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NUCLEAR
Kazakhstan hailed for giving up nukes
Areva, Siemens sign deal to build nuclear reactor in Finland
Finnish nuclear plant to boost growth, break trend
Iran to Open Nuclear Facilities to U.N.
Iran Signs Protocol on Snap UN Nuclear Inspections
Iran Signs Pact Allowing Inspection of Its Nuclear Sites
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
Chief of Arms Hunt in Iraq May Be Leaving His Post
Head of U.S. Team Searching for Iraq Arms May Leave
CIA mulls plans on news top US arms inspector may quit Iraq
Iraqi Scientists Going on U.S. Payroll
Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms
Japan reviewing arms export ban to join US missile defense system
North Korea Resolute on Nuclear Program
British Man Faces 'Dirty Bomb' Charge in U.S.
The additional protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
No new nukes to U.S. arsenal, Nunn urges
2 Times Reporters to Testify in Scientist's Case Against U.S.
Nev. Lawyers Outline Nuke Dump Strategy
Hanford's first plutonium facility being dismantled
MILITARY
Serbs May Help Patrol Afghanistan, but Qualms Abound
A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable
European Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Market Growing Rapidly
Halliburton Unit Denies Gouging KBR
Pentagon Boosts High-Tech Tagging
Europeans Seek More U.S. Defense Work
Saddam shown videos of mass graves
U.S. Soldier Killed in Ambush in Iraq
Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border
Israel Awaits Latest Word From Sharon on Next Step
Israel prepares for mass move if road map fails
Iraq Deployment Shows the East German Syndrome
Iraq Crowds AIDS, Hunger Out of Spotlight - Annan
Wounded Troops Denied Benefits?
White House Web Scrubbing Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Federal Court Rebukes Bush on Detainees
Courts Slam Anti - Terror Legal Strategy
Courts Deal Blow to Bush on Treatment of Terror Suspects
U.S. to Seek Stay of Court Ruling on Padilla
Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons
Appeals Court Orders Release of American Held as Combatant
Australian at Guantanamo in 'Legal and Moral Black Hole,' Lawyer Says
10 Years For Man Who Aided Jihad Probe
U.S. Intensifies Its Alert on Saudi Arabia
New Warning About Threat of Terrorism Is Issued in Saudi Arabia
OTHER
Appeals court OKs medicinal pot
AIDS Is Cutting African Life Span to 30-Year Low, Report Says
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
Kazakhstan hailed for giving up nukes
December 18, 2003
By Delphine Soulas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031217-091953-2561r.htm
U.S. officials praised Kazakhstan this week for the example it set eight years ago by giving up the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal and called for other countries to follow its example.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar and former Sen. Sam Nunn, the champions of U.S. legislation that helped Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics to give up nuclear materials, were among those at the ceremony marking the Central Asian nation's 12th anniversary of independence on Tuesday.
"Our experience of nonproliferation and disarmament must be ... applied to other countries," said the Kazakh minister of energy and mineral resources, Vladimir Shkolnik, at a symposium co-sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a privately financed group aiming to reduce the threat from weapons of mass destruction.
"Iran and other nations could learn from Kazakhstan that a nation can grow, modernize, make progress and gain stature not in spite of renouncing nuclear weapons, but because of it," said Mr. Nunn.
Kazakh Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev pointed out that Kazakhstan was the first country ever to shut down a nuclear-test site and renounce a nuclear arsenal - the world's fourth-largest at the time.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Kazakhstan inherited 104 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 1,040 nuclear warheads, 40 strategic bombers and the Semipalatinsk nuclear-test site, where the Soviet Union conducted more than 400 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989.
Through the $100 million committed to Kazakhstan by the U.S. government's Cooperative Threat Reduction program, all nuclear weapons were removed from Kazakhstan by May 1995. Kazakhstan also destroyed the nuclear-testing infrastructure of Semipalatinsk by July 2000.
