo. Recent reports say Rwandan troops have been reentering the country after withdrawing a year ago. Rwanda has been silent on the allegations.
"To be very frank, a key issue in peace in the Congo is getting foreign-backed armed groups out of this country," said Lt. Col. Subhash Yadav of the U.N. peacekeeping mission here.
After a failed mission in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province in eastern Congo where ethnic fighting in June led to thousands of deaths, the peacekeeping force added 2,000 troops and beefed up its mandate. Called the Mission of the Organization of the United Nations in Congo and now numbering 10,800, it has the right to use military force in response to any threat to peace. Pakistani-led peacekeepers in still-volatile Ituri province have recently been firing back, and this and similar actions by peacekeepers have served to slow the fighting.
Standing before a map in Bukavu, an eastern city near the Rwandan border, Yadav admitted there were still areas that the peacekeepers were not reaching, and gave a snapshot of his organization's successes and problem areas. "There is still a lot of human suffering," he said. "There are still places where armed groups are operating, and all you see in a village are children and old people without even clothing."
The task of uniting the vast country under a central government is daunting. Some regions haven't been visited by a government minister in 20 years.
Information Minister Vital Kamerhe made a visit to the eastern town of Kindu -- the first by a central government official since the 1980s. He drew thousands of shocked residents when he distributed new radio transmitters to relay broadcasts of the government-owned station. Kamerhe has presented transmitters to towns throughout the east, the cradle of the civil war. For more than a decade, residents of the interior could not listen to the capital's radio station.
The radios may help psychologically, but leaders hope they will also aid in preparing the country for elections in two years. The last time this nation voted was 1960.
In Kabila's offices, the BBC news plays on a television and photos of every Congolese leader except Mobutu hang on the wall. The younger Kabila, who has been largely credited with cementing the peace process, says the Congolese people deserve a chance to vote.
"I'm determined to have elections, whether there are roads or rain," Kabila said. "I think it's a pretty legitimate demand of the people at this point."
Meanwhile, ordinary Congolese are in patriotic limbo.
Moussa Bahiti stood on a street corner in the eastern town of Goma, more than a thousand miles from Kinshasa. He said he was a tax collector for the central government years ago but had not worked since the war began. Still, he proudly wore an orange shirt printed with swirling maps of the country, names of various rebels groups and the title "La Reunification."
"The war is complete. I am Congolese. Slowly, slowly, the country is one," Bahiti said. "From Goma to Kinshasa, the country is uniting. I believe in it working out this time. Maybe. I hope."
-------- arms
Arms sales to Israel breach guidelines
Government turning blind eye to human rights abuses
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday November 5, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1077800,00.html
Large quantities of British arms and internal security equipment are being sold to Israel despite the government's public criticism of the country's human rights record and growing violence there, the Guardian can reveal.
Export licences for weapons are being cleared even though Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has admitted that Israel has breached assurances that British equipment would not be used in the occupied territories. Exports approved by the government this year cover categories including leg-irons, electric shock belts and chemical and biological agents such as tear gas. They also include categories covering mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, military explosives, and infrared and radar sensors.
The hitherto undisclosed arms sales are revealed in a letter from Nigel Griffiths, the minister for export controls at the Department of Trade and Industry, to Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman.
The Foreign Office says in its annual human rights report that it is "deeply concerned at the impact that the continuing Israeli occupation and the associated Israeli military operations have had on the lives of ordinary Palestinians".
It says "both Israel and the Palestinian terrorist groups have shown a worrying disregard for human rights".
The report specifically refers to British arms exports. It says: "The outbreak of the intifada, the continued Israeli incursions in the occupied territories and the breach of Israel's 2000 assurance that UK-originated equipment would not be used in the occupied territories, have all been factored into the UK government's export licensing policy."
The human rights report also refers to four Britons who lost their lives or were seriously injured in the past year as a result of the continuing crisis. Yoni Jesner was a victim of a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv in September. Iain Hook, an engineer, was shot by the Israeli army in the Jenin compound where he worked in November 2002. Thomas Hurndall, a peace activist, was shot in Rafah, Gaza, in April this year, while trying to shield Palestinian children. James Miller, a British journalist, was shot and killed in Gaza in May, while filming the destruction of Palestinian homes.
According to the government's arms control guidelines, exports will be blocked "if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression". The guidelines say licences will not be issued "for exports which would provoke or prolong armed conflicts or aggravate existing tensions or conflicts in the country of final destination." Weapons exports will also be banned "if there is a clear risk that the recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country, or assert by force a territorial claim."
Mr Campbell said last night: "The credibility of our contribution to the peace process in the Middle East can only be damaged if we say one thing and do the other."
The government told the Commons last month that Britain "has not sold main equipment such as tanks, aircraft, warships or artillery to Israel since May 1997".
The DTI said last night: "Since the outbreak of violence in the occupied territories in September 2000, the government has taken account of Israeli military tactics in its licensing decisions and keeps the situation under close review."
----
UN protest over suspected arms smuggling in DR Congo
KINSHASA (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105135815.51t0ilx0.html
The United Nations has protested to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after being prevented from inspecting a plane it suspected of bringing weapons into the volatile east of the country.
"MONUC (the UN Mission in the DRC) has protested vigorously to the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for having prevented its verification assignment in Kamina," it said in a statement.
MONUC sent a team of military observers to the military base in Kamina, in Sud Kivu Province, which borders Rwanda, after a plane crashed on takeoff there at the weekend.
The type of plane was not specified in the statement but MONUC said it was operated by a Russian crew.
"There are allegations that the plane was carrying weapons for armed groups in Sud Kivu," MONUC said, stressing that the UN resolution defining MONUC's mandate imposed an embargo "on the supply of weapons and military equipment to all active armed groups in the DRC".
MONUC said its observers had been "prevented from approaching the site, which was guarded by soldiers armed with AK-47 rifles and a number of civilians". They had also been unable to locate the Russian crew or a DRC officer known to be aboard the aircraft.
The authorities in Kamina insist the plane crash, in which no one was injured, was a minor incident "involving a civil aircraft with no secret cargo".
But MONUC said its observers could neither confirm nor deny this version of events and demanded unfettered access to the site of the accident so it could ascertain exactly what had happened.
MONUC is monitoring a ceasefire that took effect in the DRC in April to end a regional war that broke out in 1998 when rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda sought to overthrow the Kinshasa government.
The war drew in half a dozen African countries at its height and claimed an estimated 2.5 million lives, either directly through combat or indirectly through famine and disease.
The presence of armed foreign groups in eastern DRC remains an issue of concern, as seen with clashes late last month between the tribal Mai-Mai warriors and Rwandan rebels in the Mwenga region.
There has also been ongoing fighting in northeastern DRC despite the establishment of an interim government in July.
----
Report: U.S. selling missiles to Thailand
November 05, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031105-101609-5479r.htm
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov. 5 -- Fearing a regional military imbalance, the United States has supplied Thailand with air-to-air missiles, the Washington Times reported Wednesday.
Eight Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles were delivered because of "an imminent threat" posed by Russian rockets offered to China and Malaysia, according to weapons monitors.
The Bangkok Post said the weapons "arrived two months ago, shortly after the (Thai) air force received 16 second-hand F-16 fighter jets worth a total of $130 million."
Wade Boese, research director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the United States "committed to sell Thailand AMRAAMs a few years ago, but held off on delivery because U.S. policy regarding AMRAAMs is not to be the first to introduce that particular type of missile into a region unless other comparable missiles already exist there.
Boese said the missiles offer "beyond-visual-range capability," which also allows the AMRAAM-firing pilot to fly away before the missile explodes, an action known as "fire and forget," "launch and leave" or "shoot and scoot."
----
U.S. said to supply missiles to Bangkok
November 05, 2003
By Richard S. Ehrlich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031104-110816-8044r.htm
BANGKOK - The United States is supplying Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) to Thailand because of "an imminent threat" posed by Russian rockets offered to China and Malaysia, according to weapons monitors.
The Bush administration decided to deliver eight AMRAAMs to Thailand after having earlier said the air-intercept missiles would be exported only if Bangkok suffered a potential military threat.
"We have no comment on arms deliveries to Thailand," a tight-lipped U.S. Embassy spokesman said when asked about the report.
But the respected Bangkok Post reported recently that the missiles have already been delivered to "maintain the military balance in the region," according to an unidentified source in Thailand's air force.
The weapons "arrived two months ago, shortly after the [Thai] air force received 16 second-hand F-16 fighter jets worth a total of $130 million," the newspaper said.
Matthew Schroeder, an Arms Sales Monitoring Project research associate at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, was less certain.
"There were reports that the U.S. planned to deliver the missiles in September or October, but I have not seen any confirmation that they have been delivered," he said in an e-mail interview.
"Raytheon has at least one contract to produce eight AMRAAM air vehicles for Thailand," Mr. Schroeder said.
Wade Boese, research director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the United States "committed to sell Thailand AMRAAMs a few years ago, but did hold off on delivery because U.S. policy regarding AMRAAMs is not to be the first to introduce that particular type of missile into a region unless other comparable missiles already exist there.
"The strict U.S. policy on exporting AMRAAMs reflects the lethality of the missile," Mr. Boese said in an e-mail interview.
The AIM-120C AMRAAM is prized for being able to knock out an enemy plane or intercept an incoming rocket before the AMRAAM-firing pilot actually sees the target.
The sophisticated air-to-air missile offers "beyond-visual-range capability," which also allows the AMRAAM-firing pilot to fly away before the missile explodes - an action colloquially known as "fire and forget," "launch and leave" or "shoot and scoot."
"Essentially, the missiles are pilot equalizers in the sense that it puts the outcome of a potential dogfight more on the missile's technical capabilities and not the skills of a pilot," Mr. Boese said.
--------
Group Says Guinea Sold Arms Used on U.S. Embassy in Liberia
November 5, 2003
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/africa/05AFRI.html
DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 4 - The cost of befriending the enemy of one's enemy has once again become painfully clear for the United States government: Washington's staunch ally in West Africa, Guinea, supplied mortars to Liberian rebels, who used the gift to shell an American-owned compound in Liberia where thousands had taken refuge during fighting earlier this year, a report to be released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch says.
The arms shipment to Liberian rebels violated a United Nations arms embargo on Liberia, where fighting between the government of Charles G. Taylor, then the president, and two rebel factions pummeled the capital, Monrovia, from June to August.
The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August, shortly after Mr. Taylor left for exile in Nigeria, and a transitional government, composed of their representatives, took over in October. All sides in the conflict have flouted the embargo, generally falsifying the contents of containers stuffed with weapons. Some Guinean weapons, for example, were in containers labeled "detergent," according to a report prepared by a United Nations panel appointed to monitor the embargo.
The panel's report, presented to Security Council members but not yet made public, recommends that the penalties against the trade of arms, diamonds and timber remain in place. The Security Council, of which Guinea is currently a member, is to review that issue this week.
The report by Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, called on the Security Council to hold Guinea accountable for breaching the embargo during the last attacks on Monrovia. "The government of Guinea, which facilitated the illicit supply of mortar rounds, bears an important measure of responsibility for the atrocities," the report said.
The report took note of what people in Monrovia commonly refer to as "World War III," the third and most intense attack on the capital in late July. Human Rights Watch found that the mortar rounds fired on central Monrovia by the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy were Iranian munitions procured by the Guinean Ministry of Defense this year and sent to the rebels.
The report said that some of the mortars, traced to Guinea, a recipient of American military aid, landed in a compound owned by the United States Embassy, where about 20,000 people displaced by the fighting had sought refuge. On July 21, during an intense bout of shelling, two mortar rounds fell on the compound, killing 20 and wounding more than 50.
Embassy officials said the weapons fired on the compound had not been provided to Guinea by Washington. Guinea denied supporting the Liberian rebels.
Human Rights Watch called for a suspension of American military aid to Guinea.
-------- asia
Sri Lanka's President Declares a State of Emergency
November 5, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/asia/05CND-LANK.html
NEW DELHI, Nov. 5 - Sri Lanka's president declared a state of emergency today, a day after she suspended Parliament, fired three top government ministers and deployed troops at key buildings in Colombo, the capital.
"The emergency regulations invest the government with wide-ranging powers to arrest and detain persons and ban political activity," a military spokesman, Col. Sumedha Perera, was quoted as saying by Colombo Page, a Sri Lankan Internet newspaper.
The moves by President Chandrika Kumaratunga touched off a political crisis and fueled fears that a 20-month cease-fire between government forces and ethnic Tamil rebels would collapse.
But a spokesman said today that the cease-fire would stand. "The president has no intention of resuming or provoking the resumption of hostilities," the spokesman, Lakshman Kadirgamar, told reporters, according to Reuters.
Sri Lankan political experts said President Kumaratunga appeared to be trying to weaken her bitter political rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. President Kumaratunga has harshly criticized the prime minister for making too many concessions in peace talks with the rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The prime minister was in Washington meeting senior American officials on Tuesday and is scheduled to meet with President Bush today. He issued a statement in Washington accusing the Sri Lankan president of trying to derail peace efforts.
"The irresponsible and precipitate action of the president is aimed at plunging the country into chaos and anarchy," the prime minister said, The Associated Press reported. "I therefore call upon all of the people, the armed forces, police and public service to remain calm and vigilant."
Both the president and the prime minister were elected to their posts, but the president has far more power under Sri Lanka's Constitution. Citing deteriorating security in the country, the president fired the prime minister's appointees in three important ministries - defense, interior and state-run news media. She also suspended Parliament, where the prime minister's party holds a two-seat majority, until Nov. 19.
