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NUCLEAR
Pills Urged for People Near Nuke Plants
Activists want depleted-uranium munitions labeled
Are Iran's Nuclear Promises Believable?
Iran Still Hasn't Signed Nuke Agreement
ElBaradei Rejects Criticism of UN Iran Inspections
South Korea wants U.S. to back off on nukes
U.S, China Gap Could Delay N. Korea Talks
Breast Scanner Uses Nuclear Medicine to See Cancers Early
Australia says it will join US missile defense program
Australia to Join U.S. Missile-Defense System
Australia to Participate In U.S. Missile Shield
Transcript: U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War'
Put the Blame on Cheney for U.S. Mess in Iraq
MILITARY
Explosions occurs near U.S. Embassy in Kabul
Rumsfeld Meets Warlords in Afghanistan
A Brewing Constitutional Crisis
Liberia's Ex-Leader Is Put on Interpol's Most Wanted List
Ballistic Missile Launched in Kazakhstan
Rumsfeld Discusses Tighter Military Ties With Azerbaijan
LOCKHEED MARTIN DISPLAYS MISSILE DEFENSE RADAR
Northrop Grumman Wins Billion Dollar Missile Defense Program
Orbital Wins $400 Million In Missile Defense Contracts
Makers of Body Armor Boost Production to Combat Shortage
Boeing Lags in Building Spy Satellites
China's Military Warns Taiwan
U.S. Rejects Iraqi Plan to Hold Census by Summer
Iraqi Political Parties Will Form Militia to Work With American Forces
Bulgaria ready to negotiate about hosting EU bases, Parvanov says
General: Israelis Exaggerated Iraq Threat
Body Armor Saves Lives in Iraq
Air Force One: A New Account
The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner
Hateful words a war crime
Court Convicts 3 in 1994 Genocide Across Rwanda
Journalists Sentenced In Rwanda Genocide
Killing of Witness Rattles Mexico's 'Dirty War' Probe
Pinochet Should Be Tried Again, Lawyers Say
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Mayor Agrees to Allow Panel to Examine Sept. 11 Records
Judges Hear U.S. Appeal in Terror Case
Compromise Hinted In Moussaoui Case
Court Rules On Aiding Terrorist Groups
Judge rules out death penalty for 9/11 defendant
Why we should fear the Matrix
Sudden Shift on Detainee
Decision to Allow Lawyer for 'Enemy Combatant' Is New Policy
Guantanamo Bay Detainee Is First to Be Given a Lawyer
Man Who Trained With Qaeda Gets 10-Year Sentence
Muslim Chaplain Thanks His Supporters
US Exporting 'Tools of Torture'
ENERGY AND OTHER
Wind: more jobs and power for same investment
E.P.A. Drafts New Rules for Emissions From Power Plants
ACTIVISTS
Venezuelan Protesters Clash With Police
Activists protest Hanford dump through initiative
Mexican Parents of GIs in Iraq: 'Bring Our Children Home'
Peace activists march against SDF dispatch in Hiroshima
Priest tells soldiers to disobey orders to go to Iraq
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Pills Urged for People Near Nuke Plants
December 4, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Pill.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-nuclear-pill,0,7684329.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Making potassium iodide pills available to people who live near nuclear power plants was endorsed Thursday by the National Research Council.
The pills can help protect the thyroid gland of people exposed to radiation, if taken promptly after a radioactive release occurs.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced in late 2001 it would provide the pills to states with nuclear plants on request, so they could have the material on hand if needed in an emergency.
Agency officials said Wednesday that has been done, and handling and distribution of the pills is up to the states.
The council report, requested by Congress, agreed that the pills could be effective if taken within a few hours of exposure to radiation. It said the pills should be made available to everyone age 40 or younger, especially children and pregnant and lactating women.
The pills work by flooding the thyroid with nonradioactive iodine, thus preventing it from absorbing radioactive iodine, which can cause damage.
But potassium iodide has just one use -- to prevent thyroid cancer by shielding the thyroid from radioactive iodine. It blocks no other type of radiation and protects no other body part.
Just as with any medication, overdoses of potassium iodide can be dangerous. Some people may experience allergic reactions, including nausea or rashes, from taking it.
The council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to advise the government on science matters.
-------- depleted uranium
Activists want depleted-uranium munitions labeled
Military's exemption is challenged
By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER FOREIGN DESK EDITOR
Thursday, December 4, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/150991_du04.html
Four activist groups, including one in Poulsbo, have launched a nationwide campaign to force the Pentagon to label shipments of depleted uranium munitions.
"The United States military does not want civilian populations to know how and when depleted uranium munitions are being shipped through their communities for fear of what the military calls 'unnecessary public concern about the radiation risks associated with DU munitions,' "according to Glen Milner, of the Ground Zero Center for Non-violent Action in Poulsbo.
Milner said that normally this type of shipment would be labeled with Department of Transportation "radioactive" and "explosive" signs. Branches of the military, however, have a special exemption, which allows them to ship DU munitions without the "radioactive" placard. The exemption, which must be renewed every few years, expires June 30.
Milner estimates that the military makes about 2,000 shipments of DU munitions annually to various facilities.
The Pentagon doesn't like to talk about the shipments, but Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army Field Support Command, acknowledged that the Army alone sent about 195 shipments of DU munitions within the continental United States in the past 12 months. He said because of security concerns, such details as where the shipments came from and where they went could not be disclosed.
Milner said he hopes Ground Zero and the other groups in the campaign -- Traprock Peace Center in Massachusetts; the Military Toxics Project in Maine; and Nukewatch in Wisconsin -- can help bring about enough public pressure to force the government to decide not to renew the next application for exemption by the Military Traffic Management Command, a branch of the Department of Defense.
"By understanding the danger of shipping DU through our neighborhoods, we will better understand the damage done by firing DU in neighborhoods in other countries in our name," said Milner, who said he would like to see a ban on the use of all DU ammunition.
"Depleted uranium is an extremely toxic material and much more dangerous when shipped with an explosive propellant as is the case of DU munitions," he said.
The Pentagon has said there have been no known health problems associated with the munitions. At the same time, the military acknowledges the hazards in an Army training manual, which requires that anyone who comes within 25 meters of any DU-contaminated equipment or terrain wear respiratory and skin protection, and says that "contamination will make food and water unsafe."
Critics of DU say they fear it is responsible for a significant increase in cancer and birth defects in regions where the munitions have been used and say it is a prime suspect in Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has plagued thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Milner said a simple traffic accident could render DU shipments dangerous.
When DU burns it turns into highly toxic and extremely fine uranium dust that can be spread in the air, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.
Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in groundwater, according to the U.N. Environmental Program.
Milner also cited an incident where DU rounds were shipped to an unauthorized recipient; an incident he said could have been more easily remedied if the shipment had been clearly labeled.
In 2001, the Coast Guard received a shipment of DU in downtown Seattle. The Coast Guard, however, is not licensed to use DU munitions. Days later, when the mistake was noticed, the DU was handed over to the Navy, which took it to a storage facility at Port Hadlock.
"If an explosion or fire had occurred while the ammunition was stored in downtown Seattle, the spread of toxic and radioactive DU dust could have been disastrous," Milner said.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, Milner has identified several other locations where the Navy stores DU: San Diego; Seal Beach, Calif.; Crane, Ind.; Indian Head, Md.; Colts Neck, N.J.; Hawthorne, Nev.; McAlister, Okla.; Charlestown, S.C.; Tooele, Utah; Dahlgreen, Va.; Norfolk, Va; Sewells Point, Va.; and Yorktown, Va.
In addition, there are 10 bulk-storage facilities for ammunition scattered across the United States -- each with a capacity for storing more than 11,000 tons of DU ammunition.
In the original 1986 request for an exemption to the Department of Transportation requirement of signs stating a shipment is "radioactive," obtained by Milner, the Defense Department said there are three reasons for transporting DU munitions without drawing public attention.
# "Marking the outside of the DU munitions containers as radioactive may create friction with foreign governments when foreign nations handle DU munitions during ship loading or unloading."
# "We do not want to generate unnecessary public concern about the radiation risks associated with DU munitions."
# By placing signs on trucks reading "radioactive" and "explosive" together it would "raise public concerns" that nuclear weapons were being shipped.
The document states further that there would be no increased risk to the public by not labeling the shipments radioactive, because "in the unlikely event of an accident or incident involving transportation of DU munitions, the DOD maintains Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams nationwide trained in the health hazards associated with DU munitions."
"These teams are capable of responding on short notice with protective equipment and radiation survey instruments," it said.
But Milner counters with this: "In case of a fire, first responders, the local police and firefighters, would have no idea the shipment contained radioactive material."
ON THE WEB
Ground Zero Center for Non-violent Action: www.gzcenter.org
Traprock Peace Center: www.traprockpeace.org
Military Toxics Project: www.miltoxproj.org
Nukewatch: www.nukewatch.com
U.S. Department of Defense: www.defenselink.mil/
P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035 or larryjohnson@seattlepi.com
-------- iran
Are Iran's Nuclear Promises Believable?
By Gary Fitleberg
12/05/03
American Daily
http://www.americandaily.com/item/3746
According to reliable sources, hard-line factions in Iran's totalitarian regime are determined to acquire at least the capability to develop atomic weapons. Analysts all agree this would be dangerous and destructive to Middle East regional stability.
An Iranian political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity stated, "The [Iranian] regime will pursue getting the know-how. They'll stretch the letter of the agreements to the full extent possible."
The Revolutionary Guard and its military strategists are convinced Iran must develop a nuclear weapon. Only then will it assume its place as a major regional power. Iran will also be adequately able to defend an attack by America or Israel.
These were the comments of a policy advisor to a senior conservative cleric who made them on the condition on anonymity.
Analysts and diplomats in Iran, both foreign and Iranian, said they expected the regime to continue its covert nuclear weapons program while making a commitment to open its facilities to inspections.
Iran supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, as well as other senior officials, were opposed at the IAEA deadline for full disclosure and threatened to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and also not to allow inspections.
Iran's cooperation with the IAEA has been influenced immensely from pressure by the international community.
Iran has pledged its cooperation recently. Iran's promises thus far are unbelievable based on its past record of concealment vs. disclosure. Iran did not disclose, for example, both uranium and plutonium, which it later admitted and claimed was contaminated from machinery purchased illegally on the "black market" in a blatant concealment.
The United States is pushing to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council for a possible resolution for sanctions. The European-led faction on the board wants to give Iran more time to come clean.
Questions arise whether or not Iran intends to fully comply or disclose its true intentions regarding its nuclear program based on its past record of concealment. Iran's credibility is clearly in question.
We can not afford to be wrong regarding Iran's nuclear program. Concealment does not equal disclosure. Shall we believe Iran whatsoever? What is Iran trying to hide? Iran must come clean completely. Click here to send feedback to the author
Gary is a Political Analyst specializing in International Relations with emphasis on Middle East affairs. His articles have been published in numerous publications including La Prensa (Managua, Nicaragua equivalent to the L.A. Times), Pakistan Today, The Kashmir Telegraph, The Iranian and many more.
----
Iran Still Hasn't Signed Nuke Agreement
December 4, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Despite mounting Western pressure and the implicit threat of sanctions, Iran still has not signed a key agreement to open its nuclear facilities to intrusive inspections, the U.N. atomic energy watchdog said Thursday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he expected Iran to sign the accord ``shortly.'' But a Western diplomat suggested that Tehran was stalling, and said the United States and other countries were waiting impatiently ``for Iran to keep its promises and sign.''
Iran agreed last month to open suspect nuclear sites that until now have been off-limits, and to let IAEA inspectors conduct unannounced checks to ensure the country is not trying to develop atomic weaponry as alleged by Washington.
In a resolution last week that warned Tehran to stay in line with international efforts to make sure the country has no nuclear weapons ambitions, the Vienna-based IAEA's 35-nation board censured Iran for 18 years of secrecy.
Although the resolution did not confront Iran with a direct threat of U.N. sanctions -- a tougher approach that Washington had sought -- it warned Tehran that the IAEA would consider further action if ``further serious Iranian failures'' should be found.
The wording implicitly warned Iran that the agency could report it to the Security Council, which has the power to impose economic or diplomatic sanctions. It called on Tehran to ``promptly and unconditionally sign, ratify and fully implement'' the accord, but did not set a deadline.
The diplomat, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, did not say whether the United States or other countries were contemplating lodging a protest aimed at pressuring Iran to sign.
In a sign of possible disarray within the government over how to respond to the IAEA, Tehran's representative to the agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, told the AP on Thursday that he had been relieved of his duties. He did not elaborate.
Iran insists its atomic energy program is peaceful and geared only to producing electricity. Under international pressure, it agreed to sign the inspection agreement and to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which it says had been confined to non-weapons levels anyway.
ElBaradei told reporters the agency was developing a ``plan of action'' over the next few months on how to deal with Iran.
He said agency experts were now in the process of contacting companies that sold Iran centrifuges and other equipment that bore traces of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. Iran contends the equipment already was contaminated when it acquired it. ElBaradei declined to identify the companies or the countries involved.
``We still have a lot of work to do, and a lot of work is in progress,'' he said.
Although there has been evidence of suspect nuclear activity in Iran, ElBaradei characterized it as ``laboratory-scale involving small quantities'' and expressed confidence that his agency would uncover any significant effort to enrich uranium for weapons use.
``There will always be a centrifuge somewhere. But we can detect industrial-scale activities,'' he said. ``If a country moves from research and development to the industrial scale, it's highly unlikely that would go undetected.''
ElBaradei also said he hopes his inspectors will return soon to neighboring Iraq. He said he expected the Security Council to give the agency a fresh inspection mandate early next year.
The U.N. agency found no evidence that Saddam Hussein was trying to revive his atomic weapons program before the war, but ``we still need to verify that Iraq does not have nuclear weapons of mass destruction,'' ElBaradei said.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
----
ElBaradei Rejects Criticism of UN Iran Inspections
December 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-elbaradei.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog on Thursday rejected criticism of its failure to detect Iran's clandestine experiments to make enriched uranium and plutonium, saying they were practically undetectable.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), also said Iran had yet to sign a protocol accepting more intrusive snap inspections, though diplomats said it was too early to say whether Tehran was stalling.
Iran acknowledged to the IAEA in October that it hid a secret centrifuge uranium enrichment program from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades.
ElBaradei said Iran's laboratory-scale experiments, which Washington said were further proof that Tehran has been secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons, were on too small a scale to be easily detected by his inspectors.
``People have been saying Iran has been cheating the agency, if you like, for 18 years,'' ElBaradei told reporters. ``Yes, Iran has been successful in doing research and laboratory activities and this we were not able to detect, and I don't think we will be able to detect in the future.
``But...if a country moves from research...to an industrial scale to develop weapons, I think the system, with all the technology that we have, makes it highly unlikely that this kind of program would go on undetected.''
The United States accuses Iran of using its nuclear power program as a front to build an atom bomb. Tehran denies this.
While the IAEA concluded in a recent report that it had seen ``no evidence'' Iran did have a covert weapons program, it said the jury was still out as to whether one existed.
ElBaradei said that no matter how thorough and intrusive inspections are, there are clear limits to what they can detect.
``There will always be easily concealable items -- one centrifuge or two centrifuges operating somewhere or a computer study,'' he said.
ELBARADEI CRITICIZES WASHINGTON
In a separate interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, ElBaradei said Washington was setting a bad example for would-be nuclear proliferators by research into so-called ``mini nukes.''
The United States, like Iran, is a signatory of the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). By signing the treaty as a nuclear power, Washington has pledged to gradually disarm.
``If you see Congress unblocking millions of dollars for research into mini nuclear bombs, one understands that far from aiming for nuclear disarmament, the United States seeks to improve its arsenal,'' he said in the interview to appear in the paper's Friday edition.
ElBaradei also said Iran had not yet told him when it would sign an NPT protocol permitting more intrusive, short-notice IAEA inspections but he expected it to sign soon, as promised.
Several non-U.S. diplomats told Reuters they did not consider the fact that Iran had not signed the NPT protocol as proof Tehran was stalling.
ElBaradei said the agency was in the process of contacting companies and individuals who had been involved with Iran's purchase of centrifuge components, which it said were contaminated with weapons-grade uranium.
Although he did not name names, diplomats and arms experts have said Pakistan was the likely origin of Iran's European-developed centrifuge designs and much of its hardware.
-------- korea
South Korea wants U.S. to back off on nukes
Associated Press
Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031204.wkore1204/BNStory/International/
Seoul - South Korea said Thursday that the United States should ease off some of its demands against North Korea and help keep up momentum for six-nation talks on the isolated country's nuclear program.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said Washington should show greater understanding for South Korea's position in return for the South's willingness to send troops to Iraq in support of the United States, Seoul's top ally.
The South Korean government fears that Washington might resort to punitive steps such as economic sanctions against North Korea, a scenario that the South says would spike tensions and hurt its economy.
Officials from the United States, Japan and South Korea are to meet in Washington this week to hone their positions ahead of possible talks that would also include Russia, China and North Korea. Japan's top negotiator in the discussions, Mitoji Yabunaka, left Thursday for Washington.
While countries are shooting for a round of talks some time in mid-December, no date has been set and a U.S. official said Tuesday the talks may not happen until next year because of disagreements over North Korean demands. The U.S. official did not elaborate.
Mr. Jeong said Thursday that Seoul hopes its plans to send up to 3,000 troops to Iraq will help win co-operation from Washington.
"We will fully do our duty concerning South Korea-U.S. relations, so we wish that the United States would also co-operate to make progress in resolving the nuclear issue, which the Korean people feel insecure about," he said.
"North Korea should also not be too strong in making demands from the United States, but the United States should also somewhat ease its position on North Korea's demands to maintain momentum on talks and to seek a resolution quickly," he said, without being more specific.
North Korea has made demands for concessions to be extended simultaneously with a drawdown of its nuclear program instead of after it had been shut down.
Mr. Jeong said Thursday that it is too early to tell if a second round of nuclear talks will happen this month. The first round of talks, held in Beijing in August, ended without much progress.
"China and South Korea are trying to co-ordinate the demands by the United States and North Korea," he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has rejected suggestions that the resumption of the talks has been delayed.
"It's impossible to postpone a meeting that has never been scheduled in the first place," Mr. Powell told reporters Wednesday in Morocco. "The important thing is that all parties remain committed to moving ahead with the six-party talks process."
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun pledged Wednesday to send troops to Iraq "without delay" after parliamentary approval, citing the importance of maintaining a strong alliance with the United States.
The nuclear standoff flared a year ago when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
----
U.S, China Gap Could Delay N. Korea Talks
December 4, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- China's insistence that the United States give security assurances to North Korea once it renounces nuclear weapons could delay a second round of negotiations with Pyongyang, a Bush administration official said Thursday.
In the meantime, the administration is holding talks at the State Department with Japanese and South Korean delegations in an effort to reach a joint position. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the views of the three allies were fairly close. He also credited China with trying to make progress on the North Korean program.
The talks had been expected to convene Dec. 17. A State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said this week that the goal remained to hold talks before the end of the month. On Thursday, Ereli said the aim was talks ``in the near future.''
Since the first round of the six-party talks was held in August in Beijing, North Korea has made demands for concessions to be extended simultaneously with a drawdown of its nuclear program instead of after the program had been shut down.
The main concession would be a written statement by the Bush administration assuring North Korea's security.
China, which has taken the lead in informal discussions with North Korea, has proposed the United States extend the assurance after North Korea renounces nuclear weapons on the peninsula. The negotiations then would take up other issues, including an improvement in U.S. relations with the communist state, the official said.
China's insistence on a joint declaration outlining this sequence is the focus of the U.S. talks with South Korea and Japan that Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly is supervising. The declaration would be adopted at the end of the second round.
Kelly told reporters ``we are working to develop the kind of consensus on the six-party talks that can allow the talks to go forward.''
But, he said, officials have ``a way to go and we have no firm dates at this point.''
On Monday, North Korea rejected a U.S. demand that it first renounce its nuclear program before receiving security guarantees from Washington, saying it would ``rather die'' than submit to conditions that amounted to slavery.
Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said Tuesday the United States wanted to reconvene six-party talks quickly, and ``at those talks we hope to make tangible progress toward the goal of a nuclear-free North Korea.''
