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NUCLEAR
Panel Eyes Thyroid Risk for Communities Near Nuclear Plants
Nuclear crew was laid off in mid-task
Nuclear plant 'causes cancer', say protestors
Iran Government Gives Go - Ahead to Snap Nuke Checks
Iran OKs Signing of Nuclear Agreement
Blow to nuclear crisis talks as Bush rejects North Korea offer
Bush says North Korea's nuclear program must end
North Korea Urges Initial Nuclear Deal, Wants Aid
Seoul Analyzing Reports of N.Korea Nuclear Activity
Bush Rejects N. Korea's Offer of Nuclear Programs Freeze for Energy Aid
U.S. Plans Sea-Based Missile Defense Test
Terror in the Mirror
The Iraq War Makes the Case Against Mini-nukes
Field Lab Cleanup Criticized
Abraham: Los Alamos Missteps Unacceptable
MILITARY
Military Says 6 Children Died in U.S. Raid in Afghanistan
Mixed Signals of Afghan Stability
RAYTHEON MARKETS AAMs IN GULF
Japan trying to become military power: Xinhua
Japan Commits Itself to Sending Up to 600 Ground Troops to Iraq
Iraq Mission Endorsed By Japanese Cabinet Biggest Military Role Since WWII
The privatisation of war
Canada shut out of Iraq contracts
Lockheed Martin gets US $4.6b missile defence contract
High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq
Roll-out of controversial Iraq contracts delayed
White House Defends Iraq Bid Policy Despite Angry Response
Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids
Only Allies to Help With Rebuilding
Air Force Wants Broadened Boeing Inquiry
Lockheed Martin Wins Government Contract
Taiwan's Strategic Miscalculation
President Warns Taiwan On Independence Efforts
Taiwan Reaffirms Plan To Hold Referendum
Bush Warns Taiwan on Independence
New boy Poland flexes its muscles
Suicide Bombers Strike at 2 U.S. Bases, Wounding Dozens of G.I.'s
Bomber Wounds 58 Troops in Iraq
U.S.: Plane Probably Hit, Lands in Iraq
Manhunt in Iraq: Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads
Israeli and Egyptian Officials Discuss Renewing Peace Efforts
US tells Russia of plans for eastward military expansion
Annan Says Danger In Iraq Is Too Great For U.N. for Now
U.N. Asks Court's Opinion on Israeli Wall
Iraqi Governing Council Sets Up Its Own Court for War Crimes
Rights Court Run by Iraqis Is Approved By Council
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ex-Senator Kerrey Is Named to Federal 9/11 Commission
Kerrey Replacing Member of 9/11 Panel
Justices Hear New Arguments About Meaning of Miranda
Prosecutors Say It's Unclear Papers Chaplain Carried Were Classified
Army Chaplain's Hearing Delayed
OTHER
Report Cites 10 States' Mercury Pollution
U.N. Delays Debate on Cloning of Human Beings for One Year
U.S. Considers Importing Influenza Vaccine
ACTIVISTS
Iranian Activist Accepts Nobel Prize
Iranian Accepts Nobel Peace Prize, and Criticizes the West
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
December 10, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-10-09.asp#anchor4
Potassium iodide pills should be available to everyone age 40 or younger living near a nuclear power plant, according to a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council.
The recommendation rests on evidence that potassium iodide can prevent thyroid cancer caused by exposure to radioactive iodine - a compound that could be released during a severe accident at a nuclear power plant.
For potassium iodide to be most effective, it must be taken within a few hours before or after exposure to radioactive iodine, the report says.
Fetuses, infants, and children are more biologically sensitive than adults to radioactive iodine, the panelists noted, and so infants, children, and pregnant and lactating women are considered to have the most need for potassium iodide pills if exposure to radioactive iodine is likely.
The pills are not recommended for people over 40 because epidemiological studies have not demonstrated a risk of radiation induced thyroid cancer in this age group, the panel reported, while their risk of side effects from potassium iodide is higher.
Federal experts first recommended distribution of potassium iodide pills to citizens near nuclear power plants following the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. The nuclear industry resisted for fear the move would raise concerns about nuclear safety, but concerns in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks have renewed interest in the plan.
The report was praised by Congressman Ed Markey, who mandated the study through an amendment bioterrorism legislation enacted by Congress in 2002.
Markey's amendment authorizes federal funding to provide pills to protect populations living within 20 miles of the nation's 104 nuclear power plants.
"I think it is time for the 12 states that have nuclear power plants within their borders but still do not distribute potassium iodide to their citizens to change course immediately," Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat said.
According to the panel's report, these 12 states are Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
The panel found that 17 states with nuclear power plants within or near their borders currently have programs in place for predistribution of potassium iodide to the general population, while four have stockpiles.
The report calls on states and municipalities to decide how to stockpile, distribute, and administer potassium iodide tablets, but recommends that federal agencies keep a backup supply and be prepared to distribute it to affected areas in the event of a nuclear incident.
"Because conditions at nuclear power plants vary so much, it must be up to local planning agencies to determine the appropriate distribution strategy and areas in which to dispense potassium iodide," said committee chair David Tollerud, a professor at the University of Louisville.
The panel said the U.S. government also should provide financial support to help states implement plans for distributing potassium iodide. And because potassium iodide pills keep for a long time if stored properly, it recommends that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration should consider extending the allowable shelf life of tablets being amassed for an emergency.
-------- canada
Nuclear crew was laid off in mid-task
By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT,
Toronto Globe and Mail
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - Page A1
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031210/PICKER10/TPTechInvestor/
A crew of workers performing sensitive repairs earlier this year at the recently reopened Pickering A nuclear station were laid off while in the middle of the task, according to reports obtained by The Globe and Mail.
The workers downed their tools, began leaving the site and had to be asked back to tighten a plug they had loosened in the plant's radioactive-containment system.
The reports, known as station condition records, provide a glimpse of why Pickering A was years late in reopening and nearly $750-million over budget. The reports contain unvarnished internal assessments by junior staff outlining troubles involved in refurbishing Canada's oldest atomic plant.
The reports indicate that much of the work at Pickering A was so sloppy it had to be redone and that tradespeople weren't trained to reach the exacting performance standards required in the nuclear industry.
Thousands of these so-called SCR reports are written annually at Ontario's nuclear stations, and a review of about 40 done at Pickering A and obtained by The Globe indicates that employees who worked on the front lines of the refurbishment were frequently appalled by the poor quality of the work done by contract tradespeople.
They found instances of wires being installed with insulation scraped off and noted that toolboxes were given out without proper metric measuring tools, among other defects.
Last week, a blue-ribbon panel headed by former federal cabinet minister Jake Epp issued a highly critical report on cost overruns and the work delays at Pickering, but it didn't give details of the day-to-day glitches that made the station, which reopened in late September, more than two years late and nearly three times over its original budget.
Mr. Epp's report prompted the forced resignations of the three top executives at provincially owned Ontario Power Generation, which operates the Pickering station. The resignations did not go as far as the senior-management level.
The SCRs give clear indications of many shop-floor-level problems at Pickering, as well as in the top echelons of Ontario Power.
In the case of the layoff, which occurred late on Jan. 20, workers were just about to begin pushing a cable through a wall surrounding the station's No.4 reactor when they were told they'd been fired to save money.
The workers had been given permission at 10:41 p.m. to remove a gland nut, a type of plug, covering a hole in the plant's wall. The gland nut had to be removed to allow them to shove the cable into the reactor building.
Reactor buildings are at a negative pressure at all times. Removing a gland nut means that air immediately is sucked through any wall openings into the reactor area, a safety design that prevents the escape of radioactive particles around the reactor.
The cable had to be pushed through the hole quickly to maintain this negative pressure. The workers loosened the gland nut, but 14 minutes into the job, they were sacked.
"Construction personnel were notified at job site of layoff at 22:55," the report noted, adding that "personnel were going to leave job site."
The workers were hastily persuaded to retighten the plug before they left, and tradespeople from elsewhere at the station completed the job.
The line manager's report concluded that "Personnel being laid off should not be assigned to work that is associated with a special safety system."
Managers then recommended that the company revise layoff procedures so workers wouldn't be fired in the middle of shifts, reducing the risk of them leaving the site unsafe.
In another instance, also earlier this year, one manager found electrical wiring with large amounts of its insulation skinned off, a dangerous condition that could cause short circuits or fires. Luckily, there was enough slack wire that repair staff cut out the parts lacking insulation. The manager, in assessing the cause of the problem, attributed it to "extremely poor workmanship."
Ontario Power spokesman John Earl said the station condition records contain unusually frank assessments because the company wants employees to discuss any problems they find honestly and then figure out ways to prevent them from reoccurring.
"You try to encourage the staff to self-report anything that can create an improvement opportunity for the station," he said.
Mr. Earl said all the reports are available for federal nuclear safety inspectors to review, although only one of those obtained by The Globe was deemed by Pickering staff to be serious enough to warrant notifying the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the watchdog agency in Ottawa.
One of the biggest problems noted was that electricians working at the plant frequently didn't follow wiring instructions. Wires that were supposed to be firmly crimped or fastened to equipment often weren't. Staff found more than 25 feet of unneeded wires shoved haphazardly into an electrical box, a mess that could have hindered quick repairs in an emergency.
In one case, a cable that was supposed to be permanently installed to a pump fell off when workers were taking insulation off a nearby splice. In another, workers installed the wrong type of connectors, or coverings over the electrical system. The specifications called for connectors that would keep wires dry if the station is flooded with water during an accident, but different equipment was installed.
Station staff found so much poor wiring they began to be concerned that it could be a widespread failure at Pickering A and not the result of a few incompetent crews. Staff recommended that electricians, who typically have experience wiring houses or commercial buildings, be given training in a "minimum set of workmanship expectations . . . prior to allowing them to perform work at OPG."
-------- europe
Nuclear plant 'causes cancer', say protestors
Expatica Spanish news
10 December 2003
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=82&story_id=3033
BURGOS - Campaigners claim a nuclear power plant has caused a series of cancer cases, it was reported Wednesday.
Anti-nuclear protestors have blamed the Santa Maria de Gerona Nuclear Power Plant, near Burgos, for causing a rise in the number of cases of cancer suffered by people living near the plant.
They have been calling for the plant's closure.
But Antonio Cornadó, communications director of Nuclenor, which owns the plant, claimed it was safe and reliable.
Cornadó said protestors had a right to make their claims, but added there was no legitimate reason for the plant's closure.
He added that regular controls carried out by the Council for Nuclear Safety, an organisation made up of independent technicians, had declared the plant safe.
The Council's reports confirmed that the plant functions better today than ten or 20 years ago. Furthermore, the UN controlled International Organisation for Atomic Energy declared the Garoña plant in excellent technical condition after a three-week inspection.
Cornadó pointed out that an epidemiological study published three years ago by the Carlos III Institute found there were no safety hazard.
He said this made the anti-nuclear protestors' attempts to create social alarm unacceptable.
-------- iran
Iran Government Gives Go - Ahead to Snap Nuke Checks
December 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's government has given the go-ahead for the country to sign an international protocol binding it to tough, snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, Iranian officials said Wednesday.
``The Foreign Ministry was given permission by the government to sign the Additional Protocol'' to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.
Abtahi and government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh declined to say exactly when Iran would sign the protocol.
Iran agreed to sign up to tougher nuclear inspections in October after concerted international pressure for it to dispel U.S.-led concerns it may be developing nuclear arms.
Implementation of the protocol could still face other government hurdles, but these are widely expected to be cleared and Iran has promised to put it into effect.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last month strongly condemned Iran for an 18-year cover-up of sensitive nuclear research and warned it that no further breaches of its non-proliferation obligations would be tolerated.
Iran, which has also agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in a confidence-building measure, insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and not geared to weapons production.
Ramazanzadeh said the protocol would be signed in Vienna by Iran's representative to the IAEA.
After the signature, ``the government will send it to parliament as a bill,'' he said.
If approved by lawmakers, the majority of whom are allies of President Mohammad Khatami, the bill would then need to be sent to the Guardian Council, a 12-member body dominated by conservative clerics who decide whether proposed legislation is in accordance with the constitution and Islamic Sharia law.
The Guardian Council has been a thorn in the side of Khatami and his allies in recent years, rejecting many reformist proposals. Several of its members spoke out strongly against signing up to tougher nuclear inspections earlier this year.
Nevertheless, dissenting voices among Iran's hard-liners toward the protocol have been virtually absent in recent weeks and Iran has promised to implement the protocol even before it is ratified by parliament.
The European Union said Monday it would wait for the IAEA's next report on Iran early next year before resuming talks with Tehran on a potentially lucrative trade pact.
--------
Iran OKs Signing of Nuclear Agreement
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The Iranian government has authorized the signing of the additional protocol of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a further step toward fulfilling its commitment to allowing unrestricted inspection of its nuclear facilities.
While Iran pledged to sign the protocol during a visit by three European foreign ministers on Oct. 21, its failure to fulfill that pledge has led to accusations of backtracking. The United States, which suspects Iran of conducting a secret program to build nuclear bombs, is known to be impatient for Iran to sign.
The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said last week he expected Iran to sign the additional protocol ``shortly.''
``The government has authorized the Foreign Ministry to go ahead with a signature of the additional protocol,'' government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh told reporters Wednesday. ``The permission was issued by the Cabinet last week.''
But on Wednesday, IAEA officials said they still had no date for a signing ceremony, and Ramezanzadeh did not say when Iran's representative to the IAEA would sign the protocol in Vienna, Austria.
``After the signing, it will return to the government for ratification. Then the government will submit it to the parliament as a bill for approval. At the final stage, it has to be ratified by the Guardian's Council into law,'' Ramezanzadeh said.
Under Iran's constitution, any international agreements have to be ratified by both parliament and the Guardian's Council, a body dominated by hard-liners.
Under existing agreements, IAEA inspectors have to obtain prior permission to enter certain suspected nuclear sites in Iran. The additional protocol will remove that restriction.
Iranian conservatives oppose the protocol, seeing it as a surrender of sovereignty. Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist, said Wednesday he hoped the protocol would be ratified by the liberal-dominated parliament before its term expires in June.
``I hope it will be finalized under the current parliament, otherwise it may get into trouble under the next parliament,'' Abtahi told reporters, alluding to fears that hard-liners may fare well in next year's parliamentary elections.
Under existing agreements, IAEA inspectors have to obtain prior permission to enter certain suspected nuclear sites in Iran. The additional protocol will remove that restriction.
Last month the IAEA, a U.N. agency, censured Iran for not declaring certain aspects of its nuclear activities and warned the country to abide by the rules in future to assure the world it is not making nuclear weapons.
Iran insists its atomic energy program is peaceful and geared only toward energy production.
-------- korea
Blow to nuclear crisis talks as Bush rejects North Korea offer
SEOUL (AFP)
Dec 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031210042128.uare234o.html
Hopes for a new round of nuclear crisis talks this year diminished Wednesday as US President George W. Bush rejected a North Korean offer to freeze its nuclear facilities in return for major concessions.
A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman told the official Korean Central News Agency late Tuesday that Pyongyang would impose the freeze only after it received rewards.
These would include its removal from a US list of nations accused of sponsoring terrorism and the resumption of suspended US oil deliveries.
Bush, following talks Tuesday with China's Premier Wen Jiabao at the White House, gave a blunt rebuff to the proposal.
"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program; the goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way," he said, adding "that is a clear message that we are sending to the North Koreans."
Officials in Seoul were closely examining the statement from Pyongyang which South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-Kwan said reflected long-standing North Korean demands.
"We believe North Korea's demands reflect in part those already made during three-way talks in April and the first six-way talks in August," he said.
Yoon said South Korea was still pushing for a new round of six-way talks this year, bringing together the two Koreas, China, Japan, the United States and Russia.
China hosted the first round of talks in Beijing in August that failed to break the impasse triggered in October last year when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to running an enriched uranium program in violation of a 1994 nuclear freeze accord.
After the United States suspended fuel oil deliveries in retaliation, North Korea kicked out international monitors from its nuclear complex at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang, withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and said it had nuclear weapons and was reprocessing spent fuel to build more.
Analysts in Seoul said the freeze offer referred only to the plutonium-producing plant at Yongbyon, mothballed under the now-defunct 1994 Agreed Framework, and ignored the uranium program that triggered the current crisis.
"North Korea is talking about Yongbyon only," said Kim Sung-Han of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security here. "They have never admitted to the uranium program."
The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said Pyongyang was deeply disappointed by the US attitude after Washington rejected a North Korean proposal last week for "simultaneous" measures to be agreed on at a new round of talks.
Judging that proposal too favourable to the Stalinist state, Japan, South Korea and the United States last week drafted their own counter-proposal for the talks that was handed to Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday and was to be passed on to North Korea.
Yoon indicated that the latest North Korean demands were not in response to the new US-backed proposals.
"I don't think the proposal drafted by South Korea, the United States and Japan has yet been conveyed to North Korea," he said.
In recent weeks North Korea has been urging the United States to accept the principle of "simultaneous actions" as a framework for resolving the standoff.
Under its proposals, North Korea would offer to renounce nuclear weapons development, to allow inspections, and eventually, to scrap its nuclear facilities. In return, it has asked for a security guarantee from the United States, economic aid and diplomatic relations.
The US-backed counterproposal focuses on "coordinated steps," according to a senior South Korean official. Washington is maintaining a central demand that North Korea scrap its nuclear programs in a verifiable manner, as other "coordinated" steps, including a written security guarantee, are made.
----
Bush says North Korea's nuclear program must end
Wednesday December 10,
(AFP)
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/031209/afp/031209165033int.html
WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush rejected a North Korean offer to freeze its nuclear program, saying it must be irreversibly and verifiably dismantled.
North Korea earlier offered to freeze its nuclear facilities in return for simultaneous concessions from Washington, including its removal from a US list of nations sponsoring terrorism.
The North also called for the removal of a US "blockade" of North Korea and the resumption of energy aid including the supply of heavy fuel oil and electricity by the United States and neighbouring countries.
----
North Korea Urges Initial Nuclear Deal, Wants Aid
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
December 10, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23066/story.htm
SEOUL - The North Korean Foreign Ministry said Tuesday Pyongyang sought an initial agreement with the United States and its allies in which it would freeze its nuclear program in exchange for energy aid and other concessions.
A Korean-language statement issued by the North's state-run KCNA news agency spelled out what it called "initial steps" that could be agreed verbally to ease a crisis over the communist state's nuclear ambitions.
"Such steps would see us freeze our nuclear activities in exchange for our removal from the U.S. state terror sponsor list, the lifting of political, economic military sanctions and a blockade, and the provision of heavy fuel oil, electricity and other aid by our neighbors and the United States," it said.
The statement, published by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, carried no other details. It comes as South Korea, the United States and Japan along with China and Russia are trying to organize a second round of nuclear talks with North Korea.
A North Korean official said earlier Tuesday Pyongyang would return to six-party talks only if the U.S. and its allies agreed to simultaneous concessions, a demand they have already rejected.
The nuclear crisis that erupted in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had said it had a covert nuclear program. Washington halted shipments of heavy oil to North Korea in November 2002 in response to the North's program.
Washington placed North Korea on a list of states it accuses of sponsoring terrorism in 1988, a year after Pyongyang agents were implicated in the mid-air bombing of a South Korean passenger jet over the sea near Myanmar.
----
Seoul Analyzing Reports of N.Korea Nuclear Activity
December 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-nuclear.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is investigating but has yet to confirm reports of fresh activity this month at North Korea's main nuclear center at Yongbyon, Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told reporters on Thursday.
South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper quoted U.S. and South Korean officials as saying an American intelligence satellite detected fumes rising from a coal-fired boiler at the nuclear lab at Yongbyon. The fumes were traced on four days this month.
Yongbyon, about 90 km (60 miles) north of the capital Pyongyang, contains a nuclear reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant at the center of the year-long crisis over the secretive communist state's attempts to build nuclear weapons.
``We are trying to confirm the activities, but at this stage I have no definitive information to disclose,'' Jeong told reporters at his weekly news conference in Seoul.
JoongAng Ilbo said the fumes were detected on December 2, 3, 4 and 7, and that a truck was spotted traveling in and out of the premises of Yongbyon's five-megawatt nuclear reactor.
North Korea said in July it had completed reprocessing of 8,000 fuel rods to extract plutonium for bombmaking. The rods had been sealed and monitored by United Nations experts from 1994 until Pyongyang expelled the monitors in December 2002.
North Korea further raised tensions on the peninsula in October, when it said it would reprocess additional fuel rods to strengthen its nuclear deterrent.
The latest report comes as the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a second round of six-way talks on the nuclear dispute with North Korea to follow an inconclusive first round in August.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had said it had a covert nuclear program in addition to the project at Yongbyon.
--------
Bush Rejects N. Korea's Offer of Nuclear Programs Freeze for Energy Aid
By Soo-Jeong Lee
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50957-2003Dec9.html
SEOUL, Dec. 9 -- North Korea announced Tuesday that it would freeze its nuclear weapons programs in return for energy aid and being removed from the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism. President Bush rejected the offer.
The North's terms appeared to be a response to a plan offered a day earlier by the United States, Japan and South Korea for negotiating an end to the nuclear crisis.
While Washington and its allies have sought the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs, the new proposal from Pyongyang offered only to "freeze" them as a first step. The North added, however, that the long-term goal would be to "de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula."
"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program," Bush said. "The goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way."
"That," he said, "is the clear message we are sending to the North Koreans."
The president spoke at a brief news conference at the White House with Premier Wen Jiabao of China. The Chinese are working to revive stalled talks between North Korea and the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China after a five-month pause.
Details of the U.S.-backed proposal are unclear, but South Korean officials said it called for "coordinated steps." According to news reports, it seeks agreement on three principles: a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis; a complete, verifiable and irrevocable dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, and security assurances for North Korea.
A spokesman for North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called the proposal "greatly disappointing," because its aim is to "completely eliminate our nuclear deterrent force by giving just a piece of paper called 'written security assurances,'" which is "no more than a commitment."
Instead, North Korea proposed freezing its nuclear activities in exchange for measures including the removal of North Korea from the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism, lifting "the political, economic and military sanctions and blockade, and energy aid, including the supply of heavy fuel oil and electricity by the U.S. and neighboring countries," the spokesman was quoted as saying by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
Pyongyang had wanted Washington to issue the security assurances simultaneously with a renunciation of its nuclear weapons program. The United States wanted the North to move first. On Tuesday, North Korea seemed to back away from its previous demand that Washington and its allies accept its "package" deal at one time.
It demanded that at least the first-phase action be agreed upon. Participants in the six-way talks have been trying for weeks to jump-start a second round of negotiations. The first round ended without much progress, and participants had hoped for a new meeting in mid-December.
-------- missile defense
U.S. Plans Sea-Based Missile Defense Test
Wed December 10, 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3973032
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon on Wednesday said it planned to use a sea-based missile to shoot down a mock warhead over the Pacific Thursday for the first time since a botched drill last June.
The Missile Defense Agency said a "hit-to-kill" missile fired from the U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie would try to intercept a dummy warhead fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai in the Hawaiian islands.
It would use information relayed by the destroyer USS Russell, sometime after noon EST, the agency said.