TamilNet, a Web site with close ties to the Tamil rebels, said the moves had "dimmed" hopes for a negotiated end to a 20-year civil war. Tamils, who are Hindus, said they took up arms to defend themselves from Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority, which is Buddhist.
"We are carefully monitoring and studying the developments," the Web site quoted Daya Master, the rebels' media coordinator, as saying. "Based on this, our leadership will decide what to do."
After six rounds of negotiations led by Norway and backed by the United States, peace talks stalled in April. The Tigers - considered a terrorist organization by the United States - walked out, saying the government had done too little to rehabilitate the war-ravaged northeast, much of which the rebels control.
On Saturday, the rebels made a new proposal in which they dropped their demand for an independent Tamil state and called instead for the establishment of a Tamil-dominated interim administration for the northeast, which would have sweeping power over everything from land to justice.
The prime minister's government responded that the two sides' proposals differed "in fundamental respects," but said talks should continue. President Kumaratunga's party, by contrast, rejected the rebel proposal and said the prime minister was doing too little to ensure that the rebels were not simply rearming to fight another day.
Jayadeva Uyangoda, a political scientist at the University of Colombo, said in a telephone interview from Colombo that the president must be cautious. If war erupts, he said, she could be blamed. The streets of Colombo were calm tonight, Sri Lankan observers said. But they noted that the epic political struggle between the country's two leading politicians was entering a dangerous new phase.
-------- biological weapons
WHO Assails Wealthy Nations on Bioterror
Coordination of Defenses Poor in Simulation; U.S. Support for Agency Questioned
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A496-2003Nov4?language=printer
GENEVA -- A severe lack of funding for surveillance and front-line defenses has left the World Health Organization unprepared to deal with a global bioterrorist attack involving an agent such as smallpox, according to a senior official who monitors disease outbreaks for the agency.
The concerns were underscored by a recent exercise involving a simulated bioterrorist attack in which WHO observers unexpectedly had to be called in to broker breakdowns in coordination among the eight nations taking part.
Several WHO officials also said they believe that U.S. bioterrorism defenses that mainly focus on domestic preparations could be ineffective against an attack involving a pathogen that emerges, or is released, in a remote part of the world and spreads internationally.
More than 100 nations have no surveillance capabilities to detect such an outbreak, several WHO officials said. In an attack, they added, a welter of conflicting national protocols could undermine a swift global response.
Although the United States has sought to vaccinate domestic health workers against smallpox, for instance, no comparable program has been offered to WHO employees who may be the first to respond, said Patrick Drury, project manager of WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defended the level of support for WHO and said the United States is aiming for an optimal balance among unilateral, bilateral and multilateral biodefense strategies.
The recently concluded global bioterrorism exercise, called Global Mercury, was based on a scenario involving a group of terrorists who deliberately infect themselves with smallpox and then travel to various countries, using their bodies to spread the infection on public transportation systems and at car shows and by distributing contaminated business cards.
The exercise underscored the drawbacks of defending against bioterrorism threats on a nation-by-nation basis, said Drury and other WHO officials. Results of the exercise will be discussed this week by officials of the United States and several other industrialized countries at a meeting in Berlin.
"We'd like to see the United States engage in this as a multilateral effort," Drury said. "They seem to be unilateral or bilateral in what they are doing."
WHO, which was supposed to play only an observer role in the exercise, had to be called in to negotiate coordination among the players, Drury said. The countries participating were the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan and Mexico.
By the end of the exercise, Drury said, victims had been infected with smallpox in Chicago and the West Coast.
"If you have problems between democratic countries, you can imagine what will happen if you put Iran and North Korea in the picture," said Diego Buriot, director of WHO's Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response in Lyon, France.
Bill Pierce, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said that the United States played a key role in conducting Global Mercury, which he described as only the first step in developing multinational protocols to deal with bioweapons.
Some WHO officials said they were satisfied with the level of U.S. involvement. David Heymann, an American infectious diseases expert working on polio eradication, said that U.S. surveillance systems would complement WHO's multilateral efforts. "The U.S. has been a strong supporter of WHO," he said.
But other U.S. experts said America needs to do more.
"The U.S. has not made an investment in global public health and the World Health Organization that anywhere matches the magnitude of the global health need," said Margaret Hamburg, a physician who is vice president at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington, which studies biological, chemical and nuclear security threats. "We cannot address this problem by going it alone or by developing relationships on a one-on-one and ad-hoc basis."
Several officials at WHO pointed out that the recent outbreak of the new respiratory infection called severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) began in rural China but rapidly spread to industrialized countries. More than 100 countries do not have the laboratory expertise to spot even common diseases, making it unlikely they would detect a new agent until it had claimed many lives or spread to other countries, said Bradford Kay, an American who is helping WHO build laboratory capabilities in developing countries.
WHO officials readily acknowledged that the United States is already a top funder and that American specialists often provide the backbone for international investigations of disease outbreaks. But they said $10 million promised to WHO this year to boost surveillance has not yet been forthcoming, leaving the agency with too few resources to thoroughly investigate the outbreak reports that pour in every day.
"It's understandable for them to say we'll do it ourselves instead of relying on a bunch of U.N. pinkos," Drury said of U.S. biodefense planners. But instead of trying to build a "Great Wall" around the United States, he said, it would be cheaper and more effective to build global networks that could spot and contain outbreaks where they begin, instead of reacting after they had spread.
Pierce rejected that criticism. He said that the United States wants funds set aside for WHO once details of programs have been worked out.
"This is a hollow complaint," he said. "I don't know why they are complaining. Maybe they are covering up for some of their shortcomings."
The Global Mercury bioterrorism exercise, described by Drury and another official, laid out this hypothetical scenario:
A couple arrived in Vancouver on a plane from Tokyo at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 8. The man was deathly sick and collapsed at the airport. A quarantine officer summoned health authorities, who quickly deduced that he had smallpox. Police arrested the woman and interrogated her. A search of her luggage found references to a global bioterrorism attack, and authorities eventually concluded that members of a terrorist cell had deliberately infected themselves and were flying to various countries to start an epidemic of hemorrhagic smallpox, an unusual -- and especially lethal -- form of the disease.
As the game played out, Drury and Buriot said, WHO had to be called in as a neutral broker.
"The practicality of ongoing teleconferences with eight different countries and different cultural backgrounds and different languages and different priorities" were enormous, Drury said. "One talks politics; one talks science."
Missing in the exercise, but certain to complicate matters in a real crisis, was the public panic that such an outbreak would trigger.
There is not a cordon sanitaire that one country can mount to "keep out" infections, said Ann Marie Kimball, professor of epidemiology at the school of public health at the University of Washington. "If wealthy countries are truly interested in the biosecurity of their populations, they would be wise to work with the larger global community to assure that all countries are secure."
----
US crackdown on bioterror is backfiring
05 November 03
New Scientist
Debora MacKenzie
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994345
This week, a respected biologist was led into a Texas courtroom. He faces no fewer than 68 charges and could end up in jail for the rest of his life. Has the FBI finally caught the anthrax attacker?
No. Thomas Butler merely reported that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Many of Butler's colleagues believe the justice authorities are making an example of him as part of a wider effort to ensure that scientists take more care with material terrorists might exploit.
Whatever the outcome of the case, that effort is having repercussions that go far beyond the fate of one scientist. New Scientist has contacted more than 20 prominent figures in the US working in bioterror-related fields.
Some refused to talk, and most who did did not want to be named. Their comments paint a disturbing picture. Some scientists, for instance, are refusing to work on projects involving agents that could be exploited as bioweapons, even though the US government is providing massive funding to boost such research.
Others are considering abandoning existing work. Irreplaceable collections of microbes essential for managing and tracing outbreaks, bioterrorist or natural, are being destroyed simply because labs cannot comply with the new rules.
Cell mate
The climate of fear created by the Butler case is even threatening the US's ability to detect bioterrorist activity. New Scientist has been told that labs in one state are no longer reporting routine incidents of animals poisoned with ricin, a deadly toxin found in castor beans, for fear of federal investigation.
And if any terrorist ever does make off with dangerous bacteria, it will be a brave scientist who tells the FBI. As one put it: "I don't want to end up in a cell with Tom Butler."
In a letter sent to the US attorney-general John Ashcroft in September, Stanley Falkow, a respected researcher at Stanford University in California, goes further: "Trying to meet the unwarranted burden of what the government considers 'biosafety' is simply not coincident with the practice of sound, creative scientific research."
It is now two years since someone killed five people and created widespread disruption by posting envelopes of anthrax around the US. Coming just weeks after 9/11, the attacks shone a glaring spotlight on the risks of disease research.
The authorities decided far tighter control was needed over biologists with access to dangerous pathogens. Their main response was 2002's Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act, which from February 2003 imposed tight controls on "select agents", a list of 82 viruses, bacteria and toxins that could be used as weapons.
The list includes the agents responsible for many significant diseases that affect people, livestock or plants, including foot and mouth disease and the BSE prion that causes mad cow disease. Even botulinum toxin is on the list, though the medical version, Botox, is exempt from the regulations.
Fingerprint records
People working with select agents now have to register with the government, put their fingerprints on record, get security clearances, and have their labs inspected. Extensive controls have been placed on the movement of microbes and researchers, and all samples of select agents must be strictly accounted for or destroyed.
There were controls on transporting some microbes before, but now possessing them is also regulated, and non-compliance is a crime. The scientific community does support tighter controls, says Ron Atlas, former president of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
"Common sense as well as government regulations dictate that the days of carrying vials of dangerous pathogens in our pockets are gone, as are those of leaving cultures of anthrax in open laboratories," he says. "As scientists we must honour a pact with the public to protect public health and defend against bioterrorism."
The ASM, together with leading journals such as Nature and Science, announced in 2002 a voluntary self-censorship code that requires crucial details that could be exploited by bioterrorists to be removed from scientific papers.
But the regulations the US government has brought in, and the way they are being implemented, are driving some scientists to despair. For example, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta must now give permission to work with human pathogens, while the US Department of Agriculture manages livestock diseases.
This ought to allow diseases such as anthrax that affect both people and animals to be dealt with by either agency. But in practice, some say, one agency will tell researchers they do not have the right paperwork, even if the other gave them clearance.
Search and destroy
Other rules are simply badly thought out or inconsistent. One part of the regulations states that clinical labs that grow new cultures of select agents must destroy them within seven days, one researcher complains. But another part requires labs to get permission before destroying any cultures - and this takes more than seven days.
Such problems leave scientists feeling that compliance is simply impossible. "Every single lab involved in select agents has violated the regulations somehow," says one. "The FBI can come in and find you out of compliance whenever it chooses."
The implications for government control of what scientists can do or say is, in the words of one, "McCarthy-esque". Even when the rules are clear, complying with them can be prohibitively expensive. One state university had to hire five full-time police and an extra secretary just for three moderately sized labs. Institutions that cannot afford this are giving up research involving select agents.
One researcher, again afraid to be quoted, had to drop a proposal for work on ricin because it required a collaborator with particular equipment. "None would work on a select agent without millions of dollars of government money, prepaid," the researcher says. On top of the financial burden, potential partners do not want to risk criminal liability if they accidentally break any rules.
Meanwhile, researchers who have not been able to meet deadlines for registering every single sample of select agents they hold are having to destroy them. Many labs have thousands of samples, and such collections are important for diagnosis, drug and vaccine testing, and for tracing outbreaks. After the 2001 anthrax attacks, for instance, one collection helped investigators to identify the strain used.
"All clinical labs in this country have now dropped select agents and destroyed their archive stocks," says one prominent researcher. Scientists at big government labs say that smaller institutions are appealing to them to take their collections. "We haven't been able to save nearly enough," says one. And the bureaucrats "are not helping".
Even military labs are not immune. "I have had to autoclave three freezers of Venezuelan equine encephalitis," says Peter Jahrling of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland, because regulators had wanted a full account of each sample by a deadline he could not meet.
The disease, which can kill people and animals, is considered a prime bioweapon candidate, but it is also endemic in many countries in the Americas and USAMRIID is working on a vaccine.
Lock out
Until last week many researchers faced the prospect of being excluded from their own labs, because after 12 November only people who had passed an extensive government background check were to be allowed access to select agents.
Partly because of initial understaffing, the FBI has not yet approved many staff. Even government scientists who already have high-level security clearances must get new ones to continue working in their own labs, and yet more to visit collaborators.
The deadline was extended last week only after desperate appeals from four university associations and the American Society for Microbiology. Those who have sent in complete applications by 12 November will now have provisional approval. But the FBI has yet to receive complete applications from 2000 of the 9000 researchers listed as needing clearance.
Part of the problem was that the FBI sent out the forms late, and there has been confusion over the exact requirements. Many of the difficulties seem to be teething problems resulting from the introduction of a new security culture to scientists whose work has in the past been largely unregulated, and doing it within very tight deadlines.
But the damage could be permanent. If the current trends continue, many scientists will not be willing to do research that could help protect people - in the US and elsewhere - against natural disease outbreaks or deliberate attacks involving the select agents.
"How could I possibly permit my students and myself to be subject to the same nightmare [as Butler] if we also made an inadvertent mistake?" asks Falkow in his letter to Ashcroft. "I know this fearful feeling is true not only of American scientists but also of colleagues from abroad... You have your regulations but I believe you will have fewer knowledgeable scientific practitioners of infectious diseases research."
"If I am required to inventory every vial, even if it is in a locked freezer behind five layers of security, then be held criminally accountable for any mysterious disappearance when it is almost certainly only sloppy record keeping," says another researcher, "then I'll work on Paramecium [a pond protist] and leave the select agents to someone else."