Mr. Nunn, Georgia Democrat, and Mr. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were the primary forces behind the enactment of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in 1994.
"With help from the Nunn-Lugar program, Kazakhstan has systematically banished the legacy of weapons of mass destruction inherited from the Soviet Union," President Bush said in a statement read at the symposium.
-------- europe
Areva, Siemens sign deal to build nuclear reactor in Finland
PARIS (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218115227.p0c54pkb.html
Finnish electricity provider TVO has signed a contract with a consortium grouping French nuclear energy group Areva and German engineering giant Siemens to build a reactor in Finland, Areva announced Thursday.
Ae European Pressurized Water Reactor is to be built at the Olkiluoto site in Finland, said French state-owned Areva, the world's largest nuclear group.
TVO put the value of the deal at three billion euros (3.7 billion dollars).
----
Finnish nuclear plant to boost growth, break trend
By Ott Ummelas
18 Dec 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17486713.htm
HELSINKI, Dec 18 (Reuters) - By the end of 2003, Finland will finalise details for an investment that will break ground in more ways than one.
Private power generation firm Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) plans by that time to pick the main contractor to build the country's fifth nuclear reactor. TVO says a bid from France's Framatome and Germany's Siemens currently has the inside track.
TVO expects the 3.2-billion-euro ($3.95 billion) project at existing nuclear facilities in the west coast town of Olkiluoto to provide more than 3,000 construction jobs during four years and help create at least as many in the services sector.
"The gross domestic product (GDP) of Finland should be some 1.5 percent higher in 2010 than without the nuclear plant, mainly from the investment impact," said Hannu Kaseva, an economist with Finnish think-tank ETLA.
The investment, to be largely funded through debt, will be the largest of its kind in Finland. It comes at a time when the country's centre-left government is trying to maintain the welfare state while also cutting taxes to keep big firms, like top global phone maker Nokia, from moving abroad.
The 1,600-megawatt pressurised water reactor, due to come online in 2009, will also help offset volatile energy prices in a region dependent on climate-sensitive hydropower, TVO says.
And it will help Finland cap greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels as stipulated under the Kyoto deal.
"When we filed the application last time to the state in 1993, we did not have the Kyoto protocol," said TVO official Anneli Nikula. "If we want to keep the Kyoto target...nuclear power is the best option."
But the decision stands in stark contrast to a Western Europe moving away from nuclear power, with no new plants built in the last decade and the memories of Ukraine's 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster never lurking too far below the surface.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
Germany, Belgium and neighbouring Sweden have announced a withdrawal from atomic energy, with Britain and France lukewarm on the idea but keeping their options open on how to replace their ageing reactors.
Environmentalists say Finland should focus on renewable energy resources, with the decision downplaying safety issues and sending the wrong message abroad. The project also doesn't take account of the recent surge in global terror, they add.
"It can be a strong and dangerous signal to other countries that this is a good way of solving climate issues while it in fact is solving one environmental problem with another," said campaigner Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace.
Eight Greenpeace activists were arrested this month after they slipped into TVO's head office and handcuffed themselves to furniture. Others climbed the building to hang banners from the roof calling to "stop the nuclear madness".
"Finns are like the guinea pigs," Kosonen said, referring to Framatome's European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) which is slated to be used. EPR was once planned as a replacement for ageing reactors in France and Germany but has not been built anywhere.
But Finnish nuclear safety authority STUK, which has the right to reject the application in its review next year, says all the competing reactor designs could fulfil its requirements with some adjustments.
And the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States are being taken into account.
"The possibility of a large plane hitting (the reactor) is one of the main issues," said Petteri Tiippana, head of STUK's project unit.
"The plant has to be able to cope with a large airliner crash without immediate radioactive releases into the environment."
NUCLEAR COMEBACK?
Even when the reactor is up and running, industry estimates that Finland will still need more than twice the new plant's power capacity by 2015 to meet the growing energy demand as old plants using fossil fuel are gradually decommissioned.