Bolton also said security assurances would be extended to North Korea only after its ``agreement and implementation'' of verification procedures that would assure that North Korea would not restart its nuclear program.
-------- medicine
Breast Scanner Uses Nuclear Medicine to See Cancers Early
DURHAM, North Carolina, (ENS)
December 4, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-04-09.asp#anchor2
A new breast scanner designed to detect subtle changes in breast cells before a cancerous lump can be felt by hand or seen with X-ray mammography was debuted today at the 26th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
The new camera developed by researchers at Duke University Medical Center has undergone extensive testing in artificial breasts and testing in women is set to begin this spring.
Such early detection should enable doctors to more successfully treat breast cancer before it has formed a tumor or spread to lymph nodes, said Martin Tornai, Ph.D., associate professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at Duke and developer of the device.
The camera uses nuclear medicine to pick up chemical changes to breast cells that signal the cells are becoming malignant, said Tornai.
The camera should be useful for detecting tumors in large or dense breasts, which are difficult to image using traditional mammography because X-rays often cannot penetrate them. "This technology could potentially be applied to screening women who are at high risk for breast cancer, particularly younger women who have denser breast tissue that X-ray mammography can't easily penetrate," he said.
And the geometry of the new device allows for imaging small breasts and the nearby chest wall. It can image the axillary lymph nodes to look for evidence of metastasis - which traditional mammography cannot do.
In addition, Tornai said the device could be useful to monitor the course of chemotherapy or radiation therapy in breast cancer patients because it could detect changes to the cancer cells.
"During and after chemotherapy, if you take an X-ray mammogram of the same cancerous tissue, it looks identical to its pre-treatment size," says Tornai. "But if you take a nuclear medicine image, the dead tissue doesn't take up the tracer, so you can see if the therapy is having an effect very early on, much sooner than waiting for tumor shrinkage."
The new device works without any breast compression, and women may not be required to remove their bras.
The key to the new scanner is that it detects changes in the behavior of cancer cells rather than structural changes, such as tumor masses, which take much longer to develop, said Tornai.
"Once you start seeing structural changes using mammography, that indicates the molecular process has been going on for awhile," he said. "If we can detect subtle changes in cells before a tumor has developed, we have a better chance of treating the abnormal cells in their earliest stages of malignancy."
To use the device, a cancer-specific radioactive tracer is injected into the patient's bloodstream. The tracer, called sestamibi, is preferentially absorbed by cancer cells because they have large numbers of mitochondria, the cells' powerhouses. Cancer cells have more mitochondria than normal cells because they are more metabolically active and require more energy to grow and spread.
Next, the camera obtains an image by picking up gamma rays - high energy photons or units of light - that are emitted by the radioactive atom attached to sestamibi. The gamma rays easily penetrate the tissue and can be detected non-invasively by a gamma ray camera.
"Nuclear imaging tracers like sestamibi show up in both pre-malignant and malignant breast cells as a little light bulb in the middle of a dim space," said Tornai. "You really want a tracer to home in on small bits of cancer that may otherwise be too small for other scanners to detect."
Gamma ray tracers such as sestamibi have a short half-life and are broken down quickly by the liver and excreted. Tornai says the amount of radiation exposure from a single diagnostic procedure is about the same as a year's exposure from the natural background radiation found in the environment.
Tornai is awaiting patent approval on the new device, including the combination device that overlays X-ray and nuclear medicine images.
-------- missile defense
Australia says it will join US missile defense program
CANBERRA (AFP)
Dec 04, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031204040812.yuiejvbs.html
Australia's conservative government announced Thursday that it would participate in the United States' controversial program to develop a missile defense shield.
"We think that with the proliferation of long-range missiles and trends towards proliferation of mass destruction warheads, it is a sensible decision for Australia to take," said Defense Minister Robert Hill.
"We have given that careful consideration and we think that we can play a part, obviously a small part in terms of the massive overall program," he said.
"This will be the start of obviously what will be a long program."
Hill said cooperation would primarily involve scientific research and most likely the area of radar sensors, since the US had shown considerable interest in Australia's over-the-horizon radar system known as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN).
"They looked at our capabilities and were impressed with JORN and said that there was within the JORN system capabilities that could assist with missile defense," Hill said.
Australia could also could incorporate some of the developed technology into air warfare destroyers being built for the country's navy, he said.
But Hill said there were no current plans to host part of a ground-based missile defense system on Australian territory.
Australia under Prime Minister John Howard has been one of the staunchest foreign allies of US President George W. Bush and was the only country besides Britain to send forces into the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Bush's plan to develop a general missile defense shield led to the United States abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and has come under strong criticism at home and abroad.
Critics say the scheme is too costly, technically unfeasible and likely to spark a new global arms race.
But Bush has said he hopes to deploy a limited missile shield by 2004 that would include ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in the US.
Hill said Australia saw no immediate risk to its territory but was concerned the country might one day be threatened by long range missiles able to carry chemical, biological or nuclear warheads.
"If Australia is interested in at some time utilising the technologies that are becoming available to defeat incoming ballistic missiles, then it should be working within the program from an early date," he said.
"The American program is the program. It is a huge investment by the Americans. They will be starting to deploy their systems next year," he said.
"Basically what they have done is invite us to come within that tent. From that we believe that we will be better able to meet that threat in the future if it comes to pass. We are looking at long lead times."
----
Australia to Join U.S. Missile-Defense System
December 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/asia/04AUST.html
CANBERRA, Australia, Thursday, Dec. 4 - Australia has decided in principle to join an American-led missile defense system, strengthening military ties with Washington, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Thursday.
Stressing that the missile system was purely defensive and not offensive, Mr. Downer said the move would deter rogue states from acquiring ballistic missile technology.
"This is a strategic decision to put in a place a long-term measure to counter potential threats to Australia's security and its interests from ballistic missile proliferation," he told Parliament.
While he did not mention North Korea by name, the Communist state has a nuclear weapons program and has ballistic missiles capable of hitting Japan, a critical American ally.
The decision to join the American program could bring renewed accusations by some Asian neighbors that Australia is playing "deputy sheriff" for Washington in the Pacific.
Australia has also joined the United States' Joint Strike Fighter program to develop an advanced stealth fighter-bomber.
Mr. Downer, aware of regional sensitivities, said the conservative government had already briefed many countries in the region of its decision to join the missile program, which it has long supported. He said Australia would continue to keep its regional partners informed of its involvement.
Australia's defense minister, Robert Hill, said this could include expanded cooperation to detect missiles at the point of launch, acquiring ship-based or ground-based sensors, and research development.
Mr. Downer said joining the missile defense system would strengthen Australia's military ties to the United States.
"Our long and vigorous alliance with the United States benefits the security of both countries and will be strengthened by our participation in missile defense," he said.
The United States took its first steps toward setting up a missile defense last year when it withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile treaty that banned such systems.
The missile defense program is in its initial stages, but many defense experts viewed Australia as an essential component in a shield because of an American-Australian monitoring station at Pine Gap in the desert of central Australia.
----
Australia to Participate In U.S. Missile Shield
Associated Press
Thursday, December 4, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33553-2003Dec3.html
CANBERRA, Australia, Dec. 4 -- Australia has agreed to participate in a U.S. program to build a defensive missile shield, the government announced Thursday.
"We believe that taking part in the U.S. program will serve our strategic interest, help us defend Australia and allow us to make an important contribution to global and regional security," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.
The Bush administration hopes to develop a shield against missiles, arguing that "rogue states" could soon have ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. It wants allies such as Britain and Australia to be involved, particularly for the stationing of satellite tracking facilities.
Critics say the technology is unreliable and that the undertaking could spark an arms race.
Australia has been one of Washington's staunchest allies, pledging troops to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.Downer said Australia's participation "will depend on many factors including our own strategic defense needs, regional considerations, industry capabilities and financial considerations."
Defense Minister Robert Hill said Australia would likely help in research and had no plans for a ground-based defense system.
-------- us politics
Transcript: U.S. OK'd 'Dirty War'
New evidence suggests that Henry Kissinger gave the Argentine military 'a green light' in its 1970s-80s campaign against leftists.
by Daniel A. Grech
Thursday, December 4, 2003
by the Miami Herald
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1204-01.htm
BUENOS AIRES - At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody ''dirty war'' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that ''we would like you to succeed,'' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.
This document is a devastating indictment of Kissinger's policy toward Latin America. Kissinger actually encourages human-rights violations in full consciousness of what was going on.
The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. César Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or ''disappearance'' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983.
The document is also certain to further complicate Kissinger's legacy, which has been questioned in recent years as new evidence has emerged on his connection to human-rights violations around the world -- including in Chile, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Kissinger and several top deputies have repeatedly denied condoning human-rights abuses in Argentina.
DIPLOMATIC CABLES
Among the 4,667 U.S. documents declassified by the State Department last year were diplomatic cables showing that the Argentine military believed it had Kissinger's approval. The information was requested by the families of the junta's victims and human-rights groups.
A transcript of the 1976 Kissinger-Guzzetti meeting was declassified recently under a Freedom of Information Request by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington. The document was made available to The Herald on Wednesday and will be presented at a conference on U.S.-Argentine relations during the dirty war today in Buenos Aires.
''Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed,'' Kissinger reassured Guzzetti in the seven-page transcript, marked SECRET. ``I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed, the better.''
`DEFINITIVE EVIDENCE'
''This is final, definitive evidence that Kissinger gave a green light to Argentine generals,'' said Carlos Osorio, director of the Argentina Documentation Project at the National Security Archive.
The Argentine military began its war against leftist guerrillas and suspected sympathizers in 1975, before taking power in a coup the following year. By the time of the conversation between Kissinger and Guzzetti, the machinery of murder and disappearances had received worldwide condemnation and the U.S. Congress was considering economic sanctions.
Guzzetti assured Kissinger that the ''struggle'' against ''terrorist organizations'' would be finished by the end of 1976. But a 1983 report by an Argentine truth commission showed that the killings accelerated in late 1976 and continued for two more years.
''This document is a devastating indictment of Kissinger's policy toward Latin America,'' said John Dinges, an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and author of The Condor Years, a book on military dictatorships in the Southern Cone due out in February. ``Kissinger actually encourages human-rights violations in full consciousness of what was going on.''
A VINDICATION
The transcript also vindicates the then-U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Robert Hill, who in late 1976 began pressing the Argentine military on human-rights issues but was told by Argentine officials that Washington was supporting them.
''Guzzetti went to the U.S. fully expecting to hear some strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices,'' Hill wrote in a cable. ``Rather than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation.''
''All along they denied this,'' Dinges said. ``Now, finally, we have Kissinger's actual words giving the green light.''
----
Put the Blame on Cheney for U.S. Mess in Iraq
December 4, 2003,
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-vpklu043569491dec04,0,88577.column?coll=ny-news-columnists
This isn't how Papa Bush and the handlers thought it would work out. Not when they put solid Dick Cheney in charge of the kid's government.
With all of his experience in government, from White House chief of staff to congressional leader to secretary of defense, Cheney was the one who would avoid the big mistakes, who would make up for Junior's lack of experience.
And yet President George W. Bush is going into his re-election year with one huge mess on his hands in Iraq. It isn't only that much of the world is bewildered if not downright scared at the administration's arrogant unilateralism; it's that a good segment of the American people have begun to question the president's judgment and credibility because of how Iraq was handled.
Cheney was supposed to prevent something like this from happening. He was supposed to protect the not so well prepared W. from the big mistakes. And yet, as more accounts of the maneuvering inside the administration are revealed, it is increasingly clear that it was Cheney who was the moving force behind the decision to fight a war of choice against Iraq.
What is particularly disturbing is how the administration misused intelligence information to make its case for war and failed to plan competently for the postwar period. Two recent articles, one by George Packer in The New Yorker and another by David Rieff in The New York Times Magazine, provide detailed, on-the-record accounts of how the Pentagon deliberately ignored almost all the expert advice coming from the State Department, the CIA and from almost anywhere else about what had to be done after the war.
There was plenty of information available about how difficult the postwar project would be, but the Pentagon planners, with utter disdain for anything coming from the State Department, ignored it. They believed that once Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants were eliminated, the people of Iraq would greet the Americans with open arms. The State Department experts told them otherwise. Their information was trashed.
You could blame that on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his band of neoconservative warriors led by Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. But bitter conflict between State and Defense is common in every administration. It's the White House that is supposed to sort it out and make sure the president acts upon accurate information.
But Cheney turned out to be the leading neoconservative. According to one account, he told Bush in February of 2002 that he believed it was a mistake to have not eliminated Hussein during Bush I and that now was the time to do it. And he then drove the policy through to war. Cheney was put there to prevent Bush from being duped by those with axes to grind, yet the vice president turned out to be the chief ax grinder.
The same story is true on the run-up to the war. In the Dec. 4 edition of The New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers examines the administration's contention that Iraq posed an imminent threat. He particularly cites 29 claims made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his very influential Feb. 5 speech to the United Nations and finds that so far not one has been shown to be the case. And Powell was more cautious than others.
The problem, Powers says, is that the White House exerted enormous pressure on the CIA to produce intelligence that coincided with its policy predilections. This is very dangerous, of course. And, given Bush's lack of background, it's easy to understand why he might not have understood how intelligence can be misused. It was Cheney, the seasoned, solid expert in national security matters, who was supposed to make certain the intelligence was straight, who was going to protect the president's credibility. But it turns out he was the one pushing for information to confirm his preconceived notions.
Yes, the buck stops with the president, but the more I learn about what happened behind the scenes the more I say put the blame on Cheney.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Explosions occurs near U.S. Embassy in Kabul
12/4/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-12-04-kabul-blast_x.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Suspected Islamic militants fired a rocket into a field next to the U.S. Embassy here Thursday, Afghan authorities said. The blast occurred less than two hours after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left the Afghan capital.
There were no reports of injuries in the 6:15 p.m. explosion about 300 yards from the embassy compound, and 100 yards from the headquarters of international peacekeepers in Kabul.
Rumsfeld had earlier held talks with President Hamid Karzai at his palace elsewhere in the city. The defense secretary left about 4 p.m. to continue his tour of Central Asia.
"We are reviewing our security posture," a spokesman at the heavily fortified embassy said. He spoke on condition of anonymity and declined further comment.
The blast underlined the violence plaguing Afghanistan two years after a U.S.-led offensive swept the Taliban regime from power and heightened tension in Kabul ahead of a loya jirga, or grand council, next week to ratify a constitution.
Thursday's blast echoed around the city, drawing swarms of Afghan police and soldiers to an expanse of newly tilled field next to the U.S. Embassy compound.
Security officials walked the field with flashlights. One emerged from the darkness holding a piece of shrapnel he said was from a small rocket. Reporters were evicted before the impact site could be found.
Troops from the 5,700-strong International Security Assistance Force blocked roads around the U.S. compound.
Lt. Cmdr. Frank Coburn, a British ISAF spokesman, said a forensics team was sent to the site. He said he couldn't confirm witness accounts suggesting it was a rocket.
Matyullah Ramani, a senior Kabul police officer, said: "It was Taliban or (Gulbuddin) Hekmatyar" - a renegade commander allied with the Taliban. "They are trying to disrupt the loya jirga."
Karzai's administration has little control outside the capital because of attacks by pro-Taliban insurgents and fighting among provincial warlords.
Recently, attacks on aid workers and Afghan government staff have increased sharply in the south and the east, forcing relief agencies to reduce their work there.
Kabul has also been affected.
Five rockets rained down on the city on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, slightly injuring one Canadian civilian working at a peacekeepers' base.
On Nov. 22, an explosion in the garden of an upscale hotel in Kabul frequented by foreigners shattered windows, but caused no injuries.
--------
Rumsfeld Meets Warlords in Afghanistan
December 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan-rumsfeld.html?hp
KABUL (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed suggestions on Thursday that Taliban rebels would disrupt Afghan elections next year, even as a guerrilla ambush killed a worker with a U.N.-backed project.
Rumsfeld, who met warlords in the north of the country to promote a disarmament drive, said NATO could eventually take on a wider role in post-war Afghanistan, the Western alliance's first mission outside Europe.
Asked at a news conference whether he was concerned that the resurgent Taliban guerrilla movement might delay the polls in the south and the east of the country, Rumsfeld replied:
``I can't imagine that there will be any type of delay from the standpoint of what you suggested in the south.''
``While there always may be incidents from time to time, the capabilities that exist and the role that can be played by both Afghan forces as well as coalition forces ought to be able to manage anything like that quite well,'' he said.
His comments were echoed by President Hamid Karzai, who vowed that militants -- ``the Taliban, terrorism, whoever they are'' -- would not be allowed to disrupt the vote due to be held in June.
However aid groups, the United Nations and others have grave doubts that the current level of security will be sufficient to ensure Afghanistan's first ever free polls will run smoothly.
On a visit to Afghanistan in May, Rumsfeld said U.S. forces had moved from major combat operations to stabilization and reconstruction, a statement that has come back to haunt him.
More than 400 people have been killed in clashes since August, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001. They have included local and foreign aid workers, U.S. troops, Afghan soldiers, officials and police, as well as many guerrillas.
On Thursday, an Afghan worker from a U.N.-sponsored program in a western province was killed in an ambush officials blamed on the Taliban. Eleven people were wounded, one seriously.
On Wednesday, two U.S. soldiers were wounded, one seriously, when a renegade policeman threw a grenade at a U.S. military vehicle in the southern city of Kandahar.
WARLORDS A WORRY
Concern about security are not limited to the Taliban insurgency but extend to provinces dominated by warlords officially loyal to the government but with their own agendas.
The reality of that situation was made clear when Rumsfeld started his one-day trip in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to push a faltering drive aimed at disarming rival pro-government factions while building up a new national army.
He met ethnic Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is accused of dragging his feet on handing over heavy weapons and rival ethnic Tajik commander Ustad Atta Mohammad, whose forces have clashed repeatedly since helping the United States overthrow the Taliban.
On Wednesday, the defense ministry said Dostum had given up just three tanks, while Atta had surrendered 50. But Rumsfeld said both factions had begun the process, adding: ``We certainly acknowledged that and encouraged it.''
In Kabul, Rumsfeld met commanders of the 11,500-strong U.S.-led force pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda militants and a separately mandated NATO peacekeeping force, having called in Mazar on a British Provincial Reconstruction Team that has been trying to ease factional tension and push disarmament.
The United States and its allies see such teams as a way to boost security in the provinces, but aid groups say they are too small to provide protection for the polls and aid work, which has already been severely disrupted across much of the south.
Six PRTs have been set up and a U.S. official said the United States intended to put four or five more into the south and east where the battle against militants is fiercest.
Rumsfeld's visit follows talks with NATO defense ministers to discuss ways to boost security and plug embarrassing equipment gaps limiting the alliance's ability to expand its peacekeeping force from Kabul to provide a meaningful provincial presence.
-------
A Brewing Constitutional Crisis
Afghan Delegate Meetings Foreshadow Difficult Battles
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33289-2003Dec3.html
GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- More than 650 turbaned elders milled outside a U.N. voting tent Tuesday, clutching copies of a formal white document. Some fumbled with rarely worn spectacles as they peered at the tiny print; others frowned and jotted careful notes next to certain items.
There was no time for tea and gossip. The nation was preparing to debate and adopt a new constitution after 25 years of war and lawlessness, and the elders, gathered in a schoolyard to elect candidates for the upcoming constitutional assembly, already knew what they wanted from the charter.
"We want democracy, but only if it is according to Islamic law," asserted Nasrullah, 55, a farmer from Ghazni province, as a dozen men around him nodded vigorously. "In this document it is written that killing criminals is not allowed, but we need qisas to stop crime," he said, referring to the Islamic doctrine of eye-for-an-eye vengeance. "This is not the law of the Taliban. It is the law of God."
The gathered elders agreed, in principle, that women should be able to participate in the assembly, provided they wear proper Islamic head coverings. But the lone woman candidate was nowhere to be seen. She spent the day segregated in a classroom, cut off from all the discussion, and she said no one had given her a copy of the proposed constitution.
As more than 19,000 delegates gathered in eight cities this week to choose 500 members of the constitutional assembly, or loya jirga, the impassioned and often contradictory views of delegates foreshadowed a long, heated battle at the meeting, due to open Wednesday, and reflected the deep strains in a society pulled both toward a rural, religious past and a future as a modern nation.