-------- europe
EU defences must not double up on NATO tasks: Schroeder
BERLIN (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105160016.z2bkvw9v.html
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder expressed support Wednesday for a European Union defence structure but said that it should be built within NATO and not double up on tasks carried out by the alliance.
The EU must be able to act "in terms of foreign and security policies, and that could and must happen within the transatlantic alliance," he told a European forum in Berlin.
"It's about establishing a European pole inside NATO and not a competitor for NATO," Schroeder said, adding that there should be no duplication of tasks.
Germany, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg -- which sparked an unprecedented crisis at NATO just before the Iraq war by blocking help for partner Turkey -- in April proposed a separate EU defence planning headquarters outside Brussels.
Other EU countries reacted coolly to the idea, saying that NATO remained a cornerstone of defence and should not be weakened, while the United States has been particularly critical.
British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said earlier Wednesday that Britain will not participate in a proposed autonomous EU military planning and command centre which will be separate from the NATO headquarters.
-------- iraq
Who Comprises the Iraqi Resistance? (Part1 )
By Firas Al-Atraqchi
Freelance Columnist
04/11/2003
http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2003/11/article_02.shtml
16 US soldiers were killed in an attack on a US CH-47 Chinook helicopter near Fallujah.
In light of a military campaign gone wrong and mounting casualties, the Bush administration in collusion with the Pentagon is masterminding a new wave of media manipulation by consistently suggesting, repeating and insisting that the violence of resistance in Iraq is not domestic in source and nature, but exported by foreign elements.
The media has heard various explanations as to why US and (to a lesser extent) British soldiers are starting to come home in body bags.
The preferred explanation is that the violence in Iraq is due to foreign fighters, or jihadis, as some military officials have seen fit to label them. These jihadis are considered to be disgruntled Muslims (they may come from anywhere in the Arab world) who see Iraq as a battleground against what they term the "evil American Empire." These jihadis, US officials claim, either are directly linked to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda or sympathize with such organizations.
This explanation works wonders for US media. It exonerates the Iraqi people who were meant to have greeted US soldiers with song and dance, flowers, and rice when Baghdad was "liberated." Although the little Hollywood charade never really materialized, blaming foreign insurgents leads one to believe that, at the very least, the Iraqis don't mind having US occupying forces in Iraq, and at the very best, that Iraqis want US forces to occupy their country. By shifting the blame to foreign fighters, the White House and the Pentagon create the illusion that only foreign fighters are in Iraq, thereby discrediting the claim that Iraqis do not want US forces. The public is then led to believe that the invasion of Iraq is going smoothly, that Iraqi society is moving ahead but is being disrupted by foreign Islamic elements.
These foreign Islamic elements are also a convenient scapegoat to connect the invasion of Iraq to the events of September11 . Prior to the war, virtually every White House official barked and bellowed that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Vice-President Dick Cheney continues to insist that there is a link despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The bottom line is that Iraq had nothing to do with September11 , one of the principal reasons for invading Iraq (the second was weapons of mass destruction; there is also no evidence to support that claim). When the US public demanded proof and got nothing in return, the White House created a new battleground -Iraq- citing that Iraq was where America was waging war against terrorism.
On November3 rd, President Bush told reporters "We are taking the war over there [Iraq] rather than let them bring it here." Since no Iraqi brought the war to American shores, and no evidence was found to support such a claim, creating the threat of foreign Islamic militants infiltrating Iraq will allay the US public's fears and confusion.
But it won't do the same with the Iraqi people who are not as easily fooled. The US administration is trying to lick its wounds in the US public domain but is forgetting that it is meant to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people first and foremost. In that it has failed miserably.
The second explanation meted out by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and its proxy, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), is that the violence in Iraq is largely due to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his most loyal Baathist supporters or the dreaded Fedayeen fighters. Every time an explosion is heard in Baghdad or an Iraqi civilian dies, members of the CPA and the IGC quickly point to Saddam. In the wake of the downing of the Chinook helicopter near Fallujah, which killed 16 US soldiers, the CPA and the Pentagon were at a loss for words. How could they account for this momentary military defeat? Blame someone that is invisible, of course - Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, former Iraqi Vice-President and Saddam's most trusted ally who is thought to be hiding in Mosul.
US media was quick to broadcast images of Al-Douri and sound bites from various Arab and regional conferences. "He called the Kuwaitis sons of dogs," said one MSNBC commentator, as if insulting the Kuwaitis was proof enough that Al-Douri was behind the killing of US soldiers. What US media did not mention is that Al-Douri is thought to be an invalid, dying of cancer at the ripe old age of78 .
There is a problem with the second explanation, however, because it does not account for the great depth, veracity, frequency and success of recent attacks. How could Saddam's forces be so mobile, agile and quick? US military commanders have in effect started to admit that they face an invisible enemy, an enemy they have vanquished more than six months ago when President Bush declared the war over. The second explanation on its own presents the White House with a public relations fiasco.
Enters the surefire columnist who knows what Iraqis feel without ever really being in Iraq or talking to Iraqis in their own country. These media pundits introduce yet another explanation - a hybrid of both explanations above; the Baathists are importing foreign fighters. And they are doing it from Iran and Syria.
"We thought we won the first Iraq war in 100 hours, but lost the peace to Saddam and his Baathist followers. We thought we won the second Iraq war decisively in one week, but Saddam's murdering class and his imported terrorists chose to run and fight from underground," William Safire, a proponent of the Iraq invasion, says in The Washington Post (November3 ,2003 ).
The picture now becomes all the clearer. The US is fighting home-grown terrorists (the Baathists) and the Islamic terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers (Al-Qaeda), and Iraq is the proving ground. To any buffoon this simply says that the US must "stay the course," as President Bush said last week, and fight to the last man in Iraq.
Suddenly, the reasons for going to Iraq are no longer about weapons of mass destruction (David Kay has been embarrassed into reclusion because he came up empty.); they are no longer about freeing the Iraqi people or creating the Arab world's first democracy. They are about converting a fertile country into a depleted uranium cemetery for Al-Qaeda. Never mind that Iraqis live there, too.
This explanation might go down well with the common lot in North America, but it is an insult to the Iraqi people themselves. On the one hand, it says that no one really cares about them, and on the other, it insults them by saying they can't fight or fend for themselves.
And that is the precise root of the problem. The grievances of the Iraqi people are being tossed aside, which may better explain why resistance in Iraq is increasing, becoming ever more ferocious, and why more US soldiers die every day.
Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
--------
Blasts Strike U.S. Compound in Mosul
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. forces in the northern city of Mosul came under attack Wednesday as insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at a convoy and barracks, and a hand grenade exploded near another military convoy in the city center.
Two Iraqi civilians were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their car after apparently missing a military convoy, Sgt. Chris Ryder said. An American soldier also was wounded.
An Iraqi teenager was also killed in a hand grenade blast near Mosul's city hall, hospital sources said. Two others teens and a U.S. soldier were wounded.
No casualties were reported in the earlier attack on the barracks, the U.S. military said.
Separately, a U.S. soldier died of wounds sustained from a ``non-hostile gunshot'' at a Baghdad checkpoint, the military said.
Also, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division captured two former Iraqi Army generals in an early Wednesday raid in Fallujah, the military said. The two men were suspected of being ``key financiers'' and organizers of anti-coalition fighters operating there, the military said.
The continuing attacks by shadowy groups of Iraqi resistance fighters have cast doubt on the ability of the U.S.-led coalition to contain the growing insurgency, and have sparked an exodus from Baghdad of international organizations and diplomats from several Western countries.
Spain, a close U.S. ally, withdrew many of its diplomatic staff on Wednesday because of escalating violence.
Huge explosions thundered through Baghdad Tuesday evening as the insurgents targeted the 2-square-mile ``Green Zone,'' which includes coalition headquarters, the military press center and other key facilities.
Iraqi police said two mortars fell in the zone, but U.S. officials said the headquarters itself, located in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces, was not damaged. A Pentagon spokesman said three people were wounded. It was unclear if they were military or civilians.
The huge detonations sent coalition staffers running into the hallways. It was the second mortar attack against the Green Zone in as many days.
The Spanish withdrawal followed the slaying of a Spanish navy captain in the truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19, and the Oct. 9 killing of a Spanish sergeant working for military intelligence. Security at the Spanish Embassy had been stepped up in recent weeks.
The temporary withdrawal was part of a plan to move the Spanish mission to a safer location, Spain's foreign minister, Ana Palacio, told television channel CNN+ on Wednesday. Palacio will travel to Baghdad this weekend and meet with L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator for Iraq.
Two other coalition members have withdrawn diplomats from Iraq because of stepped-up insurgent attacks. Last month, Bulgaria and the Netherlands moved their diplomats to Jordan, also citing worsening security.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday the attacks on coalition troops were being conducted by small groups of Saddam supporters and terrorists who had infiltrated the country.
The Defense Ministry said Tuesday a British marine was killed by hostile fire in Iraq last week, bringing the British death toll since the war started to 52.
``There is no inhibition on the progress we are making both in political and in economic terms, other than this small group of people,'' Blair said.
``The answer is to carry on making the effort to make Iraq better.''
Fears about security have increased after a dramatic escalation in attacks, starting with the Oct. 26 missile barrage against the Al-Rasheed Hotel, where many coalition and U.S. military officials lived. One U.S. colonel was killed and 18 people were wounded.
On Sunday, guerrillas near Fallujah shot down a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, killing 15 soldiers in the bloodiest single strike against American forces since the war began March 20.
Violence persisted Tuesday when a roadside bomb killed a 1st Armored Division soldier and wounded two others in Baghdad.
On Wednesday, the new head of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council said he will visit Turkey to ``mend ties'' with Iraq's northern neighbor after weeks of tension over the possible deployment of Turkish troops in Iraq.
Jalal Talabani, a longtime Kurdish leader who assumed the one-month rotating presidency Saturday, will visit Turkey on Nov. 19.
Separately, officials said Iraq's Oil Ministry has replaced the director of the government's petroleum marketing agency in a bid to accelerate oil exports, considered the key to economic revival.
Shamkhi Faraj was named to head the State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, replacing Mohammed Jibouri, who ran the agency since major combat ended in May.
Faraj, who was in charge of the ministry's economic department, formerly worked at OPEC and is considered knowledgeable in petroleum marketing, one official said.
Other personnel changes were expected, he said.
The oil marketing organization said last month that Iraqi exports tripled from 300,000 barrels a day in June to 900,000 in September, but sabotage of pipelines and smuggling cut into foreign sales.
Before the war began in March, Iraq pumped around 2.1 million barrels a day.
The Middle East Economic Survey, based in London, said Iraq exported an average of about 1.15 million barrels of crude a day in October.
Bremer has said the country loses $7 million a day when the northern pipeline is not in service.
--------
THE OCCUPATION
3 Blasts Seem Aimed at U.S. Compound
November 5, 2003
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 4 - Three powerful explosions in rapid succession shook central Baghdad on Tuesday evening in what apparently was a mortar attack on the headquarters of the American civilian authorities here.
Iraqi witnesses standing near the gates said the explosions hit the sprawling, walled-in American compound about 7:45 p.m.
A spokeswoman for American military said Tuesday night that four people had been wounded, but she gave no details.
The witnesses said the mortar shells had come from a neighborhood north of the American headquarters and landed inside.
"I looked up and saw trails of white light, and then they exploded inside there," said Muhammad al-Mayehi, an Iraqi, pointing toward the offices of L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator, and his staff.
The explosions, which rattled buildings on both sides of the Tigris River, added to a growing sense of insecurity in the capital and in central Iraq, where guerrillas fighting the American occupation have recently carried out a number of spectacular attacks.
The explosions followed the deaths of at least 15 American soldiers on Sunday, when their helicopter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the town of Falluja. (Early reports from the military indicated that 16 had been killed, but the Department of Defense is now confirming only 15.) Last week, suicide bombers struck targets across the capital, killing 34 people.
If reports of witnesses hold true, the attack on Tuesday was the third evening of mortar attacks in Baghdad since Mr. Bremer lifted its nighttime curfew late last month, as a gesture to Iraqi Muslims observing Ramadan. It would be at least the fourth attack in recent months to strike within the American compound, a cordoned-off chunk of downtown Baghdad.
The political fallout from the violence continued Tuesday as well. The Spanish government, one of the Bush administration's most important allies in Iraq, said Tuesday that it had drastically scaled back its diplomatic staff here.
Only four or five people remain in the Spanish Embassy in Baghdad. The rest of the diplomatic and administrative team has been withdrawn to Jordan, the Spanish foreign minister, Ana Palacio, said Tuesday.
She said the Spanish government planned to move the embassy to a more secure building and reduce its staff so that all personnel could be situated in one place.
The steady beat of violence here has hindered almost every aspect of the American effort to rebuild the country and foster democratic government. The lack of security has stifled foreign investment and chased away all but a few relief agencies.
In a separate incident in Baghdad on Tuesday, an American soldier was killed and two others were wounded when the vehicle they were riding in was struck by a homemade bomb. The soldiers were with the First Armored Division, the main occupying force in the capital.
Bombs of the type used against those soldiers, typically fashioned from one of the innumerable stockpiles of ammunition left behind after the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government, have inflicted dozens of casualties on American troops since major combat operations were declared over six months ago.
Within minutes of the explosions, American soldiers and Iraqi police officers with searchlights began combing the desolate strip of land along the eastern side of the Tigris River near the Sheraton Hotel. Sirens wailed, and the rattle of machine-gun fire cut the air in the distance.
In late September, three projectiles cut into another part of the American compound, hitting the 14th floor of the Rashid Hotel. In mid-October, six rockets were launched into the area. Neither attack caused injuries. On Oct. 26, a missile struck the Rashid again, killing an American officer.