The harsh winter of 2002-2003 already tested all the available plants and even forced the authorities to advise Finns to turn down the heat in their sacred retreat -- the sauna.
Experts say this means the debate on whether to build more nuclear power is set to grow, but any decision on building a sixth reactor is unlikely to be taken during this decade.
"There is an obvious need for more capacity at some stage, but there are factors like how much we can expect from renewable energy sources," says Ulla Sirkeinen, head of the energy policy unit at Finland's industry and employers' lobby TT.
"The other is what will emissions (quota) trading bring with it? These things need to be followed up before there is any need to make the decisions."
-------- iran
Iran to Open Nuclear Facilities to U.N.
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran signed an accord Thursday that gives U.N. experts full access to its nuclear facilities, yielding to international pressure to end two decades of secrecy and prove it has not tried to build atomic weapons.
But while Iran called the agreement ``historic,'' the United States played down its importance of the signing, saying it was ``a useful step in the right direction,'' but would require monitoring to ensure Tehran does not break promises.
Washington, which has accused Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons in secret, said it would take several years before the world gains confidence that Iran is being truthful about its atomic program. Iran insists its program is peaceful and geared only toward producing electricity.
``My country has taken a great and important step towards revealing its attitude of transparency and its full commitment to international confidence-building,'' said Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian representative to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
``I ardently hope that the new stage is set and that my country shall no more be subject to unfair and politically motivated accusations and allegations,'' he said, after he and the IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei signed the accord.
The agreement, tacked on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, requires Iran to submit to intrusive, surprise U.N. inspections of its nuclear complexes and research facilities. The treaty, which Iran has endorsed, forbids it from developing atomic weapons.
ElBaradei called the signing ``an important building block toward establishing confidence that Iran's program is exclusively for peaceful purposes.''
While he called on Tehran to ratify the agreement quickly, he also praised the government for beginning in October to open up suspect sites that were previously off-limits and let agency inspectors conduct unannounced checks -- effectively acting as if the accord is already in force.
ElBaradei said inspections so far have not proved or disproved Iran's claims that it has not tried to develop nuclear weapons.
But if subsequent inspections dispel suspicions about Iran's activities, the U.N. nuclear agency will have broken ``a vicious cycle which has been going on for over 20 years,'' he said.
Kenneth Brill, the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, called Thursday's signing ``a useful step in the right direction,'' but said only aggressive inspections would erase doubts sown by Iran's ``nearly two decades of deception.''
Iran is still seeking new weapons, a senior Bush administration official said Thursday in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official told The Associated Press that the United States would be watching closely to see if Tehran complies with the inspection accord.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea, which Washington also suspects of developing weapons of mass destruction.
The European Union welcomed the new agreement, saying ``it will help in establishing the international community's confidence in Iran's assurance about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program.''
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said his country also was pleased with the agreement but added that ``much remains to be done,'' urging Iran to ratify it ``as soon as possible.''
Although Iran repeatedly had said it would sign the accord, its failure for weeks to follow through had led to speculation that it might be stalling.
The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors censured Iran in November for its past secrecy in a resolution that warned Tehran to stay in line with international efforts to make sure the country has no nuclear weapons ambitions.
Although the resolution did not threaten to send the matter to the U.N. Security Council -- a tougher approach that Washington had sought -- it warned Tehran that the IAEA would consider further action if ``serious Iranian failures'' arise.
Under international pressure, Iran also has agreed to suspend its enrichment of uranium, which it says had been confined to non-weapons levels anyway.
On the Net:
IAEA, http://www.iaea.org
----
Iran Signs Protocol on Snap UN Nuclear Inspections
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-nuclear.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran signed an agreement on Thursday allowing the U.N. nuclear watchdog to conduct snap inspections across its territory, in a bid to persuade the world it is not secretly developing atomic weapons.