Chris Taylor, a spokesman for the agency, said the test, the fifth in a series and costing roughly $40 million, was the next step in integrating the sea-based Aegis weapons system into a planned multi-layered missile defense shield.
The test was designed to evaluate selected long-range surveillance and track functions of the Aegis system.
Taylor said the destroyer Russell would be sailing closer to Kauai, using its own Aegis system to detect the target missile and feeding that data to the USS Lake Erie, which would be patrolling several hundred miles off the island.
The agency said it would be the third developmental test using more complex ballistic missile engagement scenarios in an effort to simulate a more realistic operational scenario.
In a similar test on June 18, a Raytheon Co.-built Standard Missile 3 fired from the Lake Erie missed its target, the first miss in four attempts to shoot down an incoming short-range missile using the Aegis system.
Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Maryland, is the prime contractor for the Aegis weapon system and vertical launch system installed in Aegis cruisers and destroyers.
-------- terrorism
Terror in the Mirror
by James Brooks
Wednesday 10 December 2003
MMN International Inc.
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/2861/
"If Israel were required to obey the law and abandoned its illegal occupations, the position of Palestinian terrorists would be instantly undercut. Funding for Palestinian terrorism, such as it is, would dry up. And it is very clear that Palestinian support for violent resistance would plummet in the advent of an Israeli withdrawal."
To most Americans, terror is emblematic of the Israeli-Arab conflict. But what is "terror" to us?
Following 9/11, we heard that Americans finally knew what terror meant to places like Israel. It was not acceptable to suggest that we finally knew what terror meant to places like Guatemala, or Iran, or Vietnam, or Chile, or Palestine, or dozens of other places where civilians have been terrorized by our military and intelligence, or by US-backed regimes using our training and equipment.
Terrorism is a reprehensible war crime because it targets civilians. Not because it is 'stateless', not because people sometimes kill themselves in the act, but because it targets civilians.
In the sixty years preceding 9/11, the United States had targeted and killed well over two million civilians, including more than 500,000 during World War II, (1,2,3) over a million innocent souls in Southeast Asia, (4) and over 500,000 in Iraq through war and sanctions. Our self-censorship of the real policies and events driving our government had become so pervasive that we could only imagine ourselves as world leaders in preventing civilian casualties. Now we are so advanced we no longer need count the dead. Our anti-personnel bombs didn't kill them, so it doesn't matter.
In such a state of mind, and still mired in our national racism, we were ready to imagine the 9/11 terrorists as an absolute "other", just as they were described. They were everything we were not, starting with their "utter contempt for innocent life".
Upon this foundation of denial, we confounded our idea of terrorism with prejudices of race and religion until it became an essentially Islamic/Arabic threat disconnected from political issues.
Our long-standing cultural, political, and financial support for Israel against the Arabs did much to prepare us for this grave misunderstanding. Our response to the events of 9/11, led by an administration deeply linked to Israel's right-wing, nudged us into agreement with the popular Israeli excuse: Terrorism is an evil act by other people of inferior blood and/or religion and/or minds driven by an irrational desire to completely destroy us.
If we let that 'idea' dominate our discussion of the Israeli-Arab conflict, we will be taking a giant step backward in our already-retrograde national understanding of the problem.
But if we insist instead on a rational understanding, and reject this government-media propaganda, we must be prepared seek the truth from Palestinian and international sources. This much-needed effort would inform Americans about how we sustain the Israeli-Arab conflict and how to stop it, and could offer insights into the terror that threatens us.
First we would learn that Americans do not see the Israel and Palestine seen by the rest of the world. Our national image of the region flows from what our politicians, intellectuals, editors, producers, generals, columnists, educators and legal experts think we should see. And that has overwhelmingly been the Israeli point of view, sanitized for US sensibilities and modified for US interests.
Palestinians (other than terrorists) have been so thoroughly excluded from American view that in some cases they haven't been able to submit their work, on the pretext that they are not citizens of a recognized state. The fact that their "statelessness" is a direct result of Israel's prohibition of Palestinian statehood, under threat of "terrible consequences" for disobedience, is the unmentioned, invisible icing on this bitter cake of censorship. Hollywood's "Academy" rejected Elia Suleiman's award-winning "Divine Intervention" for this reason earlier this year, (5) though now it has deigned to accept Palestine as an "exception". (6)
Fed into our relentless pursuit of political simplification ("the mainstream"), our intelligentsia's world-famous pro-Israel bias has created an America that sees the conflict in Palestine as a fight over a scrap of land between two roughly matched peoples with competing claims. One is imagined as a white democratic ally of the United States, the other as people of color practicing dictatorship, strange religion, and terrorism.
There is no inkling that Israel is the world's last 19th century colony, or that the history of the conflict is one long colonial conquest. Neither the schoolbooks nor the New York Times will divulge this home truth. Nor will they mention what generations of Zionist leaders have made clear to their followers: The Arab inhabitants of greater Palestine must be expelled to make way for the Jewish Homeland.
Having long ago established ethnic cleansing as a moral imperative for the achievement of their Holy goals, the Zionists imagine themselves leading the world in "purity of arms", frequently declaring that Israel's is "the most moral army in the world."
Perhaps our military brass share a friendly disagreement with their Israeli peers on this point, as they collaborate on the Pentagon's most advanced strategic "defense" projects. Consider Rumsfeld's enthusiasm for the "humanity" of bomb targeting. (7)
It has probably been stated as a general rule: When nations begin to make exceptional claims for the "morality" of their armed forces, they will be found upon examination to be engaged in the most abjectly immoral crimes.
Starting from a position of deep denial, the Zionists, like us, felt free to indulge in moral qualms about other subjects. For instance, how should the Arabs be removed? Liberal Zionists argued that the moral purity of the Jewish State would be endangered if Israel slipped into ruling over the Arabs. Zionists fostered by the Fascist politics of Europe, including the Herut and the Irgun terrorists, urged a different approach, and went on to lead the Likud. The liberals became Labor, and proceeded to leap at every chance to extend Israeli rule over the Arabs.
Despite bitter, sometimes violent, disagreement among themselves regarding the true moral path of Zionism, Israel's power factions have remained united in their pursuit of the overall goal. Labor or Likud, the practical effects of Israel's diplomatic and military policies have remained the same.
In "The Fateful Triangle", Noam Chomsky cites Aharon Bachar's November, 1982 article in Israel's largest daily about a report presented by senior Labor Party leaders to then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin (Likud). One section concerned the behavior of Israeli forces in the Palestinian town of Halhul, north of Hebron:
"...During the many hours that hundreds of people were kept in the mosque square, they were ordered to urinate and excrete on one another and also to sing Hatikva ["The Hope", the national anthem of Israel] and to call out "Long Live the State of Israel." Several people were beaten and ordered to crawl on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick the earth. At the same time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the inhabitants were loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like sheep to the Administration headquarters in Hebron.
"On Holocaust Day, the 27 of Nissan, the people who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps." (8)
Bachar wrote that this and similar reports submitted by Israeli soldiers elicited no action by the authorities. Reports of similar and much worse behaviors have appeared year after year, and continue to appear today, only to be routinely denied by Israeli officials and ignored by both US government and media. Yet television viewers around the world may see Israel's latest atrocities and injustices in their evening news.
We are blinded to the daily grind of Israeli violence and the extent of Israeli army control. We aren't told that seven in ten Palestinians make less than two dollars a day, that many villages now suffer alarming rates of malnutrition and disease. Fed denials compounding denial, many of us don't understand why Palestinians resist Israel with a guerilla war of opportunity, sacrifice, and revenge.
Why do they fight with rocks, slingshots, pipe bombs, rifles, and suicide bombs against a nuclear-tipped Israel deploying the latest missiles, depleted uranium munitions and anti-personnel flechettes spewing from tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16s, APCs, hummers, and M-16s, almost all made in the US and custom-fitted for Israel's line of 'rough work'? (9,10)
Why are there Palestinian terrorists? More than half a century of humiliating, covered-up, racist occupation and thievery. It's that simple.
If my native state of Vermont, home of the redoubtable Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, were subjected to generations of crushing military occupation and land theft, I have no doubt that some of us would turn to terrible deeds. When I imagine our sons and daughters knowing nothing but desperation and violence, I shudder. Their resistance might be worse than anything yet attempted by Palestinians.
Attacking Israeli soldiers is not terrorism, but lawful resistance to illegal occupation recognized by international law. When you are so boxed in and outgunned that these legal tactics offer no hope, when your daily civilian casualties continue to mount and no-one notices, when everything else has failed, what do you do? Do you emulate your oppressors, and resort to war crimes?
America's "debate" fixates on a tragic symptom while neglecting its fundamental cause, which is not perverted Islam, or wicked schools, much less some grand "clash of civilizations." The cause is the US-funded Israeli occupation, itself an ongoing act of war against civilians.
Conventional wisdom holds that the Palestinian Authority must now "eradicate terror" to advance the "peace process", a demand frightening in its disconnection from reality. It is insult added to injury, blame-shifting inviting chaos.
During the last three years, the Israelis have systematically destroyed PA police stations and security infrastructure. Never strong, today the PA is reduced to tatters. Why do we insist that now they must accomplish what the Israelis, the "anti-terror experts", find impossible? Most observers think such a move would trigger Palestinian civil war. Is that our policy objective, or is it all a cynical exercise in blaming the victim?
Would the terror cease if Israel withdrew to its pre-1967 borders? Perhaps three-quarters of it would, simply by stopping Israeli "operations". (11,12,13) In that event, Syria and other neighbors have pledged to recognize Israel in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242.
If Israel were required to obey the law and abandoned its illegal occupations, the position of Palestinian terrorists would be instantly undercut. Funding for Palestinian terrorism, such as it is, would dry up. And it is very clear that Palestinian support for violent resistance would plummet in the advent of an Israeli withdrawal.
The prescription is inevitable. To end the Palestinian terror, and begin to solve our own terror problem, cut it off at its source: Get Israel out of the Palestinian territories and enforce a just peace.
Notes:
1) Terror Bombing, by Doug Henwood, April 22, 1999, Communications for a Sustainable Future, http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/apr99/msg00948.html
2) Hiroshima; Breaking the Silence, Howard Zinn, http://polymer.bu.edu/~amaral/Personal/zinn.html
3) Tomgram: Mike Davis on bombshell art, TomDispatch.com, http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?pid=957
4) American Genocide of the Vietnamese People, 1945-1974, FreeSpeech.org, http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/vietnamgenocide/Vietnam.html
5) Oscar rejection for Palestinian film, BBC, January 16, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2665957.stm
6) Palestinian film joins Oscar race, BBC, October 21, 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3209974.stm
7) Rumsfeld says Iraq air campaign unprecedented, CTV News, March 21, 2003 http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1048277754718_15?s_name=
8) Aharon Bachar, Yediot Ahronot, Nov. 5, 2982, as quoted in "The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians" (updated edition), Noam Chomsky, South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999 http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/ZMag/articles/chomup.htm
9) IS THE ISRAELI MILITARY USING DEPLETED-URANIUM WEAPONS AGAINST THE PALESTINIANS?, International Action Cente, November 27, 2000, http://www.iacenter.org/israel_du.htm
10) Israel: Stop Using Flechettes in Gaza, Human Rights Watch, April 29 2003 http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/israel042903.htm
11) Israel Defence Forces, Casualties updated, http://www.idf.il/daily_statistics/english/1.doc
12) Statistics for the Palestinian Intifada, Palestine Monitor/Health Development Information and Policy Institute, http://www.hdip.org/Fact%20sheets/Intifada_factsheet.htm
13) Palestine Red Crescent Society, Information for period from September'2000 to December'2003, http://www.palestinercs.org/Database/Date/
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
The Iraq War Makes the Case Against Mini-nukes
by Charles V. Peña
December 10, 2003
Cato
http://www.cato.org/dailys/12-10-03.html
Charles V. Peña is director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.
Congress has given the Bush administration the green light to conduct research -- not engineering or development -- for low-yield, earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, a.k.a. mini-nukes, to destroy targets that are too deeply buried and heavily reinforced for conventional bunker busters. Advocates of these mini-nukes say they are needed because adversaries are building underground facilities to conceal and protect their weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They also contend that because mini-nukes would produce less collateral damage, they would be seen as more credible weapons and, thus, be able to deter rogue states from using WMD. Mini-nukes might even dissuade those states from developing such weapons in the first place.
But a headlong rush in quest of mini-nukes should be tempered by the experience of the Iraq war. Prior to going to war, the administration alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including the possibility of acquiring a nuclear weapon. More ominously, the administration claimed that Saddam Hussein could give WMD to al Qaeda terrorists. But more than six months after the president declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003, WMD have yet to be found. David Kay, in charge of the U.S.-led, 1,400 person inspection team in Iraq, testified before Congress that the United States has "not yet found stocks of weapons," has only discovered "WMD-related program activities," and that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was only in "the very most rudimentary" state. Moreover, the CIA has found no evidence that Hussein tried to transfer WMD to terrorists, al Qaeda or otherwise. In other words, all the hoopla about Iraqi WMD amounted to next to nothing.
That hardly creates confidence that mini-nukes would only be used when circumstances warrant. In fact, the Iraq war suggests the opposite. If the administration had mini-nukes (which it wants), it might have used them in a preemptive fashion on the slim pretext of alleged WMD - that apparently don't exist - which supposedly would be given to al Qaeda terrorists, who weren't in league with the former regime in Baghdad.
The inability to find any WMD, to date, highlights another problem with the possible use of precision mini-nukes to destroy WMD facilities: very precise delivery of weapons to the wrong place. Before and during the Iraq war, administration officials implied that they were relatively certain where WMD were located, including aerial photographs shown by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the U.N. Security Council when he made the administration's case for military action in February. But suspected WMD locations are now turning up empty. So even if Iraq had WMD and the United States had used mini-nukes, it might have used nuclear weapons against the wrong targets, i.e., facilities that did not contain WMD.
The Iraq war also calls into the question the usability of mini-nukes. Presumably, the existing B61-11 nuclear bunker buster (most people don't know that the United States has such a weapon in its inventory) can be configured with yields low enough to be categorized as a mini-nuke. Outfitted with GPS guidance, it has the potential to be used as a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high value underground targets.
On at least two occasions U.S. intelligence indicated that Saddam Hussein was thought to be in underground bunkers that were subsequently attacked with conventional weapons. If Hussein was arguably the highest value target in Iraq during the war, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime, which was part of the overall U.S. war strategy. But the fact that the United States chose not to use the B61-11 during the Iraq war suggests that either (a) even a relatively low-yield nuclear weapon detonated underground would produce too much damage, particularly if located in a densely populated urban area such as Baghdad or (b) there is a real stigma or aversion to U.S. first use of nuclear weapons, even against adversaries who cannot retaliate in kind.
Thus, the Iraq war demonstrates some practical problems and real limitations associated with mini-nukes. And rather than spending money for weapons that would have next to zero utility in some future war, the United States would be much better off improving its intelligence and analysis to know whether a real threat exists.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Field Lab Cleanup Criticized
EPA says the standards at the Rocketdyne site near Simi Valley don't meet U.S. criteria.
By Gregory W. Griggs,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 10, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rocket10dec10,1,676039.story?coll=la-headlines-california
Ongoing cleanup operations at Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory are inconsistent with federal environmental regulations, and leave too much radioactivity behind to allow future development at the site or even unrestricted recreational uses, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials.
Cleanup standards at the former nuclear research facility near Simi Valley do not meet federal criteria because they are based strictly on radioactive levels, rather than the cancer risk they pose, according to a Dec. 5 letter from the agency's waste management division addressed to Henry DeGraca, an official with the Department of Energy's regional office in Oakland.
"EPA does not currently believe that cleanup at [Rocketdyne] will satisfy standards for unrestricted land use," Arlene Kabei, associate director of waste management, wrote in the 11-page letter to DeGraca.
The EPA was asked by neighbors of the lab site and elected officials to independently evaluate the DOE's radiological cleanup. But the agency has no jurisdictional power over the ongoing cleanup operations and announced last week it would scale back its oversight after more than a dozen years.
DOE officials have maintained that the lab site, where DOE-commissioned nuclear research was conducted for four decades beginning in the early 1950s, would pose no significant threat to human health or the environment once the multimillion-dollar cleanup is completed in 2007.
Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) fired off a letter Tuesday asking recently appointed EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt to explain why the two agencies can't reach a mutually acceptable cleanup standard to ensure public safety.
"I am amazed, as are my constituents, that two federal agencies have failed to agree on the best course of action and that commitments repeatedly made over the years are being abandoned," Gallegly wrote.
The energy agency announced in April that it would only clean the site to minimum EPA standards, effectively removing about 5,500 cubic meters of contaminated soil, or less than 2%, instead of the nearly 405,000 cubic meters that exist. Once cleared for unrestricted use, critics say, the 2,800-acre property could potentially be used for homes, schools or day-care facilities.
"In yet another public health rollback, EPA is caving in to pressure ... and pulling out of the clean-up process," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Tuesday in a prepared statement.
"Instead of protecting the public, the EPA and the Department of Energy are planning to leave behind hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of radioactive soil."
And Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) is expected to send a letter today to U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham urging his agency to clean up the field lab to the more stringent standards required of EPA Superfund sites, according to a spokesman in her Washington office.
In her memo to DeGraca, Kabei states that not enough soil samples have been collected from subsurface locations on the Rocketdyne site to make decisions on unrestricted land use. She advocates more extensive sampling to assess radiological contamination. "Subsurface contamination, if present, could be exposed when digging foundations, installing in-ground swimming pools, or other excavation activities, posing an additional potential risk to workers and residents," Kabei wrote.
She states that the DOE's cleanup plan would only make the property acceptable for some restricted recreational uses, such as camping or picnicking, but only with time limitations.
"We feel more study is needed, more data needs to be collected on the site before it's released for unrestricted use," Kabei said in an interview Tuesday. "We've provided the technical information we were asked for ... now it's really up to the community and elected officials to decide what it wants the Department of Energy to do next."
EPA officials have determined that the field lab's level of contamination, though of concern, is not severe enough to place it on the federal Superfund priority list. The decision was based on several factors, including that there are no homes or schools now on the site and that the groundwater beneath the radioactive area is not used for drinking.
Dan Hirsch, president of the anti-nuclear group Committee to Bridge the Gap, said the Department of Energy is breaking a promise it has made since 1995 to clean all its former nuclear testing sites to the EPA's more exacting standards.
"DOE has reversed course and has said now it will leave 99% of the contaminant in place and allow the site to be released for unrestricted residential use. That means one day children could be playing on top of plutonium," Hirsch said. "If they don't clean it up to the [optimal] EPA standard, the people who are living around the site will continue to risk being exposed every time the wind blows or the rain comes."
The public will have a chance to comment on the issue tonight during a session of the Santa Susana Field Lab work group, which will meet from 6:30 to 10 p.m. at the Grand Vista Hotel, 999 Enchanted Way, in Simi Valley. Representatives of the two federal agencies and the state Department of Toxic Substances Control will speak.
"As always, we want to work with the regulatory agencies and the Department of Energy to do as thorough and as timely a cleanup as possible under the current regulatory standards," said Dan Beck, a spokesman for Boeing, which now owns the property.
"We're not going to become involved in the debate between the EPA and the DOE," Beck added. "If they resolve their differences and come to some sort of agreement, then we'll continue to clean up to that standard. That's our commitment."
Rocketdyne conducted nuclear research from the 1950s to the 1980s. In 1956, the company began operating test reactors at the site and research continued despite a partial fuel meltdown in 1959. Nuclear testing was discontinued at the site in 1989.
-------- new mexico
Abraham: Los Alamos Missteps Unacceptable
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Labs.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3489994,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Wednesday that the Los Alamos National Laboratory's misplacing of classified information was unacceptable and reinforced the government's decision to consider new lab contractors.
Lab management ordered a halt to operations at its Nuclear Nonproliferation Division on Tuesday after an inventory failed to account for nine floppy disks and a large-capacity storage disk that are believed to contain classified information.
``This latest development is a concern. Clearly it suggests that everything is not the way we would want,'' Abraham said in an interview. ``We find unacceptable any kinds of security failures. One of the reasons we found it appropriate to go ahead with competition was the security issues. This recent development reinforces the conclusion we reached.''
Abraham earlier had spoken to a department advisory board that adopted recommendations for a framework for the competition for the $2 billion contract to run Los Alamos, as well as future competitions for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and others.
The University of California has run Los Alamos since the lab was created as the headquarters of the Manhattan Project -- the secret effort to create the first atomic bomb -- in 1943.
Competition for the Los Alamos contract was hastened by management failures in recent years, including the firing of two investigators who raised allegations of mismanagement, abuse of lab purchasing and financial malfeasance.
Earlier, computer hard drives containing secret nuclear-related were misplaced. Also, the lab and FBI were criticized for mishandling an investigation into possible Chinese espionage. The investigation targeted nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee, but crumbled. Lee was never charged with spying.
Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said the division's halt in operations will continue while employees receive additional training on procedures for securing and tracking disks storing classified data.
Roark said the disks are believed to have been destroyed. The lab disposes of such material through erasing information and crushing, shredding or burning the disks.
A university spokesman, Chris Harrington, spoke of ``aggressive action to ensure strong security policies and procedures are in place at the labs.''
The university's vice president for lab management, S. Robert Foley Jr., expressed concerns about the advisory board's position that Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, the country's two nuclear weapons labs, could be run by different contractors.
Foley wrote the board that the labs have ``unique responsibilities for national security'' that are facilitated by the cooperation that comes from having one contractor.
On the Net:
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
University of California: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Military Says 6 Children Died in U.S. Raid in Afghanistan
December 10, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/10CND-AFGHAN.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 - The United States military acknowledged today that six children were killed in another bombing raid against suspected Taliban members in eastern Afghanistan last week.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, said the bodies of the children and two adults were found under a collapsed wall when troops searched the raided compound. The assault took place last Friday but the military only acknowledged that they knew of the deaths today when asked about them at a news briefing.
The deaths occurred just hours before an airstrike on Saturday killed nine children and one adult in a village in southeastern Afghanistan.
Friday's attack was on a compound east of the town of Gardez that belonged to a suspected Taliban militant, Mullah Jilani. American troops attacked the compound at night from the air and the ground. They searched the compound the next day, seizing dozens of weapons, including artillery pieces, machine guns and rockets and found the bodies.
"After we went there we discovered the bodies of two adults and six children under a collapsed wall," Colonel Hilferty told reporters in Kabul.
"We don't know what caused the collapse of the wall because although we fired on the compound there were other explosions inside the compound," he said. He did not identify the two adults but said Mullah Jilani was not found.
He said troops had come under attack during the assault, prompting American forces to raid the compound. Nine suspected militants were captured and he released photos of the large cache of weapons that were recovered.
Asadullah Wafa, the governor of Paktia province where the raid happened, confirmed the deaths of the children in a telephone interview. He said they were part of the family of an associate of Mullah Jilani who were living in the same compound.
-------
Mixed Signals of Afghan Stability
Militiamen Surrender Weapons as Officials Warn of Terror Attacks
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50956-2003Dec9.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 -- Doing their best to march in step, 2,000 soldiers and former militia fighters paraded past a reviewing stand Tuesday after turning in their weapons and listening to speeches about beginning a new civilian life and contributing to their country's reconstruction.