Iraqi guerrillas opposed to the American occupation have made hit-and-run mortar strikes one of their primary methods of attacks. American officers say the guerrillas often place the mortars in the bed of a truck, pull over to the side of the road, fire and drive away - before the Americans have time to respond.
Some American military installations employ sophisticated tracking devices that allow them to trace the arc of a mortar shell back to its exact point of launch. But the devices are of little use when the guerrillas run off after firing.
The size of the mortar used to fire the shells was unclear. The crash and thunder of the explosions, far larger than those used in recent mortar attacks in Baghdad, suggested it was quite large.
Also on Tuesday, in the north, Mosul was rattled by two attacks. Guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Mosul Hotel, headquarters of the 101st Airborne Division.
Mosul residents reached by telephone said that five rockets were fired at the hotel and that three had struck it. A spokesman for the American military confirmed the incident but gave no details.
In the second attack, gunmen shot and killed a prominent Iraqi judge outside his home, Reuters quoted the police as saying. The Reuters report said the judge, Ishmael Youssef, had served under Mr. Hussein's government and had continued after many of his colleagues had been fired by the Americans.
The killing of Mr. Youssef came a day after gunmen, believed to be associated with Mr. Hussein's government, murdered the chief judge of Najaf, in the south. The judge, Mohan Jaber al-Shoueili. was taken from his home and killed in Najaf's main cemetery, officials said.
Mr. Shoueili had been leading several investigations of local officials who served under Mr. Hussein. Guerrillas have been waging a campaign of murder against those who cooperate with American forces here.
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U.S. Shifts On Creation Of Security Unit in Iraq
Bremer Sets Conditions For Paramilitary Force
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A858-2003Nov4.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 4 -- The U.S. administrator of Iraq has decided to conditionally support the creation of an Iraqi-led paramilitary force composed of former employees of the country's security services and members of political party militias, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council wants the force, which would pursue resistance fighters who have eluded American troops, to include a domestic intelligence-gathering unit and to have broad powers to conduct raids and interrogate suspects. Such characteristics would make the proposed force different from those created under other security initiatives undertaken by the Americans, who until now had expressed opposition to the idea.
The council leaders contend that Iraq's municipal police departments are too weak -- and American soldiers too lacking in local knowledge -- to combat the supporters of former president Saddam Hussein, Islamic militants and foreign guerrillas who are attacking American forces and Iraqis cooperating with the U.S.-led occupation. "We need a security force that is run by Iraqis, that is more heavily armed than the police and is able to act quickly," said a senior official of the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmed Chalabi, has participated in discussions about the new unit.
Although the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, had initially opposed the creation of a paramilitary force under the control of the country's interim interior minister, he has softened his position as attacks, particularly on Iraqi targets, have increased. Bremer no longer has "any objection in principle" to the force, but wants to ensure several conditions are met in vetting, training and supervising the participants, a senior U.S. official here said.
The Governing Council implored the U.S. government Tuesday for more authority to deal with security issues, saying in a letter to President Bush that Iraqis "are more able than others to handle this matter."
"We appeal to you, Mr. President, to transfer more authority to Iraqis, so they can run their own affairs and combat the forces of evil that are trying to destabilize Iraq," Jalal Talabani, the current holder of the council's rotating presidency, wrote in a letter of condolence to Bush in response to the deaths of 15 American soldiers in a missile strike on a transport helicopter.
As the council made its plea to Bush, Iraq was wracked by another day of violence. Three explosions, caused by mortars or rockets, occurred inside the supposedly secure headquarters zone of the occupation authority in Baghdad, wounding four people, military officials said. One soldier from the Army's 1st Armored Division was killed by a roadside bomb in the capital. And in the northern city of Mosul, an Iraqi judge was shot and killed outside his home.
The escalating violence prompted Spain, which is contributing 1,300 troops to the U.S.-led military force, to withdraw most of its diplomatic staff from Iraq. Britain, the second-biggest contributor to the force, said one of its marines was killed by hostile fire on Friday, the first fatality in more than a month among the 10,500 British military personnel in Iraq.
The unit that the Governing Council wants to create would be the most powerful domestic security force in Iraq, fueling concern among some U.S. officials that it could be used for undemocratic purposes, such as stifling political dissent, as such forces do in other Arab nations.
Council leaders said they wanted the force to be drawn primarily from former members of the military and police, as well as members of the security and intelligence wings of five political organizations: the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Shiite Muslim Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and two large Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
"We have very well-established intelligence networks," the Iraqi National Congress official said. "If we can act on that information right away with a strike force, instead of waiting for the Americans to receive our reports and act on it, we can catch a lot more people than the Americans are now."
Occupation authority officials have expressed concern that such a force would give the five political groups unrivaled power in the country's internal security apparatus. But U.S. and British officials involved in security matters here say they believe the risks are outweighed by the potential gain of having Iraqis assume a more active role in hunting down resistance fighters. Until now, Iraqi police officers, most of whom lack adequate training and equipment, have been reluctant to take up that task.
"It would be good to have a group of Iraqis who are well-trained and well-armed and well-disciplined participating in the fight," one occupation authority official said. "Every bit helps."
Bremer would approve, the senior official said, if the members were carefully screened by the Interior Ministry and by the occupation authority, and received police training, not military instruction. In addition, the official said, Bremer would require that command-and-control issues with U.S. forces be resolved and that the force could not grow beyond more than a few thousand members.
Political party security organs and other militias could not join the force en masse, but members could join as individuals, the official said. "We're not going to have a process whereby militias are institutionalized here," the senior official said. If that happens, he said, "we will not have a unified Iraq at the end of the day."
Setting up this force, the official said, "will have to done very carefully."
Although Bush administration officials want to increase Iraqi involvement in pursuing resistance fighters, the entities created so far by the occupation authority -- a police force, a force to guard buildings, border police, a civil defense corps and an army -- are all subservient to Bremer. The civil defense units, which are recruited and trained by American soldiers, take their orders from U.S. commanders. While the police have more autonomy, they usually do not involve themselves in hunting down resistance fighters.
The creation of an Iraqi-run paramilitary unit would be a significant step toward giving Iraqis more power to tackle the escalating guerrilla activity and rampant crime that have shaken the faith of many Iraqis in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct their country and form a democratic government.
"We need to be equal partners with the Americans in promoting security," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose militia, the Badr Brigades, has been patrolling cities in southern Iraq. "They want us to take responsibility. They need to give us the authority."
In his letter to Bush, Talabani wrote that "Iraqis are more able than others to handle this matter because they are well aware of the course of events in Iraq, more knowledgeable about the situation, the complexities of Iraqi society and the nature of Saddam Hussein's terrorist regime."
-------- israel / palestine
Israel gets apology for peace-threat poll
By Ed O'Loughlin
November 5, 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/04/1067708213036.html
The European Commission has apologised to Israel for an opinion poll which found that Israel is the country most ordinary Europeans regard as the biggest threat to world peace.
Israeli leaders and international Jewish groups have angrily denounced the poll, saying European criticism of Israel is motivated by anti-Semitism.
In apparent agreement, the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, said the results "point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand".
"To the extent that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical," he said.
The present holder of the rotating European presidency, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said he felt "surprise and indignation" and that the question had been "misleading".
Mr Berlusconi recently weathered a similar controversy after publicly denying that the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini played any role in the Holocaust. He was subsequently awarded a prize by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for his support for Israel and the US.
Carried out as part of continuing surveys by the European Union, the telephone poll sampled 7500 respondents in all 15 EU member states.
Presented with the names of 14 countries, the respondents were asked if they regarded each in turn as a threat to world peace. The results showed 59 per cent of respondents agreed that Israel was the biggest threat to world peace. The US, Iran and North Korea came joint second with 53 per cent. Iraq came next with 52 per cent, followed by Afghanistan.
Libya, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Somalia, Russia, Syria and Pakistan all scored less than 50 per cent.
Palestine was not listed because, the EU says, it is not a country.
Meanwhile, on a visit to Russia, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said he was prepared to meet the recently appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurie, to discuss the stalled "road map" for peace.
The Israeli Government froze contacts with the Palestinian Authority following the breakdown of a short-lived unilateral Palestinian ceasefire, saying it could not negotiate while the authority's chairman, Yasser Arafat - whom it accuses of terrorism - is still pulling the strings of power.
----
Israeli Military Easing Restrictions
By MARK LAVIE
Associated Press Writer
Nov 5,
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- In a gesture to Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, Israeli defense officials said Wednesday they had begun easing travel restrictions in the West Bank and were discussing the removal of unauthorized settlement outposts.
But Palestinians said little had changed on the ground and that Israel had even confiscated some Palestinian land in the West Bank.
In other developments, a meeting of Palestinian officials failed to resolve a stalemate between Qureia and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Their dispute, over the appointment of a security chief, has prevented Qureia from forming a new government and resuming dormant peace talks with Israel.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned home from Russia early Wednesday after expressing hope in a new Palestinian government.
Israeli forces have been encircling main Palestinian population centers for two months, banning most travel. The crackdown, a reaction to suicide bombing attacks inside Israel, has further stifled the battered Palestinian economy.
The army said closures were being lifted around all West Bank Palestinian towns, except Jenin and Nablus. The two areas have been centers of Palestinian militant activity, and an army spokesman said the military had received numerous warnings about threats in Nablus. The army said operations in the area would continue Wednesday.
"Easing up on the Palestinians is all well and good, but it takes second place to the security of the people of Israel," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday. With a population of more than 130,000, Nablus is the largest city in the West Bank. The travel restrictions have disrupted the city's commerce and prevented people from nearby towns from reaching hospitals.
Early Wednesday, there were few signs of improvement in the West Bank.
"We don't know how long these measures will last and we don't know the extent of Israeli commitment to these measures," said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister.
At the Surda roadblock north of Ramallah, the army allowed pedestrians to pass but a physical barrier remained intact. The crossing was jammed with hundreds of cars, people and donkeys.
Other checkpoints were also still intact, and the operators of major bus companies in Nablus and Bethlehem said they still did not have permission to resume operations.
An army spokesman said the lifting of the restrictions was being carried out in steps. "I can assure you that people are feeling this (improvement) as we speak," the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Israeli army had approved the seizure of Palestinian farmland in the Jordan Valley, not far from the Israel-West Bank border. The army, he said, planned to use the land for a security barrier that Israel is building, ostensibly to deter suicide bombers. The army did not immediately comment.
Erekat said he complained to the United States, Russia and the European Union - sponsors of the international "road map" peace plan that envisions a Palestinian state by 2005.
Palestinians are enraged over the barrier, which dips deep into the West Bank in some areas. The United States has also criticized it.
"The Israeli government is determined to bury the road map and the vision of a two-state solution underneath this wall," Erekat said.
Israeli security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Defense Ministry would start a serious discussion about removing unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank. The easing of travel restrictions and the review of the outposts are meant to show Qureia that the country is serious about resuming peace talks, the officials added.
Mofaz also wants to show progress to U.S. officials when he goes to Washington next week, the officials said. The United States has greatly diminished its presence in the region in recent weeks amid continued violence.
The road map peace plan requires Israel to dismantle dozens of settlement outposts erected since 2001. The outposts are typically little more than a handful of trailers and Israeli flags.
However, only a few of the outposts been removed, and in recent weeks the Defense Ministry has given indications it would take steps to "legalize" some of the remaining ones instead, drawing stiff Palestinian objections.
In another development, the central committee of the dominant Palestinian Fatah party met to discuss the dispute between Qureia and Arafat. A grim-looking Qureia left the meeting without talking to reporters.
"The situation is too difficult and nothing has changed," Shaath said, adding that another meeting was scheduled later Wednesday.
Qureia wants all security forces under one person, Gen. Nasser Yousef. Arafat, who controls some of the forces, has opposed the appointment on personal and political grounds.
Israeli and Palestinian officials had already started contacts in anticipation of Qureia's presenting a new Cabinet. The two sides hope to arrange a meeting between Qureia and Sharon once a Palestinian government has been formed. The leaders would talk about a possible truce and how to break the deadlock over the international peace plan.
----
Arafat Stalls New Cabinet
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/international/middleeast/05PALE.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 4 - The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat delayed the formation of a new cabinet on Tuesday by blocking his prime minister's choice for interior minister, Palestinian officials said. The move will slow efforts to restart peace talks with Israel after a three-month freeze. Advertisement
The prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, has assigned all cabinet portfolios except interior minister, the officials said. Underlying the dispute is Mr. Arafat's refusal to relinquish control over some security services.
Mr. Qurei's emergency government expired Tuesday, but he said he would present a new cabinet to his parliament by next week.
Waiting in the wings are the Israelis, who established tentative contacts with Palestinian officials in recent days, hoping to arrange a meeting between Mr. Qurei and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once a long-term Palestinian government has been formed.
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
C.I.A. Needs to Learn Arabic, House Committee Leader Says
November 5, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/politics/05INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that prewar American intelligence about Iraq had been hampered by significant shortcomings, including what he called the C.I.A.'s unsatisfactory response to Congressional directives to improve its foreign language capacity.
The chairman, Representative Porter Goss of Florida, has been a prominent champion of the intelligence agencies, so his criticisms were particularly notable.
They went beyond those that he and his Democratic counterpart, Representative Jane Harman of California, made in late September in a private letter to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and they opened a new chapter in the debate over who or what was responsible for intelligence failures regarding Iraq.
"Our capabilities were not what they should have been," Mr. Goss said in an hourlong interview. He said there had been "way too many gaps" in American intelligence gathering, including information about Iraq's conventional military power and any illicit weapons programs.