The signature to the Additional Protocol to the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comes nearly 18 months after an exiled Iranian opposition group sparked a crisis by saying Tehran was hiding several large nuclear facilities. The allegations proved to be true.
Iran's outgoing ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Akbar Salehi, said Tehran wanted to ensure every aspect of its nuclear program was open to scrutiny.
``We will not leave any stone unturned,'' he told reporters.
Salehi and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei signed the document at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.
``The protocol is a tool to build confidence and to provide assurances,'' ElBaradei said, adding that he hoped Iran's parliament would ratify it as soon as possible.
The United States has labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' and says it is using its atomic energy program as a smokescreen to develop nuclear arms. Tehran denies this.
The U.S. ambassador to the IAEA called the signature a ``step in the right direction'' but said it would take years before the world could be sure Iran was meeting its obligations. Another Western diplomat called the move ``long overdue.''
The protocol sparked heated debate in Iran earlier this year, with hard-liners saying the short-notice inspections it permits were tantamount to allowing spies into the country.
But, under mounting international pressure, Iran said in October it would sign up for the tougher inspection regime, suspend uranium enrichment and provide full details of nuclear activities dating back to the 1980s.
Unlike the IAEA's U.N. Security Council mandate to conduct weapons inspections in pre-war Iraq, the protocol does not allow unannounced ``anywhere and any time'' inspections in Iran.
But it does empower the agency to demand much more information about sensitive nuclear activities and to inspect all declared and undeclared nuclear sites with as little as two hours' notice.
18-YEAR COVER-UP
The IAEA criticized Tehran last month for an 18-year cover-up of potentially arms-related nuclear research, warning the Iranians any further breaches could see them taken to the Security Council for possible sanctions.
``Iran's signature today of the Additional Protocol is a useful step in the right direction,'' U.S. ambassador Kenneth Brill said, adding that it was ``only a first step'' and now had to be ratified and enter into force.
``Given Iran's nearly two decades of deception, rigorous verification of the Protocol's implementation by IAEA inspectors over a period of several years will be critical if the international community is to begin to gain confidence in the consistency of Iran's actions with its international obligations,'' Brill said.
The protocol will give the IAEA much broader inspection powers than it has under Iran's NPT Safeguards Agreement. But one analyst said it would not stop Iran developing the capacity to manufacture nuclear arms if it wanted to.
``Even with the Additional Protocol, the IAEA is going to need member states to provide intelligence,'' Gary Samore of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told Reuters. ``If governments have information that Iran has not really come clean, then now is the time to give it to the IAEA.''
----
Iran Signs Pact Allowing Inspection of Its Nuclear Sites
December 18, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAN.html
Iran signed a protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty today that allows the International Atomic Energy Agency broader rights of access to sites in the country, a move intended to help establish confidence that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran's former representative at the agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, and Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, signed the protocol in Vienna. The agency is a United Nations organization that promotes atomic energy and monitors its use in military applications.
"The protocol for us is an important tool for our work towards trying to establish confidence that the nuclear program is really peaceful," the agency's chief spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky said. "The next step is that Iran would ratify the agreement."
Mr. Gwozdecky said by telephone from Rome that the signing of the agreement today demonstrated "an act of good faith or good will on the part of the Iranian government" and was an "indication of their legal commitment" that must be followed by ratification of the agreement, which will make it a full legal obligation.
"It, formally speaking, doesn't enter into force until ratification has taken place," he said. "However, Iran has told us that they will act as if the protocol was ratified, and therefore they have allowed our inspectors to go and inspect places as they want to.
"Right now we are getting the benefits of the protocol without it being legally enforced," Mr. Gwozdecky said. "They have indicated to us that they would continue to do so until ratification legally brings that into force."
Asked when the ratification might take place, he said that there was no deadline and that the process varied for each country, because legislation must be enacted to put the protocol into effect.
For example, new laws may be required to compel companies to cooperate or to criminalize activities in order to comply with the agreement, he said.