The Afghan government, headed by President Hamid Karzai, presented a draft constitution to the public one month ago. Under the U.N.-mandated political process, it must be ratified by the loya jirga before presidential elections can be held next year, to be followed by parliamentary voting.
Officials said they tried to strike a balance between the demands of various political and religious groups, but the document drew criticism from conservative and progressive forces. Human rights groups said it failed to adequately protect women's rights, judicial independence and religious minorities, while student groups protested that it did not guarantee the right to free higher education.
Among the delegates and candidates from Ghazni and Parwan provinces, however, there was near-universal concern that the proposed constitution was too secular and modern, giving insufficient power to Islamic law and custom. Their comments suggested that the assembly could split deeply over the balance of political power and competing visions of modern and traditional Islam. In Kabul Stadium, where more than 500, mostly ethnic Tajik delegates from Parwan gathered inside a giant tent Monday, the mood was serious and attentive. Many delegates were veterans of guerrilla struggles against both communist and Taliban forces, and they appeared keenly appreciative of the historic chance to build a peaceful, politically modern nation.
And yet the dominant sentiment in the tent was one of belligerent opposition to the proposed system of a strong executive and weaker parliament, which delegates said failed to ensure the rights of ethnic minorities and northern Afghan "freedom fighters" like themselves. The original constitution proposed by a commission included a prime minister, but Karzai had the position removed.
"Our country's future is at stake here, and we do not want the blood of the martyrs to be wasted," said Mahmad Yacoub, 47. "We need a parliamentary system with a strong prime minister so the rights of the poor and the freedom fighters will not be abused. Just as we struggled against Russia, so we will struggle in the loya jirga."
The depth of ethnic feeling was also reflected in criticisms of other provisions -- that the national anthem be sung in Pashto, the Pashtun dialect, instead of Dari, the Tajik dialect, and that Mohammed Zahir Shah, 88, the former Afghan monarch, be named "father of the nation."
Delegates from less secure neighboring provinces are traveling to Gardez, a well-protected provincial capital 65 miles south of Kabul, all week to vote. On Tuesday delegates from Ghazni, a conservative ethnic Pashtun region, joked and posed excitedly for photographs, but they also expressed suspicion that the proposed constitution might erode their religious laws, ethnic rights and cultural traditions.
Mahmad Samander, a candidate and teacher from Ghazni, said he had read all 161 articles in the draft "very carefully" and had taken notes on dozens of items that he found contradictory to Islam. Like other delegates, he expressed concern at the references to international treaties, women's rights and permission for minority Shiite Muslims to be judged according to Shiite legal precepts.
"We want Islamic law, not international law. It is what so many of us fought and died for," he said, referring specifically to the Sunni strain of Islam, which is followed by 80 percent of Afghans. "If I am elected to the loya jirga, I will employ all my boldness as a former freedom fighter to eliminate or amend every un-Islamic item."
Yet despite professing such conservative views, Samander and other delegates from Ghazni and Parwan argued strongly for the right of all Afghans to attend state universities at no cost, saying otherwise only the "children of the rich" would learn. The current draft does not guarantee free higher education.
Afghan officials said the current draft reflects a moderate vision of Islam that is shared by most Afghans and will help the country's emergence into the modern world, but that some interest groups are trying to fuel Muslim concerns for their own political gain.
"The constitution says this is an Islamic country, but we must make sure we are talking about a modern Islam, one that is consistent with progress, with science, and with economic development," said Vice President Hedayat Amin Arsala in an interview in Kabul. "Some people want to use religion for political purposes, but constitutions cannot be made for groups or individuals. They are made for the entire nation."
Officials from the United Nations, which is supervising the loya jirga, said this week that the selection of voters and candidates has gone smoothly, despite fears of intimidation or abuse by ethnic militias or other groups. This week, delegates from all 32 provinces are selecting candidates by secret ballot. Separate special elections are being held for women, nomads, refugees and other minority groups, with a limited number of seats reserved for each.
In some rural provinces, though, few women have come forward as candidates and some have complained that officials discouraged them from participating. In Ghazni, the women's election had to be held twice, U.N. officials said, and in Paktika, a province with high poverty and illiteracy rates, only one woman candidate registered, so officials selected a second to fill the provincial quota.
On Tuesday, the sole female candidate to reach Gardez was Gulsum, 28, a health worker. She waited all day in the chilly classroom with her husband -- all women attending election events and the loya jirga itself must be escorted by a male relative, according to Afghan custom -- while the 600-plus male delegates mingled, chatted and ate lunch outside.
"In my district, none of the women knew anything about the loya jirga, including me, and none of us was given a chance to read the constitution," Gulsum said, huddled beneath a blanket but smiling gamely as she waited for the outcome of her district. "I want to serve my people and help other Afghan women participate in public life, because they have never had the chance before."
-------- africa
Liberia's Ex-Leader Is Put on Interpol's Most Wanted List
December 4, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/africa/04CND-TAYL.html
The international police organization Interpol issued a notice today for the arrest of the former president of Liberia, Charles G. Taylor, who has been indicted on war crimes charges by a special tribunal in Sierra Leone.
Interpol's "red notice" is not itself an arrest warrant. But it is based on the tribunal's indictment and takes the legal formality of such a request one step further because Interpol member countries can use the notice to decide whether it represents a valid request for a provisional arrest.
"The notice basically places someone on the world's most-wanted list," a spokeswoman for the tribunal, Allison Cooper, said by telephone from Freetown. "It is notice to the world's police that he is wanted for arrest in another country or jurisdiction."
The court, run jointly by the United Nations and the government of Sierra Leone, issued the indictment in March but unsealed it on June 4 after Mr. Taylor, bowing to pressure from the leaders of Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, announced that he would step down by the end of the year.
Mr. Taylor is charged with crimes against humanity in connection with accusations of his support for rebels in Sierra Leone. He was in Ghana at the time the indictment was made public and received asylum in Nigeria in August.
The Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has in the past rejected turning over Mr. Taylor to the tribunal in Sierra Leone, though he has said Mr. Taylor may respond to a summons from a legitimate court in Liberia, which at the moment has no functioning legal system.
Today, the Reuters news agency quoted a spokeswoman for the Nigerian president as saying Nigeria would not extradite Mr. Taylor on the war crimes charges.
"The president has said before that he will not be harassed about Taylor," the spokeswoman said. "The action that Nigeria will take will not lean toward handing over Taylor to Interpol. She added, We remain committed to keeping Taylor here on his own volition."
Some member countries treat red notices by Interpol as a request for information on the individual, while others use it to permit the wanted person to be arrested pending extradition formalities, according to an Interpol statement.
"We would hope it would increase the likelihood," Ms. Cooper said of the red notice. "But what will happen now depends on the Nigerian government and whether they will choose to enforce it."
"Nigeria is a signatory to the Interpol agreement," she continued. "The question has to go to the attorney general of Nigeria whether or not they want to act on it."
Mr. Taylor is the second serving national leader to be indicted on war crimes charges in the last decade. The first was Slobodan Milosevic, who was indicted by the tribunal in The Hague while he was president of Serbia.
Under a peace deal, Liberia has a transitional government. Its chairman, Gyude Bryant, has said he supports having Mr. Taylor face the Special Court for Sierra Leone. But he needs to muster support in the cabinet, which includes supporters of Mr. Taylor.
-------- asia
Ballistic Missile Launched in Kazakhstan
Fri Dec 5, 2003
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=10&u=/ap/20031205/ap_on_re_eu/russia_missile_test
MOSCOW - An intercontinental ballistic missile lifted off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday as part of a test to determine if it was still combat ready.
"The missile was launched to test whether all its parameters were in order and whether it was safe to use," the Russian Space Forces spokesman told The Associated Press.
The launch was carried out successfully. For test purposes, the missile did not carry warhead.
The RS-18 missile has a range of over 6,200 miles. It has been used since 1980 and was last tested a year ago.
----
Rumsfeld Discusses Tighter Military Ties With Azerbaijan
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33186-2003Dec3.html
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Dec. 3 -- Visiting this small, oil-producing country, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed thanks Wednesday for its assistance in the war on terrorism and discussed deeper U.S. involvement, including help in intensifying Azeri patrols of the Caspian Sea and the possible use of Azeri bases for U.S. military operations.
The Pentagon leader dodged questions about October's disputed election of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his ailing father, Heydar, amid evidence of voting irregularities cited by international observers and the U.S. State Department.
Greeting Aliyev at the start of a meeting in the presidential building, Rumsfeld congratulated him on the election victory. But asked at a news conference afterward about whether the vote met international standards for free and fair elections, he offered no opinion.
Instead, Rumsfeld focused on the growing strategic importance of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that has emerged as a key U.S. ally in a region between Iran and Russia that is of increasing concern to Pentagon authorities.
"The United States has a relationship with this country. We value it," Rumsfeld said, standing beside the Azeri defense minister, Col. Gen. Safar Abiyev. "And certainly we intend to continue that military-to-military relationship with the new administration."
In a speech last month, President Bush declared a U.S. commitment to the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the rest of the world, saying that the success of democratic government in Iraq would "send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran, that freedom can be the future of every nation."
On quick visits to Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria on Tuesday and Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell voiced a similar message, calling on the countries to continue democratic reforms and respect human rights.
A predominantly Muslim nation of 8 million people, Azerbaijan was one of the first countries to offer the United States support after the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to defense officials. It has allowed U.S. military planes to fly through its airspace for operations in Central Asia and the Middle East, and has sent small contingents of troops to serve in the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In return, President Bush last year and again this year waived a ban on security assistance imposed on Azerbaijan a decade ago over a territorial dispute with Armenia. This has allowed about $3 million a year in military aid to flow to Baku to fund peacekeeping-training and education programs.
As a next step, Pentagon officials say they see Azerbaijan, which is on the west coast of the Caspian, enlarging its naval and reconnaissance forces to guard against trafficking in weapons and drugs and against potential transit by terrorists in the region.
The United States recently delivered a Coast Guard cutter to Azerbaijan as part of its assistance. Rumsfeld said that Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, the deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, was in Baku recently to discuss ways of broadening cooperation in maritime and other military missions.
Azerbaijan also factors significantly in Pentagon plans to shift away from the large, permanent facilities in Germany and other European countries, and instead rely on smaller, skeletal bases and other military arrangements, such as rights to use local bases temporarily, in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East.
The subject came up in the talks here, but Rumsfeld said no specific proposals had been presented. Other defense officials said the possible options for Azerbaijan ranged from use of Azeri territory for occasional training of U.S. troops to the permanent stationing in the country of equipment and small numbers of American troops.
Abiyev said at the news conference that his country would be willing to consider any future U.S. proposal to base American troops in the country or allow access to bases for periodic use. He also said that he and Rumsfeld had discussed ensuring the security of a new oil pipeline across Azerbaijan to Turkey and the Black Sea that is due to start operating next year.
-------- business
LOCKHEED MARTIN DISPLAYS MISSILE DEFENSE RADAR
Thu, 04 Dec 2003
Middle East News Line
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/december/12_05_4.html
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Lockheed Martin has unveiled its missile defense radar.
The U.S. company displayed the radar capabilities of the S-Band advanced radar [SBAR] for a delegation of U.S. Navy officials, legislators and international customers. The radar is meant to be installed on surface vessels and is meant to be a key element in the Aegis-based missile defense system.
Lockheed Martin already produces the SPY-1 phased array radar. The SPY-1 is the main sensor in the Aegis Weapon System, installed on 65 percent of the U.S. Navy's surface combatants, warships in Japan and Spain, and recently was selected for warships in Norway and Korea.
Executives said the SBAR is far superior to SPY-1 in terms of detection and range. The two elements have been regarded as key requirements in ballistic missile defense. A SBAR prototype was successfully demonstrated about six months ago.
----
Northrop Grumman Wins Billion Dollar Missile Defense Program
SpaceDaily
Dec 04, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-03za.html
Los Angeles - The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) today awarded a Northrop Grumman and Raytheon team the Kinetic Energy Interceptors (KEI) contract, which is to provide the U.S. with the ability to destroy hostile missiles at their most vulnerable stage, the boost/ascent phase of flight.
Led by Northrop Grumman, the industry team will develop and test this critical boost phase element of the Agency's global layered missile defense system. The KEI contract is valued at more than $4 billion over eight years.
Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman's chairman, chief executive officer and president said, "We are proud of this contract win, which firmly establishes Northrop Grumman's position as a top-tier systems integrator for missile defense. We have assembled a team of the nation's leading missile defense companies who are committed to delivering a quality system on time, on budget and with mission success assured. KEI is critical to our country's overall defense and will also serve as a visible, deployable deterrent to those who would threaten us."
The award follows a $10 million, eight-month concept design effort during which two competing teams produced concepts for a KEI boost phase program. The Northrop Grumman/Raytheon team will now move forward with its design and begin managing the development and test phase, leading to planned deployment of this new land-based element in the 2010-2012 timeframe. KEI will complement the other boost, midcourse and terminal defense interceptor programs currently underway.
"The Northrop Grumman/Raytheon team's realistic approach will rely on existing, mature technologies to successfully deploy this portion of the Ballistic Missile Defense System," said Donald C. Winter, Northrop Grumman corporate vice president, Mission Systems sector president, and lead executive for missile defense. "The KEI program will provide a land-based capability that can be quickly and easily adapted to sea-based platforms."
"Raytheon is extremely honored to be part of the team that's been selected for this challenging and important program. Our KEI design involved the innovative use of proven systems, providing a new capability for the Missile Defense Agency with a minimum level of risk and cost," said Louise L. Francesconi, a Raytheon vice president and president of the company's Missile Systems business in Tucson, Ariz. "We look forward to working closely with our customers on the development and test phase and deploying this capability as quickly as possible."
KEI Design Northrop Grumman is leading the team and serving as systems integrator. Overall responsibilities include systems engineering, systems integration and test, command and control, battle management, communications, and launcher development. Raytheon is the principal subcontractor responsible for developing the kill vehicle, for integrating the interceptor and providing a significant portion of weapon system engineering.
The Northrop Grumman/Raytheon design includes a mobile land-based launcher built by Northrop Grumman and subcontractor SEI; a Raytheon-built interceptor that will be faster and more agile than any other interceptor to date; a HMMWV that will house the command and control battle management and communications system; and satellite receivers to process the signal that a hostile missile has been launched. The equipment is highly mobile and can be easily loaded onto a C-17 aircraft and transported worldwide.
Employment The program will be headquartered in Arlington, Va., with significant amounts of work performed at contractor sites throughout the country. These include Huntsville, Ala., Tucson, Ariz., Chandler, Ariz., Elkton, Md., St. Louis, Mo., Sunnyvale, Calif., and Naval Base Ventura County, Calif. The Northrop Grumman/Raytheon team will begin to increase its staff over the next several years, totaling 3000 employees across the entire team by 2007.
Key subcontractors to Northrop Grumman and Raytheon include Aerojet, Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Ball Aerospace, Booz Allen Hamilton, Davidson Technologies Inc., Information Extraction & Transport Inc., Orbital Sciences Corp. (Launch Systems Group), Oshkosh Truck Corp., Photon Research Associates Inc., Rockwell Collins, SAIC, Schafer Corp., SEI, and 3D Research Corporation.
----
Orbital Wins $400 Million In Missile Defense Contracts
SpaceDaily
Dec 04, 2003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-03zb.html
Dulles - Orbital Sciences Corporation reported Wednesday that it has been awarded a contract by a Northrop Grumman-led team to conduct booster vehicle design, development, test, and early-production for the Kinetic Energy Interceptors (KEI) missile defense program.
Raytheon Company will lead the team's interceptor-level system development, of which Orbital's booster vehicle is an integral part. Orbital's contract is valued at approximately $400 million from 2004 through 2010 and is projected to be staffed by approximately 300 Orbital employees during its peak activity period.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) today selected the Northrop Grumman-led team to be the prime contractor for the KEI program. The KEI program is intended to provide the United States with the ability to intercept and destroy hostile missiles during their boost and ascent phase, when the threat vehicle is most vulnerable.
The KEI program is moving forward as a critical element of MDA's multi-layered defense system. It is planned as a complementary system to the other boost- midcourse- and terminal- defense interceptor programs currently under development. It will provide a land-based capability that can be quickly and easily adapted to sea-based platforms.
Commenting on the KEI booster vehicle contract selection, Mr. David W. Thompson, Orbital's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "Orbital is exceptionally proud to be a partner with Northrop Grumman and Raytheon on the KEI team. Together, we are advancing this national-priority program, which is at the forefront of the defense of our country."
"With the addition of the KEI boost vehicle program, Orbital's interceptor and target launch vehicles are now being used to help develop, test and deploy missile defense systems in each layer of MDA's architecture, including the boost, midcourse and terminal phases of the missile defense system," Mr. Thompson concluded.
The KEI program continues Orbital's rapid growth in the market for missile defense-related launch vehicle technology. Orbital is also the primary supplier of test and operational interceptor boosters for MDA's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which is scheduled to begin initial deployments in 2004.
Mr. Ronald J. Grabe, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Launch Systems Group, stated, "The KEI contract award is further recognition of Orbital's demonstrated expertise in booster vehicle design, development and production.
"Our work on the GMD program, together with the introduction of numerous new target vehicle configurations over the past several years, gives Orbital an unmatched level of recent and relevant missile experience that we bring to the KEI team."
Mr. Grabe added, "Orbital's long and distinguished track record of successful launches in support of missile defense programs is emblematic of our company's total commitment to mission success. With major roles on both the KEI and GMD boost vehicle programs, two of the country's highest priority missile defense initiatives, we have rededicated ourselves to total customer satisfaction and product reliability."
----
Makers of Body Armor Boost Production to Combat Shortage
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33185-2003Dec3.html
The Army's rush to overcome shortages of body armor and armored Humvees in Iraq is sparking a mini-boom for manufacturers of the equipment.
Body-armor manufacturers are increasing output to 25,000 vests a month from 3,300. An Ohio-based subsidiary of Armor Holdings Inc. -- the military's only maker of armored Humvees -- is ramping up to 24-hour production in an effort to turn out 220 vehicles a month within six months. It currently produces 80 a month.
The Army initially provided body armor only to infantry and combat troops. Now it wants to outfit everyone on the ground in Iraq.
In the past few months, Ceradyne Inc. of Costa Mesa, Calif., has spent $2 million to increase production of the ceramic plates used in vests to 14,000 a month from 9,000. Each vest contains at least two plates. The company has hired 120 workers and bought 16 new furnaces to fire the plates, said David P. Reed, vice president and general manager. The price of Ceradyne's common stock has soared 145 percent since June 2.
"We're investing for the long run," Reed said. "Body armor is here to stay for the military."
The Army has shifted hundreds of armored Humvees into Iraq and Afghanistan from other areas and has about 1,500 in those two countries. It aims to have 3,500 of the $150,000 armored vehicles there, though the time frame is uncertain, according to Army spokesmen.
"The evidence to date suggests that U.S. forces are not properly trained or equipped for guerrilla warfare on a long-term basis," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense industry analyst with the Lexington Institute. "That's illustrated not only by an absence of body armor and hardened vehicles but a shortage of people who can speak the local language."
Armor Holdings, which also provides armor for nonmilitary vehicles, has moved its commercial operations out of its main plant so all 140,000 square feet can be dedicated to armored Humvees. The company is bringing on 150 workers, a hiring drive that will expand its staff by nearly 50 percent. Armor hasn't operated at this pace since the military significantly accelerated orders during the war in the Balkans, said Robert F. Mecredy, president of the company's aerospace and defense group.
The company will probably produce 850 armored Humvees this year, an increase of 227 from last year, said Peter J. Barry, an analyst with investment bank Bear, Stearns & Co. Production is expected to grow to 2,265 in 2004. "It doesn't hurt that the pricing competition is negligible," Barry said.
Armor's common stock price is up about 82 percent since the beginning of June.
The military is also moving to add armor to traditional Humvees by tacking on lightweight interior insulation panels. The number of inquiries about the technology "has increased quite substantially" in recent months, said Brad Squires, chief technology officer of US Global Nanospace Inc., a Nevada company that developed the panels.
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Boeing Lags in Building Spy Satellites
December 4, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/business/04boeing.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The Boeing Company is running more than a year behind schedule and billions of dollars over cost on a highly classified program to build the next generation of reconnaissance satellites, forcing the government to shift an estimated $4 billion from other spy programs, senior government officials said on Wednesday.