Congressional officials have long expressed concern that intelligence agencies do not have nearly enough officers who speak Arabic, Persian or Pashto, languages needed to gain access to information in Arab nations, Iran and Afghanistan.
In the interview, Mr. Goss offered a careful defense of the Bush administration's use of the prewar information, taking issue with Democrats who have said the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. He said he believed that the administration's warnings about Iraq's illicit weapons program had been prudent, even though American investigators in Iraq have not turned up any chemical or biological weapons or prohibited weapons materials. In general, he said, intelligence agencies "did the best they could with what they had" in concluding that Iraq had such weapons in its arsenal.
But Mr. Goss said a review under way by his committee had turned up what he called fundamental shortcomings in intelligence gathering about Iraq before the war, particularly about the "plans and intentions" of Iraqi decision makers.
He would not be more specific about the weaknesses, but left little doubt that his main focus of concern was in human intelligence.
Mr. Goss said a report being drafted by his committee would focus in part on "why these capabilities weren't employed or otherwise brought to bear, or why they weren't harvested."
He blamed what he called a disinvestment during the 1990's, a period in which the classified intelligence budget is believed to have declined under President Clinton, for many of the problems. But he also said the C.I.A.'s response to calls for more extensive language skills on the part of its officers, before this year's war in Iraq and since, had been "belated and insufficient."
In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Ms. Harman, the top Democrat on the committee, said she agreed that intelligence resources on Iraq, and human intelligence capacity in general, had been inadequate.
But she said she believed that intelligence agencies and the administration were also to blame, for not acknowledging that their sources of information were far from sufficient and relied heavily on uncorroborated accounts from Iraqi defectors. "Analysts ought to know when their sources are inadequate," she said.
Among Republicans on Capitol Hill, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, has sought most directly to blame intelligence agencies for incorrectly gauging the threat posed by Iraq, in particular by asserting that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program, something that American investigators in Iraq have not been able to substantiate.
But as the Senate committee moves forward on its own review, Senator Roberts's Democratic counterpart, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, has been seeking to shift attention to the question of how the administration used that intelligence to bolster its even darker public assertions.
On the issue of language training for intelligence officers, a senior Republican Congressional official said a significant amount of money allocated by Congress for the foreign language training of C.I.A. officers, particularly in Arabic, Persian and Pashto, had been redirected by the agency for other purposes during the last fiscal year.
An agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity said he understood that some of the money had been spent on computer-driven document translation rather than on training for individual officers.
"Our view is that we need both," the official said, but he defended the computerized capacity as one that would prove useful, for example, in translating the reams of Arabic-language documents being accumulated by the American investigators in Iraq who are working under David Kay, a special adviser to Mr. Tenet.
"We've been working on language capability for a number of years," said the C.I.A. official, who added that the agency had increased hiring bonuses and other inducements.
But Mr. Goss was sharply critical, saying the agency sometimes seemed hamstrung by uncertainty over which languages it might need most in the future, when "the answer is we need them all."
--------
Panel to See Prewar CIA Memos on Iraq
White House Agrees on Release
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A512-2003Nov4.html
The White House will agree to share with the Senate intelligence committee CIA memos from October 2002 that warned the White House against saying that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium in Africa, a White House official said yesterday.
Though White House lawyers must work out an arrangement with the committee staff for the documents to be made available, reaching agreement on the CIA memos leaves the committee with only one outstanding White House request -- permission to interview "individuals involved in briefing senior administration officials." The individuals remain unidentified and the request is under study, the White House official said.
"When you are dealing with the White House, they want to make sure they are not getting into a precedent in regard to various documents used by the executive," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee, told reporters yesterday.
The Senate committee is also awaiting answers to questions recently posed to the Pentagon and CIA, as well as delivery of two major intelligence analyses from the State Department, sources said. In addition, no agreement has been reached on a request for testimony from CIA Director George J. Tenet.
As a result, Roberts said yesterday, it probably will be next year before the committee holds public hearings and releases its report on prewar Iraq intelligence.
"There are hundreds of pages to review, more than we ever expected" from recent requests, a senior congressional aide said yesterday. "And more is still coming in."
The pending request to the White House relates to CIA memos written Oct. 5 and Oct. 6, 2002. They urge changes in the draft of an Oct. 7 speech that said the Iraqi "regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from sources in Africa, and the central ingredient for the enrichment process."
The memos were first disclosed last July by Steven Hadley, the deputy national security adviser. He said the CIA sought to have the words removed because the amount was "in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source."
The second CIA memo, dated the next day, told the White House that the CIA had differed with British intelligence because Iraq already had a large stock of uranium, Hadley said.
The allegation was removed, but famously emerged three months later in 16 words in the president's State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The outstanding request to the Pentagon is a series of questions from Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the committee's vice chairman, that relate to testimony by Undersecretary Douglas Feith on July 10 about Feith having established a two-man intelligence analysis group in October 2001. The group reviewed earlier CIA, Pentagon and State Department intelligence reporting and analyses involving al Qaeda and other terrorist groups seeking connections to Hussein's Iraq or other countries.
It supplied reports to Feith, which were passed on to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who allegedly passed some on to the president and to Vice President Cheney. The group also briefed Tenet and his top aides in August 2002 on its findings about alleged connections between terrorist organizations. Later, Feith set up the Office of Special Plans, which prepared for the Iraq war and its aftermath.
The State Department announced last week that additional staff has been added to process the committee's last two requests.
-------- un
N. Korea, Japan in name-calling row at United Nations
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105154318.3vshtods.html
A general debate at the United Nations turned into a name-calling row when a representative of North Korea referred to the Japanese as "Japs."
UN General Assembly president Julian Hunte pleaded with speakers to mind their language after deputy UN ambassador Kim Chang Guk let the epithet fly in a discussion Tuesday of the annual report of the UN's nuclear watchdog agency.
The ambassador said he rejected pressure from the "Japs" over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.
He said he used the term because a Japanese diplomat the day before had referred to his country as North Korea rather than its official title, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The ourburst came in a discussion on the report by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei.
In introducing the report Monday, ElBaradei said North Korea's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty posed a "serious and immediate challenge" to the international effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
North Korea was the lone vote in the General Assembly against the report, which was approved 129-1.
--------
Israel Brings Anti-Terrorism Resolution to U.N.
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A501-2003Nov4.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 4 -- Israel, the target of hundreds of critical U.N. resolutions, introduced on Tuesday its first initiative before the 191-member General Assembly in more than a quarter-century, a resolution condemning attacks against Israeli children by Palestinian suicide bombers.
This is a shift in strategy at the United Nations by Israel, which has sought to avoid engaging in a forum that is traditionally sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Israel is also considering pressing the Security Council to consider passing a resolution condemning new suicide attacks against Israeli citizens, Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador to the United Nations, Arye Meckel, said in an interview Tuesday.
The diplomatic campaign reflects a calculation by Israeli diplomats that U.N. members will be hard-pressed to oppose an anti-terrorism resolution. "We are testing the waters," said an Israeli official who asked not to be identified. "We believe that there is less tolerance for terrorism."
But the move places Israel in the awkward position of lending credibility to a body that it has long charged with being irrelevant and unfair to the Israeli cause. It is also runs counter to Israel's standard position that the conflict in the Middle East should be resolved through negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, not by the United Nations.
The Israeli initiative is complicating efforts by the Bush administration to persuade the Palestinian U.N. representative, Nasser al-Kidwa, to reduce the number of resolutions the Palestinians present to the General Assembly. The United States has asked al-Kidwa to consolidate as many as seven resolutions dealing with the chief U.N. relief agency into one large resolution. Al-Kidwa had agreed to reduce the number to four.
"It's up to the Israelis to decide what to do, but we are just saying that resolutions, whether in the Security Council or the General Assembly, dealing with the Middle East don't necessarily contribute to bringing about a peaceful resolution to the conflict," said a State Department official who asked not to be identified.
Meckel said that Israel decided to circulate its draft after Egypt presented a nearly identical resolution last week condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinian children. "We know these G.A. resolutions are not binding. Nevertheless, they do play a role in the court of public opinion," Meckel said in an interview Tuesday. "We feel we cannot sit by idly and display indifference."
Meckel, who presented the draft to a group of European envoys Tuesday, said that Israel wants to force U.N. members to face a stark "dilemma." Either they can vote in favor of the Palestinian and Israeli texts, he said, or they can oppose both. "This is a test case for the U.N. member states. Are they ready to say to us Israeli children are not as important as other children?"
Israel presented its draft resolution Tuesday morning to the General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with children's rights. Israeli diplomats said that they had not decided when to call for a vote on the resolution and left open the possibility of withdrawing it if the Egyptians agreed to withdraw their parallel pro-Palestinian resolution.
Arab diplomats said it is unlikely that Egypt will withdraw the draft. But one European diplomat said that the European Union would try to persuade both countries to withdraw their resolutions and focus on one broad resolution that deals with the rights of children.
Israel circulated its first draft resolution to the General Assembly in December 1976, calling for revival of peace talks with Syria, Jordan and Egypt. But the text was withdrawn after the Palestinians backers offered an amendment to include the Palestine Liberation Organization in the discussions. At the time, the PLO was calling for the destruction of the Israeli state.
Israel has not since put a resolution before the General Assembly. But last December it won support for a Security Council resolution condemning a Nov. 28, 2002, al Qaeda attack that killed three Israeli tourists at the Paradise Hotel in Kikambala, Kenya.
-------- us
Need for more troops debated
November 05, 2003
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031104-114525-5214r.htm
Four Republican lawmakers returning from Iraq yesterday said more U.S. troops are not the solution to improving security conditions in the war-torn country.
"We do not need more troops," said California Rep. Ed Royce, who visited the nation with Reps. Peter T. King of New York, Steve Chabot of Ohio and Max Burns of Georgia.
Coalition ground forces commander Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and others, including Maj. Gen. David H. Petreaus of the 101st Airborne Division, made "the same observation: We have sufficient troops here," Mr. Royce said.
Other lawmakers disagree.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., Delaware Democrat, on Sunday said that "In the short term, we may need more American forces there while we're training these [Iraqi security forces]."
Mr. Biden's comments came during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," where he was joined by Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, who agreed with his assessment. Both senators are the senior members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and recently went to Iraq.
Citing the estimated 600,000 tons of ammunition stashed "all over the country" in weapons dumps, Mr. Biden asked: "If we didn't need more forces in there, why aren't we able to guard these dumps?"
"What's needed now very badly," he said, "is an urgent call for trainers from NATO countries and to try very hard to further get NATO involved in this."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, himself recently back from Iraq where terrorists fired rockets at his hotel, reported on his trip yesterday in a speech to a conference in the District.
Mr. Wolfowitz focused on the positive aspects of his trip, saying he was struck by the emerging Iraqi economy - especially the open-air markets in the northern city of Kirkuk.
"The people we encountered were a mixed crowd of Arabs and Kurds, and some others," he said. "The Arabs were vocal in their enthusiasm for liberation and their hatred of Saddam Hussein, as were the Kurds."
Still, the wave of attacks hitting Iraq since the start of Ramadan on Oct. 26 has been the worst since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1. The attack on Baghdad's Al Rasheed Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz was staying, came on the first day of the Muslim holy month. On the second day, dozens of Iraqis were killed by a series of suicide car bombings.
On Sunday, insurgents downed an Army helicopter, killing 16 American soldiers, and four persons were wounded yesterday when guerrillas fired mortar rounds into the headquarters area of the U.S.-led occupation forces in Baghdad.
The four Republican congressmen just back from Iraq said U.S. forces largely are facing a supportive population of Iraqis. The congressmen suggested a solid portion of the resistance is coming from foreign fighters who have entered Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime.
--------
New Battlefield Hospital Prototype a Hit
November 5, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Portable-Hospital.html
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) -- A prototype of a new battlefield hospital arrived in a big, drab-green box and within minutes unfolded into a full, two-table operating room. The U.S. Army calls the $10 million project the ``Future Medical Shelter System.'' It is designed to replace a patchwork of facilities that have been in the field almost 20 years.
But after seeing the prototype Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., said the Army can remove ``future'' from the name.
``This is unbelievable,'' Wamp said. ``It is now. It is here. We did it. All we have to do is mass produce it.''
The prototype was engineered and built at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, which besides caring for the nation's nuclear arsenal uses its expertise to build new products as a ``national prototype center.''
William Howell, deputy commander of acquisition for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command based at Fort Detrick, Md., said the new surgical unit could be in production in another year or two.
The portable hospital, weighing just 15,000 pounds fully loaded, ``can literally go from the back of a truck to 'ready to receive patients' in about 30 minutes,'' Y-12 project manager Duane Bias said.
The unit comes in the form of a standard shipping container -- 8 feet high by 8 feet wide by 20 feet long. It unfolds into a hard-roofed emergency surgical suite in five minutes or less.
It is significantly more advanced than the medical shelters now in use.
``It's a huge difference,'' Howell said. ``You are looking at a shelter that hopefully takes one to two people to put it up instead of 18, and will be ready to work in minutes, not hours.''
Constructed from honeycombed aluminum panels, titanium and PVC plastic, the surgery suite is strong enough to be stacked during shipment and capable of operating in temperatures ranging from 25 degrees to 125 degrees Fahrenheit.
The suite also can provide chemical and biological protection for up to 72 hours. It could also carry bullet-resistant panels if needed, Bias said.
``We are fighting a global war on terrorism where you have to strike fast. In so doing, we have to have a platform that can get us there quickly and... give health care to the soldiers who so richly deserve it,'' he said.