"Iran has stated that it is acting in accordance with the protocol's provisions, pending the protocol's formal entry into force," according to a statement posted on the International Atomic Energy Agency's Web site after the signing. "The additional protocol requires states to provide an expanded declaration of their nuclear activities and grants the agency broader rights of access to sites in the country."
Iran's vice president, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, told reporters on Wednesday that Iran would sign the agreement to demonstrate Iran's commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear power.
"Iran has decided to sign the protocol to prove that the Iranian nuclear program is for civilian purposes," said Mr. Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, in remarks carried by the Islamic Republic News Agency on Wednesday. "Signing the protocol will also end the propaganda campaign against the nuclear program."
On Oct. 21, Iran agreed under international pressure to sign the additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
During a visit by the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France, Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program and allow unfettered inspections but demanded technical cooperation for its peaceful nuclear program.
On Wednesday, Mr. Aghazadeh called on the three European nations to help Iran gain the release of nuclear equipment previously bought by Iran.
The news agency today carried a report quoting the nuclear agency's chairman, Antonio Núñez García-Saúco, as saying that the board expected Iran to immediately set the protocol into motion. He said that the board was still studying a report Iran handed over to the agency last month on its nuclear activities, but acknowledged that the country had suspended its uranium-enrichment program.
In response to Iran's demand on Wednesday that the agency facilitate the transfer of nuclear technology after the signing of the protocol, Mr. Garcia-Sauco said today that the transfer was a very long process.
"It has different phases with the additional protocol making up the first stage," Mr. Garcia-Sauco said, according to the news agency.
The International Atomic Energy Agency condemned Iran's 18-year nuclear program last month and said it had produced small amounts of plutonium, which is needed for making nuclear weapons. The agency, seeking to encourage recent Iranian openness, stopped short of urging action by the United Nations Security Council.
Russia, Iran's major nuclear partner, this week refused to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran unless it signed the protocol. Russia helped Iran build a nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr.
Christine Hauser reported from New York for this article, and Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.
Christine Hauser reported from New York for this article, and Nazila Fathi reported from Tehran.
-------- iraq / inspections
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
Remember 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'? For Bush, They Are a Nonissue
December 18, 2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - In the debate over the necessity for the war in Iraq, few issues have been more contentious than whether Saddam Hussein possessed arsenals of banned weapons, as the Bush administration repeatedly said, or instead was pursuing weapons programs that might one day constitute a threat.
On Tuesday, with Mr. Hussein in American custody and polls showing support for the White House's Iraq policy rebounding, Mr. Bush suggested that he no longer saw much distinction between the possibilities.
"So what's the difference?" he responded at one point as he was pressed on the topic during an interview by Diane Sawyer of ABC News.
To critics of the war, there is a big difference. They say that the administration's statements that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could use on the battlefield or turn over to terrorists added an urgency to the case for immediate military action that would have been lacking if Mr. Hussein were portrayed as just developing the banned weapons.
"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.
The overwhelming vote in Congress last year to authorize the use of force against Iraq would have been closer "but for the fact that the president had so explicitly said that there were weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat to citizens of the United States," Mr. Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.
As early as last spring, Mr. Bush suggested that the Iraqis might have dispersed their biological and chemical weapons so widely that they would be extremely difficult to find. And some weapons experts have suggested that Mr. Hussein may have destroyed banned weapons that he had in the early 1990's but left in place the capacity to produce more.
This week, at a news conference on Monday and in the ABC interview on Tuesday, Mr. Bush's answers to questions on the subject continued a gradual shift in the way he has addressed the topic, from the immediacy of the threat to an assertion that no matter what, the world is better off without Mr. Hussein in power.
Where once Mr. Bush and his top officials asserted unambiguously that Mr. Hussein had the weapons at the ready, their statements now are often far more couched, reflecting the fact that no weapons have been found - "yet," as Mr. Bush was quick to interject during the interview.