The Boeing project was initially set at about $6 billion, but the National Reconnaissance Office had to add substantially to that figure to address what auditors have described as large problems with the program, the officials said. Even so, the officials said, the reconnaissance office has had to scale back its expectations for the satellites' initial performance to well below what Boeing had promised.
Boeing is now under scrutiny for improprieties related to other Pentagon deals, including a $20 billion contract to provide aerial refueling tankers to the Air Force. The problems with the satellite program are not related to that deal, but Boeing's involvement in the spy satellite business is part of a broader effort by the company to increase its share of federal contracts, and the delays and cost overruns have become a further source of deep strain between the company and the government.
The fact that the satellite program is behind schedule and over budget has been well known within the intelligence community and the military industry, but the decision to shift large sums from other programs had not been reported. Still, the classified nature of the program has given Boeing a low profile in the matter; a report issued in September by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board portrayed the program as "significantly underfunded and technically flawed" but did not even mention Boeing by name.
But in interviews, senior government officials and private experts with detailed knowledge of the program said Boeing's poor performance on the contract had caused deep concern within the intelligence community about prospects for meeting a crucial need to put the new generation of spy satellites in place before the current group begins to deteriorate.
A spokesman for Boeing, Joseph Tedino, declined on Wednesday to comment in any detail on the company's involvement with the spy satellite project, citing its classified nature. "This program is not something we publicly comment on," Mr. Tedino said.
The reconnaissance office's decision in 1999 to grant the satellite contract to Boeing was itself a radical departure, in that Boeing's major competitor, now called Lockheed Martin, had always been the government's principal provider of reconnaissance satellites. The concept behind the planned new generation of satellites is also a departure, in that it is to rely on smaller, more numerous and cheaper satellites than the current group of about half a dozen large expensive satellites whose ability to cover the world is limited by their number.
Last July, Boeing was denied more than $1 billion in Pentagon orders after it was found in possession of proprietary documents from Lockheed Martin, but those documents were related to a 1998 competition to develop a rocket for military satellites rather than to the next-generation satellite program itself.
An audit of the Future Imagery Architecture project that was completed this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee blamed both Boeing and the reconnaissance office for the project's problems, a Congressional official said. The official said that the flaws included "mismanagement and poor planning, along with a company entering an area they're not used to participating in, at a level of complexity they haven't been accustomed to."
In rare public remarks in September, when the report by the Defense Science Board, an independent advisory panel, was released, Peter B. Teets, the reconnaissance office's director, acknowledged that the spy satellite program, with Boeing as the principal contractor, had been "underfunded" and "underscoped." Still, Mr. Teets said, according to a transcript provided by the office on Wednesday, "This was a difficult situation, so it took some time, but we were able to bring to bear additional resources that I think have the F.I.A. program back on reasonable track now."
But other senior government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they thought there was still no more than a 50-50 chance that Boeing would meet its new scaled-back goal for launching the first of the new generation of satellites in 2006.
A similar view was voiced by several private experts on military technology, including John Pike of Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Va. "Boeing won the contract by proposing a price that was way below what the project will actually cost," Mr. Pike said. "I believe that more money has been added, but there is still some unease as to whether the true cost had been discerned."
A statement on Boeing's Web site describes the 1999 contract for the satellite program as representing "a key element of the N.R.O. space-based architecture" that "will provide the customer with a significant enhancement to America's critical intelligence capability over the next decade."
But by the time the Defense Science Board began its review in 2002, said A. Thomas Young, the panel's chairman, the panel identified "deficiencies which were quite extensive," recommended "massive" corrections and went so far as to question whether the program should be terminated. Ultimately, Mr. Young said in September, the program was judged too important to national security to be scrapped.
"Should the program continue or not?" Mr. Young said, addressing an issue that he said the panel had "wrestled a lot with." He spoke at a reporters' roundtable with Mr. Teets, according to the National Reconnaissance Office transcript. "Our belief was that it was critically important to the country, the program should be continued, could be corrected," he said. "The corrections would be massive, and we identified some of the things that we thought should be done in that regard."
The panel's report was drafted last May but not released until September, apparently to give the reconnaissance office time to respond to the criticism.
Lt. Gen. James Clapper, who heads the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, acknowledged at a breakfast with reporters in September that the government has had to lower its expectations for the next-generation satellite program.
-------- china
China's Military Warns Taiwan
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31525-2003Dec3.html
BEIJING, Dec. 3 -- China's military warned Taiwan that any decision to attack the island of 23 million would not be affected by concerns about China's economic development or that it might prompt a boycott of the 2008 Olympics.
A leading Chinese military strategist, writing in an influential magazine distributed here Wednesday, said also that China was not concerned that foreign investment might drop or that its development would be set back several years, its soldiers might die, its relations with third countries be affected or that people and property in the Asia-Pacific region would be damaged by a war.
"The Taiwan authorities say that because of the Olympics, we won't make a move," Maj. Gen. Peng Guangqian wrote in Outlook Weekly, published by the official New China News Agency. "But if you compare the Olympics and the sovereignty of our country's territory, sovereign territory will always take precedence. . . . The price for reunification will be paid if necessary. We're prepared, and we can pay it."
The military's warning is part of a coordinated campaign to counter recent steps by Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian to push the island more rapidly along the road to permanent independence. Beijing has vowed to attack Taiwan if it declares independence.
While Taiwan has an independent government and army, for decades China and Taiwan have agreed that there is only one China. The disagreement was about which government, Beijing's or Taipei's, represented China.
But in recent months, Chen has vociferously rejected the "one China" principle, as it is called. And he had pushed the passage of a law to allow referendums to be called in Taiwan on such subjects as independence and mainland relations.
Last week, China warned Taiwan to expect a "strong reaction" if it adopted a referendum law without limits on what issues could be put to a vote, demanding in particular that referendums on the island's name, flag and the definition of its territory be prohibited.
A day later, Taiwan's parliament passed a law that would allow such referendums, but only under certain circumstances. Three-fourths of the legislature would need to approve a referendum to change Taiwan's constitution, and a majority would be needed to call a vote on a "major policy."
But, in a loophole currently being exploited by Chen, the law allows the president to call a "defensive" referendum on national security issues if Taiwan's sovereignty is threatened by outside forces. Until the Outlook article, it appeared that the restrictions would satisfy Beijing. But Chen has begun arguing in campaign speeches that he can call a "defensive" referendum at any time because Taiwan is under constant threat from China.
Chen's aides say the president will keep his promise not to propose a referendum on independence. But members of his party have suggested votes on whether China should dismantle its missiles or whether Beijing's proposed "one country, two systems" formula for reunification is suitable for Taiwan.
The United States, Taiwan's main diplomatic ally and arms supplier, also appears to be worried. "We would be opposed to any referenda that would change Taiwan's status or move toward independence," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Tuesday.
Taiwanese independence activists, including former president Lee Teng-hui, have argued that China would not dare attack Taiwan because it is worried about international reaction As a result, Lee has pushed for Taiwan to hold a referendum on its constitution in 2006 and declare independence in 2008 -- a program that Chen is believed to support.
In his article, Peng, who is a senior official in the strategy department of the Academy of Military Sciences, vowed an attack regardless of the costs. He said it was "schoolchildren's logic" to think that China's worries about staging the 2008 Olympics successfully would stop Beijing from invading Taiwan. "The Olympics are like adding flowers to a brocade, but if the brocade is ruined . . . what use is there adding any flowers?" he said.
"If the Taiwan splitists want to make a wager, if the international anti-China forces want to make a wager, then they inevitably will pay a heavy price," he added.
-------- iraq
U.S. Rejects Iraqi Plan to Hold Census by Summer
December 4, 2003
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/middleeast/04CENS.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 3 - Iraqi census officials devised a detailed plan to count the country's entire population next summer and prepare a voter roll that would open the way to national elections in September. But American officials say they rejected the idea, and the Iraqi Governing Council members say they never saw the plan to consider it.
The practicality of national elections is now the subject of intense debate among Iraqi and American officials, who are trying to move forward on a plan to give Iraqis sovereignty next summer. As the American occupation officials rejected the plan to compile a voter roll rapidly, they also argued to the Governing Council that the lack of a voter roll meant national elections were impractical.
The American plan for Iraqi sovereignty proposes instead a series of caucus-style, indirect elections.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric, is calling for national elections next June, not the indirect balloting specified in the American plan for turning over control of the country. But American officials, and some Iraqis say the nation is not ready for national elections, in part because the logistics are too daunting.
In October, Nuha Yousef, the census director, finished the plan for a quick census, which lays out the timetable in tabular form over several pages.
"After processing the data, the most important thing is the election roll, and that would be available Sept. 1," she said. Full results, she added, would come in December.
One American official acknowledged in an interview that American authorities had been aware of the quick census plan but rejected it.
Informed of the proposal this week, several members of the Governing Council who advocated a direct national ballot next June 30 said they were upset that they had not seen it. The Census Bureau said it had delivered the plan to the Governing Council on Nov. 1, but apparently it was lost in the bureaucracy.
"This could have changed things," said Dr. T. Hamid al-Bayati, a senior aide to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the Governing Council member who announced last week that Shiite religious leaders opposed the indirect elections. Perhaps, he and others suggested, some council members would have argued last month that the vote on self-government should be delayed until September when the voter roll became available.
Another council member who favors national elections said: "I am irate. There is no doubt the situation would be different now, if we had known about this."
Charles Healtly, a spokesman for the occupation authorities, said the Americans knew about the census proposal but decided against pursuing it.
"Rushing into a census in this time frame with the security environment that we have would not give the result that people want," he said. "A lot of preparation work needs to be done for elections, and there is concern not to rush the process."
Some Governing Council members say the Americans never told them about the census plan.
Some Iraqis have said they wonder why American officials called for caucus elections in June, in part because a census could not be completed in less than a year, while at the same time rejecting a plan to produce a census more quickly.
Louay Hagi, who oversees the Census Bureau in the Planning Ministry, said the proposal was not rushed. In an interview, he said his staff prepared a detailed timetable for a census that was stripped down from the 73 questions asked in the last census six years ago, to 12 basic demographic queries, enabling the work to be done much faster than the normal two-year time frame.
As it had in the past, the bureau would use 400,000 school teachers to visit every household in Iraq on one day, June 30, said Ms. Yousef, the census director. The plan would cost $75 million, Mr. Hagi said, in part to buy 2,500 computers.
"We sent the plan to the Governing Council on Nov. 1 and asked for an answer by Nov. 15," Mr. Hagi said. "We are still waiting for a response." He would not say to whom at the council the proposal was sent.
Adel Abdel Mahdi, who attends every Governing Council meeting on behalf of Mr. Hakim, the council member, said he had never heard about the census proposal and "was surprised" to learn of it.
A council member who does not favor elections, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, said, "This is bad," and continued: "You can't have something like this as a secret. It is not a weapon." But he said he did not think knowledge of the plan would have changed the debate last month.
As it turned out, on Nov. 15 the Governing Council announced it had agreed to the American plan for indirect elections to choose a "transitional assembly" in June, the first step in a progression to a new constitution and the election of a new Iraqi government by Dec. 31, 2005.
The debate now is over whether the selection of a transitional assembly next summer should be by caucus-style balloting or a direct national election. Although last week, Ayatollah Sistani declared that he would insist on a direct vote, his aides have since softened that view. In an interview, Mr. Bayati said Mr. Hakim, who is serving as president of the Governing Council this month, was "ready to compromise."
"We want a plan that will reflect the will of the Iraqi people," Mr. Bayati said, "and we could do that by using civic societies in every governorate - union leaders, judges, chiefs of tribes, religious figures and other well-known parties."
An American official said "that sounds essentially like what we have been proposing, but as always the devil is in the details," such as who would choose those people.
Last week the council established a nine-member committee to study the issue of how to choose the transitional assembly.
Mr. Hagi said the quick census was still possible, but that now the results might not be ready until the middle of September.
-------
Iraqi Political Parties Will Form Militia to Work With American Forces
December 4, 2003
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/middleeast/04IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 3 - The American-led administration in Iraq has agreed with leaders of the country's top political parties to create a militia group made up of troops picked in equal numbers by the parties, party officials and members of the Iraqi Governing Council said Wednesday.
The militia's responsibilities will include the gathering of intelligence on guerrilla activities and possibly conducting house raids, the officials said. It will have 700 to 1,000 members, they said, and will be split into groups under the command or guidance of American soldiers.
"They will use this force for quick operations," said Nushirwan Mustafa, the deputy to Jalal Talabani, who represents the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan on the 25-member Governing Council. "Until now, there has been a vacuum of security. In June, sovereignty will be transferred from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Iraqi government. They should start now to build some security groups to take responsibility and take over security in the country."
Mr. Mustafa's party would be one of seven contributing 100 soldiers each to the militia, he said. The seven parties are the ones recognized by allied forces as the major political groups opposed to Saddam Hussein's government around the time of the American-led invasion, he added. Besides Mr. Mustafa's party, they are the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Dawa Party and the Iraqi Communist Party.
Mr. Mustafa and officials of other parties said plans for the militia, details of which were first reported in The Washington Post on Wednesday, were still subject to change.
Dan Senor, an allied spokesman, declined to comment, saying that he would not talk about conversations between American officials and the Governing Council.
Iraqi political leaders from all factions have long argued that American soldiers were ill-equipped to gather intelligence on resistance fighters. The foreign administrators, though, were reluctant to form a large militia, the Iraqis said, mainly because of their distrust of the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But the deteriorating security situation seems to have swung the opinion of the occupiers, Iraqi officials said.
The make-up of the militia has raised concerns among some Governing Council members. Ghazi Yawar, a council member who does not represent any political parties, said forming a militia of soldiers from different parties could lead to violent factionalism.
He added that the Governing Council was not consulted about this and that only council members representing the largest parties - ones that would contribute soldiers - took part in talks on the militia with Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior American commander in the Middle East.
"I am very outraged," he said. "How many people are running Iraq? I'm very upset. This can lead to warlords and civil war. Should I form my own militia? I can have 20,000 people or more here. But that is not what I want to do."
His understanding of the militia differed somewhat from Mr. Mustafa's. Mr. Yawar said only the five largest parties - rather than the seven largest - would contribute to the militia, with 160 to 200 people picked by each party. He said some of them had proposed replacing the council's Gurkha guards - elite Nepalese soldiers who serve with the British armed forces - with militiamen.
"I object," he said. "I want someone in a uniform."
Mr. Mustafa said the militia's soldiers would leave their party affiliations behind once they joined the new outfit. They would operate under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior, he said, and be concentrated in the Baghdad area.
He added that the militia would serve as an interim force while the occupation authority trains the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, paramilitary troops that will be melded into a national army. What will happen to the militia after that is unclear, he said.
Military officials said on Wednesday that soldiers from the 173rd Airborne and Iraqi security forces had captured 23 people on Monday night believed to be paramilitary troops loyal to Saddam Hussein. The operation took place west of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown.
Though rumors swirled in Baghdad on Tuesday that the operation had found Izzat Ibrahim, a top aide to Mr. Hussein, military officials later said they had not captured Mr. Ibrahim.
Officials also said Wednesday that soldiers had detained Brig. Gen. Daham al-Mahemdi, who is suspected of directing attacks against allied forces in the town of Falluja.
Susan Sachs and Joel Brinkley in Baghdad contributed reporting for this article.
-------- nato
Bulgaria ready to negotiate about hosting EU bases, Parvanov says
04.12.2003
SOFIA (bnn)
http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.asp?st=2078
Bulgaria is ready in principle to allow location of U.S. military bases on its territory but wants first to negotiate economic and defense aspects of such a move, President Georgi Parvanov said Thursday.
"Stationing of bases in Bulgaria is an issue that has to be concretely addressed, when our partners request to," Parvanov said. "Bulgaria has assumed and will continue to assume responsibilities to its partners from NATO."
"Whether these will be military practice grounds or bases and what will be the economic implications _ this is a matter of further discussions," he added.
Parvanov made his remarks at a joint news conference with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who started a two-day visit to Bulgaria on Thursday.
Bulgaria is among seven east European countries that will join NATO next year.
U.S. naval attache in Bulgaria Capt. Christopher McDonald has said that an U.S. State and Defense Department delegation will come to Bulgaria next week for talks about permanent stationing of four squadrons of aircraft in the country.
U.S. military have earlier toured several Bulgarian air bases and army training grounds.
U.S. military have said Bulgaria has a strategic location for the defense of U.S. global interests after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks and the war in Iraq.
Bulgaria has temporarily contributed an airport for U.S. refueling aircraft engaged in U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
-------- spies
General: Israelis Exaggerated Iraq Threat
December 4, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Iraq-Intelligence.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli intelligence overplayed the threat posed by Iraq and reinforced the U.S. and British assessment that Saddam Hussein had large amounts of weapons of mass destruction, a retired Israeli general said Thursday.
The Israeli assessment may have been colored by politics, including a desire to see the Iraqi leader toppled, said Shlomo Brom, who was a senior Israeli military intelligence officer and is now a researcher with Israel's top strategic think tank.
Brom stopped short of accusing Israeli intelligence officials of intentionally misleading Britain and the United States.
His assertions could, however, undermine the reputation of the Israeli intelligence service, one of the most respected in the world.
The Israeli military declined comment, while other experts said Brom was exaggerating.
Although no weapons of mass destruction have been found, U.S. and British policy-makers are sticking by their contention that Saddam's regime possessed the weapons and threatened world peace. Public debate continues in both countries over the claims.
In an article in Strategic Assessment, a publication of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Brom said weapons of mass destruction probably would not be found in significant quantities in Iraq.
He said Israeli intelligence overplayed the potential danger before the war. Based on intelligence warnings that a U.S.-led invasion could trigger an Iraqi missile attack on Israel, possibly with chemical or biological weapons, the Israeli military ordered citizens to update their gas mask kits. As the war began, the military told Israelis to prepare for an imminent attack and carry the masks with them everywhere.
Israelis largely ignored the order, and even Cabinet ministers were seen without the kits. In the end, Iraq did not fire missiles at Israel.
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam's forces fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel, and all had conventional warheads, causing considerable damage but few casualties.
Brom told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that ``Israeli intelligence was a full partner with the United States and Britain in developing a false picture of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capability.''
He said Israeli intelligence ``badly overestimated the Iraqi threat to Israel and reinforced the American and British belief that the weapons existed.''
Brom said the Israeli assessment may have been influenced by politics. ``Israel has no reason to regret the outcome of the war in Iraq,'' he wrote, noting Saddam was an implacable enemy.
Brom ended his 25-year military career in 1998. Career officers in Israel traditionally maintain close ties with military colleagues after their retirement.
Yossi Sarid, an opposition member of parliament, demanded an inquiry. ``If political factors interfere with intelligence assessments, heaven help us. That is the greatest danger,'' he told Israel Radio, adding that Israel's credibility could suffer.
``When we present dire information about Iran's arming itself with nuclear weapons, who's going to take us seriously? They can say, 'You exaggerated about Iraq, too,''' Sarid said.
Others argued Brom overstated the case.
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said there was a failure by all Western intelligence agencies in assessing the Iraq threat, but ``to say that Israel is the prime mover in this is extremely farfetched.''
Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat research center at Bar-Illan University near Tel Aviv, rejected Brom's findings and accused him of trying to bolster Israeli doves who believe the country faces no credible external threats.
``Intelligence has to warn of the worst-case scenario,'' Inbar said. He also questioned Brom's conclusion that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ``They haven't found Saddam, either, but does that mean there was no Saddam Hussein?''
Stuart A. Cohen, a top American intelligence analyst, wrote last month that with all the evidence the U.S. government possessed, ``no reasonable person could have ... reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached.''
-------- us
Body Armor Saves Lives in Iraq
Pentagon Criticized for Undersupply of Protective Vests
By Vernon Loeb and Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33341-2003Dec3?language=printer
BAGHDAD -- Pfc. Gregory Stovall felt the explosion on his face. He was standing in the turret of a Humvee, manning a machine gun, when the roadside bomb went off. At the time, he was guarding a convoy of trucks making a mail run.
In an instant, Stovall's face was perforated by shrapnel, the index finger on his right hand was gone, and the middle finger was hanging by a tendon. But the 22-year-old from Brooklyn remembers instinctively reaching for his chest and stomach -- "to make sure everything was there," he said.