The prototype will get its first test later this month when it is exhibited in San Antonio at a convention of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States.
On the Net:
Y-12: http://www.y12.doe.gov/bwxt
-------- propaganda wars
Government extends its secrecy shield
By Declan McCullagh
CNET News.com
November 5, 2003
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5102379.html
COMMENTARY--Nobody likes to be criticized in public, especially all those politicians in Washington, D.C., who fervently hope to be re-elected.
But the Bush administration has taken the desire to avoid critical commentary to an extreme. In incident after troubling incident, federal agencies have been quietly censoring information that previously had been available on their Web sites and otherwise curbing public oversight.
About a week ago, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of its more popular Web sites, call.army.mil, after The Washington Post wrote about a report that had been posted on it.
The Post's October 25 article said "the U.S. military intelligence gathering operation in Iraq is being undercut by a series of problems in using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in the field," citing the report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report, which the Post had the foresight to mirror on its own Web site, talked about the "poor quality" of mission planning and "marginally effective" training for certain reserve troops.
The report was not classified. It was merely a sober analysis of the Army's problems in Iraq. It had the ring of truth to it, unlike Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, which he used to blandly reassure viewers. "We can win this war. We will win this war," he said.
This is not an isolated example. In the two years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has systematically reduced the amount of information available to the public, which in turn has made government officials less accountable to taxpayers. Attorney General John Ashcroft set the tone in an Oct. 12, 2001, memo that urged agencies to withhold information from requests that were made under the Freedom of Information Act. Then, in January, Rumsfeld claimed that too much data was popping up on military Web sites. Citing al-Qaida, Rumsfeld warned that "one must conclude our enemies' access (to Department of Defense) Web sites on a regular basis."
Rumsfeld's directive explains why, a few weeks ago, another part of the Pentagon decided to shroud its actions in secrecy. Until recently, the Web site for the Defense Science Board--an obscure but influential advisory body that influences military policy and had a budget of $3.6 million a year--had listed the board's membership.
Today, the board's Web site still includes links to "members" and "task force members," but one link requires a password, and the other link returns a "404: file not found" error. What makes this bureaucratic pusillanimity particularly noteworthy is that the full membership list remains available on a second government Web site the General Services Administration runs.
As with the now-unavailable Army site, national security was hardly at risk. The board members include a typical cross section of organizations that receive fat checks for military work, including representatives of Northrop Grumman, Sandia National Laboratory, General Dynamics, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. The only reasonable explanation for the disappearing information is to make it harder for the public and journalists to follow trails of money and influence.
Probably the most blatant example of bureaucrats who hope to duck criticism came about a year ago, when the military tried to quell public concern about the now-defunct Total Information Awareness project through the simple expedient of deleting files from the Web.
First, biographical information about TIA project leaders, including retired Adm. John Poindexter, disappeared. Then the TIA site shrank even more, with the slogan and logo for the TIA project--a Masonic pyramid that eyeballs the globe--vanishing, a highly unusual move for any government agency. Finally, a few weeks later, a diagram that explains the TIA project was erased.
Some reason for optimism Once in a while, though, the government can be shamed into backing down.
About a month ago, the Defense Department blocked public access to a Web site that lists internal regulations. Examples include "Prevention of Oil Pollution From Ships" and "Enforcement of the State Traffic Laws on (Defense Department) Installations."
No reason for the block was given. But after the Associated Press ran an article about it and TheMemoryHole.org posted its mirror of the site, the Pentagon relented and restored public access to the regulations. Accelerating that restoration was a strong legal argument that the regulations must be published and available to the public.
Then there's the White House, with its own form of history revisionism. On Sept. 24, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice gave a briefing to the press on the condition that she be identified only as a "senior administration official," a common practice in Washington. The transcript was posted to the Whitehouse.gov site.
One reporter, however, had addressed her as "Dr. Rice," a statement the White House faithfully included in the posted transcript. By the next morning, those words had disappeared from the White House's Web site.
In July, the Department of Energy surreptitiously deleted from its Web site documents that relate to its 2004 budget request. If you look at the HTML source code today, you'll see this note: "7/28/03 removed per J. Campbell request," a reference to James Campbell, the department's acting chief financial officer.
It turns out that the Federation of American Scientists was suing the CIA to learn the dollar size of the U.S. intelligence budget (countries such as United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands routinely disclose theirs). In its litigation, the Washington-based nonprofit group reminded the judge that the Energy Department is part of the intelligence community, and its budgets were published.
"Shortly afterward, the intelligence budget data was removed from the (Energy Department Web) site," wrote Steven Aftergood, head of the group's Project on Government Secrecy. An indomitable open-government warrior, Aftergood verified that the deleted information was not classified and then promptly republished it on his own Web site. (Aftergood, incidentally, was the first to document and publicize many of these incidents mentioned in this column.)
Every administration does this to some extent. In 1998, while working for Time Inc., I attended a meeting of the President's Export Council Subcommittee on Encryption and was kicked out of the room when a National Security Agency official wanted to brief subcommittee members in secret. Subcommittee members who heard the secret briefing later told me that limiting press coverage, not preserving national security, was the real reason the chairman closed the meeting.
In the last two years, though, the government has extended secrecy far beyond what recent predecessors have dared. There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, but using the excuse of terrorist attacks to shield officials from embarrassment and critical scrutiny is unconscionable. The public deserves better.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
ATF system will let agencies share bombing, arson data
November 05, 2003
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031104-114547-8988r.htm
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) yesterday introduced a new, Internet-accessible system that will allow state, local and other federal law-enforcement agencies to share information about bomb and arson cases and related incidents.
ATF spokesman Andrew L. Lluberes said the Bomb and Arson Tracking System (BATS) will serve as a library that law-enforcement agencies can use to manage and exchange information. It was developed by the agency's Arson and Explosives National Repository, which Congress entrusted with maintaining all national information on explosives incidents and arson.
A Virginia agency, the Winchester Police Department, is among six pilot programs under way nationwide.
"BATS will, for the first time, provide state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies with fire, arson, post-blast and explosives-ordnance-disposal responsibilities the ability to receive real-time information concerning violent crimes under their jurisdiction," said Kathleen L. Kiernan, the agency's assistant director for strategic intelligence and information.
"It will allow investigators to go from being reactive to proactive," she said.
The system, which is free and limited to law-enforcement agencies, allows investigators to capture details of bomb and arson cases, including the area of origin or device placement, casualties, dollar losses, fire descriptors, collateral crimes, device components, description of how the device was paced, and biological, chemical and radiological information.
Mr. Lluberes said the program can be used equally well by law-enforcement agencies that have an existing records-management system as well as those looking for a basic turnkey records-management system solely dedicated to arson and bombings.
ATF serves as the custodian for BATS, he said, but each participating agency will manage and control its own information and decide how and with whom to share classified information.
Mr. Lluberes said ATF's Arson and Explosives National Repository has worked since spring 2001 with PEC Solutions Inc. of Fairfax and state and local law-enforcement agencies to develop BATS for about $500,000.
The agency is conducting pilot projects with the state fire marshal's office of Maine; Glendale, Ariz., police and fire departments; the Winchester, Va. police department; the Southlake, Texas, public-safety department; and the fire-investigations unit of the Tulsa, Okla., fire department.
-------- courts
White House Told To Justify Secrecy
High Court Issues Order in Terror Case
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A494-2003Nov4.html
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it wants the Bush administration to defend the secrecy that enveloped lower federal courts' proceedings involving one of the 1,200 Arab and Muslim men detained by federal authorities after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In a brief order, the court called on Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson to respond to a Florida resident's claim that lower courts violated the Constitution when they agreed to keep even the existence of his case a matter of strict confidentiality. The court's action comes a month after Olson informed the justices that he did not plan to respond.
The court's order suggests that the justices are keeping a watchful eye on the government's legal approach to the war on terrorism, including its assertion that much of that war must be conducted in secret, even though the court has yet to accept a case for full argument and decision.
Earlier this year, the court turned down a request from media organizations to rule on the constitutionality of the administration's policy of secret immigration-court proceedings in terrorism-related cases, despite conflicting rulings by lower courts. Olson told the justices then that the policy was justified by the government's need to keep information useful to terrorists from leaking, and that Supreme Court intervention was unnecessary since such hearings were largely completed.
Yesterday's case raises a somewhat different issue: whether the Constitution permits federal district and appeals courts -- presumably at the administration's request -- to keep the public in the dark about an individual's constitutional challenge to government detention, known as a petition for habeas corpus.
Lawyers for Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, 34, an Algerian immigrant, told the justices in their brief -- the public version of which itself contains several pages of whited-out material -- that a Florida federal district judge and a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit violated the First Amendment when they heard Bellahouel's case without even noting the case on the court's publicly available docket, and without publicly explaining their reasons for doing so.
Courts may conduct proceedings in secret, the lawyers argued, but they must at least offer a public accounting of the reasons for doing so.
"The facts of Petitioner's case would make a significant contribution to the national debate about the detention and treatment of Middle Eastern persons and there is no legitimate government interest in permitting court-suppression of his ordeal," the brief said.
But some facts of Bellahouel's case, including his name, have leaked out and have been reported in the Florida press, thanks in part to a clerical error at the 11th Circuit that left some information on the Internet for a few hours earlier this year.
Bellahouel, a waiter at a Miami area Middle Eastern restaurant, was detained by the INS on a visa violation in October 2001 and then turned over to the FBI as a material witness in the Sept. 11 hijacking investigation. An FBI agent's affidavit said that he had waited on a table occupied by hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, and later went to a movie with a third hijacker, Ahmed Alnami.
Bellahouel testified before a Virginia grand jury before being released on a $10,000 immigration bond in March 2002.
The government still seeks to deport him for violating a 1996 student visa. But Bellahouel, who denies any involvement in terrorism, is married to an American, and his attorneys have said that in such cases spouses usually may adjust their status.
Bellahouel's Supreme Court petition notes that the 11th Circuit ruled in March that the district court in Miami should place Bellahouel's case on its public docket, but that no other information about it should be released. The 11th Circuit's own ruling was kept under seal and not publicly docketed, the petition notes.
The case is M.K.B. v. Warden, No. 03-6747. There is no deadline for Olson to file his response; the court will not decide whether to hear the case until he does.
-------- immigration / refugees
Illegally in U.S., and Never a Day Off at Wal-Mart
November 5, 2003
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/05/national/05WALM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
They came from Russia, Poland and Lithuania, and their tales of washing and waxing Wal-Mart's floors for seven nights a week sound much like Pavel's.
Last February, Pavel responded to an intriguing Web site that boasted of cleaning jobs in the United States paying four times what he was earning as a restaurant manager in the Czech Republic. He flew from Prague to New York on a tourist visa and took a bus to Lynchburg, Va., where a subcontractor delivered him to a giant Wal-Mart.
Pavel immediately began on the midnight shift and said he soon learned that he would never receive a night off. He said he worked every night for the next eight months. In this way, Pavel, who refused to give his last name, became one pawn among hundreds employed by subcontractors that clean Wal-Mart stores across the nation, paying many workers off the books.
Pavel's unhappy stay in the United States ended with a shock when federal agents raided 60 Wal-Marts on Oct. 23 and arrested him and 250 other janitors as being illegal immigrants. Yesterday, the company acknowledged that it had received a target letter from federal prosecutors accusing it of violating immigration laws and saying that Wal-Mart faced a grand jury investigation.
The 21-state raid last month exposed an unseemly secret about Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer: Hundreds of illegal immigrants worked at its stores, and its subcontractors appear to have violated overtime, Social Security and workers' compensation laws.
Company officials deny having known that illegal immigrants worked in their stores, saying they required their cleaning contractors to use only legal workers.
But two federal law enforcement officials said in interviews that Wal-Mart executives must have known about the immigration violations because federal agents rounded up 102 illegal immigrant janitors at Wal-Marts in 1998 and 2001. In the October raid, federal agents searched the office of an executive at Wal-Mart's headquarters, carting away boxes of papers. Federal officials said prosecutors had wiretaps and recordings of conversations between Wal-Mart officials and subcontractors.
The use of illegal workers appeared to benefit Wal-Mart, its shareholders and managers by minimizing the company's costs, and it benefited consumers by helping hold down Wal-Mart's prices. Cleaning contractors profited, and thousands of foreign workers were able to earn more than they could back home.
But the system also had its costs - janitors said they were forced to work seven days a week, were not paid overtime and often endured harsh conditions. Foreigners got jobs that Americans might have wanted. And taxpayers sometimes ended up paying for the illegal workers' emergency health care or their children's education in American schools.
"We Czechs are willing to sacrifice and work hard, but we definitely weren't earning enough money," said Pavel, 33, in a telephone interview from the Czech Embassy before he was deported last Friday. He said he received $380 in cash for his 56-hour workweeks. That came to $6.79 an hour, and he did not receive time-and-a-half for overtime.
In interviews, federal law enforcement officials, cleaning contractors, industry experts and seven illegal immigrant cleaners at Wal-Mart, including Pavel, said subcontracting allowed Wal-Mart to benefit while enabling it to deny responsibility.
Wal-Mart officials said it made sense to contract out the cleaning work because that enabled store managers to concentrate on what they do best, operating stores that provide low-cost merchandise. Wal-Mart uses about 100 contractors to clean nearly 1,000 of its stores.
Several industry executives said the questionable contractors made it hard for legitimate operators to bid low enough to win contracts at Wal-Mart.
"When you don't pay taxes, don't pay Social Security and don't pay workers' comp, you have a 40 percent cost advantage," said Lilia Garcia, executive director of the Maintenance Cooperation Trust Fund, a group financed by California cleaning contractors to police fly-by-night competitors. "It makes it hard for companies that follow the rules."