In the interview, Mr. Bush said removing Mr. Hussein from power was justified even without the recovery of any banned weapons. As he has since his own weapons inspector, David Kay, issued an interim report in October saying he had uncovered extensive evidence of weapons programs in Iraq but no actual weapons, Mr. Bush said the existence of such programs, by violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, provided ample grounds for the war.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," Mr. Bush continued, referring to Mr. Hussein. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9/11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with, and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Pressed to explain the president's remarks, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush was not backing away from his assertions about Mr. Hussein's possession of banned weapons.
"We continue to believe that he had weapons of mass destruction programs and weapons of mass destruction," Mr. McClellan said on Wednesday.
Mr. Bush has always been careful to have multiple reasons ready for his major policy proposals, and his administration has deployed them deftly to adapt to changing circumstances.
In trying to build public and international support for toppling Mr. Hussein, the administration cited, with different emphasis at different times, the banned weapons, links between the Iraqi leader and terrorist organizations, a desire to liberate the Iraqi people and a policy of bringing democracy to the Middle East.
When it came to describing the weapons program, Mr. Bush never hedged before the war. "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today - and we do - does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Mr. Bush asked during a speech in Cincinnati in October 2002.
In the weeks after the fall of Baghdad in April, the White House was equally explicit. "One of the reasons we went to war was because of their possession of weapons of mass destruction," Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, told reporters on May 7. "And nothing has changed on that front at all."
On Wednesday Mr. McClellan, when pressed, only restated the president's belief that weapons would eventually be found. Mr. Bush, despite being asked repeatedly about the issue in different ways by Ms. Sawyer, never did say it, except to note Mr. Hussein's past use of chemical weapons. He emphasized Mr. Hussein's capture instead.
"And if he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction?" Ms. Sawyer asked the president, according to a transcript provided by ABC.
"Diane, you can keep asking the question," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm telling you - I made the right decision for America because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait. But the fact that he is not there is, means America's a more secure country."
--------
Chief of Arms Hunt in Iraq May Be Leaving His Post
December 18, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Iraq-Weapons-Hunt.html
CAMP SLAYER, Iraq (AP) -- Weapons hunters are spending more time on base, intelligence experts have been reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency and the man leading a so-far unsuccessful search for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is thinking of stepping down.
A nine-month search for the weapons of mass destruction President Bush said he went to war to destroy has been conducted by a succession of U.S. teams that have all failed to find any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The lack of evidence has led critics to suggest the Bush administration either mishandled or exaggerated its knowledge of Iraq's alleged arsenal. Since the war, White House officials have at times claimed weapons were found, or that evidence of programs, rather than actual weapons, would be enough for them.
Still, nothing substantive has materialized and after an exhaustive search, the weapons hunt appears to have slowed.
``For a while this place was really active, but that's changed in the last month,'' said Charles McKay, a member of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency who has been involved in the search since May.
``Now we're lucky if there's a mission once a week around here,'' he said at Camp Slayer, the nickname weapons hunters have given to their base on the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein's former Baghdad palaces.
David Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, was named by the CIA in June to lead the search for weapons of mass destruction. His appointment, and the creation of his operation, the Iraq Survey Group, was supposed to be the key to finding the weapons Iraq long denied having.
Kay returned to the United States last week and on Thursday, a U.S. intelligence official in Washington said he was considering quitting his post. Kay did not return an e-mail message seeking comment and recently turned down a request for an interview.
During a visit Wednesday to Kay's headquarters at Camp Slayer, a senior military officer with the weapons hunt tried to offer assurances their work was continuing. ``We're still here,'' Roland Mulligan said.
U.S. intelligence officials in Washington said the search would continue. New leads could come from the interrogation of Saddam, who was captured Saturday.
The weapons hunt is staffed by more than 1,000 intelligence analysts, interrogators and translators who pore over documents, investigate suspect sites and conduct interviews with Iraqis.