It was, encased in a Kevlar vest reinforced by boron carbide ceramic plates that are so hard they can stop AK-47 rounds traveling 2,750 feet per second.
Thus, on the morning of Nov. 4, Stovall became the latest in a long line of soldiers serving in Iraq to be saved by the U.S. military's new Interceptor body armor.
This high-tech "system" -- the Kevlar vest and "small-arms protective inserts," which the troops call SAPI plates -- is dramatically reducing the kind of torso injuries that have killed soldiers on the battlefield in wars past.
Soldiers will not patrol without the armor -- if they can get it. But as of now, there is not enough to go around. Going into the war in Iraq, the Army decided to outfit only dismounted combat soldiers with the plated vests, which cost about $1,500 each. But when Iraqi insurgents began ambushing convoys and killing clerks as well as combat troops, controversy erupted.
Last month, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) and 102 other House members wrote to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to demand hearings on why the Pentagon had been unable to provide all U.S. service members in Iraq with the latest body armor. In the letter, the lawmakers cited reports that soldiers' parents had been purchasing body armor with ceramic plates and sending it to their children in Iraq.
The demand came after Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command and commander of all military forces in Iraq, told a House Appropriations subcommittee in September that he could not "answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply."
With the armor, "it's the difference between being hit with a fist or with a knife," said Ben Gonzalez, chief of the emergency room at the 28th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, the largest U.S. Army hospital in the country, which treats the majority of wounded soldiers.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, began investigating the Army's decision not to equip all troops deploying to Iraq with Interceptor body armor after learning that one of his students, reservist Richard Murphy, was in the country with a Vietnam-era flak jacket.
"There's been an overwhelming effort to get the military every possible resource," Turley said. "To have such an item denied to troops in Iraq was a terrible oversight." Since he began publicizing the lack of body armor, Turley said, he has been deluged with e-mails from people offering to donate body armor to U.S. troops.
Joe Werfelman, the father of Turley's student, said he was dismayed to learn that his son had been sent to Iraq in May without ceramic plates. "He called us frantically three or four times on this," Werfelman said in an interview. "We said, 'If the Army is not going to protect him, we've got to do it.' "
So Werfelman, of Scotia, Pa., found a New Jersey company that had the ceramic plates in stock, plunked down $660 for two plates and a carrying case, and sent them to his son. "As far as I know, he's still using the ones that we got him," he said. "Some units have the new plates and some units don't."
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Nov. 19, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee's chairman, told acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee that the shortage of body armor in Iraq was "totally unacceptable."
"Now, where was the error -- and I say it's an error made in planning -- to send those troops to forward-deployed regions, and the conflict in Iraq, without adequate numbers of body armor?" Warner asked.
"Events since the end of major combat operations in Iraq have differed from our expectations and have combined to cause problems," Brownlee said.
Before approving the administration's $87 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, Congress added hundreds of millions of dollars for more body armor, armored Humvees, and other systems to protect soldiers from roadside bombs and ambushes.
Now, three manufacturers are working overtime to produce the 80,000 vests and 160,000 plates required to outfit everyone in Iraq by the end of the year. Assembly lines are producing 25,000 sets a month.
Commanders say the vests are changing the way soldiers think and act in combat. "I will tell you that the soldiers -- to include this one -- experience some degree of feeling a little indestructible, particularly in light of the fact that we have seen the equipment work," said Lt. Col. Henry Arnold, a battalion commander and combat veteran in the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq.
"It's a security blanket," Stovall said from his hospital bed, awaiting a medevac flight to Germany with his hand bandaged. "If only they had a glove, I might have my finger, but I'm thankful that I'm here."
The product of a five-year military research effort aimed at reducing the weight and cost of the plates while increasing their strength, the body armor made its combat debut last year in Afghanistan and was credited with saving more than a dozen lives during Operation Anaconda.
The camouflage Kevlar vest, which alone can stop rounds from a 9mm handgun, weighs 8.4 pounds, while each of the plates weighs 4 pounds. At 16.4 pounds, Interceptor body armor is a third lighter than the 25-pound flak jacket from the Vietnam era, but it provides far more protection.
Consider the case of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division.
During a foot patrol in Fallujah in late September, an Iraqi insurgent suddenly emerged from an alleyway and fired an AK-47 at Spec. John Fox from point-blank range. Fox was hit in the stomach as he returned fire, and the blast knocked him off his feet. The bullet hit the middle of three ammunition magazines hanging from the front of his Kevlar vest, igniting tracer rounds and setting off a smoke grenade. A thick gray plume poured from his vest where he lay.
His squad mates, having shot and killed the gunman, rushed to his side. "Am I bleeding? Am I bleeding?" they recalled Fox asking.
They checked and discovered he was unharmed. His body armor had protected him not only from the AK-47 round but also from his own exploding munitions.
"Fox must have been only 10, 15 meters from this guy," recalled Sgt. Roger Vasquez. "And this thing stopped the bullet."
A month later, two of those who had rushed to Fox's side, Spec. Sean Bargmann and Spec. Joseph Rodriguez, were on a mounted patrol in Fallujah, sitting atop a Humvee, when a powerful roadside bomb exploded just feet away.
"It felt like somebody took a Louisville Slugger to my head," Bargmann said.
Weeks after the attack, he and Rodriguez still bore the outlines of their armor: The tops of their heads, protected by their Kevlar helmets, and their torsos, protected by their body armor, were unscathed. But Bargmann had a deep cut right below the helmet line, and Rodriguez had three scars running down his right cheek and a scar above his left eye.
This often happens with body armor: Lives are saved, but faces, arms and legs are punctured and scarred. Doctors are treating serious wounds to the extremities that are creating large numbers of amputees -- soldiers who in earlier wars never would have made it off the battlefield.
Gonzalez, the doctor at the 28th Combat Support Hospital, is not complaining about the number of amputations. "The survival rate has increased significantly," he said. "In the past, you'd see head and chest and abdominal injuries. They would die even before they got to me."
Sgt. Gary Frisbee of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment remembers standing in the turret of a Humvee waiting to die. His vehicle was bringing up the rear during a routine three-vehicle patrol in Sadr City, Baghdad's vast Shiite slum, when hundreds of armed followers of the Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr opened fire on them with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.
"I knew it was all over; it was just a matter of when," he recalled. "You're bracing yourself, because you're just waiting for the bullet to hit you. The volume of AK fire was unreal, from the roofs, in front of you, and behind you."
Two of 10 soldiers on the patrol were killed; four were wounded.
During the battle, Frisbee felt something hit the back of his Kevlar vest but kept on fighting. When the smoke finally cleared, he pulled out the back plate to see what had happened and found a bullet hole.
It had been, as he had thought, just a matter of time. He had been hit -- and saved by boron carbide.
-------- propaganda wars
Air Force One: A New Account
December 4, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/politics/04PLAN.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The White House on Wednesday changed its account of a widely reported encounter between Air Force One and a British Airways jetliner during President Bush's secret trip to Baghdad last week.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, told reporters on the trip that the British Airways pilot had spotted the president's distinctive 747 in the air and radioed its pilot. But on Wednesday, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said the conversation was between the British Airways pilot and the London control tower and had been overheard on Air Force One.
In Mr. Bartlett's original version, the British Airways pilot had radioed the president's plane, asking, "Did I just see Air Force One?" Mr. Bartlett said Air Force One's pilot radioed back, "Gulfstream Five," a smaller jet that would be all but impossible to mistake for a 747. After a longer pause, the British Airways pilot responded, "Oh."
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The Bird Was Perfect But Not For Dinner
In Iraq Picture, Bush Is Holding the Centerpiece
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A33
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33090-2003Dec3.html
President Bush's Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.
In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.
The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.
Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.
The scene, which lasted just a few seconds, was not visible to a reporter who was there but was recorded by a pool photographer and described by officials yesterday in response to questions raised in Washington.
Bush's standing rose in a poll conducted immediately after the trip. Administration officials said the presidential stop provided a morale boost that troops in Iraq are still talking about, and helped reassure Iraqis about U.S. intentions.
Nevertheless, the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein's arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States.
The White House has updated its account of an airborne conversation in which a British Airways pilot wondered into his radio if he had just seen Air Force One and was told that it was a Gulfstream 5, a much smaller plane. White House officials first said that the British Airways pilot had talked with the Air Force One pilot. Bush aides now say the conversation occurred between the British Airways pilot and an air traffic control worker.
"I don't think everybody was clear on exactly how that conversation happened," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
British Airways said it has been unable to confirm the new version. "We've looked into it," a spokeswoman said from London. "It didn't happen."
White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real.
"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."
The Democratic presidential candidates tipped their hats to the White House stage managers by refusing to criticize the trip, which dominated weekend newscasts.
Aides to the Democrats said they concluded that the less said about the trip, the better. In the view of these aides, the trip produced reassuring images of a situation that has badly deteriorated, and Democrats just wanted the moment to pass so they could go back to criticizing Bush's postwar policy.
A poll conducted four days after Thanksgiving by the National Annenberg Election Survey put Bush's job approval rating at 61 percent, up from 56 percent during the four days before the holiday. His job disapproval rating dropped from 41 percent to 36 percent. His personal popularity increased from 65 percent to 72 percent. The polls of 789 people before Thanksgiving and 847 people after Thanksgiving each had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The trip was pulled off in total secrecy -- only a few Bush aides and reporters knew about it in advance, and they were allowed to discuss it only on secure phone lines. Reporters covering the Thanksgiving program in Baghdad were not allowed to report the event until after Air Force One had left.
Some of the reporters left behind at Crawford Middle School, where they work when Bush is staying at his Texas ranch, felt they had been deceived by White House accounts of what Bush would be doing on Thanksgiving.
Correspondent Mark Knoller said Sunday on "CBS Evening News" that the misleading information and deception were understandable, but that he had been "filing radio reports that amounted to fiction."
"Even as President Bush was addressing U.S. personnel in Baghdad, I was on the air saying he was at his ranch making holiday phone calls to American troops overseas," Knoller said. "I got that information from a White House official that very morning."
-------- war crimes
Hateful words a war crime
December 04, 2003
Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031203-113817-3449r.htm
NEW YORK - With a trio of guilty verdicts yesterday, the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda has established that men armed only with words can commit genocide.
Three Rwandan media executives were convicted by the international tribunal of committing and inciting genocide, war crimes and persecution in a case that will set a precedent for the new International Criminal Court.
Their weapons: the government-sponsored radio station known as "Radio Machete" and "Hate Radio" and a weekly newspaper whose agenda was the extermination of the country's Tutsi majority.
The "media trials" marked the first time since Nuremburg that hate speech has been prosecuted as a war crime. It has been one of the most closely watched cases before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), seated in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha.
"You were fully aware of the power of words, and you used the radio - the medium of communication with the widest public reach - to disseminate hatred and violence," wrote presiding Judge Navanethem Pillay in sentencing to life in prison Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of Radio Television des Mille Collines.
"Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the death of thousands of innocent civilians."
More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in a three-month killing spree carried out by thousands of Rwandans against their neighbors. The seeds of the genocide, prosecutors say, were sown by news outlets like Kangura and Radio Machete.
Human rights advocates praised the verdict, even as some legal and media analysts warned that repressive regimes could use the verdict for their own purposes.
"This is the first time that journalists have been convicted for their participation in genocide, and I think it's a wake-up call to hatemongers everywhere that they can't incite people to commit genocide or ethnic cleansing," said Reed Brody, legal counsel to Human Rights Watch. "If you fan the flames, you'll have to face the consequences."
Karin Karlekar, the managing editor of Freedom House's annual survey of press freedom, praised the convictions but warned that some governments might use the verdict as a justification to clamp down on media in their own countries.
"Rwanda has already begun doing it," she said. "These guys were way over the line, but it's the gray area [of public speech] that is endangered, especially in countries with racial or ethnic tension."
Nahimana, the founder of the radio station, was found guilty of broadcasting inflammatory music and diatribes against Tutsi "cockroaches" and exhorting tens of thousands of listeners to butcher their neighbors. The intensity of the message increased as the genocide reached its apex in April 1994.
Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role on the station's board of directors and, separately, for distributing weapons used to kill Tutsi civilians.
The ICTR sentenced Hassan Ngeze to life behind bars for instigating and abetting acts of genocide in Kangura, a tabloid filled with cartoons and pictures that targeted for extermination all Tutsis, especially women.
Barayagwiza, who was tried in absentia, and Ngeze were also convicted of operating the Coalition in Defense of the Republic, a government party that spearheaded the Hutu Power movement, which demonized Tutsis before the killing began.
The landmark case against the three men opened in October 2000 and underwent frequent delays: A lack of translators stalled the translation and transcription of thousands of hours of audiotapes from the original Kinyarwanda into French and English.
Defense attorneys said the prosecution was selecting examples out of context rather than offering a more balanced representation of the station's programming.
All three defendants said they were protected by freedom of speech. But Judge Pillay noted in her decision that it was "critical to distinguish between the discussion of ethnic consciousness and ethnic hatred."
Life in prison is the strongest punishment the ICTR can mete out, and all three men may appeal.
In Kigali, Rwandan prosecutor-general Gerard Gahima praised the conviction.
"The conviction ... is a very important development because it shows that the responsibility for the genocide is not limited to those who did the actual killing," he said. "Those who spread the message through the media and told the ordinary people to kill are far worse than people who followed their orders," Reuters reported from Kigali.
The U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, drafted in 1966 and ratified by 151 nations including the United States, says: "Any advocacy of national racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law."
----
Court Convicts 3 in 1994 Genocide Across Rwanda
December 4, 2003
New York Times
By SHARON LaFRANIERE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/africa/04RWAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Dec. 3 - In the first case of its kind since the Nuremberg trials, an international court here on Wednesday convicted three Rwandans of genocide for media reports that fostered the killing of about 800,000 Rwandans, mostly of the Tutsi minority, over several months in 1994.
A three-judge panel said the three men had used a radio station and a newspaper published twice a month to mobilize Rwanda's Hutu majority against the Tutsi, who were massacred at churches, schools, hospitals and roadblocks. The court said the newspaper "poisoned the minds" of readers against the Tutsi, while the radio station openly called for their extermination, luring victims to killing grounds and broadcasting the names of people to be singled out.
The three men convicted were Hassan Ngeze, who owned the newspaper Kangura, Ferdinand Nahimana, who controlled the popular radio station RTLM, and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, the station's co-founder. Each of the three were found guilty of three counts of genocide and two counts of crimes against humanity. Mr. Ngeze and Mr. Nahimana were sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Barayagwiza was sentenced to a lesser term of 27 years because, the judges said, his rights had been violated early in the case. All had been in the court's custody for years.
In 100 days in 1994, prosecutors in Arusha contend, about 7 out of 10 of Rwanda's Tutsis were wiped out with a brutal efficiency. The United Nations, which failed to intervene during the massacres, set up the international court in the relative safety of Tanzania three months after the killings ended to bring the main perpetrators to account.
Wednesday's verdicts were the first convictions of media executives for crimes of genocide since 1946, when the Nuremberg tribunal sentenced the Nazi propagandist, Julius Streicher, to hang for his campaign against the Jews.
In a 29-page summary of the Arusha judgment, which was read aloud in court, the judges pointed out that they were addressing issues that had not come before an international court for many decades. "The power of the media to create and destroy human values comes with great responsibility," the summary said. "Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences."
Elated prosecutors called the verdicts a historic victory. "This is really a groundbreaking decision," said Stephen Rapp, the lead prosecutor. "The court said there is a wide range for free expression, but when you pour gasoline on the flames, that's when you cross the line into unprotected expression."
John Floyd, Mr. Ngeze's lawyer, called the judgment a major setback for free speech and an invitation to dictators to close down any media outlet on the grounds it could provoke violence.
"This is a terrible, terrible decision, the worst decision in the history of international justice," he said. He claimed that American courts, with their great concern for free speech, would have thrown the case out.
Floyd Abrams, a legal expert on the First Amendment disagreed. He said in a telephone interview that while the United States protected free speech more fiercely than any other country, it did not shield statements intended to provoke violence and likely to do so. "We would have protected some of the materials that were before the court," he said. "But even the First Amendment would not provide a basis for acquitting these defendants."
Mr. Nahimana, who argued that his radio station was taken over by extremists during the killings, and Mr. Ngeze intend to appeal, their lawyers said. Mr. Barayagwiza refused to go to court, and his lawyer made no statement after the verdict.
Besides drawing a legal boundary between free speech and criminal incitement to mass murder, tribunal officials said the verdicts vindicated the court's slow and expensive approach to delivering justice in a region where the powerful have long enjoyed impunity.
The international court has faced intense criticism. In nine years, with a staff of 872 and an annual budget of $88 million, it has produced only 17 convictions, including Wednesday's.
The United Nations recently gave the court more judges and appointed a new lead prosecutor, Hassan Bubacar Jallow of Gambia, to replace Carla Del Ponte, who was splitting her time between the Rwanda tribunal and one set up in The Hague to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
Tribunal officials said Wednesday's verdicts showed that the court had overcome most of its troubles. The pace of trials has clearly picked up: in the past month, two new cases have begun against eight ministers of the interim Hutu government that ruled during the massacres. One verdict was delivered earlier this week, and four more are expected soon.
But there is no decision about who will investigate charges that the Tutsi organized revenge killings of Hutus after a Tutsi-controlled government came to power in mid-1994. Rwandan officials say they want to handle it themselves. Some critics say the tribunal must investigate or lose credibility with Rwanda's Hutu.
And the location of the court, 1,200 miles from Rwanda's capital, Kigali, means that few Rwandans feel a part of the process. For a court organized to impart a sense of justice and help the Hutu and the Tutsi reconcile, that is a major impediment.
Bongani C. Majola, the deputy prosecutor here, put it this way: "Rwandans say, `Listen, we are the victims, but we know nothing about what is happening there. We don't see it on the papers, we don't hear it on TV, we don't hear people in the bars talking about it. So to us, nothing is happening.' "
What the verdicts will do, said Mr. Rapp, the lead prosecutor, is help set an international standard governing the responsibility of those who control the media for hate-spewing broadcasts and articles.
The cases turned on whether the three men were deliberately trying to create a frenzy of violence, or were simply trying to arouse the Hutu to defend themselves against armed Tutsis who were trying to overthrow the Hutu government.
The three-year trial detailed how the hugely popular RTLM station turned into a messenger of death. Copies of Mr. Ngeze's newspaper showed it relentlessly denigrated the Tutsi and suggested on its cover that the machete was the best way to deal with them.
The judges found that the station and newspaper branded all Tutsi, armed or unarmed, as the enemy. They quoted a witness who testified: "What RTLM did was to spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country."
In sentencing Mr. Nahimana, Navanethem Pillay, the presiding judge, said "Without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians." To Mr. Ngeze, the newspaper owner, she said: "Instead of using the media to promote human rights, you used it to attack and destroy human rights." She called Mr. Barayagwiza, an extremist political leader, the linchpin of the three men's conspiracy to incite genocide.
The court also found that Mr. Barayagwiza distributed a truckload of weapons used by Hutus to kill Tutsis and that, in one town, Mr. Ngeze ordered Hutu militias to murder Tutsis.
As gangs took to the streets with nail-studded clubs and sharpened sticks, the radio broadcasts grew increasingly chilling, court records show. One RTLM announcer advised: "Look at a person's height and his physical appearance. Just look at his small nose and then break it."
Another broadcaster discovered hundreds of famished Tutsis hiding in the dormitory of an Islamic center in Kigali. A survivor testified that the station announced that armed Tutsi fighters were in the mosque.
By the next morning, the Hutu militia had herded the Tutsi into nearby houses and lobbed grenades inside, the witness said.
Two months later, RTLM announced on the air that incredibly, still more Tutsis had fled to the mosque, hoping for refuge.
"I went there to take a look and saw that they looked like cattle for the slaughter," the broadcaster said. "I don't know whether they have already been slaughtered today or whether they will be slaughtered tonight. I feel they are all going to perish."
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Journalists Sentenced In Rwanda Genocide
Prosecutor Said 'Hate Media' Urged Killings
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33067-2003Dec3.html
NAIROBI, Dec. 3 -- An international court on Wednesday sentenced two Rwandan journalists to life in prison and a third to 35 years for their roles in fueling the 1994 genocide, ending a landmark three-year trial that highlighted the media's role in directing Rwandans to kill.