After the arrests, Wal-Mart, which had $245 billion in revenues last year, said it was beginning a review to ensure that no illegal immigrants worked in its 3,470 American stores.
"We take every action that we can to make sure our workers are legal workers, and in this case, be assured we will take whatever corrective actions are necessary," said Tom Williams, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark.
He said of the target letter, "The notification gives us time to provide the attorney general's office information that supports our position."
Many people, from janitors to federal investigators, said Wal-Mart store managers and officials at headquarters knew about widespread use of cleaners who are illegal immigrants.
"The chief manager of our store knew what was going on," Pavel said. "He knew that we were illegal."
Federal law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wal-Mart executives must have known about the use of illegal immigrants partly because 13 Wal-Mart cleaning subcontractors pleaded guilty to illegal hiring practices several years ago.
One of the 13 was Miriam Klackova Facemyer, 30, president of Spartak Cleaning, who admitted two years ago in federal court in Virginia to employing illegal immigrants. Ms. Facemyer, a native of Slovakia living in Richmond, employed more than 110 immigrants, most from Eastern Europe, to clean Wal-Marts and other stores.
Wal-Mart is not the only retailer to use questionable cleaning contractors. Hundreds of Mexican immigrants have sued three California supermarket chains, charging them with hiring contractors that never gave a night off, did not pay overtime and often paid less than the minimum wage.
Daniel Kuchar, a 25-year-old Czech engineering student, said he worked every night except Christmas in his 12 months cleaning for two Wal-Mart competitors, Kmart and Target, in Northern Virginia. The companies have policies prohibiting contractors from hiring illegal immigrants. Last March, he won a $7,278 judgment in state court against his contractor, Promaster Cleaning Service, for failing to pay him time-and-a-half for overtime.
"Everybody goes to the United States for the money," said Mr. Kuchar, who entered on a tourist visa and has returned to his Czech village.
One subcontractor, Stanislaw Kostek, whose company, CMS Cleaning, cleaned more than a dozen Wal-Marts in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, acknowledged that he had hired illegal immigrants.
"It's a degrading job; very few people want to do it even though the salary is at least $2 above the minimum wage" of $5.15 an hour, Mr. Kostek said. "But there are workers who want to do the job."
Those workers, he said, come from not just Eastern Europe but also Mexico, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and other distant lands. Some take the jobs hoping they will be the first step in their climb to the American dream, while others view it as a way to earn cash before returning home.
Mr. Kostek, a native of Poland, said he quit the business after paying a $10,000 civil penalty last June in pleading guilty to federal charges of employing illegal immigrants.
Victor Zavala Jr., who cleaned Wal-Marts in New Jersey seven nights a week, explained the lure of the job.
"When I talk on the phone to friends in Mexico, they ask me how the pay is, and I say, `We're getting $350 a week,' " said Mr. Zavala, a native of Mexico City who was rounded up in the Oct. 23 raid. "They say, `Wow, in Mexico we're earning 300 pesos a week.' That's just $30 a week. So compared with Mexico, it's good money."
Mr. Zavala said it was unjust to deport immigrants who worked hard and well. "We were proud of what we were doing," he said. "Every morning we looked back at the floors, and they looked real shiny. I don't want to get too emotional, but do you think we want to go back to our country and earn just $30 a week?"
One night, he recalled, a co-worker sliced his hand open on a floor-scraping blade and was rushed to a hospital in Red Bank. He had problems paying the $800 bill because his job did not provide health insurance and his employer shunned the workers' compensation system. The hospital swallowed the cost.
Reached by telephone, Ken Clancy, president of Facility Solutions, which employed Mr. Zavala, would not comment.
Mr. Kostek described an elaborate network of contractors that served Wal-Mart. There was a contractor above him, he said, that had perhaps 100 stores. This contractor then made individual subcontractors responsible for stores, usually between 5 and 20.
Wal-Mart paid the contractor $10 an hour per worker, Mr. Kostek said, the contractor paid subcontractors $9 an hour per worker and subcontractors paid their employees $8 an hour - although many workers said they received less than $7. Mr. Kostek said he had to pay for equipment, chemicals and liability insurance.
He did not pay some required taxes. "How do you pay workers' comp if you're making $1 an hour and you have to cover all expenses?" he said. "And no, I wasn't paying Social Security either."
Mr. Kostek would not name the contractor above him, and federal prosecutors and Wal-Mart executives refused to name Wal-Mart's cleaning contractors and subcontractors.
Industry experts and janitors said the contractors and subcontractors appeared to play a shell game, continually closing down, filing for bankruptcy and reincorporating under different names. Some closed without paying workers their last month's pay. Some insisted on a $2,000 finder's fee for providing foreigners with jobs.
"There is a whole Mafia-like structure," said Richard Krpac, chief counsel for the Czech Embassy. "They advertise on all these Web sites, and they try to erase all of people's doubts about it. If you're without work for two or three years, and you're trying to take anything, you may easily fall prey."
Denis, who refused to give his last name, said he got a medical degree in Russia before taking a job at a Wal-Mart in Lexington, Va. He said the store manager knew that illegal immigrants were cleaning the floors.
"It's obvious," he said. "They knew the whole crew consists of foreigners who don't speak English."
Denis said it was exhausting to work seven nights a week, with just a 15-minute break. "There were no benefits, no health insurance, no nothing," he said.
Robert, a Czech who runs a Web site to attract Eastern Europeans to janitorial work, said using foreign cleaners was good for Wal-Mart and for American consumers.
"No American wants to do this job," he said. "If they hired Americans, it would take 10 of them to do the work done by five Czechs. This helps Wal-Mart keep its prices low."
-------- police
Intelligence Guide
Updated FBI Standards Authorize Sharing Security Information
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A06
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is prepared to issue new guidelines today directing the FBI to share more information gathered in national security investigations with state and local law enforcement officials.
An introduction to the guidelines also states that they are intended to allow the FBI to make full use of "all authorities and investigative techniques" permitted by court rulings and law changes made after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They are directed at FBI intelligence gathering and are an analog to last year's guidelines that revised rules for information sharing by FBI criminal investigators.
Among the new changes are provisions allowing the FBI to disseminate certain information gathered in national security investigations to state and local officials when it is "for the purpose of preventing or responding to a threat to national security or public safety."
The change may please local officials, who have complained that they often can do little with the vague threat information provided by FBI. Classified information still could be shared only with those with security clearances, but a Justice Department official said there will be instances where the FBI can inform local officials about suspect individuals and groups without disclosing classified material.
Agents conducting national security investigations also will be able to conduct "proactive collection" of publicly available information about groups and individuals who may be of investigative interest. Previously, FBI agents were barred from gathering such information without specific grounds to open an investigation. The change would allow agents to gather material on extremist Web sites, for example, or to research the spread of radical Islam in the U.S. prison system.
The guidelines "move the investigative capabilities into the 21st century but keep the safeguards," said M.E. "Spike" Bowman, FBI deputy general counsel. Bowman said he expects civil libertarians to find fault with the new guidelines. "Anytime the FBI finds it easier to investigate, they are going to get exercised," he said.
The guidelines cautioned the FBI that "preliminary and full investigations of groups and organizations should focus on activities related to threats to the national security, not on unrelated First Amendment activities."
The new rules, which cover procedures in counterterrorism and espionage investigations, will permit the FBI to use all lawful investigative techniques, including foreign intelligence surveillance wiretaps and searches at the earliest stages of investigations.
"Previously, there were a lot of restrictions on what investigative techniques could be used at various stages of an investigation," said a Justice Department official. Now agents will be permitted to use the same tools in a preliminary investigation as they do in a full investigation, subject to approval from a special court that must approve warrants and wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A declassified version of the new guidelines, obtained by The Washington Post, is heavily redacted, with all discussion of investigative tools and techniques excised.
The Justice Department is to be informed in the future not only of all national security investigations approved by FBI headquarters officials but also of requests for investigations from the field turned down by FBI headquarters.
FBI intelligence agents are directed under the guidelines on retaining and using information to conduct "strategic analysis" of potential terrorist activity and on parameters for sharing those analyses with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, both domestic and foreign.
-------- torture
Deported Terror Suspect Details Torture in Syria
Canadian's Case Called Typical of CIA
By DeNeen L. Brown and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A522-2003Nov4.html
TORONTO, Nov. 4 -- A Canadian citizen who was detained last year at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a suspected terrorist said Tuesday he was secretly deported to Syria and endured 10 months of torture in a Syrian prison.
Maher Arar, 33, who was released last month, said at a news conference in Ottawa that he pleaded with U.S. authorities to let him continue on to Canada, where he has lived for 15 years and has a family. But instead, he was flown under U.S. guard to Jordan and handed over to Syria, where he was born. Arar denied any connection to terrorism and said he would fight to clear his name.
U.S. officials said Tuesday that Arar was deported because he had been put on a terrorist watch list after information from "multiple international intelligence agencies" linked him to terrorist groups.
Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA "extraordinary rendition" -- the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners.
Arar's case has brought repeated apologies from the Canadian government, which says it is investigating what information the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave to U.S. authorities. Canada's foreign minister, Bill Graham, also said he would question the Syrian ambassador about Arar's statements about torture. In an interview on CBC Radio, Imad Moustafa, the Syrian chargé d'affaires in Washington, denied that Arar had been tortured.
Arar said U.S. officials apparently based the terrorism accusation on his connection to Abdullah Almalki, another Syrian-born Canadian. Almalki is being detained by Syrian authorities, although no charges against him have been reported. Arar said he knew Almalki only casually before his detention but encountered him at the Syrian prison where both were tortured.
Arar, whose case has become a cause celebre in Canada, demanded a public inquiry. "I am not a terrorist," he said. "I am not a member of al Qaeda. I have never been to Afghanistan."
He said he was flying home to Montreal via New York on Sept. 26, 2002, from a family visit to Tunisia.
"This is when my nightmare began," he said. "I was pulled aside by immigration and taken [away]. The police came and searched my bags. I asked to make a phone call and they would not let me." He said an FBI agent and a New York City police officer questioned him. "I was so scared," he said. "They told me I had no right to a lawyer because I was not an American citizen."
Arar said he was shackled, placed on a small jet and flown to Washington, where "a new team of people got on the plane" and took him to Amman, the capital of Jordan. Arar said U.S. officials handed him over to Jordanian authorities, who "blindfolded and chained me and put me in a van. . . . They made me bend my head down in the back seat. Then these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me."
Hours later, he said, he was taken to Syria and there he was forced to write that he had been to a training camp in Afghanistan. "They kept beating me, and I had to falsely confess," he said. "I was willing to confess to anything to stop the torture."
Arar said his prison cell "was like a grave, exactly like a grave. It had no light, it was three feet wide, it was six feet deep, it was seven feet high. . . . It had a metal door. There was a small opening in the ceiling. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time, the cats peed through the opening into the cell."
Steven Watt, a human rights fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Washington, said Arar's case raised questions about U.S. counterterrorism measures. "Here we have the United States involved in the removal of somebody to a country where it knows persons in custody of security agents are tortured," Watt said. "The U.S. was possibly benefiting from the fruits of that torture. I ask the question: Why wasn't he removed to Canada?"
A senior U.S. intelligence official discussed the case in terms of the secret rendition policy. There have been "a lot of rendition activities" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the official said. "We are doing a number of them, and they have been very productive."
Renditions are a legitimate option for dealing with suspected terrorists, intelligence officials argue. The U.S. government officially rejects the assertion that it knowingly sends suspects abroad to be tortured, but officials admit they sometimes do that. "The temptation is to have these folks in other hands because they have different standards," one official said. "Someone might be able to get information we can't from detainees," said another.
Syria, where use of torture during imprisonment has been documented by the State Department, maintains a secret but growing intelligence relationship with the CIA, according to intelligence experts.
"The Syrian government has provided some very useful assistance on al Qaeda in the past," said Cofer Black, former director of counterterrorism at the CIA who is now the counterterrorism coordinator at the State Department.
One senior intelligence official said Tuesday that Arar is still believed to have connections to al Qaeda. The Justice Department did not have enough evidence to detain him when he landed in the United States, the official said, and "the CIA doesn't keep people in this country."
With those limitations, and with a secret presidential "finding" authorizing the CIA to place suspects in foreign hands without due process, Arar may have been one of the people whisked overseas by the CIA.
In the early 1990s, renditions were exclusively law enforcement operations in which suspects were snatched by covert CIA or FBI teams and brought to the United States for trial or questioning. But CIA teams, working with foreign intelligence services, now capture suspected terrorists in one country and render them to another, often after U.S. interrogators have tried to gain information from them.
Renditions are considered a covert action. Congress, which oversees the CIA, knows of only the broad authority to carry out renditions but is not informed about individual cases, according to intelligence officials.Priest reported from Washington. Staff writers John Mintz and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Clean energy brings windfall to Indian village
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
By Himangshu Watts,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-05/s_10097.asp
MUPPANDAL, India - On the southern tip of India, the once-impoverished people of Muppandal village are thanking Varuna, the Hindu god of the wind, for blowing unexpected good fortune their way.
In the decade since the installation of the first giant power-producing windmill, towering above the palm trees with its whirring 80-foot blades, their lives have changed dramatically.
Incomes have risen and thousands of new jobs have been created as dozens of wind energy producers swarmed the village, the showcase of a $2 billion clean energy program in India, the world's fifth-largest producer of wind energy.
"In 10 years, my daily income has gone up to 450 rupees (US$10) from 45 rupees," said Koilpillai Gopal, a barber who has been able to convert his modest roadside kiosk into a glittering shop. "It is all because of the windmills."