But the ceremony at a national guard base, designed to highlight a critical, long-awaited step in the demilitarization of this struggling nation, came as U.S. military and civilian officials here warned that they expect terrorist attacks as a national constitutional assembly begins this week. The meeting, known as a loya jirga, is now scheduled to open Saturday.
"Afghans are determined to have the loya jirga, but I anticipate increased efforts . . . to disrupt it," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told journalists, adding that new attacks could also take place along the highway from Kabul to Kandahar, which is being rebuilt largely with U.S. funds. "We want to take the offensive against them, to take the war to them."
This week U.S.-led military forces launched a large operation in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, where revived Taliban forces and other anti-government insurgents have been active. Officials have given few details on the operation, other than to say it involves about 2,000 troops, some of whom were flown by helicopter into Khost province near the border.
A U.S. air assault Saturday aimed at killing a suspected Taliban terrorist in a village in Ghazni province mistakenly killed nine children, drawing sharp criticism from U.N. officials. Both Khalilzad and a U.S. military spokesman acknowledged Tuesday that the attack might have missed its intended target, whom U.S. officials initially reported killed.
Khalilzad said U.S. military investigators were acting with "a clear sense of urgency" to determine what went wrong in the raid. Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the U.S. military spokesman at Bagram air base, attributed the civilian deaths to the "fog and friction of war," but he also acknowledged that "such mistakes could make the Afghan people think ill" of the U.S.-led military coalition.
In the past week, suspected Islamic guerrillas have shot dead a Pakistani highway engineer, kidnapped two Indian road workers and threatened to kill them, and wounded 20 people in a bombing in Kandahar. Most attacks have occurred along the southern portion of the highway, but spokesmen for the Taliban have also warned they will target anyone attending the loya jirga.
The U.S. military spokesman, echoing Khalilzad's comments, said there was "specific intelligence" that further attacks might be coming and that they might target the loya jirga. The meeting site at Kabul University, which will house about 500 delegates for several weeks, is being heavily guarded by Afghan troops and international peacekeepers.
In addition to launching new military raids, Khalilzad said, U.S. officials intend to counter recent Taliban inroads in southeastern Afghanistan by beefing up support for other initiatives. This "multi-pronged approach," he said, will include opening several secure reconstruction bases, assisting Afghan police training and administration, building roads and increasing social service projects.
Despite mounting concerns over violence, Afghan military and civilian officials said this week that they had made significant strides in disarming another perennial source of instability: the militia forces that dominate numerous areas of Afghanistan and have resisted turning over their weapons to central authorities ever since the defeat of the Taliban in late 2001.
Tuesday's parade of 2,000 disarmed militiamen, some wearing sneakers and Muslim robes, was significant because most were members of the Northern Alliance, a powerful ethnic militia that has been loyal to Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim rather than President Hamid Karzai.
In a speech during the ceremony, Fahim praised the men for their sacrifices in combating Soviet occupation and Taliban terrorism but said it was time to turn a page of history and contribute as civilians to Afghanistan's economic and political rebuilding.
"You did your moral duty to your country and we are proud of your sacrifice and suffering," he said. "Now we are going to a new stage, to start a new life with the rule of law. As you were first in the holy war, you should be first in reconstruction."
More significant than the collecting of a few thousand rifles is the planned decommissioning of hundreds of tanks and missiles that have been kept by Northern Alliance commanders in the Panjshir Valley northeast of here. On Wednesday, a convoy of heavy weapons is scheduled to travel from Panjshir to Kabul, where the armaments will be turned over to U.N. and Afghan authorities.
Rahim Wardak, the new deputy defense minister who has overseen much of the demobilization process, said in an interview that officials had pressed for the heavy-weapons transfer to take place before the loya jirga "as a symbol of good intentions and an encouragement to other militia leaders," such as Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum in northern Afghanistan, to comply with demands from the authorities.
"All these elements have been testing the government and dragging their feet, and in the past there was a tendency to back off and be flexible," Wardak said. "But now they see we are serious and that they have no alternative than to cooperate or be left out."
The upbeat tone of Tuesday's military demobilization ceremony, however, contrasted sharply with the bitter mood of hundreds of former soldiers and officers who have gathered outside the Defense Ministry every day in the cold, hoping for a handout.
The men, some of them 20-year army veterans, are among tens of thousands fired in an effort to reduce Afghanistan's enormous armed forces. Unlike the militia fighters, who will receive $200 and job training in return for turning in their weapons under U.N. supervision, the cashiered soldiers can hope to receive six months' back pay if they are lucky, after which they are on their own. Last month, a group of protesting ex-soldiers tried to force their way into the Defense Ministry and guards opened fire, killing one man and wounding several others.
"I have a lot of energy and skill. I am studying English and Word Perfect. They have the right to make the army smaller, but why don't they keep people like me with skills to offer?" demanded Lt. Shah Agha, 35, a father of six who was dismissed after 19 years and has still not received his severance.
Many dismissed officers, interviewed on several recent days as they milled and shivered outside the ministry, said they had tried to apply for the new national army but had been turned down. Many soldiers, in turn, said their commanders had already collected their weapons, so they had no chance to enroll in the U.N. demobilization program.
Wardak acknowledged that the process of dismissals, payment and weapons collection had been mishandled in some cases, but he and other ministry officials said the process was being improved. Now some of the men waiting outside the ministry hear their names called, rush to a small table and walk away smiling, stuffing currency into their shawls.
-------- arms
RAYTHEON MARKETS AAMs IN GULF
Wed, 10 Dec 2003
Middle East Newsline [MENL]
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/december/12_11_2.html
DUBAI -- Raytheon has launched a drive to expand its air-to-air missile presence in the Gulf.
Executives said Raytheon has been promoting the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM, to Gulf Cooperation Council states. They said several GCC states will require the AMRAAM for their new fighter-jet purchases from the United States.
The United Arab Emirates has ordered 80 F-16 Block 60 aircraft in a $6.4 billion sale. Bahrain and Oman have also ordered the F-16 and Kuwait has been examining another purchase of the F/A-18 fighter-jet.
The AMRAAM has been allocated a prominent role in Raytheon's exhibition at Dubai-2003. The company exhibit includes surveillance and reconnaissance systems, missile systems, strike weapon systems, ground based air defense systems and special mission aircraft.
-------- asia
Japan trying to become military power: Xinhua
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
(Kyodo News)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=281638
BEIJING - The Japanese government's approval Tuesday of a basic plan to dispatch troops to Iraq underlined its intention to become a military power and to secure oil interests, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday.
"The Japanese government is advancing the Self-Defense Forces dispatch overseas step by step to show the international community Japan is a major nation that has not only economic power but also military capabilities," Xinhua said in a report from Tokyo.
----
Japan Commits Itself to Sending Up to 600 Ground Troops to Iraq
December 10, 2003
New York Times
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/asia/10JAPA.html
TOKYO, Dec. 9 - Japan decided on Tuesday to send ground troops to join the American-led forces in Iraq in what will be its most ambitious military operation since World War II.
After months of agonizing, punctuated by the weekend state funeral of two diplomats gunned down in northern Iraq, the cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi approved a plan to send up to 600 ground troops to southeastern Iraq in a mission to last from six months to one year.
The troops, though considered noncombat, will be the most heavily armed since Japan began tentatively dispatching its Self-Defense Forces overseas a decade ago. They will engage in tasks like establishing water and medical services and rebuilding schools and infrastructure.
A timetable for their dispatch is expected to be set next week, though the mission will most likely get under way early next year.
At a news conference, Mr. Koizumi sought to explain the decision to a population that, according to polls, is overwhelmingly opposed to it, saying that the situation in Iraq was "severe" but that the Self-Defense Forces must "fulfill this mission."
"The ideals and the will of Japan as a nation are being questioned," he said. "Japan's spirit is being tested. We are no longer in a situation where we can only pay money. We must perform our utmost."
Mr. Koizumi underscored the importance of Japan's alliance with the United States, which kept Japan under its umbrella during the cold war but has urged it to play a more active role internationally.
"The U.S. is Japan's only ally, and it is striving very hard to build a stable and democratic government in Iraq," he said. "Japan must also be a trustworthy ally to the U.S."
The deployment is regarded as a turning point for postwar Japan, whose pacifist reputation has been hard-won and whose soldiers have never set foot in a war zone. It comes as Japan gropes for security in a changing region, with the rise of China and the threat from North Korea, and as the United States does the same worldwide.
For the United States, the addition of a small Japanese military force amounts to a big diplomatic victory. The war in Iraq, opposed by many of America's traditional allies, now has the imprimatur of war-renouncing Japan.
Under the plan, Japan's ground, air and maritime units will all go to Iraq. Eight aircraft, including C-130 cargo planes, will transport troops and supplies, and six naval ships, including two destroyers, will transport equipment.
On the ground, soldiers will be equipped with weapons that Self-Defense Forces have never carried overseas, like antitank weapons. They will also use 200 armored and other vehicles. They are expected to be posted to Samawa, about 155 miles southeast of Baghdad, in a zone considered safer than the rest of the country.
"It is epoch-making in that it will be in combat against hostile parties," Toshiyuki Shikata, a former general and now a professor at Teikyo University, said of Japan's Self-Defense Forces in a telephone interview. "This has never happened. It was too cowardly until now."
The Self-Defense Forces, he added, have become "an ordinary military."
Mr. Koizumi twice delayed the deployment of troops - after the attack against the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and after the recent killing of Italian troops in southeastern Iraq. Facing elections this fall, he is also wary of a public opinion deeply opposed to sending troops.
Under its pacifist, United States-imposed Constitution, Japan is not permitted to possess a military, only forces for self-defense. But in the last decade, the Constitution has been interpreted to allow the Self-Defense Forces to take part in several small peacekeeping missions, from East Timor to Mozambique.
A law passed last summer allows Japan to take part in the reconstruction of Iraq. But the troops are supposed to be posted only to noncombat areas. Unlike other soldiers, they are permitted only to defend themselves, not firing unless fired upon.
Part of the reason the Koizumi administration has pushed ahead with the issue despite popular opposition has been to dispel the humiliation Japan suffered in 1991 when it failed to contribute any troops to the Persian Gulf war and was accused of checkbook diplomacy.
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Iraq Mission Endorsed By Japanese Cabinet Biggest Military Role Since WWII
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49113-2003Dec9.html
TOKYO, Dec. 9 -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet approved a contentious plan Tuesday to dispatch nearly 1,000 troops along with transport planes and armored vehicles to aid in the reconstruction of Iraq. The deployment will mark Japan's most significant military operation since World War II.
The Japanese forces are scheduled to begin arriving sometime next month and will be responsible largely for distributing water and ferrying supplies in southeastern Iraq. They will be forbidden from engaging in offensive operations.
"We are not going to war," Koizumi said in an address to the nation on Tuesday. "But we have been put to the test to show with action, not just with words, our commitment both to the Japan-U.S. alliance and international cooperation."
Preparing the Japanese people for the possibility that Japan may lose its first soldier in action since World War II, Koizumi said, "Japan's ideals and the nation's will is being questioned. The Japanese people's hearts are being tested. I don't agree with the attitude that because it is dangerous, we give money, not personnel."
With few exceptions, Japan, with the world's second-largest economy, has shunned involvement in international conflicts in favor of cultivating its post-World War II image as a benign global benefactor. Its U.S.-drafted constitution prohibits Japan from possessing a military and entering foreign conflicts.
But facing U.S. pressure to contribute more than cash in Iraq -- and a growing consensus in some political circles here that Japan should take a more active role in world affairs -- Koizumi's cabinet approved the plan despite opinion polls showing the vast majority of Japanese oppose the deployment. Most Japanese say Iraq is still far too dangerous to send their troops.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Japan gave about $13 billion but offered no troops. After sharp criticism, Japan began to change its policy, dispatching limited numbers of peacekeepers under the U.N. flag to Cambodia, East Timor and other conflict zones.
The decision allows for a one-year Japanese troop deployment beginning Dec. 15, though their arrival date will depend on a deployment order to be finalized over the next few weeks. The mission is being viewed as a test case for Japan's future role in global conflicts as well as for its own security, now provided through its alliance with the United States.
There are mounting calls from within Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party to change the constitution. Especially with the looming nuclear threat posed by nearby North Korea and China's continued emergence as dominant force in Asia, domestic support for a "normal Japan" not wholly dependent on the U.S. for security is surfacing as never before. Japan is actively pursuing the purchase of a new, advanced missile system from the United States as well as the acquisition of refueling planes capable of extending the reach of Japanese fighter jets to North Korea and back.
Even the hint of resurgent nationalism here has made Japan's neighbors in Asia uneasy . China, particularly, still harbors bad memories of the Japanese invasion in the early 20th century. But perhaps no one is more uneasy with images of the Japanese again toting guns in foreign lands than the Japanese people themselves.
Pacifism still runs deep in Japanese society, to the extent that TV broadcasters here have been quick to point out that the armored vehicles to be used by Japan's Self-Defense Forces in Iraq will be on wheels rather than on more aggressive-looking tank-like treads.
Under their rules of engagement, the Self-Defense Forces, to be deployed near the city of Samawah, about 150 miles south of Baghdad, will not be able to fire unless directly fired upon. But Koizumi's political opponents have nevertheless called the dispatch illegal, citing the constitution, which prohibits sending troops to combat areas. Leading opposition politicians and other opponents vowed Tuesday to push for measures in parliament to block the dispatch.
Japan, which received an outpouring of letters from schoolchildren at its embassy in Kabul after donating millions of dollars to the rebuilding effort in Afghanistan, is also grappling with the reality that its mission in Iraq may now make it a target for terrorists. A purported al Qaeda warning last month threatened to bring "fury to central Tokyo" if Japan sent troops to Iraq. In response, Japanese authorities were set to enforce tighter security measures at airports and seaports starting Wednesday.
"The most tragic thing is that the world's view of Japan will change as a result of the Self-Defense Forces going to Iraq," said Akihiro Takahashi, 72, former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and a survivor of the U.S. nuclear strikes on Japan during World war II. "We spent many years dispelling the image as invader. It is unbearable for me to think that Japanese soldiers are once again going overseas."
-------- business
The privatisation of war
· $30bn goes to private military
· Fears over 'hired guns' policy
· British firms get big slice of contracts
· Deals in Baghdad, Kabul and Balkans
Ian Traynor
Wednesday December 10, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1103566,00.html
Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established.
While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground.
The investigation has also discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In 1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and women; now there are 10.
The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it.
While reliable figures are difficult to come by and governmental accounting and monitoring of the contracts are notoriously shoddy, the US army estimates that of the $87bn (£50.2bn) earmarked this year for the broader Iraqi campaign, including central Asia and Afghanistan, one third of that, nearly $30bn, will be spent on contracts to private companies.
The myriad military and security companies thriving on this largesse are at the sharp end of a revolution in military affairs that is taking us into unknown territory - the partial privatisation of war.
"This is a trend that is growing and Iraq is the high point of the trend," said Peter Singer, a security analyst at Washington's Brookings Institution. "This is a sea change in the way we prosecute warfare. There are historical parallels, but we haven't seen them for 250 years."
When America launched its invasion in March, the battleships in the Gulf were manned by US navy personnel. But alongside them sat civilians from four companies operating some of the world's most sophisticated weapons systems.
When the unmanned Predator drones, the Global Hawks, and the B-2 stealth bombers went into action, their weapons systems, too, were operated and maintained by non-military personnel working for private companies.
The private sector is even more deeply involved in the war's aftermath. A US company has the lucrative contracts to train the new Iraqi army, another to recruit and train an Iraqi police force.
But this is a field in which British companies dominate, with nearly half of the dozen or so private firms in Iraq coming from the UK.
The big British player in Iraq is Global Risk International, based in Hampton, Middlesex. It is supplying hired Gurkhas, Fijian paramilitaries and, it is believed, ex-SAS veterans, to guard the Baghdad headquarters of Paul Bremer, the US overlord, according to analysts.
It is a trend that has been growing worldwide since the end of the cold war, a booming business which entails replacing soldiers wherever possible with highly paid civilians and hired guns not subject to standard military disciplinary procedures.
The biggest US military base built since Vietnam, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, was constructed and continues to be serviced by private contractors. At Tuzla in northern Bosnia, headquarters for US peacekeepers, everything that can be farmed out to private businesses has been. The bill so far runs to more than $5bn. The contracts include those to the US company ITT, which supplies the armed guards, overwhelmingly US private citizens, at US installations.
In Israel, a US company supplies the security for American diplomats, a very risky business. In Colombia, a US company flies the planes destroying the coca plantations and the helicopter gunships protecting them, in what some would characterise as a small undeclared war.
In Kabul, a US company provides the bodyguards to try to save President Hamid Karzai from assassination, raising questions over whether they are combatants in a deepening conflict with emboldened Taliban insurgents.
And in the small town of Hadzici west of Sarajevo, a military compound houses the latest computer technology, the war games simulations challenging the Bosnian army's brightest young officers.
Crucial to transforming what was an improvised militia desperately fighting for survival into a modern army fit eventually to join Nato, the army computer centre was established by US officers who structured, trained, and armed the Bosnian military. The Americans accomplished a similar mission in Croatia and are carrying out the same job in Macedonia.
The input from the US military has been so important that the US experts can credibly claim to have tipped the military balance in a region ravaged by four wars in a decade. But the American officers, including several four-star generals, are retired, not serving. They work, at least directly, not for the US government, but for a private company, Military Professional Resources Inc.
"In the Balkans MPRI are playing an incredibly critical role. The balance of power in the region was altered by a private company. That's one measure of the sea change," said Mr Singer, the author of a recent book on the subject, Corporate Warriors.
The surge in the use of private companies should not be confused with the traditional use of mercenaries in armed conflicts. The use of mercenaries is outlawed by the Geneva conventions, but no one is accusing the Pentagon, while awarding more than 3,000 contracts to private companies over the past decade, of violating the laws of war.
The Pentagon will "pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatise", the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, pledged last year and military analysts expect him to try to cut a further 200,000 jobs in the armed forces.
It is this kind of "downsizing" that has fed the growth of the military private sector.
Since the end of the cold war it is reckoned that six million servicemen have been thrown on to the employment market with little to peddle but their fighting and military skills. The US military is 60% the size of a decade ago, the Soviet collapse wrecked the colossal Red Army, the East German military melted away, the end of apartheid destroyed the white officer class in South Africa. The British armed forces, notes Mr Singer, are at their smallest since the Napoleonic wars.
The booming private sector has soaked up much of this manpower and expertise.
It also enables the Americans, in particular, to wage wars by proxy and without the kind of congressional and media oversight to which conventional deployments are subject.
From the level of the street or the trenches to the rarefied corridors of strategic analysis and policy-making, however, the problems surfacing are immense and complex.
One senior British officer complains that his driver was recently approached and offered a fortune to move to a "rather dodgy outfit". Ex-SAS veterans in Iraq can charge up to $1,000 a day.
"There's an explosion of these companies attracting our servicemen financially," said Rear Admiral Hugh Edleston, a Royal Navy officer who is just completing three years as chief military adviser to the international administration running Bosnia.
He said that outside agencies were sometimes better placed to provide training and resources. "But you should never mix serving military with security operations. You need to be absolutely clear on the division between the military and the paramilitary."
"If these things weren't privatised, uniformed men would have to do it and that draws down your strength," said another senior retired officer engaged in the private sector. But he warned: "There is a slight risk that things can get out of hand and these companies become small armies themselves."
And in Baghdad or Bogota, Kabul or Tuzla, there are armed company employees effectively licensed to kill. On the job, say guarding a peacekeepers' compound in Tuzla, the civilian employees are subject to the same rules of engagement as foreign troops.
But if an American GI draws and uses his weapon in an off-duty bar brawl, he will be subject to the US judicial military code. If an American guard employed by the US company ITT in Tuzla does the same, he answers to Bosnian law. By definition these companies are frequently operating in "failed states" where national law is notional. The risk is the employees can literally get away with murder.
Or lesser, but appalling crimes. Dyncorp, for example, a Pentagon favourite, has the contract worth tens of millions of dollars to train an Iraqi police force. It also won the contracts to train the Bosnian police and was implicated in a grim sex slavery scandal, with its employees accused of rape and the buying and selling of girls as young as 12. A number of employees were fired, but never prosecuted. The only court cases to result involved the two whistleblowers who exposed the episode and were sacked.
"Dyncorp should never have been awarded the Iraqi police contract," said Madeleine Rees, the chief UN human rights officer in Sarajevo.
Of the two court cases, one US police officer working for Dyncorp in Bosnia, Kathryn Bolkovac, won her suit for wrongful dismissal. The other involving a mechanic, Ben Johnston, was settled out of court. Mr Johnston's suit against Dyncorp charged that he "witnessed co-workers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased".
There are other formidable problems surfacing in what is uncharted territory - issues of loyalty, accountability, ideology, and national interest. By definition, a private military company is in Iraq or Bosnia not to pursue US, UN, or EU policy, but to make money.
The growing clout of the military services corporations raises questions about an insidious, longer-term impact on governments' planning, strategy and decision-taking.
Mr Singer argues that for the first time in the history of the modern nation state, governments are surrendering one of the essential and defining attributes of statehood, the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
But for those on the receiving end, there seems scant alternative.
"I had some problems with some of the American generals," said Enes Becirbasic, a Bosnian military official who managed the Bosnian side of the MPRI projects to build and arm a Bosnian army. "It's a conflict of interest. I represent our national interest, but they're businessmen. I would have preferred direct cooperation with state organisations like Nato or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. But we had no choice. We had to use MPRI."
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Canada shut out of Iraq contracts
France, Germany, Russia in the cold
Pentagon cites U.S. security interests
RICK WESTHEAD BUSINESS REPORTER
Dec. 10, 2003.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1071011413025&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851
The Pentagon yesterday banned Canadian companies from bidding for contracts worth $18.6 billion (U.S.) to help reconstruct Iraq because of Canada's opposition to the U.S.-led war in the Persian Gulf nation. Also prevented from bidding for the prime contracts are companies from France, Germany and Russia.
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz revealed the news in a memorandum that limits competition for the contracts to rebuild Iraq's electrical, transportation and oil sectors, among others, to the 63 countries that supported the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The memo justifies banning Canada and others by saying the move is "necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States to limit competition for the prime contracts of these procurements to companies from the United States, Iraq, coalition partners and force-contributing nations."
The directive doesn't specify why allowing Canadian companies to bid would hurt American security interests. Canadian business officials who have worked in the Middle East have suggested contracts would probably be offered as a reward to those that participated in the war and subsequent occupation.
The contracts cover about 26 major projects and will be awarded for the most part by the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Canada would still be eligible to work in Iraq as a subcontractor of one of the prime contractors, said Major Joe Yaswa, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense.
"We have very tight relations with Canada," Yaswa said. "Canada is actively participating in Afghanistan, which is all of one country over."
Like Germany and France, who both are allies of the United States in NATO, Canada decided not to provide troops for an invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade wasn't available for comment. Countries whose companies are allowed to compete for contracts include: Australia, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy and Japan. Even countries such as Uganda, Morocco and Afghanistan are on the list. While they didn't all send troops to Iraq, their leaders back U.S. policy there.