"This tribunal has set an important precedent that says if the media in this day and age uses their power to attack an ethnic group or racial group, they will have to face justice," the lead prosecutor, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, said in an interview. He said the use of "hate media" helped explain how ordinary Rwandans -- even children and grandparents -- were influenced to participate in the killings.
At the trial, several emotional witnesses, including employees of the media outlets, compared the role of the media to fuel on a fire. Phrases like "go to work" and "the graves are not yet full" were read by radio disc jockeys during the spring of 1994. A newspaper called on citizens to exterminate the "cockroach Tutsis."
Over 100 days starting in April 1994, Rwanda's Hutu majority killed about 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in an organized slaughter to settle long-simmering ethnic and political tensions.
The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, headquartered in Arusha, Tanzania, sentenced Ferdinand Nahimana, 53, a founding member of Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, or RTLM, to life in prison along with Hassan Ngeze, 42, owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura. Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, 53, another executive at RTLM, was given a 35-year sentence, which was reduced to 27 years for time already served.
By soaking their journalism in ethnic hatred, the three men turned their media into weapons of war, the court said. The outcome drew comparisons to the 1946 Nuremberg trial of Nazi publisher Julius Streicher, who used films and cartoons to incite hatred of Jews. Streicher was executed; life in prison is the most severe sentence the U.N. tribunal can give.
"Let whatever is smoldering erupt," Ngeze wrote in the newspaper days before the genocide began. "It will be necessary then that the masses and their army protect themselves. At such a time, blood will be poured. At such a time, a lot of blood will be poured."
Kangura, which means "Wake It Up!," published what it called the Hutu Ten Commandments telling people to kill.
Nahimana, whose radio station was nicknamed Radio Machete, launched programs that broadcast the names and addresses of members of the country's Tutsi minority and of Hutus who sympathized with them.
John Floyd, a Washington-based lawyer who defended Ngeze, called the verdict unfair and said it curbed freedom of speech. Floyd said it could be used as an excuse by governments to shut down any media outlet they disagreed with.
"The freedom of expression has stepped backward for 50 years," he said in an interview from Arusha. "This would have never lasted in the U.S. court. These men would have had their rights to democratic expression."
The court said that freedom came with responsibility.
"The power of the media to create and destroy human values comes with great responsibility," the court said in a 29-page summary. "Those who control the media are accountable for its consequences."
Presiding Judge Navanethem Pillay said: "RTLM broadcasts were a drumbeat calling on listeners to take action against Tutsis. RTLM spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country."
"It's an extraordinarily important decision because it does recognize that media can be used to kill," said Alison DesForges, a New York-based expert on Rwanda who wrote a 771-page Human Rights Watch report on the genocide and who testified at the trial. "Using media to disseminate hate. There is larger meaning for the whole world, including America, that sends a message about the responsibility of the media."
The court has been widely criticized for being inefficient, slow moving and costly. Since it was set up in late 1994, only 17 sentences have been handed down. In Rwanda, some say the court got less attention and was taken less seriously than the criminal court at The Hague, set up to investigate alleged war crimes by the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and others.
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Killing of Witness Rattles Mexico's 'Dirty War' Probe
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33184-2003Dec3.html
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 3 -- The killing of a government witness in the investigation of Mexico's so-called dirty war has produced fear among other potential witnesses, according to representatives of victims' families and human rights officials.
"There is a new climate of terror; this is a threat to our association and others who have testified about the crimes of the police and military," said Julio Mata Montiel, a human rights official with a group representing families of people who disappeared during the government's campaign of brutal repression against activists, many of them farmers and students, from the 1960s through the 1980s.
The body of Zacarias Barrientos Peralta, 55, was found on Nov. 26 near Acapulco, the resort city in the state of Guerrero. He had been shot eight times. Prosecutors said that in the 1970s, Barrientos, a farmer, had been kidnapped by Mexican security forces, then tortured and forced to inform on rebels for more than two years.
Barrientos had recently given testimony to investigators working for Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, the special prosecutor appointed by President Vicente Fox to investigate dirty-war crimes. Barrientos testified about military and police officials involved in crimes in Guerrero, where many of the 500 or more disappearances took place.
In an interview on Wednesday, Carrillo Prieto said the killing would not deter others from giving testimony. "The people of Guerrero have always shown that they are brave," he said. "Of course, they are under threat, but they will never stop seeking justice."
Carrillo Prieto said the circumstances of Barrientos's death were unclear. He said Barrientos could have been killed by people trying to cover up their guilt in the dirty war; in a statement immediately after the killing, he said it appeared "the deadly tail of the authoritarian dinosaur is reappearing."
But he also said that family members of those who disappeared could have killed Barrientos because he cooperated with the police and military. Mata dismissed that possibility, saying that Barrientos had lived among the victims' families for decades. He said they knew he had been coerced into cooperating with the security forces through torture and "we always considered him a victim, too."
Carrillo Prieto also said Barrientos could have been killed by the Popular Revolutionary Army, or EPR, a guerrilla group in Guerrero that was a key target of dirty war violence. He said Barrientos had recently been seen with EPR members, and officials found guns in his home that were believed to belong to the EPR. He said the EPR sent a threatening message to the special prosecutor's office on Tuesday. But that theory was also dismissed by Mata and others.
"The circumstances strongly suggest that Barrientos was killed in retaliation for his cooperation with the special prosecutor's office," said Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch in New York. "It sends a very disturbing message to other potential witnesses."
Fox took office in 2000 pledging to punish those responsible for state-sponsored violence during seven decades of authoritarian rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Those efforts received an enormous boost when the Mexican Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 5 that the statute of limitations did not apply to cases of kidnapping in which no body had been recovered.
On Nov. 26, a Guerrero court issued an arrest warrant for the former state police chief, Isidro Galeana -- the first such action against top officials once considered untouchable in Mexico's culture of official impunity.
Galeana, 68, is charged with the kidnapping in September 1974 of Jacob Najera Hernandez, a school teacher and anti-government activist who was never seen again. Galeana is also a suspect in at least 12 other disappearances, officials said. Police have been unable to find him, and Carrillo Prieto said he considered the former police official a fugitive.
Barrientos was killed hours after the arrest warrant for Galeana was issued, which many here interpreted as a clear message.
"This is not simply an investigation into the past, it's an ongoing threat to the rule of law in Mexico," Wilkinson said. "They are closing in on a group of individuals who still have the wherewithal to terrorize people who would seek to hold them accountable for past abuses."
--------
Pinochet Should Be Tried Again, Lawyers Say
December 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/americas/04PERU.html
SANTIAGO, Chile, Dec. 3 - Chilean lawyers said Wednesday that they would resume efforts to try the former dictator Augusto Pinochet for human rights crimes, saying a recent television interview showed the 88-year-old general was neither senile nor forgetful.
Chile's Supreme Court halted a trial of General Pinochet in 2001 on the ground that he was mentally unfit after court-ordered medical exams had showed he suffered a mild form of dementia brought on by minor strokes.
About 3,000 suspected leftists were killed or disappeared under General Pinochet's rule from 1973 to 1990 and thousands more were tortured.
Human rights lawyers, who have spearheaded a drawn-out legal battle against General Pinochet, have asked the courts to obtain the video of a rare interview with him that was broadcast last week on Miami's channel WDLP-22.
"If Pinochet appears as a person who obviously deals well with his recollections, with his memory, then that would demonstrate that he is not crazy and in that case we would go forth with our other requests," said Eduardo Contreras, a lawyer representing families of the dictatorship's victims.
The interview, arranged by General Pinochet's daughter, set off a controversy in Chile. General Pinochet's supporters called it a public relations gaffe, while his foes said it showed the former dictator was not "crazy or demented," the legal language used when he was ruled unfit to stand trial.
The lawyers' next step would be to request a new round of medical tests and then ask the courts to strip him of the immunity he enjoys as a former president.
The issue of General Pinochet's immunity must be resolved anew, each time a criminal charge is brought against him.
"We're going to request new mental exams," Mr. Contreras said, adding that if the lawyers were convinced he was well, they would present a new request for his immunity to be removed.
The Santiago Appeals Court ruled against a similar effort to take away General Pinochet's immunity last August.
In the interview broadcast in Miami, General Pinochet called himself an "angel" and said he had always been a democrat.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Mayor Agrees to Allow Panel to Examine Sept. 11 Records
December 4, 2003
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/national/04PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - In an abrupt reversal, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City announced on Wednesday that he had agreed to release records of emergency 911 calls and other materials sought by the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Bloomberg's action comes nearly two weeks after the commission announced that it had issued a subpoena to New York City for records related to the attacks. The panel said that the city's refusal to turn over the information had "significantly impeded" its investigation.
Initially, Mr. Bloomberg said he intended to challenge the federal subpoena, arguing that the request was ghoulish and that complying with it would invade the privacy of the victims' families.
But with the deadline for complying with the subpoena looming, the Bloomberg administration reached a deal with the commission that seemed to address the privacy concerns even as it gave the commission access to the materials it has been demanding. The city had until Wednesday to comply.
Under the deal, the city secured the right to block out information identifying specific people from any records that city officials hand over to the commission. In return, however, city officials agreed to allow panel members on their premises seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., to review the unedited versions of those records.
The commission's investigators are also permitted to take extensive notes when they review unedited documents or tapes, under the terms of the agreement. And the commission's final report may include statements by people taken from the 911 tapes and transcripts, provided the commission receives permission from those people or their family members, according to the agreement.
"We are pleased that we were able to protect the privacy of the people who were in the trade center calling for emergency assistance under the most tragic circumstances imaginable," Michael A. Cardozo, the city's corporation counsel, said in a statement. "At the same time, we will supply the commission with the materials it believes it needs in order to conduct its investigation."
In a statement issued late Wednesday, the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, said: "This agreement will afford commission staff access to everything it needs to do its job."
In an interview later in the day, Mr. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said he was pleased that the city and the commission were able to resolve their differences outside of court, though he expressed confidence that the commission would have prevailed.
Now, he said, the commission can turn its full attention to figuring out what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, instead of being mired in a lengthy and expensive court battle. The commission must file a final report to Congress by May 2004, he noted.
"We can now spend time, efforts and dollars more efficiently, in writing our report and getting the information out to the public," he said.
The subpoena issued by the 10-member commission demanded that the city turn over tapes and transcripts of emergency 911 calls made on Sept. 11, as well as transcripts of hundreds of interviews of firefighters that were conducted after the attacks.
The subpoena was the third issued by the commission, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The recipients of the earlier subpoenas - the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department - both promised to comply with them.
The deal announced on Wednesday puts an end to what had become an emotional fight between the city and the commission. Indeed, the mayor criticized the commission the day after the subpoenas were issued.
On his weekly WABC-AM radio program, Mr. Bloomberg said that the tapes had captured firefighters and police officers in their final moments and that their families felt strongly that the tapes should remain private. He also questioned how the tapes would further the federal investigation.
Alvin S. Felzenberg, a spokesman for the commission, said that the commission was willing to give in to some of the Bloomberg administration's demands that any unedited material remain in the city's possession because it shared the city's concerns about privacy.
"We were willing to say, `As long as we have access to all the material to do our work, we are less concerned that we have possession of the material,' " he said. "Access is access. It doesn't matter who owns it or where it is stored."
-------- courts
Judges Hear U.S. Appeal in Terror Case
December 4, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/national/04TERR.html
RICHMOND, Va., Dec. 3 - A panel of federal appeals judges questioned Wednesday whether Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, could receive a fair trial if the Bush administration continued to deny him access to captured terrorists whose testimony might bolster his defense.
At a hearing in Richmond, the three judges, members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, did not give a clear sense of how they would rule on a Justice Department appeal that has far-reaching consequences for the government's ability to prosecute terrorism suspects in civilian courts.
But the judges peppered a department lawyer with questions about the administration's assertion that compliance with Mr. Moussaoui's demand could compromise national security and that he has no constitutional right to take testimony from captured terrorists held by the United States overseas, even if the testimony might help exonerate him.
"We want the government to engage in war powers to protect the nation and our liberties," said Judge Roger L. Gregory, a Clinton administration appointee who was the most openly skeptical of the three judges about the government's arguments. "But at what point is national security concern so great that a person can't get a fair trial?"
Judge Karen J. Williams, appointed by the first President George Bush, suggested that she was sympathetic to some of the Justice Department's arguments but described Mr. Moussaoui as "an alien in the U.S. trying to vindicate his rights under the Constitution."
The Justice Department is asking the appeals court to overturn a lower court order in October that resulted from the government's refusal to make captured Qaeda members available for defense testimony. That order threw out much of the case against Mr. Moussaoui and barred prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against him.
The three-judge panel is likely to rule within weeks. While the Fourth Circuit is considered the most conservative federal appeals court and usually supports the government's national security arguments, the outcome of this appeal is uncertain. In any event, additional appeals are all but assured, and many prominent criminal law specialists say the case is ripe for review by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Moussaoui is a French citizen who readily acknowledges his membership in Al Qaeda and his loyalty to Osama bin Laden but denies guilt in the Sept. 11 attacks and says testimony from captured terrorists would demonstrate his innocence. His lawyers have argued that he is entitled to that testimony under the Sixth Amendment, which grants defendants a right to seek out witnesses who might bolster their case.
Mr. Moussaoui, who was arrested on immigration charges in August 2001 after arousing the suspicion of a flight school in Minnesota, has sought to question several captured Qaeda members, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was apprehended in Pakistan and is described in Mr. Moussaoui's indictment as a central figure in the logistics of the Sept. 11 terrorism.
The Justice Department's representative at Wednesday's hearing, Paul D. Clement, deputy solicitor general, said Mr. Moussaoui had no right to profit from "the windfall created when the government captured an enemy combatant abroad." He said that "an alien held abroad is not subject to the courts' compulsory process" and that the Sixth Amendment offered no "absolute right to secure live testimony" from potential defense witnesses.
Mr. Clement said the government was being asked by Mr. Moussaoui and his lawyers to interrupt government interrogation of terrorists who might have knowledge of further terrorist plots.
"We are being asked to choose," he said, "between prosecuting terrorists acts that have been completed and preventing terrorist attacks that are planned for the future."
But one of Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, Frank W. Dunham Jr., said the Justice Department was trying to "sit on witnesses that have favorable testimony to the defendant," in clear violation of Sixth Amendment rights.
"Our system of American justice and fair play will not permit such a result," Mr. Dunham said. "This is more about who we are than it is about Mr. Moussaoui."
The panel here - Judges Gregory, Williams and William W. Wilkins Jr., an appointee of President Ronald Reagan - heard similar arguments from the government and defense lawyers in June. But the judges held off on a ruling then, saying it would be premature to make a decision until the trial judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Alexandria, Va., imposed sanctions on the government for its refusal to make the Qaeda witnesses available to Mr. Moussaoui.
In October, Judge Brinkema announced the sanctions, saying she would punish the government by throwing out much of the case against Mr. Moussaoui - specifically, anything that linked him directly to the Sept. 11 attacks - and striking down the death penalty in his case. The appeals court is now weighing whether to overturn that decision and allow the original charges to be heard at trial.
-------
Compromise Hinted In Moussaoui Case
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33105-2003Dec3.html
RICHMOND, Dec. 3 -- Judges on a federal appeals panel strongly hinted Wednesday that they were searching for a middle ground in the constitutional dispute that has halted the case against terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui.
The judges raised the prospect that they might order, or even draft, a compromise that would allow Moussaoui access to statements made by three key al Qaeda detainees without letting him or his attorneys interview the witnesses in person.
The witness access issue has stalled the only U.S. criminal prosecution directly related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Prosecutors refused to turn over the three detainees being sought by Moussaoui. As a result, a federal judge in Alexandria in October eliminated the possibility of the death penalty for Moussaoui and any evidence that he took part in the hijackings.
The government appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. A three-judge panel Wednesday held oral arguments in its ornate Richmond courtroom.
Chief Judge William W. Wilkins Jr. and Judge Roger Gregory asked several times whether alternate versions of the witness statements, known as "substitutions," could be fashioned. Sources said judges on the panel also have pushed the idea of a compromise, which had been rejected by a lower court judge, in sessions closed to the public for national security reasons.
Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, arguing for the government, said substitutions "may be a way of securing the defendant's rights." Lawyers for Moussaoui indicated that it had been difficult to fashion a compromise that would substitute for the witnesses' live testimony.
A compromise would allow the court to avoid the larger constitutional issues that played out before the judges Wednesday. Lawyers for Moussaoui argued that he has an absolute right to witnesses who might exonerate him, while the government argued that such access would harm national security and that the military has the right to wage war without interference.
Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. told the court in blistering language that it would be unprecedented to execute Moussaoui while denying him access to witnesses who could clear him.
"Our system of American justice and fair play will not permit such a result," Dunham said. "Even for our most notorious enemy, charged with the worst crime in history, we will not bend the rules for our own convenience because this is America."
But Clement said Moussaoui has no right to interview the witnesses because they are enemy combatants captured abroad and are outside the reach of U.S. courts. Pointing out that there would be no issue if the government had not captured the three men, he said: "What the defense is seeking is a windfall from the government's prosecution of the war on terrorism."
The judges asked tough questions of both sides. At one point, Gregory asked Clement: "Where does the Constitution require the court to have this balance of national security and a fair trial for a defendant?"
At another point, Gregory seemed to betray sympathy toward the defense position, questioning government contentions that the executive branch has exclusive control of the war on terrorism. "If we're going to have an independent judiciary, you can't have the executive determining solely if these sanctions against the government are correct," he said.
Moussaoui was charged in December 2001 with conspiring with al Qaeda in the Sept. 11 attacks. The sanctions imposed on the Justice Department evolved from a ruling in January by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who granted a defense motion to depose captured al Qaeda operative Ramzi Binalshibh, the self-described planner of the attacks.
Government attorneys strongly objected, saying a deposition would harm national security. They appealed to the 4th Circuit and argued that Brinkema had overstepped her authority because the judiciary could not second-guess military decisions.
The 4th Circuit dismissed the initial appeal in June, saying it was premature. The judges said prosecutors could appeal again if they refused to produce Binalshibh and were sanctioned by the judge.
In September, Brinkema ordered depositions of two more witnesses, identified by sources as former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, alleged paymaster to the Sept. 11 hijackers. On Sept. 10, the government refused to produce either witness, setting the stage for Brinkema's order throwing out the death penalty and the Sept. 11 references. The charges left intact still would subject Moussaoui to a possible life sentence if convicted.
It is unclear when the 4th Circuit panel will issue its ruling. Government officials have said that if they lose the appeal, and a possible appeal to the Supreme Court, they will likely move the entire Moussaoui case to a military tribunal.
--------
Court Rules On Aiding Terrorist Groups
Knowledge of Activity Must Be Proved For Conviction
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33176-2003Dec3.html
A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the government cannot convict groups or individuals of violating a federal law against "material support" for terrorist organizations unless it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew the organizations were involved in terrorist activity.
The 2 to 1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit would make it more difficult for the government to win guilty pleas and jury verdicts under a 1996 statute that federal authorities have recently invoked to convict some U.S. citizens of aiding al Qaeda.
"Without the knowledge requirement," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the panel majority, "a person who simply sends a check to a school or orphanage run by [a U.S.-designated terrorist group] could be convicted under the statute, even if that individual is not aware of the [group's] designation or of any unlawful activities undertaken by the [group]."
The case was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of a human rights organization in Los Angeles and several groups of Sri Lankan Tamils who sought to aid what they said were nonviolent activities of separatist Kurdish rebels in Turkey and Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers guerrilla group.
The ruling also reaffirmed a decision by the same court barring the government from enforcing the 1996 law's prohibitions against providing "personnel" and "training" to designated terrorist groups. The terms are too ill-defined to provide adequate notice of precisely what is banned, and are thus unconstitutional, the 9th Circuit ruled.
Judge Sidney R. Thomas joined Pregerson's opinion, but Judge Johnnie B. Rawlinson dissented, saying that the majority had unrealistically endorsed a "wide-eyed innocent" defense for those who contribute to front groups often employed by terrorists.
David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who argued the case, said: "This decision will mitigate the substantial chilling effect that this statute has cast over those who seek to provide humanitarian aid to conflict-ridden areas."