In Muppandal, a hilly region where the wind races in from the Arabian Sea through gaps between the mountains, the price of land for a windmill has soared to 300,000 rupees ($6,620) from 40,000 in the early 1990s.
Electricity produced from wind is costlier than gas, thermal, or hydro-based units, but subsidies offered by the government through tax breaks, lower import duties on equipment, and cheap loans keep prices competitive.
With the subsidies, analysts say, the generation cost varies from 2.25 to 2.75 rupees per unit, or kilowatt-hour, which is slightly more than thermal electricity. Power produced by old hydro-based units costs less than one rupee.
The subsidies and a power-starved market have attracted foreign firms such as Danish NEG Micon, the world's third-biggest turbine maker; Germany's Nordex; and privately owned Enercon and General Electric's wind unit.
India produces a total of 100,000 megawatts of power, about 12 percent less than total demand.
Rapid Expansion
Nineteen-year-old Raju Palavoor, a watchman at a wind farm, pays his college fees with his salary and flaunts a flashy watch - a luxury in many Indian villages.
"Thanks to the windmills, I can become a graduate. One day I can even get a government job," he said.
Wind farms have sprung up all along the 19-mile road from Muppandal to Kanyakumari, a town wedged between the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean.
Muppandal and other areas in the southern state of Tamil Nadu generate about half of India's 2,000 megawatts of wind energy, itself about 2 percent of India's total power output. The government expects the sector to expand rapidly and pass its target of adding 5,000 megawatts of wind energy by 2012.
"The outlook is optimistic, said Ajay Vikram Singh, secretary in the Ministry of Nonconventional Energy Sources. "India has the potential to generate 45,000 megawatts from wind energy."
Clean energy such as wind, biogas, and solar offer an attractive option for India, which imports 70 percent of its crude oil needs at a cost of more than $17 billion a year.
The Ministry of Nonconventional Energy Sources estimates a 200-kilowatt wind turbine replacing a thermal power plant will save 120 to 200 tons of coal. And burning that much coal would add to the atmosphere two to three tons of sulfur dioxide, 1.2 to 2.4 tons of nitrogen oxide, and 300 to 500 tons of carbon dioxide.
"There is enormous scope for more wind energy projects," said M.P. Ramesh, head of the Center for Wind Energy Technology in Madras.
-------- environment
U.K. urges polluted U.S. "ghost fleet" to turn back
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
By Stefano Ambrogi,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-11-05/s_10093.asp
LONDON - A controversial plan to scrap four polluted U.S. navy ships in Britain was in tatters on Tuesday after two government agencies said the scheme no longer had approval and one urged them to turn back.
The ships are on their way across the Atlantic and are expected to arrive on Friday.
Britain's Environment Agency reiterated on Tuesday that the Hartlepool site in northeast England where the ships would be broken and recycled no longer had "proper planning permission."
It said demolition company Able U.K. had two options: to turn the ships back and apply for another waste management licence, which could take months to approve, or to find another site for the demolition, either in the U.K. or another country.
Asked if the ships should turn back, an Environment Agency spokeswoman replied, "That would be our preferred option."
On Monday, Environment minister Elliott Morley backed the agency's decision in the House of Commons.
Able U.K. said the first two ageing hulks, the Conisteo and Caloosahatichie - both dating from World War II - were due in British waters on Friday and at the scrapyard on Teesside the following week. Another two are due a week after that.
A company spokesman could not say what would happen to the ships. "We are still digesting this. We just don't know," he said.
The decrepit vessels are polluted with thousands of tonnes of asbestos, toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, and quantities of heavy fuel oil.
The planned disposal of the ships in Britain has caused uproar on both sides of the Atlantic with U.S. and U.K. environmental groups challenging the scheme in respective courts. British politicians have also entered the fracas, calling for the ships to be repatriated and the waste to be disposed of in the United States.
U.K. government agencies did not know what would happen to the ships when they arrived. The Environment Agency said the ships could enter U.K. waters but could not continue to the demolition site, throwing the scheme into further confusion.
The large, unstable vessels need to cross the English Channel, one of the busiest stretches of water in the world, to reach their destination.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth blamed the British government on Tuesday for the chaos. "The government hasn't taken a joined-up approach on this. It should order them back immediately," a spokeswoman said.
The rusting ships have been languishing at their anchorage points on the James River in Virginia for years as U.S. authorities argued over how best to dispose of them.
Former U.S President Bill Clinton outlawed the sale of obsolete vessels for scrap overseas in an attempt to shield workers in developing nations who work in dangerous conditions.
But the Bush administration sought and won an Environment Protection Agency waiver against the moratorium, allowing the ships to be exported abroad for breaking.
-------- health
Synthetic 'Good' Cholesterol Helps Clear Arteries
Small Study Indicates the Possibility That Drug Therapy Could Reverse Heart Disease
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page A02
A synthetic form of "good" cholesterol has been shown to quickly shrink blockages clogging coronary arteries, offering for the first time the possibility of a drug that could actually rapidly reverse heart disease, researchers reported yesterday.
In a small, preliminary study, the laboratory-made substance, which mimics a type of cholesterol discovered in a group of surprisingly healthy villagers in rural Italy, significantly reduced in just six weeks the amount of plaque narrowing the arteries of patients who had suffered heart attacks or had chest pain.
Because the approach attacks the underlying source of many heart attacks, the results could mark a milestone in the search for new ways to treat the nation's No. 1 killer, researchers said.
"For the first time, we've shown that you can reverse coronary disease with drug therapy in a matter of weeks," said Steven E. Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who coordinated the nationwide study. "We really have, for the first time, the opportunity to attack this disease at its fundamental basis. It's a paradigm shift. It's opening a new door."
While drugs that lower cholesterol and blood pressure can cut the risk of developing heart disease, and aspirin protects against heart attacks, one of the Holy Grails of modern medicine has been to find a way to reverse the deadly process once it has begun. The results of the new study suggest that synthetic HDL may finally offer such a medicine.
Nissen and other researchers cautioned that the study involved only 47 patients, and further studies are needed to confirm the findings, fully evaluate the drug's safety and determine whether the treatment actually cuts the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
"It's extremely preliminary," said Susan K. Bennett, clinical director of the George Washington University Hospital Women's Heart Program, speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association. "But it is very intriguing."
Regardless of whether this particular drug eventually offers a practical, effective treatment, other experts said the study has opened up an entirely new way to approach treating atherosclerosis, known commonly as hardening of the arteries.
"This is the first true test of the concept that specifically targeting HDL, the good cholesterol, can impact plaque and atherosclerosis in humans," said Daniel J. Rader, director of preventive cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Scientists have long known that there are two forms of cholesterol: One is low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which is the "bad" cholesterol because it accumulates inside artery walls, causing the vessels to narrow and setting the stage for heart attacks and strokes. The other is high-density lipoprotein (HDL), called the good cholesterol because it protects against heart disease, primarily by lowering LDL levels.
About 30 years ago, researchers discovered a group of about 40 people living in the rural northern Italian town of Limone sul Garda who had a surprisingly low rate of heart disease despite their extremely low HDL levels. Scientists determined that their HDL was slightly unusual, raising the possibility that it provided powerful protection against heart disease.
Esperion Therapeutics Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., developed a genetically engineered form of this version of HDL, dubbed ApoA-I Milano, and showed that it reduced plaque inside the arteries of laboratory animals. The company then asked Nissen to test it in people.
In the study, Nissen and colleagues at 10 centers around the country gave weekly infusions of either the synthetic HDL or an inert placebo to heart disease patients for five weeks. The plaques clogging the walls of their arteries were carefully measured before and after the treatment using an extremely precise ultrasound technique.
Compared with those who received the placebo, the patients who received the synthetic HDL experienced about a 4 percent reduction in the plaques lining their arteries, a reduction 10 times as great as anything scientists had tried previously, the researchers found.
"When the statisticians delivered the data to me, I fell off my chair," Nissen said in a telephone interview. "We've run across something that can literally clear out the plaque in just a few weeks. That's unprecedented."
Rader agreed. "I don't think anyone thought you could induce regression in six weeks -- that's the single most surprising thing about this study," he said.
The only other thing that may reduce plaque inside arteries is long-term use of anti-cholesterol drugs such as statins. Some research has also suggested people who strictly adhere to the high-fiber, low-fat, vegetarian Dean Ornish diet can also somewhat reverse their heart disease. But the amount of plaque reduction in those cases was just a fraction of what patients taking the synthetic HDL experienced, and it took many years.
It remains unclear how this form of HDL works, but it may be especially adept at transporting LDL out of the blood and back into the liver, where it is harmlessly processed.
Rader noted that there could be nothing particularly special about the synthetic HDL. It could be that it is the only one that has been tested this way because it is a form of HDL that can be patented. Other companies are trying to develop different ways of using HDL to fight heart disease, such as drugs that boost the body's own production of HDL.
In the meantime, Esperion plans to conduct a follow-up study that will involve thousands of patients who would be followed for a year to determine whether the treatment reduces the risk for heart attacks and the need for angioplasties and bypass surgery to restore blood flow to the heart muscle.
"This is a landmark study in our mind that validated the whole HDL hypothesis -- that it is something that could change the way medicine is practiced," said Roger Newton, Esperion's president and chief executive.
-------- imf / world bank / wto
World Bank to Back Oil Pipeline
$125 Million, Future Aid Pledged to Caspian Sea Project
By Peter Behr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 5, 2003; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A478-2003Nov4.html
A planned 1,100-mile pipeline to carry oil from the Caspian Sea toward world markets won a $125 million loan commitment from the World Bank yesterday after the Azerbaijani government agreed to issue audited reviews on how it spends $29 billion in projected oil revenue.
The $3.6 billion pipeline, designed to deliver 1 million barrels of oil daily to the Mediterranean beginning in 2005, is a top priority for the Bush administration. It would provide an important new source of oil not under the control of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
To the World Bank and its lending arm, the International Finance Corp., the project is another milestone in a campaign to turn energy revenue in developing nations into economic, environmental and political policies that benefit entire populations rather than enriching rulers and their allies.
Oil began flowing last month through a pipeline connecting oil fields in Chad to West African port facilities in Cameroon, a project that the World Bank backed after Chad promised to disclose its oil revenue and invest a fixed share of the windfall in education and economic projects.
But activists continue to question whether such voluntary commitments will really end a long history of failed economic policies and political corruption in oil and gas projects in the developing world.
An organization called Publish What You Pay is seeking mandatory disclosure by oil companies of their contracts with state-run oil firms. "The problem with the voluntary approach is that the good companies will cooperate and the bad guys won't," said Svetlana Tsalik, director of Caspian Revenue Watch in New York, funded by the Open Society Institute, which is backed by financier George Soros. The institute is one of the proponents of the mandatory-disclosure proposal.
ChevronTexaco Corp. is an investor in the Chad-Cameroon project and expects to spend more than $5 billion in the next five years to develop oil and gas reserves in Africa -- primarily in Nigeria and Angola, two nations riven by violence and political strife.
David J. O'Reilly, the company's chairman and chief executive, said ChevronTexaco's role in these nations is creating jobs, expanding the economy, and assisting in education, agricultural and infrastructure projects. But he said its oil investments don't create leverage to demand political changes.
"We can't dictate to governments how they should operate, nor can we dictate a particular style of democracy," he said in an interview. "Our role is to provide jobs and economic development."
The IFC loan to Azerbaijan was conditioned on a series of new policies designed to prevent abuses, said Rashad Kaldany, director of the World Bank's oil resources department.
While most of the project's cost will be borne by BP, its primary sponsor, the IFC funding is important, said Deutsche Bank analyst Adam Sieminski. "It shows a commitment on the part of the international community" to go forward, he said.
World Bank officials also approved loans yesterday for oil development in the Caspian Sea and will help raise another $125 million in commercial loans for the pipeline project.
Revenue will be deposited in a state oil fund whose accounts will be audited annually and publicly disclosed, he said.
Although spending decisions will go before parliament, the fund will remain under the control of Azerbaijan's president, Heydar Aliyev, and his son, Ilham, who was declared winner in last month's contentious election to succeed his ailing father.
Tsalik of Caspian Revenue Watch said the World Bank's confidence in the Azerbaijani government is surprising. "When the current leadership wants to do something with the oil money, they will," Tsalik said.
"There are always risks," Kaldany said in an interview. "The president still retains overall control . . . but there are now additional institutional arrangements that provide some checks and balances."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protest at Israeli checkpoint in West Bank after refusenik sergeant jailed
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Nov 05, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031105104924.05iz83ib.html
Scores of Israelis staged a demonstration at the Rimonim military checkpoint in the West Bank on Wednesday after a reservist staff sergeant was jailed for refusing to serve at the post.
Twenty-seven-year-old film student Tom Mehager was handed a 28-day sentence by a tribunal on Tuesday after insisting he was not prepared to take part in the "harassment" of Palestinian civilians living in nearby villages.
Among the demonstrators who joined the protest were a number of unarmed but uniformed reservists.
Mehager told military radio from his prison cell that he had refused to serve at the post close to the Ofra settlement in the northern West Bank as its only purpose was to harass the local civilian population and had "no security value."
The reservist decided he was no longer prepared to carry out his orders which were forcing villagers to embark on 40-minute detours for journeys that should take a couple of minutes.
"This roadblock is simply a form of collective punishment," he said. "The punishment that has been handed down to me is nothing in comparison to what we are forcing on the Palestinians."
Hundreds of rank-and-file soldiers and officers have signed a petition refusing to serve in the occupied territories but dozens of the signatories have subsequently been jailed for insubordination.
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------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
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