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Lockheed Martin gets US $4.6b missile defence contract
10 December 2003
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/61313/1/.html
WASHINGTON : Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract potentially worth US$4.6b to develop targets and counter-measures for the Pentagon's missile defence programme, the Defense Department announced.
The targets and countermeasures will be used to test the gamut of missile defense systems under development, the Pentagon said.
Some experts have criticized the Pentagon for moving to develop and field a missile defense system against long range missiles without testing it against realistic targets with more than one decoy.
Lockheed Martin said it will develop targets that represent the evolving missile threat faced by the United States.
"These target systems will enable the US to realistically, reliably and affordably test the full range of ballistic missile defense systems under development," it said in a statement.
The contract was for 210 million dollars for engineering, design and management of the program over the next four years.
But it has a potential value of 4.6 billion dollars over the next 10 years if all options are exercised, the Pentagon said.
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High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq
December 10, 2003
New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10GAS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.
Halliburton, which has the exclusive United States contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti firm, government officials said. But Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead and fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers.
The cost of the imported fuel first came to public attention in October when two senior Democrats in Congress criticized Halliburton, the huge Houston-based oil-field services company, for "inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers." At the time, it was estimated that Halliburton was charging the United States government and Iraq's oil-for-food program an average of about $1.60 a gallon for fuel available for 71 cents wholesale.
But a breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.
A spokeswoman for Halliburton, Wendy Hall, defended the company's pricing. "It is expensive to purchase, ship, and deliver fuel into a wartime situation, especially when you are limited by short-duration contracting," she said. She said the company's Kellogg Brown & Root unit, which administers the contract, must work in a "hazardous" and "hostile environment," and that its profit on the contract is small.
The price of fuel sold in Iraq, set by the government, is 5 cents to 15 cents a gallon. The price is a political issue, and has not been raised to avoid another hardship for Iraqis.
The Iraqi state oil company and the Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center import fuel from Kuwait for less than half of Halliburton's price, the records show.
Ms. Hall said Halliburton's subcontractor had had more than 20 trucks damaged or stolen, nine drivers injured and one driver killed when making fuel runs into Iraq.
She said the contract was also expensive because it was hard to find a company with the trucks necessary to move the fuel, and because Halliburton is only able to negotiate a 30-day contract for fuel. "It is not as simple as dropping by a service station for a fill-up," she said.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Bob Faletti, also defended the price of imported fuel.
"Everyone is talking about high costs, but no one is talking about the dangers, or the number of fuel trucks that have been blown up," Mr. Faletti said. "That's the reason it is so expensive." He said recent government audits had found no improprieties in the Halliburton contract.
Gasoline imports are one of the largest costs of Iraqi reconstruction efforts so far. Although Iraq sits on the third-largest oil reserves in the world, production has been hampered by pipeline sabotage, power failures and an antiquated infrastructure that was hurt by 11 years of United Nations sanctions.
Nearly $500 million has already been spent to bring gas, benzene and other fuels into Iraq, according to the corps. And as part of the $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan that President Bush signed last month, $18.6 billion will be spent on reconstruction projects, including $690 million for gasoline and other fuel imports in 2004.
From May to late October, Halliburton imported about 61 million gallons of fuel from Kuwait and about 179 million from Turkey, at a total cost of more than $383 million.
A company's profits on the transport and sale of gasoline are usually razor-thin, with companies losing contracts if they overbid by half a penny a gallon. Independent experts who reviewed Halliburton's percentage of its gas importation contract said the company's 26-cent charge per gallon of gas from Kuwait appeared to be extremely high.
"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said Phil Verleger, a California oil economist and the president of the consulting firm PK Verleger LLC. "That's a monopoly premium - that's the only term to describe it. Every logistical firm or oil subsidiary in the United States and Europe would salivate to have that sort of contract."
In March, Halliburton was awarded a no-competition contract to repair Iraq's oil industry, and it has already received more than $1.4 billion in work. That award has been the focus of Congressional scrutiny in part because Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton's former chief executive officer. As part of its contract, Halliburton began importing fuel in the spring when gasoline was in short supply in large Iraqi cities.
The government's accounting shows that Halliburton paid its Kuwait subcontractor $1.17 a gallon, when it was selling for 71 cents a gallon wholesale in the Middle East.
In addition, Halliburton is paying $1.21 a gallon to transport the fuel an estimated 400 miles from Kuwait to Iraq, the documents show. It is paying 22 cents a gallon to transport gas into Iraq from Turkey.
The 26 cents a gallon it keeps includes a 2-cent fee and 24 cents for "mark-up costs," the documents show. The mark-up portion is intended to cover the overhead for administering the contract.
Ms. Hall of Halliburton said it was "misleading" for the corps to call it a mark-up. "This simply means overhead costs, which includes the general and administrative costs like light bulbs, paper and employees," she said. "These costs are specifically allowable under the contract with the Corps of Engineers, are defined by detailed regulations, and are scrutinized and approved by U.S. government auditors."
In recent weeks, the costs of importing fuel from Kuwait have risen. Figures provided recently to Congressional investigators by the corps show that Halliburton was charging as much as $3.06 per gallon for fuel from Kuwait in late November.
If the corps concludes that Halliburton has successfully administered the gas contract, it could be paid an additional 5 percent of the total value of the gas it imported.
Halliburton's Kuwait subcontractor was hired in May. Halliburton and the Army Corps of Engineers refused to identify the company, citing security reasons. Aides to Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who has been a critic of the fuel contract, said government officials had identified it as the Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company. Several independent petroleum experts in the Middle East and the United States said they had not heard of Altanmia.
Copies of the Army Corps documents were given to Mr. Waxman's office, which provided them to The Times.
Iraqi's state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides to Mr. Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO - and by Halliburton's subcontractor - are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.
The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.
The money for Halliburton's gas contract has come principally from the United Nations oil-for-food program, though some of the costs have been borne by American taxpayers. In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning early next year.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Waxman responded to the latest information on to costs of the Halliburton contract. "It's inexcusable that Americans are being charged absurdly high prices to buy gasoline for Iraqis and outrageous that the White House is letting it happen," he said.
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Roll-out of controversial Iraq contracts delayed
Reuters,
12.10.03,
By Sue Pleming
http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/12/10/rtr1176453.html
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Wednesday delayed the issue of $18.6 billion in U.S. tenders to rebuild Iraq amid criticism over the exclusion from bidding of firms from France, Germany, Russia and other war opponents.
The prime contracts were set to be advertised last Friday, but were delayed while "high-level" policy decisions took place. A further delay was announced on Wednesday after earlier promises of release on Monday and Tuesday.
"The scheduled release of the solicitations in support of the Iraq reconstruction contracts has been temporarily delayed," said a notice on the Pentagon-run Iraq Program Management Office Web site (www.rebuilding-iraq.net).
Deidre Lee, director of defense procurement at the Pentagon, attributed the delay to questions being addressed by procurement experts and said she hoped the contracts would be advertised within the next few days.
"Our intent is to get the RFPs (request for proposals) out as soon as possible," Lee said.
The 26 contracts are funded by money appropriated from the U.S. Congress and cover electricity, communications, public buildings, transportation, public works, security and justice as well as the rebuilding of Iraq's army.
Lee said experts were examining many questions raised by prospective bidders, including insurance and security issues.
One of the most contentious issues was the decision by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to bar bidding from firms whose governments did not support the war effort, such as France, Germany, Russia and Canada. Berlin, Moscow and Ottawa strongly criticized the move on Wednesday.
MANY OPPORTUNITIES
Lee said there were many opportunities for sub-contractors in Iraq for countries not on the list of 63 eligible nations.
"Those are the prime opportunities but there are many, many many opportunities for sub contracts."
The Iraq Program Management Office has set an aggressive timetable for bidders, with the award date for work set for the first week in February, a deadline officials hoped to meet despite the delay in rolling out tenders.
In addition to the 26 contracts, two other contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil industry are set to be awarded within the next month after several months of delay.
These will replace a no-competition deal awarded in March to Halliburton (nyse: HAL - news - people) , the Texas-based oil services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, which has been accused of price gouging, a charge it denies.
A military source expected these two oil contracts, worth $2 billion, would be announced before Christmas.
All of the contracts are being closely watched by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, which has sent teams to Iraq. The Pentagon is also auditing the work of Halliburton and others.
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White House Defends Iraq Bid Policy Despite Angry Response
December 10, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Military.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House, defending a new policy barring companies from nations that opposed the Iraq war from bidding on $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts, said Wednesday that countries wanting a slice of that lucrative pie must participate militarily in the post-war effort.
Responding to the angry response from Germany, Canada and other U.S. allies, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the policy was ``appropriate and reasonable.''
``Prime contracts for reconstruction funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars should go to the Iraqi people and those countries who are working with the United States on the difficult task of helping to build a free, democratic and prosperous Iraq,'' McClellan said.
The Pentagon policy prevents companies from countries that opposed war from bidding on reconstruction contracts because their governments opposed the American-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein's regime.
The directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, dated Friday and posted on a Pentagon web site Tuesday, limits bidders to firms from the United States, Iraq, their coalition partners and other countries which have sent troops to Iraq. It says restricting contract bids ``is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.''
McClellan said that other nations that want to be eligible for a slice of the $18.6 billion, money that Congress approved last month after a special budget request by President Bush, can do so by participating militarily, McClellan said. They can also vie for contracts being financed by a separate international fund that the White House estimates will be worth $13 billion, he said.
``The United States and coalition countries, as well as others that are contributing forces here, and the Iraqi people themselves, are the ones that have been helping and sacrificing to build a free and prosperous nation for the Iraqi people, and I think it's totally appropriate for those U.S. taxpayer dollars to go to the entities I just mentioned,'' he said.
The White House was ``well aware of the decision, fully supportive of the decision,'' which circulated through several government agencies before the Pentagon announced it Tuesday, the spokesman said.
Several U.S. allies sharply criticized the decision. Germany called the decision ``unacceptable'' and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, ``We will be speaking about it with the American side.''
Canada's deputy prime minister, John Manley, said the decision would make it ``difficult for us to give further money for the reconstruction of Iraq.'' Canadian officials said the country has contributed $225 million to the rebuilding effort.
In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous said that France had ``taken note'' of the Pentagon's decision and was studying whether it follows international law.
Asked whether it was productive to alienate these countries, McClellan said: ``I don't think it is.''
Bush administration officials have suggested publicly and privately before the war started that countries which opposed the United States on Iraq would be cut out of at least some of the lucrative rebuilding contracts administered by Washington. The order from Wolfowitz covers contracts to manage the entire rebuilding effort, train and equip the Iraqi National Army and rebuild infrastructure including roads, sewers, power plants and oil fields.
Wolfowitz wrote that the restrictions would encourage other countries to join the coalition in Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Joe Yoswa, said the order does not prohibit companies from the excluded countries from getting subcontracts in Iraq.
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Pentagon Bars Three Nations From Iraq Bids
December 10, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10DIPL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - The Pentagon has barred French, German and Russian companies from competing for $18.6 billion in contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, saying it was acting to protect "the essential security interests of the United States."
The directive, issued Friday by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, represents the most substantive retaliation to date by the Bush administration against American allies who opposed its decision to go to war in Iraq.
The administration had warned before the war that countries that did not join in an American-led coalition would not have a voice in decisions about the rebuilding of Iraq. But it had not previously made clear that companies in those countries would be excluded from competing for a share in the money for Iraq's reconstruction that the United States approved last month.
Those funds will pay for a total of 26 lucrative contracts for rebuilding Iraq's electricity, oil and water sectors and equipping its army.
Under the guidelines, only companies from the United States, Iraq and 61 countries designated "coalition partners" will be allowed to bid on the contracts. France, Germany and Russia are not on the list.
The document does not spell out a rationale for its claim that excluding those three countries was necessary to protect American national security interests. The guidelines do not affect subcontractors, the document makes clear, so companies that win contracts would be able to hire French, German or Russian firms to work in Iraq.
The document does say that the actions of the American-led force in rebuilding Iraq "are indispensable for national security and national defense purposes," and that allowing only members of the allied force to bid for the contracts was intended both as a reward and an incentive for further cooperation in the future.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a statement criticizing the Pentagon move as a "totally gratuitous slap" that "does nothing to protect our security interests and everything to alienate countries we need with us in Iraq."
A Republican congressman who recently returned from Iraq said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that it was a mistake to exclude particular countries from the rebuilding effort.
"It strikes me that we should do whatever we can to draw in the French, the Germans, the Russians and others into the process," said the congressman, Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut. "I would expect that most of the contracts would go to countries who have done the heavy lifting, but I wouldn't want to see any arbitrary effort to shut anyone out."
In a report that he issued on Tuesday with Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, Mr. Shays said, "The administration should redouble efforts to internationalize the rebuilding of Iraq."
Nations whose companies are listed as eligible include Britain and Poland, whose troops joined American forces in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well Spain, Italy and other countries that have contributed troops to the American-led security effort. There are also nations whose support has been less evident, like Turkey, which allowed American aircraft to fly over its territory but which moved at the last minute to reject an American plan to use the country as a staging point to invade Iraq from the north.
At a time when the United States has moved to heal the diplomatic wounds inflicted in the period before the war, the memorandum by Mr. Wolfowitz is a blunt reminder of the bitterness still felt within the administration about the stance taken by France, Germany, and Russia, who led international opposition to the war in their roles as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
But American bases in Germany have been important staging areas for transport aircraft carrying out supply and humanitarian missions and France has allowed overflights by American military aircraft.
France and Germany were among the countries that declined to pledge contributions toward Iraq's reconstruction in Madrid in October, though the European Union, in which they are dominating members, pledged some $235 million. France, Germany and Russia have declined to contribute troops to the American-led occupation force.
Defense Department officials said that Mr. Wolfowitz had made his decision after discussions with representatives of other agencies, including the State Department. A State Department official said Tuesday night that "we are committed to putting the past behind us" in relations with countries that opposed the war.
But, the official added, "This is taxpayers' money, and so we have got to go with those who have pitched in already."
The directive by Mr. Wolfowitz, which was made public on a Coalition Provisional Authority Web site, rebuilding-iraq.net, was issued as a formal "determination and findings" document to provide a legal justification for the administration's decision to limit competition.
It is not clear how subsidiaries located in countries other than a company's main headquarters would be affected by the rules.
The number of troops provided by non-American countries has increased from 14,000 to 23,700 in recent months, while the number of American troops has declined by about 12,000, Mr. Wolfowitz wrote in the document.
"Every effort must be made to expand international cooperation in Iraq," he wrote, adding: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts."
Bush administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, warned last spring that France and other countries would have to face the unspecified "consequences" of their attempts in the United Nations and other forums to block the American invasion of Iraq.
But until now, the American response has been mostly symbolic, including a notable absence of White House invitations to those countries' leaders to join President Bush for cozy one-on-ones at his Texas ranch.
A spokeswoman for the German Embassy in Washington, Martina Nibbeling-Wiessnig, would say only that "German companies and entrepreneurs are already engaged in Iraq as subcontractors." The French and Russian embassies in Washington did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
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Only Allies to Help With Rebuilding
U.S. to Deny Contracts to Firms From Nonsupporting Nations
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51059-2003Dec9.html
The United States will not allow companies from countries that did not support the war in Iraq to bid on $18.6 billion in prime reconstruction contracts funded by U.S. taxpayers, effectively excluding firms from Russia, Germany, France and Canada from a large portion of the biggest nation-rebuilding effort since World War II.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said it was necessary "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States" to limit the competition. His Dec. 5 policy memo was posted yesterday on the Web site of the Project Management Office, a new Pentagon-run group overseeing the award of U.S.-funded reconstruction contracts.
U.S. officials hinted last month that they wanted to limit the competitors to U.S. allies in the war against Iraq, but said they needed to review existing trade agreements and procurement policies to see if that was possible. Some agencies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, already are prohibited from awarding contracts to non-U.S. firms.
Firms from the excluded countries will be allowed to compete for subcontracts on the U.S.-funded projects, though officials also are encouraging prime contractors to hire Iraqi firms as subcontractors and have said they will consider such involvement in selecting the winning bids. The policy would not apply to $13 billion in international pledges made at a donor conference in Madrid in October. Little of that money has been collected, however.
The memo lists 63 countries whose companies are eligible to compete for 26 prime reconstruction contracts that the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies plan to award by Feb. 3. That list includes Australia and Britain, major members of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, as well as others such as Azerbaijan, Palau, Rwanda and Colombia.
Wolfowitz said in his memo that coalition partners "share in the U.S. vision of a free and stable Iraq. The limitation of sources to prime contractors from these countries should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members."
The $18 billion is taxpayer money, "so the U.S. should have a say in how that is spent," a senior State Department official said last night. "We're spending it on those who have already contributed to Iraq. . . . They contributed blood and treasure to liberate Iraq."
But Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, asked about the decision during a candidates' debate last night, said, "I can't think of anything dumber or more insulting or more inviting to the disdain of countries and potential failure of our policy."
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the policy a "totally gratuitous slap" that "does nothing to protect our security interests and everything to alienate countries we need with us in Iraq."
Steven L. Schooner, co-director of the government procurement law program at the George Washington University law school, said the decision also sets a bad precedent. "It's an extraordinary step when you tell your trading partners that, because of their position on a difficult policy issue, you won't do business with their firms," he said. "From a public procurement standpoint, this is."
Russia, Germany and France led the opposition to the war in Iraq and did not pledge to contribute reconstruction funds at the Madrid conference.
A spokeswoman for the French Embassy in Washington declined to comment, saying she was "waiting on Paris for official reaction."
"The German companies are going to be disappointed, but this is politics," said Richard A. Healy Jr., president of the Washington-Baltimore chapter of the American-German Business Club, a networking organization.
The Pentagon planned to release last night the final, revised solicitations for the 26 new reconstruction contracts.
One of the contracts is to equip the Iraqi army. Six others, worth about $5.6 billion, will go to repair the electrical sector and five, worth $4.3 billion, are for public works and water projects. Two contracts for about $4.6 billion will be awarded to construct security and justice facilities for various organizations, including the Iraq National Defense Force. One contract worth $1.4 billion will be awarded for the building, housing and health sector, while two worth $500 million are for transportation and communication projects and two worth about $2 billion are for restoring the oil infrastructure.
Draft solicitations were issued several weeks ago to give companies time to start preparing bids. After the formal solicitations go out, bidders will have eight days to respond with general proposals. From there, three bidders will be selected to submit more detailed proposals and to compete for the contracts.
Staff writer Robin Wright and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
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Air Force Wants Broadened Boeing Inquiry
December 10, 2003
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/business/10boeing.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (Reuters) - Air Force Secretary James G. Roche has asked the Pentagon's inspector general to expand an investigation into an $18 billion deal for 100 Boeing 767 tankers to include other significant contracts, the Air Force said on Tuesday.
The inspector general is already investigating several aspects of the tanker deal, including whether a former Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, improperly shared a rival manufacturer's proprietary data with Boeing, and whether she recused herself before negotiating with Boeing about a job.
Last month, Boeing fired Ms. Druyun and the chief financial officer, Michael Sears, after concluding they discussed a job while Ms. Druyun was still overseeing the tanker deal, and then tried to cover up their actions. Boeing's chairman, Philip M. Condit, resigned last week.
In response, the Pentagon delayed any action on the deal until the inspector general determined if the recusal matter had an adverse effect, though the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, demanded a fuller investigation.
On Tuesday, the Air Force said that Mr. Roche wanted reviews of other big contracts that Boeing had won in recent years, including upgrades of Awacs aircraft for NATO, space programs and a new small-diameter smart bomb.
"While there is no indication of any impropriety associated with other existing contracts," a spokesman, Lt. Col. Will Nichols, said, "it is prudent to thoroughly review them."
The inspector general's office said the scope of its inquiry would be determined by the accusations received, the circumstances and the "fact pattern of the evidence developed," a spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch, said.
Boeing is still suspended from government satellite-launching programs after the Air Force concluded in July that employees stole 25,000 documents from Lockheed Martin during a $2 billion rocket-launching competition in 1998.
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Lockheed Martin Wins Government Contract
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Lockheed-Defense-Contract.html
DENVER (AP) -- Lockheed Martin Corp. has won a government contract worth up to $4.6 billion to make target missiles as part of a Pentagon plan to test the nation's missile defense systems.
The contract announced Tuesday initially is worth $210 million over a four-year period. But it can be extended over a decade and carries a $4.6 billion price tag if certain conditions are met.
``Protecting deployed forces, civilian populations and our territory from ballistic missile attack is one of our nation's highest priorities,'' G. Thomas Marsh, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said in a statement.
The Bush administration plans to deploy a missile defense system beginning with 10 ground-based interceptor missiles next year and 10 more the following year.
The Pentagon contract calls on Lockheed Martin to design and build missiles that will try to mimic an enemy missile heading for the United States. The Pentagon will try to knock out the dummy missiles with an interceptor.
Lockheed has previously developed 16 test missiles for use by the Pentagon. Production of the new missiles is expected to begin next year.
Aside from Lockheed's facilities in Colorado, the work also will be done in Huntsville, Ala., Albuquerque, N.M., and the Washington, D.C., area. The company is based in Bethesda, Md.
Separately, Lockheed also announced Tuesday it had won a $100 million contract to launch a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO operates the nation's spy satellites.
The Atlas V rocket that will carry the NRO satellite into space will be built at Lockheed's Waterton Canyon facility.
In trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange, Lockheed shares closed down 2 cents at $48.40.
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NEWS ANALYSIS
Taiwan's Strategic Miscalculation
December 10, 2003
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/asia/10TAIW.html
BEIJING, Dec. 9 - The Bush administration's stern warning that Taiwan should avoid provoking China, however couched in diplomatic nuance, effectively blames the island's president, Chen Shui-bian, for threatening to upset the delicate peace in the region, analysts said Tuesday.
Mr. Chen had solicited American support for a referendum in March on China's missile build-up and the danger the mainland's military posed to Taiwan. But the administration made clear on Monday that it considered the referendum not only an election gambit but a possible move toward independence that could undermine Taiwan's security.
The admonition falls short of China's demands that the United States reduce military support for Taiwan and take other steps to curtail the island's independence movement. But it nonetheless amounts to a significant concession to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, who is visiting the United States this week.
"This is a clear sign that the United States is rethinking its attitude toward the Taiwan problem," said Xu Bodong, a Taiwan expert at Union University in Beijing. "It will be seen here as a big victory for Wen Jiabao."
Chinese officials responded to the American shift with a low-key statement that reiterated longstanding policy.
"We think the United States should abide by the relevant commitments it has made and have a clear attitude on the Taiwan issue," a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Liu Jianchao, said Tuesday.
But the administration's statement moves the United States closer to China's position in a diplomatic dance in which every half-twist is viewed as a potential pirouette.
Through most of its three years in office, the Bush administration has worked to strengthen ties with Taiwan, with which the United States has no formal diplomatic relations. Some members of Congress and many conservatives view Taiwan as a struggling democracy under dire threat from Beijing that deserves more explicit American support.
The administration has offered Taiwan an array of advanced weapons systems, though the government there has been slow to allocate the billions of dollars necessary to purchase them.