The decision came on the same day that a federal court in New York -- which is not within the 9th Circuit's West Coast jurisdiction -- gave a 10-year sentence to the first of six Yemeni Americans from Lackawanna, N.Y., convicted of supplying personnel and training to al Qaeda.
-------- death penalty
Judge rules out death penalty for 9/11 defendant
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
04 December 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=469861
The Bush administration was yesterday involved in a desperate effort to keep alive its chances of prosecuting the only person charged over the attacks of September 11.
Federal prosecutors went to the US appeals court after a judge ruled out the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui. It cited the prosecutors' refusal to allow him to call alleged members of al-Qa'ida to support his not guilty plea.
Prosecutors said allowing Mr Moussaoui to question al-Qa'ida members held in US custody would threaten national security.
The case is central to the Bush administration's effort to show it is having success in its so-called war on terror. Mr Moussaoui, 35, is charged with conspiring with the hijackers involved in the attacks.
The prosecutors are refusing to allow Mr Moussaoui to cross-examine witnesses on whom they relying for parts of their case.
District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled out evidence that could link Mr Moussaoui to the hijackings and barred the death penalty after the prosecutors refused her order that Mr Moussaoui be allowed to question such witnesses.
-------- justice
Why we should fear the Matrix
The 'Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange' program threatens privacy
By Anita Ramasastry
FindLaw Columnist Special to CNN.com
Thursday, November 6, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/11/06/findlaw.analysis.ramasastry.matrix/index.html
(FindLaw) -- On October 30, 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed simultaneous requests in Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania for information about those states' participation in the "Matrix" program. (The program's formal name is the "Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.") In addition to those five states, four others -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Utah --are participating.
The ACLU's requests seek to find out what information sources the Matrix uses, who has access to the database and how it's being used. They were made pursuant to each states' Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In October, the ACLU had sought similar information under the federal version of FOIA and in Florida, where the program originated.
What is the Matrix, and why is the ACLU so concerned? Those are the two questions I will address in this column. I will also argue that readers should be concerned, too. The Total Information Awareness program
Last September, Congress voted to close down the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. As I discussed in an earlier column, TIA would have allowed the federal government to search and combine the vast amount of data that exists in government and commercial (for profit) databases to create individual profiles of each of us.
TIA was premised on a belief that compiling as much information as possible about as many people as possible in a large-scale database would help thwart terrorist activity. The idea -- called "data mining" -- was that government officials would search the database for information, or patterns of information, that might identify terrorists.
Congress should be applauded for shutting TIA down. First, Congress banned the use of TIA against American citizens, in light of privacy concerns, as well as concerns about the potential for erroneous identifications of innocent persons as terrorists. The program was then renamed Terrorist Information Awareness. Then, Congress shut down that program as well.
Unfortunately, however, the same data mining ideas that inspired TIA have appeared again-- this time, in the guise of the Matrix. What the Matrix is, and how it works
The Matrix is run by a private corporation -- Seisint Inc. of Boca Raton, Florida, -- on behalf of a cooperative group of state governments. However, it is, at least in part, federally funded -- and may, in future, allow federal access.
The program has received $4 million from the Justice Department. It has been promised a further $8 million from the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, news reports indicate that Matrix officials have said they are considering giving access to the CIA.
What does the Matrix do? According to Congressional testimony and news reports, it appears to do just what TIA would have done, if enacted: Tie together government and commercial databases to allow federal and state law enforcement entities to conduct detailed searches on particular individuals' dossiers.
The Matrix Web site states that the data compiled will include criminal histories, driver's license data, vehicle registration records, and significant amounts of public data record entries. Company officials have refused to disclose more specific details about the nature and sources of the data. According to news reports, the data may also include credit histories, driver's license photographs, marriage and divorce records, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and the names and addresses of family members, neighbors and business associates.
Moreover, there is no guarantee that the type of data that the Matrix compiles will not be further expanded. And information in today's commercial databases encompasses purchasing habits, magazine subscriptions, income and job histories, and much more. Soon, we may be profiled based on what we read and buy, and how we live.
In Congressional testimony, a Florida lawmaker, Paula B. Dockery, described how the Matrix works: It combines government records with information from "public search businesses" into a "data-warehouse." There, dossiers are reviewed by "specialized software" to identify "anomalies" using "mathematical analysis." If "anomalies" are spotted, they will then be scrutinized by personnel who will search for evidence of terrorism or other crimes.
As with TIA, the idea is plainly that of data mining -- the concept that searches for patterns in this data (including so-called "anomalies") that can identify individuals possibly involved in terrorist or other criminal activity. But as with TIA, this kind of "data mining" may be ineffective, and has severe downsides, including its privacy costs. Why "data mining" is dangerous
Supporters of data mining claim that it is innocuous because it is simply a faster way of gathering data that already exists. They note that police personnel, and even private detectives, can already trail suspects and search records to compile a profile of a person. Data mining, they say, is just the same process speeded-up and automatized.
In fact, however, the Matrix is so much more powerful than the work of individual detectives or law enforcement personnel, that the comparison is not useful. The Matrix allows the virtually instantaneous search of dozens of records relating to ordinary Americans. Such searches could be done routinely and on a massive scale. No complainant must walk into the police department; no client must go to a private detective.
With a keystroke, the government will be able to compile so much information about us that it could reconstruct our daily lives instantaneously. It won't need to send a detective to trail us, or put a video camera at our side, because data will be used to reconstruct our movements. Nor will it need to pick and choose suspects: Everyone will be a suspect, in effect.
Still, supporters of data mining argue, "Why would you mind this, if you don't have anything to hide? Why do you care if you're a suspect, unless you're guilty?"
But this argument is insidious, as history has proved. After all, if one has nothing to hide why would that person seek to enforce his or her privacy rights, or rights against self-incrimination, or right to an attorney? Yet, of course, it's not that simple -- and these rights are among those most valued within the Bill of Rights.
The principle of "innocent until proven guilty," too, is a fundamental part of our system. Indeed, more than this, it is a core American principle that the government will leave people alone unless it has good reason to suspect them of wrongdoing.
It is unclear when law enforcement will have access to records in the Matrix. But even more important, what triggers the creation of an individual's electronic dossier? At present, this is also an open question.
The risk of painting the innocent as suspect
Even beyond the very serious privacy issues with the Matrix, there is the important risk of so-called false positives. "Data anomalies" are far from certain indicators of guilt.
The data itself may be in error. As anyone who has ever tried to correct an erroneous credit report may have found, it's not easy to stop an error once it gets into the system. Yet there has been no account of how errors in the Matrix databases can be located and corrected.
Or the data may look bad, but have an innocent explanation. Terrorists are said to be transients, moving frequently, with few fixed addresses. But students, poor people, and the homeless do the same. For that matter, so do travel writers.
The truth is that judgments about reasonable suspicion of criminal activity are fundamentally human judgments that cannot now -- and, perhaps, ever -- be made accurately by computers. A program without safeguards presents special risks
As if all this weren't bad enough -- and it is-- the Matrix lacks safeguards against these predictable problems. The Web site states that "[t]his system will ensure that state and local law enforcement officers -- the individuals most likely to come into direct contact with terrorists or other criminals -- have the best information (accurate and complete) available to them in a timely manner." Despite the promise of accuracy, it does not have an error correction system, at least not one that has been explained to the public. And it does not make clear how, if at all, it will protect privacy.
The Matrix Web site also states that "[i]nformation submitted by any state may only be disseminated in accordance with restrictions and conditions placed on it by he submitting state pursuant to the submitting state's laws and regulations." But the Web site needs to make it clear what those various state policies are, and how it believes the policies apply to The Matrix. For instance, what if data comes from several states? Will the strictest state's privacy policy apply? Or the most lax?
All of these problems with the Matrix are very serious ones. And there may be others of which we are not aware yet. Until -- and unless -- the ACLU gets full responses to its FOIA requests, we still will not know exactly what data that will be collected, how such information will be used, and who can access it.
These questions are simple. The answers may be of momentous importance. Let's hope the ACLU gets the answers it's looking for. And let's hope that the Matrix meets the same dire fate TIA did before it.
-------- prisons / prisoners
NEWS ANALYSIS
Sudden Shift on Detainee
December 4, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/national/04DETA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - When the Pentagon said this week that it would let an American being held as an enemy combatant meet a lawyer, which it had refused to do for months, it appeared on the surface to be a major concession to the critics of the policy of detaining terrorism suspects.
But it may be that the action was less of a substantive change than merely a calculated gesture to help the administration shield its policies from criticism and reversal by the courts. The American, Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Louisianan of Saudi descent captured in fighting in Afghanistan, is under indefinite detention in a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.
Viet Dinh, a former assistant attorney general who had a major role in drafting antiterror policies, said in an interview on Wednesday that the decision to give Mr. Hamdi access to a lawyer was "a significant development in the case, one that moves the government to a more sustainable position before the court."
But Mr. Dinh, who has returned to his professorship at the Georgetown University Law School, also said the administration needed to provide some better form of due process "to make its case bulletproof."
The Pentagon made its statement about Mr. Hamdi's ability to confer with a lawyer a day before the Justice Department was obliged to file a brief with the Supreme Court asking it to uphold a ruling by an appeals court that President Bush was within his rights as a wartime president to detain Mr. Hamdi indefinitely without access to a lawyer.
The brief itself, however, does not retreat from the hard-line position the administration has taken all along, that the president has the authority to detain an American citizen indefinitely without consulting a lawyer.
The administration does not concede in the brief that it has any obligation to allow Mr. Hamdi to meet with his lawyer, Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender in Virginia, although a footnote in the brief does say the two will soon be able to meet.
The Pentagon explicitly said its decision was at its discretion and was taken only because intelligence officials had finished questioning Mr. Hamdi and no longer felt the need to keep him incommunicado.
"They are trying to change at least the perception of unfairness that existed and show that they are giving this U.S. citizen some kind of rights," Pamela S. Falk, a professor of international law at the City University of New York, said. "This is clearly an attempt to defuse some of the reasonable fear among the public that the government was seeking extraordinary new powers to detain citizens in the war against terrorism."
The president of the American Bar Association, Dennis W. Archer, said on Wednesday that although he was encouraged at the decision to let Mr. Hamdi see his lawyer, he was disappointed that the Pentagon said it was doing so only as a discretionary matter and not setting a precedent.
Nonetheless, the permission may help the government's case in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court case involves not only the issue of whether an enemy combatant may consult with a lawyer, but also whether the combatant may be detained solely on the assertion of the president and the executive branch with no recourse to judicial review.
Professor Dinh has suggested since leaving the government that the process needs to be reviewed.
"Two years into the war against terror, along with the luxury of the relative safety that the administration has provided, has afforded an opportunity to have a conversation about a more systematic and sustainable set of procedures" for enemy combatants, he said.
Those comments underline the fact that allowing Mr. Hamdi to see his lawyer does not necessarily mean anything will come of it. The administration still contends in its brief that Mr. Hamdi is not entitled to challenge his detention nor his designation as an enemy combatant.
A second senior former official in the Justice Department, Judge Michael Chertoff, has also called for new methods of dealing with enemy combatants' rights of due process. Judge Chertoff, who was the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, is on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.
A senior administration official said on Wednesday that letting Mr. Hamdi see a lawyer did not represent a stark change, because the government has always contended that detainees needed to be kept in isolation only until their questioning had ended. The administration first hinted at that view publicly last month, when it argued before a federal appeals court in New York that Jose Padilla, another American held as an enemy combatant, might be permitted to see a lawyer when his questioning had ended.
The administration has argued that letting a detainee consult a lawyer before questioning is complete would render ineffective all efforts to obtain usable information. Not only might a lawyer advise a detainee not to cooperate, but the consultation, officials say, would also disturb the relationship between the detainee and the questioners.
In addition to the decision to let Mr. Hamdi consult his lawyer, the administration has made other seeming concessions to foreign allies as to the circumstances in which their citizens detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, might be tried before military commissions. Last month, Australia said Washington had agreed to allow an Australian defense lawyer meet directly with and participate in the defense of David Hicks, 26, an Australian who joined the Taliban in 1999 and was captured with it. Mr. Hicks, who is at Guantánamo, who may soon face a tribunal.
Australia and Britain have been assured that their citizens will not face the death penalty from any tribunals. At the same time, the administration is negotiating with other governments on their citizens at Guantánamo. Defense Department officials have said they may soon modify some of the rules established for military tribunals to satisfy some foreign critics.
After reaching the accord with Australia, the first foreign government to declare that it was satisfied with the procedures for a military tribunal, the Pentagon said on Wednesday that it had assigned a military lawyer to represent Mr. Hicks, one of six detainees designated eligible for a tribunal.
Pentagon officials acknowledged last weekend that they might soon release many the 660 people detained at Guantánamo. The detention of people, most of whom were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan at the end of the Afghan campaign, has been a major irritant in relations with foreign governments.
--------
Analysis
Decision to Allow Lawyer for 'Enemy Combatant' Is New Policy
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33288-2003Dec3.html
In announcing that an alleged Taliban fighter will be given access to a lawyer, the Pentagon ended nearly two years of legal debate within the Bush administration and established new policy on the treatment of U.S. citizens detained as "enemy combatants" in the war on terrorism.
The announcement late Tuesday significantly modified one of the government's most controversial anti-terrorism positions: that it may hold alleged enemy combatants indefinitely without representation, even if they are U.S. citizens. The move also increases the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court, which is considering whether to review the case, will find the government's treatment of detainees reasonable, according to administration officials and legal experts.
But defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates said yesterday that the decision does not go far enough in protecting Yaser Esam Hamdi's constitutional rights. He has been held in military custody since November 2001 with no access to a lawyer.
Critics said the government's announcement also does little to answer the larger question of how those detained in the war on terrorism should be treated by civilian and military courts, and whether the same rules will apply to another U.S. citizen being held as an enemy combatant in the same military brig -- alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. (The only other person designated by President Bush as an enemy combatant, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Bradley University graduate student accused of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent, is not an American citizen.)
In a court brief filed yesterday, the Justice Department argued that the Pentagon's decision to grant Hamdi access to a lawyer has no bearing on the government's right to detain him without further hearings.
"Common sense is beginning to take hold, but it's only halfway there," said Frank W. Dunham Jr., the public defender who has been seeking to represent Hamdi. "I see it as a welcome shift on the part of the government in realizing it can't just run roughshod over everybody. . . . But the next shoe that needs to fall is an architecture by which these people can be sorted out."
Hamdi surrendered with a Taliban unit in Afghanistan in November 2001, and the military determined in early 2002 that he is an American citizen. After Bush declared Hamdi an enemy combatant, senior lawyers at the Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies were successful in persuading the White House to back a policy that denied Hamdi access to a lawyer and provided no promise that he would ever get one, according to sources familiar with the debate.
That position drew opposition from senior lawyers at the Justice Department and some other agencies, who, sources said, believed that it was unacceptable to indefinitely deny counsel to Hamdi and Padilla, a former street gang member accused of plotting to detonate a bomb wrapped in radioactive material inside the United States. Such misgivings only strengthened as Hamdi's detention approached and then passed the two-year mark, officials said.
Yet the government succeeded in persuading the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in July that Hamdi was not entitled to an attorney and that the courts should leave such decisions up to the executive branch.
One administration official said that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was among those who argued in favor of providing a lawyer in such cases, after interrogations were completed. Viet D. Dinh, a former senior Justice official who teaches law at Georgetown University, has made similar arguments in recent speeches and panel discussions.
But administration officials also stressed yesterday that the decision was a matter of policy, not law. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Our position has been, and remains, that enemy combatants are not legally entitled to access to counsel. . . .
"The decision to provide counsel, in this case, was based solely on the Department of Defense's conclusion that Hamdi had no further intelligence value, and that providing access to counsel would not compromise national security in any way," McClellan said.
David B. Rivkin Jr., a former lawyer in the first Bush White House who filed a brief supporting the administration in Hamdi's case, said the Pentagon decision "underscores the basic legal and moral integrity of the government's position."
"They've always said there's no entitlement to a lawyer in this context," Rivkin said. "On the other hand, nothing stops them from giving access to a lawyer once the interrogation is over."
But many defense lawyers who have been critical of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies said the courts should play a role in reviewing such decisions, particularly in the case of U.S. citizens. Hamdi was born in Louisiana, although U.S. officials say he also held Saudi citizenship.
"The Pentagon's insistence that the access to counsel is not required by law, and is available only at the government's discretion, misses the critical point," said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. "The point is that the rule of law is a matter of right, not a matter of grace."
The Defense Department's new policy was first hinted at two weeks ago, during a federal appeals court hearing for Padilla, who is alleged to have conspired with the al Qaeda terrorist network to set off the radiological bomb. But one of the lawyers attempting to represent Padilla said yesterday that the government has not yet indicated whether it will allow him access to counsel. "The government has been attempting to erect an absolute wall between anyone they designate as an enemy combatant and legal counsel," said defense lawyer Andrew Patel. "This is certainly a tearing down of that wall. . . . But what it ultimately means for Mr. Padilla is too early to say."
--------
Guantanamo Bay Detainee Is First to Be Given a Lawyer
Move Is Sign That Australian Alleged Al Qaeda Fighter May Be Tried by Tribunal
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 4, 2003; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33698-2003Dec4.html
An Australian detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba last night became the first prisoner there to be given a lawyer, a strong indication that he is on track to be the first alleged al Qaeda fighter in detention to go before a military tribunal, according to informed sources.
But a source said Muslim adventurer and former cowboy David Hicks may never be tried before one of the special military courts because the U.S. government is working on a plea bargain with him. He has been accused of associating with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
Hicks, 28, has been cooperating with U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay for months, U.S. officials said. The source said that he has told them he is willing to plead guilty to some charges in a deal with prosecutors.
Maj. John Smith, a spokesman for the Pentagon's military commissions office, said last night that military officials had not reached any formal plea agreement with Hicks. "We don't have plea agreements with people not represented by defense counsel," he said.
One military official said that no formal offer had been made to Hicks, and that "arranging a plea agreement is not part of [the lawyer's] detailing" to represent Hicks.
The official added that "I don't know what Hicks has said [to U.S. officials] about what he wants to do" in terms of a possible plea agreement.
Earlier this year President Bush designated Hicks as one of six Guantanamo Bay prisoners who could be tried before a military tribunal.
Government officials said that under the rules for the tribunals, prisoners cannot enter into a plea bargain until they receive legal counsel, and in Hicks's case he has not even met with his lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori. Hicks also has not been charged with any crime to which he could plead guilty.
Government sources have said for some time that they hoped to arrange a plea agreement as part of the first military tribunal case at Guantanamo Bay to demonstrate to the world that the United States is serious about prosecuting terrorists but will reward those who cooperate.
"The government people want to start out strong by having Hicks go public with what he has done, say that he regrets it and say he is getting a good deal" from the U.S. government, one source said. "There would be a quid pro quo in this."
The next step in the tribunal process is for Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz to declare which of the six previously designated detainees is to be tried in one of the special courts. Besides Hicks, two of the others are Britons, but the nationalities and identities of the remaining three have never been confirmed.
The tribunals have been delayed for months, in part because officials want to announce them in tandem with announcements that other prisoners will be repatriated to their home countries, either to be freed or jailed pending trial there.
U.S. plans for the tribunals have sparked an international outcry, as legal experts said they lack some protections standard in most courts. Appeals of convictions, for example, do not go through the courts -- they go through the Pentagon to the president.
Last month, U.S. officials, after lengthy negotiations with Australian officials, announced a number of concessions for Hicks -- if he were convicted, he would not face the death penalty, for example, and he could speak to his family by telephone.
Hicks's family in Adelaide has proclaimed his innocence ever since he was captured fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan in late 2001. But earlier this year U.S. officials said he had provided extensive information about how he received intense training at al Qaeda terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
Hicks, a former rodeo rider and kangaroo skinner who converted to Islam, spent much of the 1990s traveling the world to join Muslim guerrilla movements in Kosovo and in Kashmir, a disputed border region claimed by Pakistan and India. He traveled to Afghanistan in 2000, when U.S. and Australian officials said he trained with al Qaeda.
--------
Man Who Trained With Qaeda Gets 10-Year Sentence
December 4, 2003
By DAVID STABA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/nyregion/04LACK.html
BUFFALO, Dec. 3 - A man who admitted attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison.