The work hasn't been easy and there was recently a large staff turnover, those involved with the search said on condition of anonymity.
Some people went home and others were reassigned to work on the counterinsurgency the U.S. military is waging in Iraq, U.S. officers said.
Kay's teams have complained about everything from logistical and transportation problems to an inability to find and keep track of Iraqi scientists. One top Iraqi missile maker who was believed to have gone to Iran in May was actually working the entire time with British military officers in Iraq. Only recently was he questioned by team members, he said.
So far, Kay's teams have talked to hundreds of Iraqis. Some have been detained, but the overwhelming majority have been cleared. In many cases, they were rehired for their old jobs; others will be eligible for U.S. government-funded projects.
Currently, fewer than 10 former weapons scientists, with expertise in biological weapons or missiles, are in custody for suspected work or knowledge of proscribed programs. None have led inspectors to any weapons.
``It's probably time to call it quits,'' said Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, whose teams were given one-third of the time the United States has already spent looking for weapons.
``The U.S. and the U.K. are so wedded to the idea that the Iraqis were hiding things that they are not willing to explore the possibility that they're wrong,'' Blix said.
In October, Congress approved $600 million for the weapons hunt to continue. Kay predicted then that definitive conclusions would be reached within six to nine months -- by spring 2004.
``I just can't understand the figures, given how little they're finding,'' said David Albright, a former weapons inspector, noting the U.N. operation cost far less.
While money is clearly being used for testing equipment, data entry, facilities and transportation, it is also going to big-name U.S. contractors working at Camp Slayer.
Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton, has a large operation at Camp Slayer, running a fueling station, a new dining hall and portable lavatories.
The base, which was bombed out and looted after the war, was littered with broken glass, unexploded ordnance, and the remnants of Saddam's regime. There was little electricity or running water in June.
Today, it has a volleyball court, a barber shop, a country store, laundry and alterations services; it is stocked with sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks the weapons hunters use to get around.
Fluor Daniel, a subsidiary of the California-based Fortune 500 company Fluor, is putting in new windows at Camp Slayer, turning palace suites into office space and helping repair damage around the grounds. Other subcontractors include Egyptian and Jordanian engineers and construction workers.
Associated Press Writer John J. Lumpkin contributed to this report from Washington.
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Head of U.S. Team Searching for Iraq Arms May Leave
December 19, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-wmd.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a potential setback to the so far fruitless hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the head of the U.S. search team, David Kay, told administration officials he is considering leaving the job as early as next month, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Though Kay cited family obligations, officials described the former U.N. nuclear weapons inspector as frustrated -- no banned weapons have been found despite months of searching and some of Kay's staff have been diverted to helping combat Iraqi insurgents.
Kay and his team were sent to Iraq to locate the weapons that were cited by President Bush and his top advisers as the main justification for invading.
An announcement could come as early as next week, one official said.
Officials said Kay, who is directing the weapons search as an adviser to the CIA, could step down before his Iraq Survey Group issues its next interim report slated for February.
Kay met with CIA officials earlier this week and will hold a follow-up meeting, most likely next week, ``to discuss next steps,'' including his tenure, an official said. He may not return to Baghdad after the Christmas and New Year's holiday. ``That's yet to be determined,'' one official said.
Critics blamed the Bush administration for undercutting the search for weapons and warned that Kay's departure could further undermine the effort.
Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright, now head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said some of the investigators on Kay's team might say to themselves, ``Kay's not sticking around. Why should I?''
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the weapons hunt was an ``important priority'' for the administration whether Kay stays or goes. ``Regardless, the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues and they will complete that work,'' he said.
In an interview earlier this week with ABC News, Bush brushed aside questions about whether Iraq had possessed banned weapons -- as his administration asserted before the war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who was captured on Saturday -- or was merely pursuing weapons programs.
``So what's the difference?'' Bush responded.