Just last month, Mr. Chen passed through the United States and was allowed to deliver a lengthy address in New York. He later shook hands with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a brief encounter in Panama, an event Mr. Chen's aides claimed was unprecedented, since the United States switched diplomatic ties from Taiwan to mainland China in 1979.
But Bush administration officials are now seeking to rein in Mr. Chen. The turning point appears to have been Mr. Chen's announced intention to hold a referendum related to Taiwan-China issues on March 20, the same day he hopes to win a second term as president.
The referendum, which Mr. Chen said last week would ask voters to demand that China remove ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, is widely viewed as an effort to mobilize his core supporters in the Democratic Progressive Party, many of whom favor outright independence.
In calling on Mr. Chen not to pursue that course, a senior administration official emphasized that the United States not only does not support Taiwan independence, reiterating long-established policy, but also does not support any move by Taiwan in the direction of independence.
That focus on process will surely delight Beijing, which fears that a Taiwanese move toward independence, and an ensuing war with China, could become inevitable unless the United States helps stop the drift toward separatism there.
"The U.S. is saying very clearly that it cares as much about the process as the end result," said Philip Yang, a expert on cross-Strait relations at National Taiwan University in Taipei. "The U.S. says that both sides have to be careful about this, but right now it is Taiwan that is creeping out of bounds."
Some Beijing-based analysts said that the United States statement was precisely the rebuke for Mr. Chen that China wanted, and predicted that it would cause him trouble in the next election. Beijing clearly favors Mr. Chen's opponent, the Nationalist Party leader, Lien Chan, who takes a more moderate approach to managing affairs with the mainland.
"This really leaves Chen in a quandary," said Mr. Xu. "If he pursues the referendum, he gives Taiwanese people the signal that he is risking the support of the United States. But if he retreats, it is truly embarrassing for him because he has pushed so hard."
Even so, other Chinese analysts argue that the statement is just the first step in a needed revision of American policy on the Taiwan question, and that Chinese officials will be reluctant to treat it as a breakthrough.
China views the Taiwan problem as fueled, at least partly, by the volatility of the American political system. Presidents frequently come into office vowing to lend a hand to beleaguered democrats in Taiwan, then gradually back away when they encounter geopolitical realities in Asia, where China is emerging as the dominant power.
Beijing is concerned that the cycle repeats itself so often that it allows Taiwan to keep testing how far it can move toward a more legal form of independence rather than the de facto independence it enjoys today.
"It is fine to have a verbal warning from the White House about this or that in Taiwan," said Yan Xuetong, a senior foreign policy expert to Tsinghua University in Beijing.
"But the Chinese side cannot be satisfied with this," he said. "It is necessary to put something in writing, to firmly oppose anything that could lead to independence in Taiwan and make that a policy that is not going to change right after the next election."
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President Warns Taiwan On Independence Efforts
Bush Says Referendum on China Should Not Be Held
By Dana Milbank and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51062-2003Dec9?language=printer
President Bush, with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at his side in the Oval Office, delivered a firm warning yesterday to the Taiwanese government over its aspirations for independence, telling the island's leaders not to pursue a referendum that has angered mainland China.
Bush raised no objection when Wen said Bush had expressed his "opposition to Taiwan independence" -- a break from the policy of ambiguity the United States has had on the subject. Bush, in his remarks with Wen, made no specific criticism of China but declared that "the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose."
Administration officials asserted after Bush's statement that there was no change in China policy, but the remarks in the Oval Office were a significant change in emphasis for the administration. Two years ago, it took an aggressive position toward China, saying the United States would "do whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan.
Bush's admonishment of Taiwan yesterday came in response to a reporter's question about the referendum, which would not directly address independence but would call on China to withdraw ballistic missiles aimed at the island.
Swiftly rebuffing Bush, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian said today that the referendum would proceed despite U.S. objections. Chen told Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) that Taiwan is not planning on declaring independence and would not try to change the "status quo," a spokesman said.
Bush's actions provoked a furious reaction from conservative critics of Beijing, who had strongly supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and his vow to further a "world democratic movement." A trio of influential conservative commentators yesterday accused the Bush administration in a statement of rewarding "Beijing's bullying" while saying "not a word" about China's missile buildup and threats of war against Taiwan.
"The president's statement today is a mistake," wrote William Kristol, Robert Kagan and Gary Schmitt. "Appeasement of a dictatorship simply invites further attempts at intimidation."
The sentiment was widespread among some conservatives. John Tkacik, a China expert at the Heritage Foundation, said the president's comments showed "he's lost his bearings" on the Taiwan issue. "It just boggles the mind," he said. "I'm just appalled. Clinton never would have gone this far."
Tkacik noted that Bush has recently promoted the cause of democracy in the Middle East, and Taiwan is a thriving democracy. "It is incongruous for an American president who just gave a speech on democracy in the Middle East to tell the people of Taiwan who they can elect," he said.
In a White House briefing for reporters provided on the condition that the officials not be identified, a senior administration official said Bush's statements might be perceived as a tilt toward China. But he suggested that the administration decided that was a risk worth taking in light of actions by Chen.
"I'll tell you there was some concern about that," he said. But "the situation is constantly evolving on Taiwan and there are constantly new statements being made, and there was felt a need to make it clear that Taiwan must be careful."
The official said Bush was more assertive with Wen in a 40-minute private meeting, calling the president "very, very forceful" in warning China not to use force against Taiwan. But officials declined repeated requests to say whether Bush had opposed Taiwanese independence, as Wen asserted. Until now, the United States has used the more neutral statement that it "does not support" independence.
The shifting U.S. emphasis on Taiwan has come after actions by Chen that the administration considers provocative, particularly the plans to hold the referendum in the spring to protest the missiles.
Although he did not criticize publicly China's actions toward Taiwan, Bush yesterday said the administration remains committed to the "one China" policy and the Taiwan Relations Act, which says military action by China against Taiwan would be a "grave threat" to security.
James R. Lilley of the American Enterprise Institute said Bush's invoking of the Taiwan Relations Act signaled that "we are not going to betray Taiwan." But he also said Bush put himself in a difficult position by opposing the referendum because there was little he could do if Chen ignores the U.S. warning. "We'll say, 'You've hurt our feelings,' " said Lilley, the ambassador to China under President George H.W. Bush.
The White House left ambiguous the consequences for Taipei of holding the referendum. Asked about the use of sanctions, press secretary Scott McClellan said: "I'm not going to rule it in or rule out." He said Bush told Wen the United States opposes Taiwan's pursuing any "referenda and constitutional reform that would change the status quo."
Wen was clearly pleased by Bush's gesture. In a speech last night, Wen twice diverged from prepared remarks to draw attention to Bush's performance before reporters at the White House. He said Bush had "sent a very loud and clear signal to the whole world."
Wen, appealing for U.S. support for Chinese reunification, called the developments in Taiwan "separatist activities" and said they threaten U.S.-China cooperation and peace in the region. China, he said, "will absolutely not tolerate the attempt by the Taiwan independence forces to separate Taiwan from China under the signboard of democracy."
On the Taiwan issue, Wen twice drew a parallel with Abraham Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union. Noting that Bush had given him a tour of Lincoln's former White House office, Wen quoted Lincoln's words that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."
Bush appeared to receive little tangible in exchange for his gesture. The two leaders, who also lunched together, discussed the two countries' trade imbalance, the way the value of Chinese currency is set, religious freedom and talks to defuse the nuclear crisis with North Korea. But the administration announced no concrete gains.
On North Korea, a senior official said, Bush and Wen "felt there was a developing consensus on this issue but that we had not yet reached the point" where another round of six-nation talks could be convened to resolve the crisis. Officials had hoped to hold the talks this month. Another official involved in North Korean issues said the Chinese did not appear pleased with a draft statement guiding the talks that was written last week by the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Schmitt, director of the Project for the New American Century, said the public exchange between the two leaders made it appear "Taiwan is the provoker." Schmitt said the administration was making a doomed effort "to try to freeze the status quo," back before the Chinese military buildup and Chen's push on referendums. Those escalations occurred while the United States was preoccupied with Iraq.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Bush's opposition to a referendum in Taiwan is consistent with his overall support for democracy.
"I think it's quite clear that our support for democracy doesn't mean that sponsoring referendums on any subject in particular around the world at any given moment is necessarily a wise course or one that might lead to stability and benefits to the people who are being invited to vote," he said.
Staff writer Peter Slevin contributed to this report.
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Taiwan Reaffirms Plan To Hold Referendum
President Defies Warning From Bush
By Tim Culpan and John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51063-2003Dec9.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Dec. 10 -- Taiwan's president vowed Wednesday to proceed with a referendum on relations with China next March despite pressure to shelve the vote from the White House, which issued an unprecedented rebuke of the Taiwanese leader.
President Chen Shui-bian, in a meeting with Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), said Taiwan was not planning to declare independence and would not try to change the "status quo" between mainland China and the island of 23 million people, according to James Huang, the Taiwanese presidential spokesman.
On Tuesday, President Bush said that he opposed the referendum plan and that it appeared Chen wanted to change the nature of the relationship between Taiwan and China.
Chen urged the international community not to take China's "military threat and missile deployment for granted and not to take Taiwan's efforts to consolidate democracy as a provocation," Huang said.
The spokesman said Chen was committed to moving ahead with the referendum on March 20, the day Taiwanese will vote in a presidential election. The referendum would demand that China withdraw all missiles aimed at Taiwan and renounce the use of force against the island.
Chen's remarks place Taiwan squarely in conflict with the United States and could spark a crisis that would hurt Taiwan's relations with its most powerful backer.
The rebuke from Bush also puts the Taiwanese president in a difficult position and could hurt his chances for reelection, analysts said. Chen is running a tight race for the presidency against Lien Chan, the Nationalist Party candidate, whom he beat in 2000 to become the first opposition figure to be elected president in Taiwan.
Michael Swaine, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said White House criticism of Chen amounted to the most serious diplomatic crisis for Taiwan since 1979, when the United States broke ties with Taipei and established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing.
Nonetheless, Swaine predicted that Chen would probably go ahead with a toned-down referendum. Otherwise, he said, Chen risked "looking weak, having caved in entirely to the United States."
Relations between Taiwan and China have deteriorated following moves by Chen that analysts said were designed to boost his prospects at the polls by antagonizing China.
The Bush administration is concerned that the planned referendum on China's missiles could antagonize China, leading it to shelve its relatively moderate policy toward Taipei of the past few years and resume the aggressive tone and actions that characterized relations in the mid-1990s. During those years, China routinely conducted threatening military exercises and test-fired missiles near Taiwan's shores.
Joseph Wu, Chen's deputy chief of staff for foreign policy, said in a telephone interview that the planned referendum would not bring Taiwan another step toward independence from China but was instead "a humble way and a peaceful way to tell the international community that we are under threat."
In a recent speech, Chen said China had 496 ballistic missiles within range of Taiwan and continued to deploy about 50 to 75 a year.
"After explaining and explaining, we hope the United States can understand the threat we are under and that we are not using a referendum as a disguise to go for independence," he said.
Su Chi, a top Nationalist Party adviser to Lien, said he was not surprised the president planned to push ahead with the referendum despite U.S. concerns. Su said the president was motivated by desperation because he was slipping in the polls.
"We think this is a dangerous strategy because it invites intervention" from the United States and from China, he said. "We want neither."
Su said the referendum unnecessarily antagonizes China but does not enhance Taiwan's security.
Several Chinese strategists also said recent moves by the Chen government threatened to push China toward adopting a more aggressive stance toward Taiwan and give hard-liners within China's government a more prominent voice.
Pomfret reported from Beijing.
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Bush Warns Taiwan on Independence
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-China.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at his side, President Bush sent a strong warning to Taiwan on Tuesday not to take any action toward independence and cause dangerous new tensions with Beijing.
``We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo,'' Bush said when asked about a planned March 20 vote in Taiwan on China. ``And the comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose.''
The planned March referendum, coupled with a changing international situation, has led Bush to speak in harsher tones to democratic Taiwan as he pursues a deeper relationship with authoritarian China, particularly on security issues.
Bush did not publicly discuss the potential military threat that China poses to Taiwan but administration officials, briefing reporters, said the president cautioned Wen that China should not use force.
If China does so, the official quoted Bush as saying, ``We're going to be there.''
The official, asking not to be identified, acknowledged there was internal concern that Bush's message on Taiwan would appear too pro-China, but the White House decided a strong statement was necessary on the independence moves.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian defended his plan to hold a referendum on whether to formally request that China remove hundreds of missiles aimed at the island. U.S. officials believe the vote could push Taiwan closer to independence.
Chen described the March 20 vote as a way to avoid conflict with China.
``A defensive referendum is for avoiding war and to help keep the Taiwanese people free of fear,'' he said. ``It is also for preserving the status quo.''
Bush apparently senses that an unstable situation in the Taiwan Strait could be dangerous, particularly with U.S. forces stretched thin because of Iraq and with a potentially explosive situation in North Korea.
Wen stopped short of repeating the military threats that China has leveled at Taiwan in response to the referendum.
He did accuse Taiwan's president of using democracy as an excuse to pursue independence, saying the president was using the referendum ``to split Taiwan away from China. Such separatist activities are what the Chinese side can absolutely not accept and tolerate.''
Bush reaffirmed the long-standing U.S. view that there is only one China, and differences between the mainland and Taiwan, which Beijing considers a rebellious province, should be resolved peacefully.
The United States, under the Taiwan Relations Act, has pledged to defend Taiwan. No administration has ever spelled out precisely under what circumstances it would use force.
Bush took office almost three years ago intent on pursuing a more pro-Taiwan policy than President Clinton. He said then he would do whatever it took to protect Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
Bush and Wen met for about 40 minutes and later had lunch at the White House with aides. Outside, about 50 members of the Falun Gong protested China's ban on the spiritual movement several years ago. One demonstrator carried a banner saying, ``Falun Gong: an ancient meditation practice based on truthfulness, compassion, tolerance.''
Earlier, during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn that featured a 19-gun salute, Bush gently chided China on human rights and Beijing's economic policies.
``The growth of economic freedom in China provides reason to hope that social, political and religious freedoms will grow there as well,'' Bush told Wen. ``In the long run, these freedoms are indivisible and essential to national greatness and national dignity.''
China joined the World Trade Organization two years ago. The administration has been pushing Beijing to speed up market-opening measures and relax controls on its currency, which it contends make Chinese exports unfairly cheap on world markets.
``We recognize that if prosperity's power is to reach into every corner of China, the Chinese government must fully integrate into the rules and norms of the international trading and finance system,'' Bush said.
Wen acknowledged the U.S. trade deficit with China -- projected at $120 billion for this year, which would be the largest ever with any country -- and said he was carrying a proposal to help ease it. He gave no details.
No issue has brought the United States and China together more than North Korea. Both countries are eager to see a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, although the Bush administration's public passion for achieving that goal dwarfs that of China.
In August, China served as host for six-party talks aimed at achieving North Korean disarmament and is playing a key role in trying to arrange for a second, and perhaps decisive, round. As an increasingly powerful neighbor of North Korea and chief donor of economic aid, China is ideally positioned to push the process.
An intense diplomatic effort is under way to work out a statement under which North Korea would commit itself to dismantle its nuclear programs in exchange for security assurances and economic benefits.
Bush said North Korea was discussed extensively at the meeting, but he gave no details.
To some, it seemed incongruous for Bush to side with the unelected leaders of China instead of the elected leaders of Taiwan.
-------- europe
New boy Poland flexes its muscles
As the EU struggles with its constitution and declining public confidence, one future member is adding to French and German woes
Ian Traynor in Warsaw
Wednesday December 10, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,1103503,00.html
From the war zones of Iraq to the diplomatic battlefields of Brussels, one country is rapidly gaining a reputation for being the new bad boy on the European bloc.
It has been by far the toughest negotiating partner for Brussels in the long and complicated process to join the EU.
It backed George Bush on Iraq with rhetoric and men on the ground, triggering bitter criticism in France and Germany. And it is Berlin's most diehard opponent at this weekend's EU summit on the constitutional overhaul of how power is wielded and decisions taken within the councils of Europe.
Five months before it is integrated into the club of western democracies, Poland is being cast by some of its new EU partners as a troublemaker.
"We're certainly going in with a bang," admitted a senior Polish official. "And the Germans won't forget this."
The latest display of refusing to toe the line came 10 days ago in Naples, when European ministers were toiling over the new EU defence policy.
Why, some of the 25 foreign ministers wanted to know, was the new EU military planning cell to be described as "permanent"? To distinguish the European approach, came the answer, from the American penchant for constructing ad hoc "coalitions of the willing" or temporary military alliances.
"In that case," piped up the Polish foreign minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, "we should call it the coalition of the unwilling. Maybe that would be a more precise and more realistic description of the situation."
The jibe highlighted frank Polish contempt for Franco-German defence ambitions for Europe, the determination not to be talked down to by the EU's traditional heavyweights, and Warsaw's utter devotion to America as its indispensable strategic partner and security guarantor.
"We need a stronger European security and defence policy. There's no doubt about that. The Balkan experience was humiliating for all of Europe," says Mr Cimoszewicz. "But we still have some doubts."
Poland's demands to be treated seriously as a regional European power and its robust defence of its perceived interests are fraught with risks.
Apart from Britain, Poland was the only European country that committed itself to combat in Iraq, with commandos storming targets at the beginning of the war. It now has 2,500 troops in Iraq. Last month Major Hieronim Kupczyk became Poland's first combat casualty since the second world war when he was killed in an ambush in Iraq.
This weekend in Brussels, Warsaw could notch up a significant victory by frustrating German plans to overhaul the EU's decision-taking machinery, denying the Germans, at least temporarily, a new constitutional system of power sharing through the way majority decisions are taken.
Both Berlin and Warsaw insist they will not budge from their positions. Poland's frankness was again evident on Monday when the prime minister, Leszek Miller, warned of an EU summit "confrontation" that could end in "fiasco".
There are plenty of pundits in Warsaw who worry that the Poles are punching above their weight - over Iraq, over Nato, over America, and over the EU - and blundering by alienating Germany, their neighbour and key partner.
But Poland's blunt talking is being encouraged by its belief that it is the only tactic that brings dividends.
"We are not a very easy customer," says Roza Thun, president of the Robert Schuman Foundation in Poland, a pro-EU body. "But that's maybe our strength. No one took us seriously before. Now the attitude [abroad] has changed. The EU likes us less, but they treat us more seriously."
Earlier this year the French told the Poles to shut up over Iraq, while the Germans have muttered about the Poles being America's Trojan horse inside the EU. In Brussels, the Poles are fed up with being told they are not "good Europeans".
But of the 10 countries joining the EU in May, Poland is as big as the other nine combined, with all that that implies for markets, territory, the military, strategy, and, not least, being listened to.
"Joining the EU is very important and we're very grateful. But let's not forget about the political and the historical dimension," Mr Cimoszewicz says.
For this country of 38 million, in a strategically important position and dominated for centuries by Germany and Russia, the "historical dimension" is an intense obsession that may seem baffling in the west. It is the wellspring of Poland's attachment to America at a time of transatlantic estrangement.
"Security is the most important thing in this country and Europe does not give us that," says Mrs Thun, an ardent pro-European.
Adam Michnik, the outstanding liberal Polish patriot and editor of eastern Europe's first and most successful independent newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, says the chastening events of recent months, from the rows over Iraq to the tough negotiations over joining the EU, have seen the Poles find their voice internationally.
"There's no point preaching to us or pushing us. It won't work. We didn't regain our own voice just to give it up. The most important thing is that Poland has recovered its independence and we will speak with an independent voice. We have the same right to that as the French or the Germans."
On America and Europe, Michnik waxes positively Blairite: "For Poland, the democratic west has always been out there. We can't see how the US can be a threat to the democratic west. The essence is that we do support a long-lasting Euro-Atlantic alliance because the US presence in Europe serves Europe well and we won't support any actions that try to eliminate the US from Europe."
On the contrary, they are lobbying to get the Americans in Poland. Having got rid of the Red Army garrisons, the Poles are eager to welcome a US military presence and are hoping some forces will be redeployed from bases in Germany to Poland. Senior US officials have been in Warsaw this week discussing plans for reconfiguring how the US projects its military clout.
The trajectory that has landed Poland in Nato and on the threshold of entry to the EU has spanned more than a decade, with governments following the same consistent policies since the overthrow of communism in 1989.
The irony is that Poland's claims to be heard internationally are being staked by a centre-left government which is the country's most unpopular since that revolution.
"Even a weak government can have good ideas," quips Mr Cimoszewicz. And with an eye on this weekend's summit battles, he intimates that Brussels and Berlin have not yet heard the last of Warsaw.
"Anybody who believes that they can convince us of changing our well-justified positions and arguments is wrong. They will understand that sooner or later."
-------- iraq
VIOLENCE
Suicide Bombers Strike at 2 U.S. Bases, Wounding Dozens of G.I.'s
December 10, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 9 - Two suicide bombers set off explosions at United States military bases on Tuesday, killing only themselves but wounding several dozen American soldiers on a day that saw a sharp increase in violence around Iraq.
Attackers also fired on a helicopter near Falluja, a city west of Baghdad where there have been frequent assaults on United States soldiers, forcing the craft into an emergency landing, the military reported. The two pilots walked away from the crash.
In western Baghdad, three Iraqis were killed and two others were wounded after a Sunni mosque was hit with two explosives, apparently rocket-propelled grenades, after morning prayers near dawn on Tuesday.
Who attacked the Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque was unclear, but many local people blamed Shiite extremists and called for retaliation. Relations between the sects - and the possibility of violence between them - remain major questions as Iraq moves toward governing itself and shaking off the legacy of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who brutally suppressed the majority Shiites.
"They are dogs!" wailed one man, who others said had lost a brother in the attack, which ripped a five-foot-square hole in the side of the mosque. "They attacked God's house. Revenge! Revenge!"
A recent United States military offensive seems to have quieted the Iraqi insurgency for now, with the number of guerrilla attacks dropping by more than half. But commanders have said repeatedly they expect the numbers to rise. That the attacks on Tuesday did not kill any soldiers seemed due in some degree to good fortune, but also to security that has tightened considerably in recent months as the attacks rose to, at times, 50 or more a day. But the failed attacks on the military could presage another wave of attacks against "soft" targets: Iraqi policemen and politicians as well as foreigners working with contracting companies or aid groups.
At 4:45 a.m., a powerful car bomb exploded at an Army base at Tall Afar, about 30 miles west of the northern city of Mosul, where American soldiers have been attacked repeatedly in recent weeks. A military statement said soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division fired on a car as it tried to drive into the compound, and then exploded.
The blast shattered windows on the base and damaged a school across the street, but killed no one other than the bomber, the statement said. The military officially reported 31 soldiers wounded, but later reports from wire service reporters who spoke with commanders there put the number of injuries as high as 58, most of them minor.
A second bomber came on foot, claiming injury, to a small base near the town of Husseiniya just north of Baghdad at about 8:30 a.m., according to Maj. Josselyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the Fourth Infantry Division. American soldiers at the entrance demanded that he stop, she said.
"They had their weapons trained on him and when he figured he couldn't get any farther, he detonated the explosives attached to his body," she said. No soldiers were hurt and the bomber "didn't succeed in anything but blowing himself up," she said.