The man, Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23, received the maximum sentence for providing support to Al Qaeda from Judge William M. Skretny of Federal District Court. Mr. al-Bakri, who pleaded guilty in May, is the first of six men from a Yemenite community in Lackawanna, a city immediately south of here, to be sentenced.
According to his plea agreement, Mr. al-Bakri received training in the use of firearms and explosives at the Farooq camp. The judge fined him $2,000 and also sentenced Mr. al-Bakri to three years of supervised release after his prison term.
The F.B.I. began investigating the six men after receiving an anonymous tip. A cryptic e-mail message sent by Mr. al-Bakri while in Bahrain for his wedding prompted the arrests of all the men, according to Peter Ahearn, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Buffalo office. In a message sent to the brother of Yahya Goba, another defendant, Mr. al-Bakri wrote, "The next meal will be very huge. No one will be able to withstand it except those with faith."
Believing Mr. al-Bakri was referring to an attack, the authorities in Bahrain seized him.
--------
Muslim Chaplain Thanks His Supporters
December 4, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Muslim-Chaplain.html
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A Muslim chaplain charged with security breaches at the U.S. military base where suspected terrorists are held thanked supporters Thursday for pressuring the government to release him.
In his first public comments since he was arrested in September, Army Capt. James Yee, 35, told Asian-American and civil rights activists he was grateful to them for calling attention to his case.
``It was an enormous blessing for me to spend Thanksgiving with some of my family,'' said Yee, who called supporters at a San Francisco news conference from Georgia, where he is awaiting a hearing.
Yee, who counseled suspected terrorists at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo in Cuba, was charged with disobeying an order for allegedly taking classified material and improperly transporting it.
He was released late last month, but the military added charges of making a false statement, storing pornography on a government computer and having sexual relations outside marriage.
Yee told activists ``there are still some battles that need to be fought,'' but did not address charges against him because his case is still pending, said his lawyer, Eugene Fidell.
At the news conference, activists demanded the government drop all charges against Yee. They compared his case to that of Wen Ho Lee, a scientist once suspected of stealing nuclear secrets. Lee eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of copying sensitive nuclear weapons data and received a judge's apology.
Advocates say both men were singled out because they are Chinese-American, and, in Yee's case, because he is Muslim.
Government officials have said they did not target Yee because of his ethnicity or religion
-------- torture
US Exporting 'Tools of Torture'
by Jim Lobe
December 4, 2003
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe120403.html
The administration of US President George W. Bush is violating the spirit of its own export policy by approving the sale of tools to countries known to use them to torture detainees, according to a new report released here Tuesday by Amnesty International.
In 2002, US exports of electroshock weapons and restraints that can be used for torture amounted to some $14.7 million and $4.4 million, respectively, according to the report, titled "The Pain Merchants."
Along with the sales of such equipment, Washington is also reported to have handed over suspects in the "war on terror" to the same countries, the 85-page report said.
"Although torture is endemic in Saudi Arabia, Smith & Wesson had no qualms about exporting approximately 10,000 leg-irons to Riyadh, and, apparently sharing this lack of concern, the Bush administration approved the sale," said William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty's US branch, AIUSA.
"For decades, human-rights groups and the US State Department have documented Saudi Arabia's cruel use of leg-irons and shackles to inflict torture and force confessions. With this shameful shipment, we can expect the torture of religious minorities and peaceful protesters to continue for years to come."
The United States is not the only exporter of such police- and security-related equipment that, while not lethal, can inflict severe pain and amount to torture when used improperly, according to Amnesty. Worldwide, some 856 companies in 47 countries either manufacture or market such devices.
Indeed, Asian companies - particularly those in Taiwan, China, and South Korea - dominate the electroshock market.
"Just because security equipment may be described as 'less than lethal' does not mean it cannot be abused, nor that it cannot injure or kill," said Brian Wood, Amnesty's expert on crime-control devices. "We are extremely concerned that in many countries devices are being authorized for use on the population without sufficient investigation of their effects on human rights."
In recent years, the US government has taken steps - most importantly the adoption of an export policy that requires licenses to sell or ship electroshock equipment to all countries except Canada - to reduce the likelihood that devices manufactured here will be sent to countries where they are used to torture or otherwise inflict harm.
Similarly, the European Commission (EC) has drafted regulations that would ban the export from member states of equipment whose primary practical purpose is torture - such as leg irons and stun belts - and impose tight restrictions on the export of equipment that may have a legitimate policing purpose but which could be used for torture, such as electroshock stun weapons and tear gas.
But the EC's policy has yet to be adopted, while US license requirements are not being seriously enforced, according to AIUSA, which noted that in 2001 the government approved three sales of electroshock devices to Turkey, despite the State Department's finding that such weapons were widely used for torture there.
In one 2002 case, a 17-year-old schoolgirl who was detained for distributing leaflets calling for the legalization of Kurdish education was stripped, threatened with rape and tortured with electric shocks to her feet, legs and stomach, according to Amnesty.
"The US needs to completely close the loopholes that have allowed the resupply of this technology to countries that torture," said Maureen Greenwood, AIUSA's advocacy director in Europe. She noted that Reps. Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde are currently working on legislation that places restrictions on crime-control exports to foreign governments known to use torture.
Amnesty said it was also concerned about other "crime-control" weapons, such as sedative chemical incapacitating agents like the one that killed more than 120 hostages when Russian security forces ended a siege in a Moscow theater last year.
Amnesty also noted that new technologies, many of which are being developed as part of the US "war on terror," may also be used to inflict torture and should be very carefully reviewed for their possible abuse.
These include radio-frequency weapons that may induce an artificial fever; "chemical stench;" taser mines that could deliver a 50,000-volt shock to anyone within a certain radius; and UV lasers that can ionize the air to also deliver an electric charge.
Amnesty stressed that most of these weapons are not intended to inflict torture but can be used to do so. "It's possible to use anything for torture," the president of a US manufacturer of electroshock riot shields told Amnesty. "But it's a little easier to use our devices."
A three-year-old study by the London-based group found that torture has been reported in all but about 35 countries worldwide and that there are more than 70 countries in which torture has been reported to be widespread or persistent.
In more than 80 countries, including the United States, deaths have been reported as a result of torture. In the US case, for example, a man died after being "tasered" a dozen times, each time with a 50,000 volt shock, by deputy sheriffs in Florida.
The US Department of Commerce last year approved licenses for exports of discharge-type weapons, including electroshock stun guns, shock batons, and similar devices, to 45 countries, among them a large number where the State Department has reported the use of torture against detainees, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Honduras, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, and Venezuela.
More than 60 US manufacturers sought licenses to export such equipment during 2002.
AIUSA said it feared that some manufacturers actually ignored the licensing requirement and shipped such equipment directly to the buyer. Indeed, a recent investigative report in US News & World Report found that several small companies freely advertise at various Internet Web sites how to circumvent exports rules for stun guns by, for example, shipping parts separately.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Wind: more jobs and power for same investment
Greenpeace says no to new French nuke with wind turbines
Thu 04 December 2003
FRANCE/Penly
http://www.greenpeace.org/news/details?item_id=362018
Since the French power authority has refused to build wind farms, we built our own this morning on the grounds of a nuclear power plant in Penly, France. We put ten wind turbines up to protest the French government decision to build another nuclear reactor on the site, despite a large nuclear energy overcapacity and the far more environmentally and economically sane option of investing in wind energy.
Franc for franc, wind is the better investment. As detailed in a report published today, "Wind vs Nuclear 2003" the same money spent on wind power generates 5 times more jobs and 2.3 times more electricity than a nuclear reactor.
The cost of the proposed French reactor is officially estimated at some 3-3.5 billion Euros. If this amount of money were invested in wind power, some 7616 megawatts of wind capacity could be built, compared to 1550 megawatts in the nuclear case. Wind would generate a massive 24 terrawatts per year, the equivalent of 6.5 million households. Nuclear would only deliver 10 terrawatts.
In recent years wind power has gone from the hippy fringe to economic viability. In Germany, over 3,200 megawatts of wind power were installed in the last year alone, supplying electricity to more than 2 million households. In the EU, a massive 75,000 megawatts of wind capacity is expected to be online by 2010, tripling the current power and adding the equivalent electricity production of 14 large nuclear reactors.
Of course this worries the nuclear industry, especially given the current decline in nukes: no single reactor has been connected to the grid in the last four years, and it would take at least another 10 years before a new reactor could come online. A growing number of old reactors have reached the end of their life expectancies and should be shut down. In reality, wind has already taken the lead and left nuclear far behind.
"Greenpeace is urging state owned EdF, Electricity de France, not to impose yet another dangerous and uneconomic nuclear reactor on Europe. The EPR [European Pressurized Reactor] is nothing new, it is an outdated and unsafe design, to be fuelled by plutonium and will produce extremely radioactive waste," said our campaigner on site, Jan Vande Putte.
"Europe is at a crossroad and we refuse to let the nuclear lobby dictate our energy future regardless of the opinion, the environment and the security of people. Greenpeace asks EDF to make the right choice."
Greenpeace activists display 10 model wind turbines on the premises of a nuclear power plant in Penly, France in protest at the French government's decision to build another reactor on the site.
Floods in France
Floods in southern France this week illustrate once again the unacceptable risk of nuclear power. Two nuclear power plants have been shut down, and a major waste storage facility is in the impacted region.
In a world threatened by terrorism and extreme weather events like the storms in France (which will only increase as global warming worsens) nuclear power is too dangerous. No terrorist has every threatened to blow up a wind turbine, and a flood doesn't stop a wind farm.
No nukes. Go wind.
The answer is blowing in the wind Euratom: nuking Europe's future
More:
Download the full report Wind v Nuclear 2003. (pdf file)
http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/multimedia/download/1/362102/0/wind_vs_nuclear.pdf
-------- environment
E.P.A. Drafts New Rules for Emissions From Power Plants
December 4, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/politics/04ENVI.html
The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a proposed regulation to control air pollutants that produce smog and acid rain and are released from power plants in the eastern United States, administration officials say.
The proposal, submitted last week to the White House, would set a regional limit on the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide for around 30 states, employees of the agency said.
The proposal would let utilities buy and sell the rights to emit the gases so long as the total remained under the regional limit. In two stages through 2015, the agency would slowly lower the overall limit for the two chemicals, which it estimates cause tens of thousands of deaths a year.
The program is similar to the highly successful national cap and trade program to control acid rain that began in the early 1990's.
The effort that will be announced soon would be aimed at further reducing acid rain in the East.
It would be similar to an E.P.A. proposal announced on Tuesday to establish a similar cap and trade system for power plants that emit mercury. Although trading pollution credits for smog and acid rain would be a major improvement over current practices under the Clean Air Act, critics say the same trading system for mercury could be more harmful than forcing individual plants to reduce releases.
Environmental advocacy groups, generally critical of the administration's record on clean air, generally applaud the new proposals for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. But they say that the agency should set more stringent limits and that they are wary that the proposal might never be finalized.
"E.P.A.," Vickie Patton of Environmental Defense said, "is poised to take an important step to begin addressing a pressing public health problem. But we expect that the pollution cuts E.P.A. proposes will fall well short of those necessary to protect children with asthma and the elderly who are most at risk from these harmful air pollutants."
The proposal would set an overall cap equivalent to a national limit of 3.2 million tons in 2015. Environmental Defense, a group in Manhattan, says health studies show that limit should be set at the equivalent of two million tons.
The proposals for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are the market-based pollution programs for utilities that the administration seems to favor. The administration has made such approaches the centerpiece to the president's proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act that would put controls on mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
Although Congress has balked at amending the Clean Air Act along those lines, the administration has sought to put the market-based approach into effect through changes in regulations.
"The cap and trade approach shows us again and again that people do more, and they do it faster, when they have an incentive to do what's in the public interest," Michael O. Leavitt, the new environmental administrator, said on Tuesday in a speech to agency employees. "More. Better. Faster. Newer. That's the tune you'll hear from the administration over and over again."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Venezuelan Protesters Clash With Police
December 4, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/international/americas/04VENE.html
CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 3 - The Venezuelan police and national guard troops firing tear gas clashed with rioting street vendors in downtown Caracas on Wednesday and at least one policeman was hurt by stones thrown by the protesters, officials said.
The clashes began after the police seized illegal fireworks, raising tensions as electoral authorities prepared to evaluate an opposition request for a referendum on the rule of President Hugo Chávez. The police said the demonstrators, some shouting slogans in support of Mr. Chávez, fired guns at officers and threw firecrackers.
"It seems as though some people are trying to create disorder in the capital, for some dark purposes," the Metropolitan Police deputy director, Orlando Gutierrez, said.
The disturbances spread to the area outside the National Electoral Council, where national guard troops fired tear gas at the protesters.
Mr. Chávez's opponents said they had collected 3.6 million signatures over the weekend, enough to set up a referendum in March or April. Mr. Chávez's supporters said only 1.9 million signatures were collected, short of the 2.4 million required.
----
Activists protest Hanford dump through initiative
by Rachel Fomon
December 04, 2003
http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/12/04/3fd0eb2b2c788
The U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship 70,000 truckloads of radioactive waste to unlined soil landfills at the Hanford Site, without cleaning the 54-million gallons of dangerous, high-level radioactive waste that already is there, said Eliza Johnson, field director of Initiative-297.
Johnson and Katie McClendon, of Heart of America Northwest, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, spoke at Western Dec. 2 about Initiative-297 and the effects more radioactive waste would have on the environment and community.
"I think that, in general, people don't want nuclear waste being dumped in their state," McClendon said.
The Hanford Site, located along the Columbia River in southeastern Washington state, once was used as a plutonium production complex that assisted in the nation's defense for more than 40 years, according to the Hanford Web site.
The Department of Energy is involved in the world's largest environmental cleanup at Hanford. The site has more than 50 million gallons of liquid waste in 177 storage tanks, 12 tons of plutonium, 25 million cubic feet of buried waste and 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater, according to the Hanford Web site.
"If we don't clean up the Columbia River, we are at danger of losing it, and now they want to bring in more," Johnson said.
Initiative-297 would require the Department of Energy to clean contaminated sites such as Hanford before it adds more waste. If voters approve the initiative, it would forbid Hanford from being the nation's radioactive-waste dump in the future.
It also would force the government to stop dumping waste into unlined ditches, require it to clean burial grounds and stop contaminated groundwater from spreading to the Columbia River.
Moreover, the initiative would require the Department of Energy to remove the waste from tanks at Hanford that leak into the ground, according to the Protect Washington Web site.
Heart of America Northwest and its volunteers have collected 180,000 signatures in four-and-a-half months, but they still need 10,000 signatures on petitions by Dec. 31 to place the initiative on the November 2004 ballot, McClendon said.
"I think, obviously, the environment will be threatened, and we can expedite the Columbia River as a water source and be faced with doubling the waste already at the site," McClendon said.
One of the main concerns is the contamination of the Columbia River, Johnson said.
Employees at Hanford are doing their part in cleaning up the site, Hanford spokeswoman Andrea Powell said.
"Everyone is focused on the cleanup right now," Powell said. "It's no secret that there are some contaminants in the Columbia River."
The Department of Health routinely tests the river to make sure it is safe. The agency considers the river to be Class A, which means it is suitable for all water activities, she said.
"This is an issue at Western because it is something that affects everyone in Washington state," Environmental Center Co-coordinator Sarah Young said. "It's important for all of us to be educated about it and do something about it."
----
Mexican Parents of GIs in Iraq: 'Bring Our Children Home'
by Diego Cevallos
December 4, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/cevallos1.html
"Our children must come home, and not keep dying in this absurd military occupation," says Mexican Fernando Suárez, whose son, a U.S. citizen, was killed in Iraq in the first days of the war.
"I'm in Iraq to express support for the people and to tell the soldiers from the United States, and especially the Latinos, to return home, to stop this military madness," Suárez said Wednesday in a telephone interview with IPS.
The 48-year-old Mexican, who emigrated to the United States in the mid-1990s without proper migration documents, lost his only son, Jesús, in March. The soldier, 20, stepped on a landmine just days after arriving in Iraq as a member of the invading forces.
As a result of his son's death, Suárez left his business and became an activist, joining organizations that are demanding the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq. He is currently visiting Baghdad as part of that campaign.
"Hundreds of soldiers from the United States have died since the war began in March - many of the victims are of Latin American descent - and all because of decisions of that Mr. (George W.) Bush, the one they call president," he said.
Like many of the 120,000 soldiers of Latin American descent who are in the US army, Suárez's son enlisted, motivated by the offer of US citizenship and access to university scholarships and credits.
"The death of Jesús was the worst that could happen to my family, and the same has happened to others, who have also lost their sons. But this helped me understand that if civil society does not mobilize, the deaths of so many brave young people will continue," he said.
Suárez arrived in Baghdad on Monday and will stay until Sunday, part of a group of nine people, mostly US activists.
The team is visiting hospitals, childcare centers and humanitarian assistance sites. The tour is financed by the non-governmental organization Global Exchange, based in the western US city of San Francisco.
"Everything here is chaos, nobody seems to want war, but at the same time people are frenetically dedicated to their work and commercial activities," he said.
While he spoke with IPS by phone, Suárez was visiting a children's hospital in the Iraqi capital. He presented them with 3,000 letters written by US children offering solidarity and condemning war.
The Mexican activist, who after his son died said he regretted having emigrated to the United States, denounced the Bush government for pegging him as mad and ungrateful just because he is part of the antiwar campaign.
"I tell them here that the people of the United States don't want the occupation of Iraq, that this is entirely the responsibility of a lying government that is headed by an illegitimate president who has turned a handful of inexperienced soldiers into victims and assassins."
Suárez points to what he calls Bush's illegitimate presidency, referring to the reports of irregularities in his favor in the vote count of the southeastern US state of Florida, governed by his brother, Jeb Bush. It was the Florida votes that ultimately put Bush in the nation's highest office.
Approximately 30,000 of the 140,000 US soldiers currently in Iraq are of Latin American origin. Also from this region, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic have sent 1,144 members of their armed forces to take part in the occupation effort.
According to US government figures, more than 400 of its soldiers have died since the war began in March, including an estimated 150 Latinos, say activists.
The United States led the invasion, with British backing, with the goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power. That objective was achieved, but gave way to a situation of military occupation that will continue until, says Washington, the Arab nation is safe and establishes a clear path towards democracy.
The occupation has met with aggressive resistance by pro-Saddam groups, whose surprise attacks and suicide bombings have claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers, civilians and diplomats from various countries.
Wednesday, the base of the Honduran forces came under fire in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. In Tegucigalpa, President Ricardo Maduro expressed concern about the attack, but said he would not withdraw the Honduran soldiers.
Suárez, meanwhile, says that "young Latinos shouldn't enlist in the US army, which hooks them with promises and lies. Their place is in schools and universities."
"My son let himself be fooled. That's how he joined an army that killed him, that deprived him of the best of life. This must not happen to others. We must say it loud, we must shout it!"
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Peace activists march against SDF dispatch in Hiroshima
Thursday, December 4, 2003
(Kyodo News)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=280913
HIROSHIMA - Some 120 peace activists marched through Hiroshima on Wednesday to protest against the Japanese government's plan to send Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq for reconstruction assistance.
Members of peace-promoting groups such as the Hiroshima Council Against A & H Bombs (Hiroshima Gensuikyo) took to the streets, repeating their calls for a halt to the plan following the weekend killings of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq.
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Priest tells soldiers to disobey orders to go to Iraq
12/04/2003
By: Associated Press
http://kobtv.com/index.fm?viewer=storyviewer&id=6723&cat=HOME
(Springer-AP) -- A Catholic priest and peace activist says he ordered National Guard soldiers from Springer to disobey military orders to go to Iraq.
The Reverend John Dear says he encountered about 75 soldiers from the 515th Corps Support Battalion outside his home November 20th.
Members of the Springer-based 515th are to be deployed to Iraq later this month for 18 months active duty.
The priest said the soldiers were on a fitness run but had gathered outside his house chanting the word kill.
Dear says he told the soldiers to stop "in the name of God."
He says he told the soldiers to quit the military and disobey orders to kill anyone.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Rael said members of the 515th were exercising that morning and Dear came out to tell them to quit the military. But he says nobody was chanting the word "Kill."
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