South of Falluja at about 2:30 p.m., the military reported, an OH-58 Delta Kiowa observation helicopter on a reconnaissance mission "took fire" and was forced into an emergency landing. A journalist from The Associated Press reported seeing the helicopter, with the 82nd Airborne Division, hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, and news film showed smoke billowing from the helicopter in a field.
American troops and helicopters who were nearby rescued the two pilots, who, the military said, walked away with "minimal" injuries.
On Monday night, three soldiers from the Fourth Infantry division died after two armored Striker troop transport vehicles flipped over into a drainage canal when an embankment on the road collapsed, Major Aberle said. A fourth soldier was injured, she said.
--------
Bomber Wounds 58 Troops in Iraq
On Violent Day, U.S. Copter Team Survives Attack
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48197-2003Dec9.html
BAGHDAD, Dec. 9 -- A suicide bomber blew up a car Tuesday outside a U.S. Army base in northern Iraq, wounding 58 soldiers and at least three Iraqis but killing no one, apparently because the driver detonated the explosives prematurely when troops fired on him as he rushed the gate, U.S. military officials said.
Hours later, the crew of a U.S. Army observation helicopter also escaped without fatalities when it made an emergency landing in central Iraq after it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, witnesses said.
But three U.S. soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division's Stryker Brigade Combat Team died and one was injured near Balad in central Iraq when both of their armored personnel carriers rolled into a canal after the embankment collapsed. Military officials stressed that the incident was not the result of enemy fire, saying the cause was under investigation.
U.S. military officials have praised the Stryker infantry carriers as important assets in turning back the Iraqi insurgency. The Stryker team and its 19-ton, eight-wheeled vehicles were recently brought from Kuwait to join operations of the 4th Infantry Division north of Baghdad, officials said.
The day also proved fatal for three Iraqis, killed when a bomb hidden beneath a car exploded outside a Sunni Muslim mosque in Baghdad shortly after morning prayers, Iraqi police said. Local clerics blamed rival Shiite Muslims for the attack, but Shiite political leaders denied the charge.
The day's violence began with the pre-dawn bombing of the 101st Airborne Division's compound at Tall Afar, 30 miles west of Mosul. When the driver of a car packed with explosives refused orders to stop as he navigated the serpentine entry lane to the base, soldiers posted above the gate began to shoot, according to military officials.
Struck by the guards' fire, the attacker detonated his explosives, blasting a three-foot-deep crater in the street, shattering windows and damaging a school across the road. Col. Michael S. Linnington of the 101st Airborne Division said the attacker's remains were scattered "all over the compound."
Although 58 soldiers were wounded, most suffered only cuts, bruises and other minor injuries. Eight soldiers were evacuated to Baghdad for medical treatment, but none of their wounds was life-threatening, military officials said. An Iraqi translator at the base and at least two other local residents were hurt by flying glass.
Another suicide bomber near Baghdad tried to attack a U.S. military field hospital later in the day but killed only himself, military officials said. Several U.S. soldiers were slightly injured.
During the past two months, more than 100 people have been killed in car bombings and other explosions targeting U.S. and allied forces, foreign diplomats and aid workers, and Iraqi security forces cooperating with the occupation authorities.
None of those groups, however, appeared to be the target of the early morning bombing at the mosque in Baghdad's Hurriyah neighborhood, suggesting that the attack could reflect tensions between Iraqi's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis.
Ahmed Jasim, who lives across the street from the Sunni mosque, said he was awakened shortly before 7 a.m. by two explosions a few seconds apart. When he left his house, he saw two burning cars and the bodies of three victims lying at the gate of the mosque.
"I thought they had bombed the [neighboring] school. I didn't believe it was the mosque because that's the house of God," said Jasim, 26. "Who would bomb it?"
Iraqi police said the bomb was hidden under a car, but local residents and clerics said the blasts had been caused by rocket-propelled grenades fired at the mosque.
Ahmad Dabbash, a cleric at the mosque, accused Shiite militias and the Iraqi National Congress -- an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Governing Council -- of responsibility for the attack. Shiite and Iraqi National Congress representatives rejected the accusation.
Entifad Kanbar, an Iraqi National Congress spokesman, called the bombing a plot by members of ousted president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. "I think this event has been orchestrated by Baathists to create an atmosphere of tension and sectarianism between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. I completely believe this attempt will fail," Kanbar said.
The attack on the observation helicopter from the 82nd Airborne Division was attributed by U.S. military officials to ground fire from insurgents. Military officials said the two-man crew of the OH-58D walked away with only minor injuries after it was forced to make a hard landing in an open field near Fallujah.
Witnesses told news agencies that they had seen the helicopter struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. Though it was structurally intact after the landing, smoke was seen billowing from it, the Associated Press reported.
Insurgents have demonstrated their ability to down U.S. helicopters with lethal results, killing 39 soldiers last month in three separate attacks. Insurgents near Fallujah brought down a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter on Nov. 2, killing 16 soldiers.
Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
U.S.: Plane Probably Hit, Lands in Iraq
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Plane-Damaged.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Guerrillas hit a U.S. Air Force transport plane with a surface-to-air missile, causing the engine to explode, a senior Pentagon source said Wednesday. The plane landed safely.
The C-17 had just lifted off from Baghdad International Airport before dawn Tuesday when the engine exploded, slightly injuring one of the 16 passengers and crew, said U.S. Air Force Capt. Carrie Clear of 447th Air Expeditionary Group, based at the airport.
The plane returned to the airport and landed safely, Clear said.
A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the explosion as a direct hit by a ground-fired missile, ``like the DHL'' incident that damaged a cargo plane departing the airport last month. That plane, too, landed safely.
Clear said the incident was under investigation.
-------- israel / palestine
Manhunt in Iraq: Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads
Tuesday, December 9th, 2003
Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/09/162219
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh reveals how a new Special Forces group assembled to "neutralize" Iraqi resistance is working with Israeli commandoes to train in assassination and other tactics - comparable to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. One of the key planners is Lt Gen. William Boykin who declared that Bush was not elected but appointed by God. [Includes transcript] In his latest article in the New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh writes:
"The Bush Administration has authorized a major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. In interviews over the past month, American officials and former officials said that the main target was a hard-core group of Baathists who are believed to be behind much of the underground insurgency against the soldiers of the United States and its allies. A new Special Forces group, designated Task Force 121, has been assembled from Army Delta Force members, Navy seals, and C.I.A. paramilitary operatives, with many additional personnel ordered to report by January. Its highest priority is the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, by capture or assassination.
"The revitalized Special Forces mission is a policy victory for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who has struggled for two years to get the military leadership to accept the strategy of what he calls 'Manhunts' - a phrase that he has used both publicly and in internal Pentagon communications. Rumsfeld has had to change much of the Pentagon's leadership to get his way. "Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things," a Pentagon adviser told me, referring to Afghanistan and Iraq.
"One step the Pentagon took was to seek active and secret help in the war against the Iraqi insurgency from Israel, America's closest ally in the Middle East. According to American and Israeli military and intelligence officials, Israeli commandos and intelligence units have been working closely with their American counterparts at the Special Forces training base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and in Israel to help them prepare for operations in Iraq."
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the New Yorker. His latest piece is titled "Manhunt in Iraq"
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome to Democracy Now!.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Hello.
AMY GOODMAN: Certainly an explosive piece that you have here. Can you tell us exactly what you found?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, Amy, beyond -- I did, Amy, in the article but I can repeat it for you, and I will be glad to, which is essentially as you read. One solution -- look we're obviously, as I quote somebody saying in the piece, we're getting mauled. Our guys are getting whacked on the ground, and it's the old sort of story again, you know, we get hit and we can't find out who's hitting us, and so we respond.
The operation that everybody was critical of, everybody, including those who support the war and very supportive of this administration, is what they call "Iron Hammer". This is the current American get-tough policy of bombings, and destroying homes, and collective punishment, and going in and making nighttime raids based on terrible intelligence and basically creating more insurgents. Everybody knows we have to do something different. So, the proposal -- this is something Rumsfeld and a lot of people in the Pentagon, his fellow conservatives have wanted to do for a long time, which is to -- they used the word 'premeditated manhunt', the euphemism for killing people. They want to go after the guys they think are running the insurgency. The only problem is, I'm anticipating a question, I know, the only problem is, who are they and can we find them? Do we have the intelligence to do so?
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about how exactly they're being trained, assassination squads, and who is doing it?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, again, the word I used was we're getting a tutorial on how to do it from the Israelis. I don't know what that does to the hair on the back of your neck, but anyway, essentially, we have been -- the Israelis have, according to Israeli officials, and I think this is correct, they have actually been, in their very tough approach to Hamas, particularly in the West Bank, they have destroyed at this point -- the Israelis, by target bombing and assassinations -- they have a special unit in Israel that dresses in Arab clothing, a military unit, and they all speak wonderful Arabic and they pounce on people. They can find somebody and pounce on them. We don't have those kind of units. They are small units.
The Israelis have been training us in some of their tactics, and how to do it once, you know -- The problem with the Israeli approach is, as a lot of Israelis will tell you, is that they have pretty much destroyed the ability of Hamas centrally to control the terror bombing against the Israelis in Israel. But that doesn't preclude independent people from continuing to operate. So, destroying the central core of communication and I guess process in Hamas still hasn't removed the threat, but it has certainly eased it somewhat. I think we're seeing that now in Israel.
And so the idea is to do the same here, to get the targets and be as tough as the Israelis have been. It's not clear we can be, because American people, soldiers, generally are not quite -- are not trained to be quite as tough. That's one reason Special Forces are going in, they're very tough. Delta, Seals. They will shoot, and they're very competent. Please don't misunderstand. They do what they're assigned to do and they're very good at it. It's just again the kind of information they have. And so I think the idea here is to see what happens, to try and destroy the central communication links of the Hamas equivalent in the Ba'ath party, as we see it, anyway. The idea is that we are also going to set up small Iraqi intelligence units. We have been collecting Iraqi intelligence people from the mukhabbarat intelligence service and military intelligence for eight or nine months, seven months, since the end of the combat war in early April. By now, we have put together enough sophisticated former Iraqi intelligence officers, we think, to form ad hoc advisory groups that would travel with our special forces. They'll also have an Israeli adviser, i think, pretty much undercover in the country advising them, too. So, that's the next step, you know. Bang, bang, bang.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Seymour Hersh. I'm looking at a piece in today's "Guardian" following up on your piece that came out yesterday in the "New Yorker" where Julian Borger quotes a U.S. Intelligence official- former. "This is basically an assassination program. That's what's being conceptualized here. This is a hunter-killer team." He says, "It's bonkers, insane. Here we are. We're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we have just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams." And goes on to say that the Israeli so-called 'consultants' have not only been at Ft. Bragg but also in Iraq with U.S. troops.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Am I supposed to comment on that?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
SEYMOUR HERSH: I didn't dispute that. I think -- I didn't write that, but I -- you know, if you -- only because, you know, the "New Yorker" has a very appropriately you know-- you need more than one source for certain things, but certainly, that's in the air. It depends how you define 'consultants'. But the basic line is obviously, if anything, I know this is -- everybody's going to lose their breakfast, but I'm probably inside the facts. Do you know what I mean? I'm within what the reality is. It's probably a little more acute, there's probably even more cooperation and particularly with -- in terms of prisoners. But you know it's just -- the bottom line is, Donald Rumsfeld has wanted since 9-11, more than two years ago, to get this manhunts -- he called it 'manhunts' with a plural, he has wanted to get manhunts going. He has wanted to be able to -- the Pentagon has assembled a list of what they call 'High Value Targets', H.V.T., and they are also known as 'Time Sensitive Targets', T.S.T. They have all of those acronyms and letters. They tried- last year we wrote -- I wrote a piece in the "New Yorker" about an attack on somebody in Yemen, a former Al Qaeda person in Yemen. Other people had written about it, but the point I made in the story I wrote was that it was the first manhunt. And there were a lot of questions about what happened. There were two previous attempts. They were firing from an unarmed -- unmanned airplane known as a 'predator', a hellfire missile. And twice the missile had been targeted at other cars before they finally got the guys they got. And both cars they were waived off, at the last minute in one case, because they were full of innocent Bedouins. The intelligence wasn't good. They finally got their man. When they got him, five other people were with him. One of them was an American citizen, presumed to be bad guys, but they weren't on the H.V.T., High Value Target list. So there was a lot of questions. And you know the military, the American military is a very, very cautious bureaucracy. And there were a lot of guys inside that don't like the idea of being hunter-killer teams. That's not what the military does, Even in Delta and the S.E.A.L. teams. These are, they're soldiers, and they fight wars, and they don't do targeted assassinations.
Rumsfeld, to get his way - he couldn't get his way last year. He has basically changed, I know I wrote a little bit about this in the New Yorker, he has changed a lot of the personnel. He has gotten rid of people that fought him, and this is his prerogative. And he has put in the Army positions of command people who are much more supportive of what he and some his aides want to do; that is work with the Israelis and others to begin killing people. And so, this is his show. I'm sure the President, yes, the President obviously approves, and the Vice President, Cheney. They all work very closely together. I'm not sure where the C.I.A. is on it. I think, you know, these guys are in a real dilemma. They're not winning. They can't win the war militarily, and from George Bush's point of view, they can't lose the war politically. So, the answer in the short run seems to be to escalate. And they're going to escalate with targeted bombing and targeted killings, and if that doesn't work, I don't know what else they'll do.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, one of the things we know they're doing is that they're wrapping towns in barbed wire.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yeah. I saw that story. That story is actually in the "Times". Just to show you how funny the newspaper world is, that story was reported by everybody six weeks ago. That happened then. I'm glad the "Times" caught up to it, but it was reported six weeks ago. That happened in October- November.
It's been -- I will tell you also what's going on, there's a lot of collective punishment in the fields. In other words, we're going to villages that were considered to be hotspots of insurgency and saying to the people there, tell us in advance of what's going to happen or else. And when something else, another landmine goes off or something, we're destroying irrigation devices, fields, sometimes houses, bulldozering, using bulldozers. It's collective punishment that's going on. That will be the next story. That's been going on for months.
AMY GOODMAN: You quote a Pentagon adviser saying, "Knocking off two regimes allows us to do extraordinary things."
SEYMOUR HERSH: You bet.
AMY GOODMAN: You then go into the personnel who are involved with this; the rise and fall of different people. You talk about Rumsfeld's rising star in the Pentagon, is it pronounced Steven Cambone?
SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You also talk about William Boykin of Somalia fame.
SEYMOUR HERSH: Lieutenant -- they call him Jerry, Jerry Boykin, everybody calls him by that name. He's a total warrior. He ran the Delta Force. He has been a Black Operator, a Black Operations guy. He was in Mogadishu he was involved in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord. Very controversial stuff I read about. And he is the fellow that the "L.A. Times," Bill Arkin, a gentleman for the "L.A. Times", about six weeks ago published a long account based on videotapes of General Boykin's speeches, or I guess Sunday morning sermons to born-again religious groups or even church groups, churches, I guess, in the Ozarks and southern Florida where he would talk about -- compare Islam to Satan, and talk about how this is sort of a, you know, a crusader sort of religious war. Quite unbelievable talk. And normally anybody -- he did that in uniform; he was then a two-star General, and head of the Special Forces Command at Ft. Bragg -- and normally he would be done.
Instead what happened is he had a meeting with Rumsfeld and they got along very well. I quote somebody as saying "like two old warriors", and he has now been in the chain of command. You know, the Pentagon will deny that he's specifically involved, but he's certainly deeply involved. He's Cambone's chief aid. Cambone is the new tough guy, that's been Rummy's -- gotten to be closer to Rummy than anybody right now, even Wolfowitz. And he's a very conservative -- out of Claremont College, which some of you might know that Claremont -- it's a neo-conservative school. He's certainly very bright. He was a guy who five years ago was talking about the need to go to war with China. Now he has been the leader in the idea of manhunts. He has been trying to do stuff on manhunts for Rummy even before he got into his job. And so, he's very much on the team. Boykin is very much on the team, and I don't know whether Cambone shares his view of -- this is a war against Satan, but you know, the horrible prospect of what's going to happen because --
A lot of the people I talk with, as I say, are true blue Republicans, true blue military guys, true blue, very big supporters, they hope everything works, but they all say the same thing. It's not going to work. It's very hard to get the intelligence. You can't really trust what we're going to get from the Iraqis. One guy said, it made a wonderful line, he said one of the particular officials, Iraqi former military intelligence, mukkhabarat guys, I mean these were the torturers for Saddam, and now they're working for us. One of them, he said, has made an agreement with the United States and he'll carry out the agreement, he said, "to the letter, but not to the spirit", the C.I.A. told me that, whatever that means. And so the next step is, and what everybody is worried about, and this came up six or seven times in a couple of dozen interviews, was Phoenix. In the late 1960's the American C.I.A. working with various sort of groups Mountagnards and ----? groups, mercenary groups in Vietnam began targeted assassination of what was said to be Vietcong and Vietnamese Nationalists, Vietnamese Communists and Vietnamese Nationalist oppositions. And in four-year periods, 40,000 of those people, later defined as 'enemy civilians', were killed, by South Vietnamese count. And the American count was over 20,000 in that year. And it turned out many of them controlled the operations - the operations got totally out of control. South Vietnamese officials were playing cards and losing money and turning guys in that they owed money to us for assassination. I'm not exaggerating. It was that bad. Way out of control. And that was the worry now. We're going to have another disastrous operation. And don't forget, Phoenix didn't win the war for us. We didn't win that war. So that's the other worry. And then once you are done with this and it doesn't work, what do you do? I don't know.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Seymour Hersh, we have to break for a minute, but when we come back I want to ask you about how Iran fits into this as well. We are talking to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour Hersh. His latest piece in The New Yorker is called "Manhunt In Iraq". And we were also just talking about one of the seminal people in this, is Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin, who was quoted last June telling a congregation in Oregon, quote, "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation and he wants to destroy us as a Christian Army." He praised President Bush as a man who prays in the Oval Office and declared, Bush was not elected President but appointed by God. "The Muslim world hates America", he said, "because we are a nation of believers", quoting from the article that Seymour Hersh quotes Boykin in, in The New Yorker. We'll be back with him in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: We're still with Seymour Hirsch. His article in the New Yorker magazine is called "Manhunt in Iraq." Washington targeting insurgents as it once did in Vietnam. And that has some experts worried-among others. What about Iran?
SEYMOUR HIRSCH: Well, that's the big issue because there's a lot of people that I respect very much who say that the intelligence in their view is sound, that Iran -- that there is specific Iranian support for the Ba'ath insurgency, which on the surface seems a little over the top because, of course, Shiite Iran and the Sunni Ba'athists don't get along well. They fought a long war against each other. Iran traditionally has some relationships with the Shiites in the south of Iraq, but certainly the Iraqis in the South, the Shiites are more nationalistic than they were in terms of than Shiism. They supported Saddam all the way during the war, but the intelligence -- there is specific intelligence.
I think some does come from Israel, and a lot of people get their edge raised, but there's a lot of concern that Iran may be playing a dangerous game. After all, Iran has Afghanistan on one border, and now Iraq. So they're feeling squeezed. On the other hand, there are also people saying, yes, Iran is keeping all options open as anybody rationally would. They are in contact with the Ba'athists and they certainly Know. . . You know, there's no worry in Iran about the fact that the insurgency isn't working. But the notion that they would be actively involved is -- in terms of supplying communication gear and weapons and bases is way over the top. And more -- as somebody said to me, it's more of the Chalabi stuff, talking about Ahmed Chalabi whose intelligence we now know, is generally conceded, provided in the Bush administration in the year or two after 9-11, played a key role in making case for WMD, the horrible case.
It's a very complicated issue, but I will tell you that one of the reasons we're organizing Iraqi--you saw in the papers the other day: we are organizing Iraqi teams of paramilitary- is, if they do decide to do something cross-border into Iran, it will be with Iraqis with American backing. That's the talk right now. Obviously,it needs more reporting, because it is just a dispute right now in the intelligence community. But you cannot rule out anything.
If Iran, certainly, whether it's directly overtly helping or not, Iran is certainly, and Hezbollah, too, have a tremendous interest in what's going on. The stakes are being raised dramatically in that part of the world because of our invasion of Iraq.
Israelis tell me there's nothing more exciting than waking up in the morning and seeing America to the east. Israel likes us there, many in Israel, not everybody. Many people think it's also disastrous in the long run.
But there's more talk now. You see it in just the administration's comments, more talk about hostility towards Syria. There was a long piece said by administration officials in the New York Times -- I don't mean to suggest that the information was accurate as everybody knew it, nobody was doing propaganda. There was a story quoting administration officials as saying that David Kay, this sort of hapless fellow that is in charge of the search for the WMD-- why he took that job he must be asking himself that, now-- Kay, what he has found was that maybe there was an arms deal for air defense weapons, which are not outside of the U.N. agreements anyway, that were purchased by Iraq or Iraq tried to purchase them from North Korea through Syria. You hear that kind of talk. So, they're beginning to open up talk about Syria again like the neoconservatives did in late March and early April when it looked like everything was going great in Iraq and they were going to keep on rolling.
So, you can have a dark -- the dark scenario would be that we do expand our aggressiveness into regime change into Syria and perhaps a new Iran and we end up sort of back-to-back with the Israelis fighting a middle east insurgency. That's where some of the people, if you read what they say very carefully, what they said in the last ten years, that's what the neoconservatives want. That's in their writing. I'll be honest, it's in internal papers that I have, but I haven't published because they are what they call white papers. They're easy discounted. In other words, a lot of thinking inside the pentagon is done unofficially, in unofficial papers, the papers that are not officially part of the system. So, the problem with those is they're so easily discountable. They're not real documents. That's one reason they do it that way. Inside the government they are known as the white papers. It just doesn't exist. In those papers, there is talk of wholesale Middle East chaos. And that's to our advantage because the next step would then be some sort of democracy. That seems to be what they think.
It does look like despite all of the troubles we're having in Iraq that some of those elements of the policy are still being carried out, and I can also add that, talk about self-fulfilling prophesies, I don't think there's any question that some Mahabis from Saudi Arabi, some very radical Shiites are coming across the border from Saudi Arabi, I think more than any other country. They're terrorists and they're intent on doing car bombings.
We began a war against a country claiming they were terrorists when I think everybody now understands they were not. No connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, no significant connection, nothing that meant much. Now we set the situation in which what we initially began the war against is beginning to happen.
I know that the two and three and four-star generals, if you ask them about what's going on, everybody wants more troops. Nobody is going to say so publicly. It means end of career, but they also all say the same thing: My boys are getting killed, and my job is to defend them. You now have a situation where what we thought we had when we went into Iraq, we may have triggered.
What do you do with that? You know, what do you do with the fact that people are coming across the border? Well, there we are. I mean it's possibly the most bungled foreign affair episode in the history of pretty much bungled stuff we have done over the last 250 years. It always ends perfect.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Seymour Hirsch, I want to thank you very much for being with us. His latest piece appears in this week's New Yorker; it's called, "Manhunt in Iraq."
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, call 1 (800) 881-2359.
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Israeli and Egyptian Officials Discuss Renewing Peace Efforts
December 10, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10CND-MIDE.html?hp
Israeli and Egyptian leaders held talks in Switzerland today as part of efforts to renew peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to end more than three years of violence.
Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, met President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at a hotel in Geneva, and Mr. Shalom was expected later in the day to discuss the stalled peace talks with his Palestinian counterpart, Nabil Shaath, in Rome, Mr. Shalom's spokesman said.
"The two meetings will encourage the restart of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," the spokesman, Moshe Debby, said by telephone from Rome.
A centerpiece of the talks is the official Middle East peace plan known as the "road map," which President Bush unveiled at a summit meeting in Amman, Jordan in June attended by Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
But any progress on that peace plan has faltered in waves of continuing violence for which the Israelis and Palestinians exchange blame.
The talks in Geneva and Rome follow a fruitless weekend meeting of Palestinian militants and factions, which had been convened to discuss whether to call a comprehensive cease-fire with Israel.
They also come more than a week after self-appointed negotiators from both sides put forth an unofficial peace initiative known as the Geneva accord. The accord's drafters, who say the document could serve as a blueprint for formal talks between the governments, met Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in Washington last week to discuss it.
Mr. Powell encouraged the negotiators of the accord, but he reiterated Washington's commitment to the official peace plan. Israel has criticized the independent initiative, calling it subversive, freelance diplomacy. The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, has not formally endorsed it.
"The only game in town is the road map," an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, David Saranga, said by telephone from Israel today.
Reading from a ministry statement, he said that President Mubarak of Egypt had said during his talks with Mr. Shalom that he would work to narrow the differences between Israel and the Palestinians.
Egypt and Israel have a peace agreement, but the Egyptian leader has often mediated in efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. His country hosted the recent truce meeting in Cairo of the Palestinian factions.
Israel is insisting that any cease-fire would be unconditional as set out in the road map and says that the Palestinians must dismantle "terrorist organizations," Mr. Debby said.
Mr. Saranga quoted Mr. Shalom as saying in the statement that it was time that the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, returned to the negotiations table with no previous conditions.
"The world is waiting for that," the statement said. "The important thing is direct negotiations between the parties."
The failure of the Palestinian factions to reach an agreement was a setback for Mr. Qurei, who is seeking to arrange talks with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. But he said in a weekend telephone interview that he would still work toward ending the violence.
Mr. Qurei has said he wants such a meeting with Mr. Sharon to produce tangible results and was hoping to see the Israeli leader with a Palestinian cease-fire pledge in hand.
Mr. Sharon has always insisted that the bloodshed must stop before peace negotiations can resume. But many Palestinians contend that Mr. Sharon is not serious about negotiations and say that he has stepped up Israeli military operations when political progress has appeared to be within reach.
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US tells Russia of plans for eastward military expansion
MOSCOW (AFP)
Dec 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031210161939.7zrz9nt7.html
A top US official told Moscow on Wednesday that Washington planned to expand its military bases into eastern Europe and ex-Soviet territories and hoped that Russia would not take it as an aggressive act.
Moscow's reaction to the message was uneasy at best.
Russia's defense minister said he viewed any eastward expansion of US-led forces with "concern" while President Vladimir Putin assembled former Soviet republic defense ministers in the Kremlin in a bid forge a stronger bond.
The series of exchanges marked another downturn in Russia-US relations that was marked most starkly on Monday by rare criticism from Washington of the way Russia staged weekend parliamentary elections in which pro-Putin parties swept the way.
The US military message was delivered by Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, to both the Russian foreign ministry as well as top officials in the country's security council and the general chiefs of staff.
One US diplomat said the closed-door talks -- which lasted for 90 minutes as opposed to the planned 30 -- focused on hard specifics as opposed to being a more general discussion customary of such visits.
Grossman himself refused to identify recent NATO member Poland and Azerbaijan -- a volatile country where both Russia and the United States have oil interests -- as the two countries where Washington planned to open bases in the coming years.
But the Azeri defense minister was quick to respond to Grossman's Moscow visit by saying that his government was deep in debate -- and leaning toward -- US military involvement in his country.
"I do not exclude the possibility of this question being studied by our government," ITAR-TASS quoted Azeri Defense Minister Safar Abiyev as saying in reference to possible American bases in his post-Soviet country.
"The world is changing in very dynamic ways," Abiyev added.
The US official seemed quietly confident on his first round of Moscow talks.
"We briefed the Russian side on our thinking and we tried to emphasize that everything that we are doing is designed in a way that will meet our treaty commitments, that will meet our political commitments, and is not directed against any country," said Grossman.
"I want to be clear here though, that what has been decided is that we need to make change," he said.
Grossman said the idea of a US eastward push was formalized by US President George W. Bush on Monday and that he was sent to Moscow for urgent negotiations as a result.
Asked about Russia's response to the dramatic US military decision, Grossman replied that he was waiting for Moscow's official response but that he felt comfortable in his meeting on Wednesday.
"I think there is recognition on their side there are new threats, there is a recognition there are new opportunities to meet those new threats, and also I hope, there is a recognition that we would like Russia to be a partner in this," he said.
"I felt... that this old way of thinking, that the Cold War is over, was very much welcomed by the Russian side," he said.
But Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told a meeting of counterparts from former Soviet republics that Moscow had no intention of accepting Washington's military encroachment of its borders.
"Any plans for the expansion of NATO military infrastructure up to our border prompts very obvious concern," Ivanov said.
One of Ivanov's deputies met with Grossman on Wednesday.
But Ivanov confirmed that the United States had not yet presented Russia with any concrete proposal on military expansion but was only speaking in theory.
"We have nothing concrete to discuss yet," Ivanov said.
Putin meanwhile told a meeting of defense ministers from former Soviet republics that anyone who enters a collective security treaty run by Moscow would get "preferential treatment (from Russia) which we can afford."
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Annan Says Danger In Iraq Is Too Great For U.N. for Now
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51154-2003Dec9.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 9 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Iraq remains too dangerous for the United Nations to resume a major role in Iraq's reconstruction and political transition anytime soon.
But he pledged to press ahead with plans to expand the United Nations' humanitarian operations in the region, and announced the appointment of Ross Mountain of New Zealand to oversee the United Nations' activities in the weeks ahead. And Annan said U.N. relief agencies would continue to conduct "cross-border operations" into Iraq to deliver essential relief supplies.
Annan's remarks, contained in a 25-page report on the United Nations' future role to be presented to the Security Council on Wednesday, is a setback for the United States. The Bush administration has been pressing the United Nations to return to Iraq since Annan ordered the evacuation of most U.N. staff.
"Under the circumstances, it is difficult to envisage the United Nations operating with a large number of international staff inside Iraq in the near future, unless there is an unexpected and significant improvement in the overall security situation," the report said.
He added: "I have set in motion a process of assembling a core of [about 60 U.N. political and security officers] so that the United Nations can be in a position to move swiftly back to the country if the people seek the Organization's assistance, and circumstances on the ground permit."
Still, Annan outlined political steps and security measures that could be taken to increase the prospects for the United Nations' return to Iraq.
On the political front, Annan urged the United States to broaden Iraqi participation in the political process and to empower Iraqis to make decisions "that will shape the political and economic future" of Iraq. "Political steps of this kind would make it clear that the foreign occupation is short-lived," he wrote.
He also indicated that he would weigh the significance of the emerging United Nations political role in Iraq before sending his staff into harm's way.
"I cannot afford to compromise the security of our international staff," he said. "In taking the difficult decisions that lie ahead, I shall be asking myself questions such as whether the substance of the role allocated to the United Nations is proportionate to the risks we are being asked to take."
Annan cited an internal security review that predicted that the security situation in Iraq was "unlikely to improve in the short to medium term." It also noted that "the United Nations will remain a high-value, high-impact target for terrorist activity in Iraq for the foreseeable future."
The U.N. chief's security plan underscored the degree to which the U.N. leadership is willing to reconsider its aversion to military support for its mission since the Aug. 19 suicide attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, which left 22 dead.
It included a request for additional funds to hire more security experts, train U.N. workers and upgrade the United Nations' plans for ensuring security in its Baghdad facility.
It also contained a demand that the United States and its military allies provide the United Nations with formal assurances that it will receive protection from a "highly mobile" armed force throughout the country, timely intelligence, emergency evacuation support for injured U.N. staff, and the use of coalition facilities if necessary.
"In summary, establishing the necessary security conditions will be a time-consuming and expensive process," he wrote.
Annan, meanwhile, urged the United States and its allies to show restraint -- "even in the face of deliberate and provocative terrorist attacks" -- in the campaign to defeat the armed resistance. He said that "the use of lethal force" should be "proportionate and discriminating. In this case, special care needs to be taken to avoid inflicting casualties on innocent Iraqi civilians."
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U.N. Asks Court's Opinion on Israeli Wall
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-World-Court-Israel-Palestinians.html
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- The International Court of Justice has received a request from the U.N. General Assembly to consider the legal implications of the wall Israel is building to separate it from the Palestinian territories, the court said Wednesday.
A letter from Secretary General Kofi Annan asks the U.N.'s highest legal authority, also known as the world court, to urgently issue an opinion on any ``legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being built by Israel'' to separate it from Palestinians. It incorporates some occupied territory, including in and around East Jerusalem.
It asks the court to consider relevant international law, the Geneva Conventions, U.N. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions in weighing the matter, said a court statement.
The General Assembly approved a resolution Monday seeking outside legal advice. The court's advisory opinions are not legally binding.
The United States and Israel voted against the General Assembly decision to seek the court opinion, but Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon later said his country would cooperate with the court.
The case is the highest profile one to reach the judiciary since it issued a ruling on the legality of nuclear weapons more than seven years ago.
Under normal procedures, a panel of 15 judges would consider jurisdiction before a lengthy period of gathering information in written statements and oral arguments. The court said it would issue a list of states and relevant organizations from which it will seek information.
The International Court of Justice was established in 1946 to resolve disputes among nations. It has issued 22 advisory opinions, most in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Iraqi Governing Council Sets Up Its Own Court for War Crimes
December 10, 2003
By SUSAN SACHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10TRIB.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 9 - With the painful discoveries of suspected mass graves this spring still in mind, Iraq's transitional Governing Council voted Tuesday to create its own tribunal to judge Saddam Hussein's aides and functionaries on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The Governing Council members, including many who say they lost family members to Mr. Hussein's campaigns of expulsions, mass executions and political torture, said they wanted all trials to be public so the world and their Arab neighbors could understand the extent of their suffering.
"It will be a noble experiment," said Adnan Pachachi, the elder statesman of the 25-member body, which was appointed by the American-led occupation authority now controlling Iraq. "It shows we want to apply the rule of law and not let the desire for revenge take over."
The vote on the tribunal was taken in secret, as all council decisions have been, but Mr. Pachachi and other members confirmed that a proposed law setting up the court was approved without any dissent.
No copy of the law was made available to the public. But its drafters said the law would create an entire new judicial apparatus, headed by five Iraqi judges and including investigative and prosecutorial sections. Defendants would have the right to legal representation and a right to appeal, council members said.
Several human rights groups, which said they were not given the chance to see the law in advance, said an all-Iraqi tribunal would reflect the Bush administration's aversion to international courts and United Nations involvement.
Most other big war crimes trials of the past decade, whether concerning Bosnia, Sierra Leone or Rwanda, have included a formal role for United Nations agencies and judges with experience in war crimes trials.
"It is up to us," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a governing council member. "But we are of course restrained by international standards, especially European human rights standards."
In addition to the international human rights crimes - genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity - the Iraqi tribunal could rely on capital crimes in Iraqi law that include wasting the country's resources, misuse of judicial powers and aggression against other nations.
Getting the special court up and running could take months, if not years, Iraqi and American occupation officials said. Some of the financing could come from Iraq, which will depend mainly on oil revenues for its future budgets. The United States Congress has also approved a grant of about $75 million for organizing the tribunal and supporting its cases.
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Rights Court Run by Iraqis Is Approved By Council
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A51049-2003Dec9?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Dec. 9 -- Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council approved on Tuesday the creation of a special court run by Iraqis to try members of former president Saddam Hussein's government on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The tribunal, scheduled to be announced on Wednesday, will have broad powers of arrest and the right to prosecute anyone -- from Hussein to prison hangmen -- accused of involvement in the mass killings, forced expulsions and widespread torture that occurred during the 35 years that Hussein's Baath Party ruled the country.
Unlike the special courts established to prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, which operate under the aegis of the United Nations and involve international jurists specializing in human rights law, this tribunal will be staffed with Iraqi prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys. That arrangement, although blessed by the U.S. government, has alarmed international human rights organizations, which contend Iraq's legal system is too corrupt and inexperienced to handle complex cases.
In a last-minute concession to the rights groups, council officials said, the U.S. occupation authority asked council members to include a provision giving the council the right to appoint international judges if needed. The council's legal committee agreed to the amendment shortly before the full 25-member council voted on the law, the officials said.
"It's a very important change, but it will still be an Iraqi-run process," an Iraqi official involved in drafting the law said.
The tribunal will be the first attempt to bring to justice scores of members of Hussein's government, military and intelligence services for crimes committed between July 17, 1968, when the Baath Party came to power, and May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq. Council members said they would ask U.S. forces to hand over hundreds of former officials in American custody -- including 38 captured senior officials from the Pentagon's list of 55 wanted Iraqis -- as soon as the tribunal sets up a detention center.
A senior U.S. official in Washington said the Bush administration intended to deliver Iraqi suspects to the Iraqi courts for trial, although U.S. authorities may retain physical control over some to prevent escape attempts. Iraqis who "clearly need to be held accountable . . . will be turned over," the official said. "The plan is to defer to the Iraqis, but to work with them to ensure that it is a strong and credible process."
Iraqi officials here also said scores of former government officials who are now free could be charged. "There will be many arrests," said Salim Chalabi, an American-educated lawyer who has been a key architect of the tribunal.
The first trials could begin by summer, starting with the most prominent officials in custody, members said. They said they hope to try 400 cases within four years.
"This is a major step toward starting the process of accountability and reconciliation in a damaged society," said Chalabi, a nephew of Iraqi political leader Ahmed Chalabi.
With Hussein still on the run and his two oldest sons dead, officials said the first to be tried likely will be Ali Hassan Majeed, who ordered chemical attacks on ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq during the 1980s, and Hussein's once-powerful private secretary, Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti.
Defendants could face the death penalty if convicted.
Iraqi political leaders have been reluctant to involve the United Nations and international organizations out of fear the tribunal would be moved out of the country or dominated by foreigners, depriving Iraqis of the long-sought opportunity to judge their former dictator and his henchmen.
The Bush administration, which has been involved in drafting the tribunal law, wanted the U.S.-appointed Governing Council to oversee the trials.
The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, has given the council special authority to establish the tribunal, meaning he will not have to sign the law for it to take effect. U.S. and Iraqi officials said Bremer and his aides have nevertheless reviewed the law and voiced support for it.
"Nobody has any doubt over the capacity of the Iraqis to run this process themselves," an official with the occupation authority said.
Council members and others involved in drafting the law insisted Iraqis were capable of convening a tribunal that meets international standards of fairness. "We have judges and prosecutors and courts," said council member Mahmoud Othman. "Iraqis should deal with the crimes of Iraqis. We can handle it."
Another member, Dara Noureddine, a retired judge who was imprisoned for issuing a ruling counter to Hussein's wishes, said most Iraqi judges and lawyers were not members of the Baath Party or facilitators of Hussein's police state. "Saddam set up special courts to do his dirty work," he said. "We have many judges and lawyers who did not participate in that system who can do this job professionally."
Judges for the tribunal will be nominated by an independent judicial council and approved by the Governing Council, council members said. Prosecutors, investigators and public defenders will be appointed by the Governing Council, the members said.
International legal experts will be asked to serve as advisers to the judges, lawyers and investigators, the members said. "They will have a monitoring role to ensure that the Iraqi judges comply with international standards of due process," Chalabi said.
But international experts were unconvinced. They noted that the United Nations and the U.S. Justice Department both issued reports in recent months calling into question the competence and impartiality of Iraq's judicial system.
A team of U.N. specialists concluded in August that Iraq had "a degraded justice system" that "is not capable of rendering fair and effective justice for violations of international humanitarian law and other serious criminal offenses involving the prior regime."
Although human rights groups welcomed reports of the concession on international judges, they called the move insufficient.
"Given the profoundly dysfunctional state of the Iraqi judicial system, we need a much more robust international involvement," said Paul van Zyl, director of country programs for the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York.
Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at Human Rights Watch in New York, said he feared the Iraqi tribunals could "degenerate into political show trials."
International experts and even some Iraqi officials have expressed concern for the safety of judges, lawyers and witnesses in light of continuing resistance attacks. In recent weeks, Hussein loyalists have assassinated more than a dozen Iraqis deemed to be collaborating with occupation forces.
"Security will be a very big issue," Othman said. "We have to realize that there are people who will do everything they can to block these trials."
An Iraqi official involved in the process said participants in trials likely would be guarded and witnesses could be relocated for their safety. "We will take extraordinary precautions," the official said. To address deficiencies in legal skills, the U.S. government has started a series of workshops in Baghdad to train Iraqi judges and lawyers. "We're going to make sure they're ready," a U.S. official involved in the process said.
The tribunal will have hundreds of investigators, many of them foreigners, who will sort through reams of documents seized from Baath Party offices and dig through the more than 250 mass graves that have been identified across the country.
The investigators also will accept information from relatives of people who were killed.
To be brought before the special court, suspects would have to be charged with at least one of four categories of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or an assortment of specific offenses under Iraqi law, including the misappropriation of government funds and the invasion of another Arab nation.
There will be 10 trial chambers, each with a five-judge panel. A nine-judge appellate court will handle appeals.
Some rights groups have questioned the legality of establishing a tribunal while Iraq is under U.S. occupation, raising the possibility that not just the defendants, but many ordinary Iraqis, will reject the proceedings as illegitimate. But organizers of the court scoffed at that suggestion.
"The real legitimacy lies in the mass graves," Chalabi said. "Except for those who committed the crimes, I don't think there will a single person in Iraq who will object to this."
On Monday, the council again became a 25-member panel when it named Salama Khufaji, a dentist and professor at Baghdad University, to replace Akila Hashimi, who was mortally wounded in an attack Sept. 20. Like Hashimi, Khufaji is a Shiite Muslim. She is from Karbala.
Staff writer Peter Slevin in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ex-Senator Kerrey Is Named to Federal 9/11 Commission
December 10, 2003
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/politics/10PANE.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, was appointed on Tuesday to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a panel he will join with six months left in its inquiry.
Mr. Kerrey, who was a vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was in Congress and who is president of the New School University in Manhattan, will replace Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia.
Mr. Cleland, the most outspoken of the commission's 10 members in criticizing the Bush administration and the government's intelligence and law enforcement failures before the 9/attacks, had previously announced that he would resign from the panel as soon as the Senate confirmed his nomination to the Export-Import Bank. The Senate confirmed him on Tuesday on a voice vote.
The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, chose Mr. Kerrey as Mr. Cleland's replacement, and he said in a statement:
"I can think of no individual better suited to look into these issues and aggressively pursue the facts wherever they may lead than Bob Kerrey. This is the most important commission Congress has created in my time in public office. The families of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all Americans deserve to know the answers to the many pressing questions surrounding the events of that terrible day."
--------
Kerrey Replacing Member of 9/11 Panel
Former Senator Taking Seat as Group Decides Whether to Extend Deadline
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50947-2003Dec9.html
Former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, who served as the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, was named yesterday as the newest member of the independent panel investigating the government's performance before and during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Kerrey, an influential figure in intelligence circles who has also been a strong supporter of CIA Director George J. Tenet, takes over the seat on the bipartisan panel vacated by former Georgia senator Max Cleland (D), whose nomination to the Export-Import Bank board was confirmed yesterday. Commission rules do not allow Cleland to serve on both panels.
Kerrey's appointment comes at a crucial time for the 10-member commission, which is in the midst of a debate over whether it should seek an extension to its statutory May 27 deadline. The panel has been slowed by fights with the Bush administration and New York over access to information, and its hearings so far have focused on broad policy issues.
Kerrey, president of New School University in New York, was not available for comment, a spokesman said. The appointment was announced by Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).
Several commission members praised Kerrey's appointment yesterday, saying that his extensive background in intelligence issues will allow him to quickly get up to speed.
"The commission will profit enormously from the depth and breadth of experience Senator Kerrey brings with him to its deliberations," Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican former New Jersey governor, said in a statement.
The appointment also earned cautious support from the Family Steering Committee, a prominent group of terrorism victims' relatives that has been closely monitoring the commission's work. But the group cautioned that its support is "based on a favorable outcome after the standard vetting for any potential conflicts of interest."
Kerrey told the group last week that he will resign as a member of a CIA science advisory panel, one committee member said. Several commission members have recused themselves from specific issues because of potential conflicts of interest, and the relatives group has criticized ties between Bush administration officials and the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow.
-------- courts
Justices Hear New Arguments About Meaning of Miranda
December 10, 2003
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/national/10SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 - Three years after the Supreme Court reaffirmed its landmark Miranda decision as having "announced a constitutional rule," it was apparent during arguments at the court in two cases on Tuesday that the practical meaning of Miranda and the continued utility of its famous warnings for criminal suspects remain very much in question.
At issue was what use prosecutors may make of evidence obtained after an initial failure by the police to read suspects their Miranda rights before the start of questioning. Each case reflected a common scenario that defense lawyers say will become much more common if the court finds the evidence admissible.
In one case, the result of a federal prosecution in Colorado, the evidence was physical: an illegal gun, the location of which was disclosed to a federal agent by a man who had just been placed under arrest.
When the agent started reciting the Miranda warnings, the suspect, Samuel F. Patane, interrupted by saying that he already knew his rights. In answer to the agent's question, Mr. Patane then said the gun was on a shelf in the bedroom. The United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled that not only could that statement not be introduced, but that the gun itself, as the "fruit" of a Miranda violation, must be kept out of court as well.
In the second case, resulting from a state murder prosecution in Missouri, the police pursued an intentional strategy of questioning a suspect without Miranda warnings, obtaining incriminating admissions before resuming the interrogation after a 20-minute delay. This time, the suspect, Patrice Seibert, was fully advised of her rights, signed a formal waiver form, and incriminated herself again.
The initial statement was clearly inadmissible. The question for the Supreme Court on Tuesday was whether the second statement, following the warnings, should be seen as the product of a fully informed suspect's free will, admissible in court. The Missouri Supreme Court said no, ruling that to admit the second statement in this circumstance would be to encourage deliberate evasions of the Miranda rules.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 1985 case from Oregon that an intervening warning could isolate the initial failure and make a second statement admissible. In that case, however, the initial failure to give the warnings was inadvertent. A central issue in the new case is whether it mattered that the police had deliberately omitted the warnings.
It made no difference, an assistant solicitor general, Irving L. Gornstein, argued for the federal government, which is supporting Missouri's appeal, Missouri v. Seibert, No. 02-1371. "That the initial failure was intentional adds nothing to the psychological force that operates on the suspect, and makes the subsequent warnings no less effective," he said.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer objected. "But what it does do is provide a tremendous incentive for the police to run around Miranda," he said.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed, adding, "Miranda, whatever it has become, has all over it `inform at once.' Now it can be `don't inform until, until you've gotten enough.' "
Arguing for the state, Karen K. Mitchell, Missouri's chief deputy attorney general, said the officers' intention in not providing the warnings in the first instance was irrelevant to the admissibility of the second statement. Only two questions mattered for that purpose, she said: whether the suspect made a "knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver" of the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present, and whether the statement was in fact voluntary.
Justice David H. Souter responded that he doubted that the two statements "can really be separated as a matter of simple psychology." He said it was more likely that the second statement reflected not a genuine waiver of rights, but a "throwing up of hands" on the premise that it was too late to take back the earlier self-incrimination. "That's the basic implausibility in your case," Justice Souter told Ms. Mitchell.
But if the government lawyers received skeptical questions from the court's liberal wing, conservative justices were at least as hard on Amy M. Bartholow, an assistant public defender who was urging the court to uphold the Missouri Supreme Court's decision. "I guarantee you that if the court says this practice is O.K., it will become embedded in police procedure," Ms. Bartholow said.
Suppose a second incriminating statement was indeed more likely after the police have obtained an initial statement, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said to Ms. Bartholow. Then he asked "So what, if it's not coerced?"
Along with Justice Kennedy, Justices Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist observed at several points throughout the two arguments that there was a significant difference between failing to give Miranda warnings and coercing an admission from an unwilling suspect. The former violated the Miranda rule but only the latter actually violated the Fifth Amendment's right against compelled self-incrimination, they said.
This line of discussion raised profound and provocative questions about what the court thought it was doing three years ago when, in Dickerson v. United States, it declared in a 7-to-2 opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist that Miranda v. Arizona had "announced a constitutional rule" that could not be overturned by Congress.
Regarded as somewhat opaque when it was issued, the Dickerson opinion has become more elusive with time, as shown Tuesday by an exchange between the chief justice and Jill M. Wichlens, an assistant federal public defender from Denver who argued in the Colorado case against the admissibility of the gun. When Ms. Wichlens referred to the Miranda warnings as "constitutionally required," Chief Justice Rehnquist interrupted her. "The warnings are required in order to make a statement admissible," he said, adding, "It's a conditional thing."
The solicitor general's office, which argued three years ago that Miranda should be preserved, has embraced a carefully confined view of how the procedural protection offered by the Miranda decision relates to the Fifth Amendment. Miranda "provides an extra layer of protection to avoid a violation of the Fifth Amendment right," Michael R. Dreeben, a deputy solicitor general arguing the government's appeal in the Colorado gun case, told the court.
Responding at one point to Mr. Dreeben's assertion of a significant difference between a "compelled" statement and an "unwarned" one, Justice Kennedy said, "You're back into metaphysics."
Mr. Dreeben cheerfully agreed. "It is a little metaphysical," he said.
Under the government's theory of the case, United States v. Patane, No. 02-1183, a piece of physical evidence is "outside the core concern" of the Miranda decision even if derived from a violation of the Miranda rules and from a statement that itself is inadmissible.
Justice Souter objected to Mr. Dreeben, "But there isn't any functional difference in a case like this between admitting the statement and admitting the gun." For the defendant, the protection of Miranda "disappears," he said.
Justice Ginsburg asked: "Are you saying that the police chief can say, `don't worry about his statement, we want the goods?' "
"That is my position," Mr. Dreeben said, adding, "There is a terrible cost to the truth-seeking function of a criminal trial to suppress reliable physical evidence" simply because the statement leading to its discovery was "unwarned."
Justice Souter replied: "The state knows how to avoid paying those costs. It gives the warning."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Prosecutors Say It's Unclear Papers Chaplain Carried Were Classified
December 10, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/national/10YEE.html
FORT BENNING, Ga., Dec. 9 - The criminal proceedings against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, fell into confusion on Tuesday and stalled as the military prosecutors asked for extra time to determine whether documents that were found in Captain Yee's luggage when he was leaving the base were, in fact, classified.
The hearing was postponed until Jan. 19 to give the prosecutors time to review the documents that set off a major investigation into whether Captain Yee was a spy, a contention from which the government has since emphatically distanced itself.
The military's case against Captain Yee ostensibly began when customs officials found documents they believed were suspicious and possibly containing classified materials in his backpack on Sept. 10 when he arrived from Guantánamo at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla. Officials initially thought Captain Yee might have been part of an elaborate plan to infiltrate the Caribbean base, where some 660 prisoners from the Afghan war are being held.
Officials placed Captain Yee in solitary confinement for nearly three months in a naval brig while they completed their investigation into possible espionage. Maj. Scott Sikes, one of Captain Yee's defense lawyers, said on Tuesday that military prosecutors once told him that they might seek the death penalty in the case.
But when the investigation was completed last month and Captain Yee was released, the military did not bring any serious espionage case. Instead, he was charged with two counts of mishandling classified data, a reference to the materials found in his luggage, as well as four new charges with no apparent connection to security issues. Those included adultery and keeping pornography on his government computer, issues that prosecutors said came to their attention in the espionage investigation.
After repeated complaints from defense lawyers that they could not proceed on the issue of mishandling classified information if it remained unclear whether the documents were classified, the government acquiesced on Tuesday. Lt. Col. Mike Mulligan, one of the prosecutors, said the government had decided to conduct a thorough classification review of the documents.
Eugene R. Fidell, Captain Yee's civilian defense lawyer, called it disgraceful that his client had been kept in the brig for 76 days for possessing materials that the government still had not determined were classified. Mr. Fidell also said the military should be embarrassed to have tried to proceed with a criminal hearing on the charges without the determination.
The postponement of the hearing may create another problem for the prosecution. Mr. Fidell said that under military law charges were supposed to be brought within 120 days of the Sept. 10 arrest. The government has suggested that various factors have extended the time frame.
Major Sikes said he hoped the military would decide to drop the case. He said he believed that the military was pressing ahead as part of an unwise effort to save face over its initial miscalculation.
The case, he noted, "started out with allegations of being a spy."
"There has since been a steady decline in the seriousness of the allegations," Major Sikes said.
Major Sikes, a former military prosecutor, said, "This is the most incredible military proceeding this military counsel has ever seen."
In addition to the complaints about how much information the defense was receiving, Mr. Fidell apparently became embroiled in a feud with the presiding judge, Col. Dan Trimble, and refused to meet with him privately in his office. Mr. Fidell said that at a Tuesday morning meeting Colonel Trimble accused him of grandstanding and raising too many objections.
Mr. Fidell said he objected to Colonel Trimble's efforts to deal with the case behind closed doors and then told reporters that he felt the proceeding "should not be dealt with as a friendly and cozy agreement between us lawyers."
When Colonel Trimble approached Mr. Fidell in the hallway later and asked to meet with him privately, Mr. Fidell refused.
Colonel Trimble declined to comment.
--------
Army Chaplain's Hearing Delayed
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50943-2003Dec9.html
FORT BENNING, Ga., Dec. 9 -- A preliminary hearing for a Muslim chaplain accused of mishandling classified information from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been postponed for a month. The delay, announced Tuesday, will allow the Army to review documents that defense attorneys seek to have released.
Attorneys for Army Capt. James Yee say they need to see the documents the Army confiscated three months ago from Yee's backpack as he returned from Guantanamo, where he worked with suspected terrorists, most captured in Afghanistan.
Although reports said Yee was being investigated as part of an espionage probe at Guantanamo, he was never charged with spying. Instead, the Army is prosecuting him on lesser charges, including mishandling classified information -- notes found by Customs officials when they searched him Sept. 10 at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla.
He is also charged with disobeying an order, making a false statement, adultery and storing pornography on his government computer.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Report Cites 10 States' Mercury Pollution
Environmental Advocacy Group Uses EPA Data to Pinpoint 'Hot Spots'
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 10, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50755-2003Dec9.html
Ten states, including Maryland, have pockets of airborne mercury pollution that pose serious public health risks, especially to pregnant women and their fetuses, according to a new study by an environmental advocacy group.
The report by Environmental Defense, based on six-month-old computer modeling data from the Environmental Protection Agency, showed that the vast majority of mercury pollution in these "hot spots" came from nearby coal-fired power plants and other facilities. The finding runs counter to assertions by the utility industry that mercury pollution is globally ubiquitous -- literally carried around the world by the wind -- and cannot be adequately regulated by federal standards.
The Electric Power Research Institute, an industry group, estimates that on average 70 percent of mercury deposits come from global sources. But in nine of the 10 states with the worst mercury concentrations, power plants or other facilities within those states contributed 50 to 80 percent of the mercury, according to the Environmental Defense study. The EPA did not dispute the report's findings but said it is pursuing its own methods to reduce mercury emissions.
The annual mercury concentrations ranged from a low of 65 grams of mercury per square kilometer in Pennsylvania and Tennessee to 125 to 127 grams per square kilometer in Indiana and Michigan. Maryland registered 95 grams per square kilometer. Other states with mercury problems are Florida, Illinois, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas, the report said. By comparison, relatively safe states with few local sources of mercury pollution registered mercury deposits of 10 to 15 grams per square kilometer.
While mercury pollution from medical and municipal waste incinerators has all but disappeared since federal and state authorities imposed tough regulations in the early 1990s, coal-fired power plants remain unregulated and account for about 40 percent of U.S. mercury emissions, the largest single source. Power plants generate about 48 tons of mercury pollution a year, roughly the same as a decade ago.
"Reducing power plant pollution is critical to reducing local mercury deposition and avoiding the dangerous contamination of fish, wildlife and people," the Environmental Defense report concluded. "EPA should issue strong mercury standards for power plants that reduce mercury pollution from 48 tons today to about 5 tons, or a 90 percent reduction."
Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a utility industry advocacy group, said, "We disagree with the study's conclusion that the public is at great risk from mercury from coal-fired power plants." He said other studies "suggest that hot spots are not a major health concern," adding that other factors may be at play in causing health problems. "The basic message is: It all depends on how you factor your assumptions."
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that, like lead, threatens the brains and nervous systems of fetuses and young children. Exposure from eating contaminated fish can lead to a number of neurological problems, including learning and attention disabilities and mental retardation. Forty-three states have issued advisories to limit consumption of mercury-laden fish.
The new report may fuel a controversy over the Bush administration's plan for regulating mercury emissions. Until recently, the EPA appeared on track to require individual power plants to reduce mercury emissions and other toxic pollutants by as much as 90 percent within three to four years by using the "maximum achievable control technology."
But the White House and new EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt revealed last week that they favor an alternative approach. It would place mercury under a less stringent category of the Clean Air Act, where it could be regulated along with sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and other pollutants under a "cap and trade" program.
That approach would set an overall industry target of reducing emissions by 70 percent by 2018. Power plants with serious pollution problems could buy "credits" from cleaner-operating companies in order to help meet the industry-wide goal. A similar approach was used in a successful program begun in 1990 to combat acid rain under the Clean Air Act.
Administration officials say the new approach would achieve greater pollution reductions than was likely to occur under the previous plan, which they considered complicated and certain to draw industry resistance.
"The EPA is mandating, for the first time, a 70 percent cut in mercury emissions from power plants," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said yesterday. "We will go from zero regulation to a mandatory 70 percent cut. This will force steep emission cuts and reduce the likelihood of hot spots from occurring. Should hot spots occur, states would have flexibility to take additional measures."
Critics say the move's net effect is to require substantially smaller reductions in mercury emissions than otherwise could be achieved and add nearly a decade to the time it would take the industry to implement mercury-reduction technology.
-------- genetics
U.N. Delays Debate on Cloning of Human Beings for One Year
December 10, 2003
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/10CLON.html
UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 9 - The General Assembly on Tuesday ducked for a year a polarizing debate over human cloning that has set the Bush administration against some allies like Britain and much of the world's scientific community.
All 191 United Nations members agree on a treaty to prohibit cloning human beings, but they are divided over whether to extend such a ban to stem cell and other research known as therapeutic cloning.
Opponents say total prohibition would block research on cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, spinal cord injuries and other conditions. The White House says that enough stem cells from human embryos exist for research and that cloning an embryo for any reason is unethical.
The United States lost a struggle last month to obtain an all-out ban when a compromise passed the General Assembly's legal committee by one vote. In recent weeks the United States revived its bid, working with Costa Rica, but the total ban resolution never reached a vote.
Scientific groups flooded the United Nations headquarters with petitions and messages of alarm. The issue had been expected to come up for a new vote on Tuesday, but Costa Rica did not press for one, and the matter was rescheduled for next year.
Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for the American ambassador, John D. Negroponte, said the United States was happy to go along with the one-year consensus but would not alter its stance. "We will continue to work for a total ban," he said.
The American position drew the ire of Britain's deputy ambassador, Adam Thomson, who told the Assembly, "It is clear there is no consensus in respect to therapeutic cloning research, but by ignoring this fact and pressing for action to ban all cloning, supporters of the Costa Rican resolution have effectively destroyed the possibility of action on the important area on which we are all agreed - a ban on reproductive cloning."
-------- health
U.S. Considers Importing Influenza Vaccine
December 10, 2003
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/health/10FLU.html
The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday that they were exploring ways to import influenza vaccine from Europe and redistribute supplies to meet any shortages in this country.
"We have a gap between what we wish we had and what we have," Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the centers in Atlanta, said.
Dr. Gerberding added that health officials were "just doing the best we can to try to get vaccine to the people who need it the most."
A shortage seems to exist in some regions while supplies appear adequate in others, she said in a telephone news conference. She did not specify the areas.
Still, the director acknowledged that there was no way that the 185 million Americans deemed eligible to receive flu shots would receive them. Drug companies made 83 million doses for this season, a number based on demand in past years.
Dr. Gerberding added that government rationing of the remaining stocks was not an option, because most vaccine is in the hands of practicing physicians, who dispense it according to patient need and demand. Last week, the two leading American makers of flu vaccine said they had shipped all their supplies and could not make any more for this season because of the complexity and time needed to produce it.
A spokesman for Dr. Gerberding, Tom Skinner, said that later this week the C.D.C. expected to receive information from surveys to gain a more complete picture of stocks.
Flu vaccines in this country are made entirely by private companies, and in the past producers have had to discard tens of millions of doses when most of the people eligible to receive it did not heed advice from doctors and health officials to be immunized.
"For the last five years, we have thrown a lot of flu vaccine away," Dr. Gerberding said.
Last year, she said, the two companies that manufacture vaccine for this country, Aventis Pasteur and Chiron, made 95 million doses but discarded 12 million because of low demand. So they reduced production to 83 million for this season.
Even if the government can import vaccine from Europe, the amount is likely to be relatively small. Dr. Gerberding said the government was exploring the possibility of securing a half-million doses of vaccine from the British unit of Chiron. That vaccine is licensed but not approved for use in the United States, Dr. Gerberding said, and her agency is working with the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether it can be used in time.
"The trick here," she said, "is what we can do as a federal agency to assure the manufacturers will make more doses than we need on average."
Dr. Gerberding said the health and human services secretary, Tommy G. Thompson, had asked for recommendations to work on the problem. One option is for the government to pay manufacturers to increase production in the future.
Dr. Gerberding was cautious in assessing the state of flu activity.
"It has not reached what we call the epidemic threshold yet in terms of deaths from influenzalike illness," she said. "But we wouldn't be surprised to see that happen, given the pattern that's emerging right now."
The flu season began early and has not peaked, she said, adding, "We will expect more cases."
In Denver, Dr. Tom Langston, a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Children's Hospital, said the number of patients with influenza or parents concerned that their children might have it had remained steady after an abrupt start.
"Basically, four weeks ago, kind of overnight, our numbers went up," Dr. Langston said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Doctors in the hospital's emergency room are treating 70 to 100 additional patients each day compared with usual, Dr. Langston said.
"It's the flu," he said, "and we see it every winter. Why it's worse this year, I don't know. Why did Colorado have more West Nile cases this summer? I don't know."
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control reported that influenza was widespread in 13 states, mostly in the West: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
Only the District of Columbia and Massachusetts have not reported significant activity as of their last report, but activity may have increased since then, Dr. Gerberding said.
Health officials here and in Europe had earlier reported that a new Fujian strain of flu virus was causing a vast majority of cases of the respiratory illness. Also, Dr. Gerberding has said early laboratory tests show that the current vaccine offers some protection against Fujian flu.
But protection in humans is another issue, and that has to be measured by determining what percentage of individuals vaccinated come down with influenza. Even the best vaccine is not 100 percent effective. Infectious disease experts and health officials debate the degree of protection that the vaccine will afford. Many say it will be adequate; others contend that it will be weak.
Dr. Gerberding said it would take several weeks before officials learned from studies how well this season's vaccine was protecting against the Fujian strain.
Meanwhile, she prescribed "common sense" measures to protect against the spread of flu, advising parents to keep children with fever, sneezing, coughing and aching out of school and adults with similar signs and symptoms to stay home from work.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Iranian Activist Accepts Nobel Prize
December 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nobel-Peace-Prize.html
OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Iranian democracy activist Shirin Ebadi received the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize on Wednesday, saying it would inspire Iranians and women around the Muslim world to seek their rights and denouncing leaders who use Islam as a pretext for dictatorship.
Ebadi, the first Iranian and Muslim woman to win the Peace Prize, appeared at the award ceremony without the headscarf that Iran requires women to wear in public, in what many viewed as a silent expression of her battle for freedom.
An audience of hundreds, including members of the Norwegian royal family, rose to give the laureate a standing ovation after she was given the coveted Nobel gold medal and diploma.
The award ``inspires me and millions of Iranians and nationals of Islamic states with the hope that our efforts, endeavors and struggles toward the realization of human rights and the establishment of democracy ... enjoy the support, backing and solidarity of international civil society,'' Ebadi said a speech after receiving the $1.4 million award.
``Undoubtedly, my selection will be an inspiration to the masses of women striving to realize their rights, not only in Iran but throughout the region,'' she said, speaking in Farsi.
Ebadi also criticized the United States for using the war on terror as a pretext for violating human rights, pointing to the detention of hundreds of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without access to lawyers.
The 56-year-old lawyer, author and activist, Iran's first female judge, was named the 2003 Nobel peace laureate for her work in fighting for democracy and the rights of women and children. In 2000, she was jailed for three weeks on charges of slandering government officials and banned from working as a lawyer after riling her nation's theocratic rulers.
Since winning the Nobel, Iranian reformers have looked to Ebadi to rally opposition to unelected hard-liners who oppose any change to the conservative Islamic system of running the country. Hard-liners have denounced her as a ``Western mercenary'' and she recently was given police bodyguards after receiving numerous death threats.
Last week, about 60 female hard-liners prevented Ebadi from making a speech at a women's university in Tehran.
Ahead of the ceremony outside Oslo City Hall, thousands of children sang for the laureate, with snow surrounding the building.
Ebadi, wearing a light-colored skirt and blouse, spoke during a solemn one-hour ceremony before an audience that included members of Ebadi's own family and Academy Award winning actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The ceremony also featured music performed live by an Iranian-Kurd folk music group.
``If the 21st Century wishes to free itself from the cycle of violence, acts of terror and war ... there is no other way except by understanding and putting into practice every human right for all mankind regardless of race, gender, faith, nationality or social status,'' she said, according to an English translation of her speech.
The other 10 Nobel winners, including six Americans, were to receive the awards for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics in Stockholm, Sweden. J.M. Coetzee, 63, was to receive the literature prize, the second South African to pick up the award after Nadine Gordimer in 1991.
In her acceptance speech, Ebadi said despotism was incompatible with Iranian and Islamic traditions.
``Some Muslims, under the pretext that democracy and human rights are not compatible with Islamic teachings and the traditional structure of Islamic societies, have justified despotic governments and continue to do so,'' Ebadi said.
She said the plight of women in Islamic states and the lack of freedom and democracy is caused by ``the patriarchal and male dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam.''
Ebadi also took the United States to task for its human rights record.
She warned that threats to human rights also come from countries who have used the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as pretexts for limiting freedoms.
``Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms ... have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism,'' she said. She also criticized the world's failure to enforce U.S. resolutions calling for an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901, were created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his will and are always presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896.
On the Net:
Nobel Peace Prize: http://www.nobel.no
----
Iranian Accepts Nobel Peace Prize, and Criticizes the West
By CRAIG S. SMITH
December 10, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/international/middleeast/10CND-NOBE.html
SLO, Dec. 10 - Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, accepted the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize here today, declaring that the award would inspire women across the Muslim world to fight for equality in oppressive, patriarchal societies.
But Ms. Ebadi, who has represented political prisoners and the victims of political violence in Iran, avoided sharp criticism of the Islamic government there and delivered her most pointed rebuke instead to the United States for what she called human rights abuses carried out in the name of the war on terrorism.
Many Iranian exiles have complained that by awarding the prize to a woman working within the legal system in Iran, the Nobel Foundation is supporting political Islam over a secular alternative in the country. Indeed, the Iranian government has taken the opportunity of Ms. Ebadi's prize to showcase recent reforms and put the best possible light on the position held by women there.
Following the award ceremony, Iran's vice president for the environment, Massoumeh Ebtekar, appeared on CNN to congratulate Ms. Ebadi and extol the advances of women in Iran. Ms. Ebtekar is better known to many people in the West as the official interpreter and spokeswoman for the militants who took American hostages in 1979 at the American Embassy in Tehran.
Ms. Ebadi is the first Muslim woman to win the prize, which has been awarded annually for 102 years. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the winners, made it clear that this year's award was meant to send the message that Islam is not necessarily incompatible with democracy and human rights.
"We felt it important to relate to human rights in the Muslim world, but wanted to avoid demonizing Islam," the committee's executive director, Geir Lundestad, said.
But Ms. Ebadi has come under attack by many Iranian opposition figures abroad who see her as an apologist for political Islam. The chant of protesters has followed her around the few Oslo blocks where the Nobel festivities take place.
"If you live under an Islamic regime in a region where political Islam is terrorizing women and you defend Islam, then you are defending political Islam," said Azar Majedi, founder and chairperson of the London-based Organization of Women's Liberation in Iran, who helped organize the protests in Oslo. "You cannot stop this kind of regime with these kind of niceties."
In her acceptance speech, Ms. Ebadi offered oblique criticism of Iran's conservative Islamic government, saying that "some Muslims, under the pretext that democracy and human rights are not compatible with Islamic teachings and the traditional structure of Islamic societies, have justified despotic governments."
But she delivered a much sharper rebuke to the United States, declaring "some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of Sept. 11 and the war on international terrorism as a pretext."
"Regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms, special bodies and extraordinary courts, which make fair adjudication difficult and at times impossible, have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of terrorism," she said, making a specific reference to the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of people suspected of being Al Qaeda members have been held for nearly two years.
She warned the governments of the United States and other Western nations that have "prescribed war and military intervention for this region" against meddling in Iran's affairs.
"If you consider international human rights laws, including a nation's right to determine its own destiny to be universal, and if you believe in the priority and superiority of parliamentary democracy over other political systems, then you cannot think only of your own security and comfort, selfishly and contemptuously," Ms. Ebadi said.
Ms. Ebadi also questioned why United Nations Security Council resolutions concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories have not be put into effect while those on Iraq have led to "attack, military assault, economic sanctions and, ultimately, military occupation."
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