HIGH HOPES
When he took the job in June, officials said, Kay had fully expected to quickly find evidence to back up the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi weapons.
But in a preliminary report in October, his team found no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons.
``When he (Kay) signed up, I don't think that he envisioned that it would take quite as much time and effort and that the security situation would be quite what it is,'' a U.S. official said.
``And there is some pressure back here on the home front,'' the U.S. official added, referring to Kay's family obligations.
Officials said Kay was also unhappy that some members of his team were shifted to the counter-insurgency front. ``So he doesn't have all of the assets he would like to have. Nobody does,'' the U.S. official said.
The Survey Group plans to issue its next interim report in February and its final report next fall.
----
CIA mulls plans on news top US arms inspector may quit Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218225856.9wl14km5.html
The CIA discussed "what comes next" after press reports that US team leader David Kay plans to leave the group searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a US official said Thursday.
The CIA had no comment on Thursday's Washington Post report that Kay planned to leave the Iraq Survey Group as early as February, before the group's work is finished.
"He's back here for the holidays and for discussions on what comes next," said a US official, who declined to elaborate.
The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group that Kay leads has failed so far to find any of the banned weapons that President George W. Bush cited as justification for war against Iraq.
Some survey group members have been redirected to intelligence work on the insurgency in Iraq.
The White House, meanwhile was silent Thursday on whether Kay would quit.
"I wouldn't presume to speak for him," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
"I would point out that the search is an important priority and the work of the Iraq Survey Group continues."
The Post said Kay, who reports to CIA director George Tenet, is planning to leave early for personal and family reasons and that the only remaining question was when.
It quoted a senior administration official as saying he planned to leave before the Iraq Survey Group submits its final report in late 2004 and possibly even before its next interim report, due in February.
Kay's preliminary report in October said the group found that Iraq had been working to acquire chemical and biological weapons before the war, had missile programs under development, but only a rudimentary nuclear program.
The US insistence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions served as the prime justification for the US-led invasion of the country in March.
In a televised interview Tuesday, Bush dismissed the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or only had plans to acquire them.
"So what's the difference?" he said in the interview with ABC television.
"If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger," the president said. "A gathering threat, after nine-11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with and it was done after 12 long years of the world saying the man's a danger."
Meanwhile, investigations by the House and Senate are looking into the intelligence community's pre-war assessments that Iraq possessed banned weapons.
Democrats have accused the administration of making selective use of the intelligence to make its case for war.
An internal review led by former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr last month expanded its inquiry to include the raw intelligence used to back up the intelligence community's assessments.
----
Iraqi Scientists Going on U.S. Payroll
December 18, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Scientists.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hundreds of Iraqi scientists and technicians who the Bush administration says worked on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs for Saddam Hussein will be paid by the United States for their role in postwar projects, partly to keep the Iraqis from selling their expertise elsewhere.
The two-year program will begin with a $2 million U.S. contribution, and the United States may provide as much as $20 million more later, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.
That would prevent the scientists from helping ``countries of concern or groups of concern,'' he said.
The Associated Press was the first to report in November that the Bush administration was working on a plan to keep Iraqi scientists occupied with peaceful research at home, including details of the proposal.
The program has some similarities to the United States' hiring German scientists who had worked in atomic and missile projects during World War II and paying Russian scientists to discourage them from offering their skills to potential American adversaries.
``We are giving people an opportunity to contribute to the future of Iraq,'' Boucher said.
While the United States is interested in prosecuting Iraqis who may have used weapons of mass destruction, it is not interested in pursuing people who may simply have been associated with the programs, the spokesman said.
``We are looking at scientists and technicians here, not politicians, not political people,'' Boucher said. ``If there are issues that arise with regard to individuals, those issues will be looked at.''
Before Saddam was deposed this year in a U.S.-led war, he had hundreds of scientists and technicians working on a wide range of weapons programs.
The new program was approved by postwar Iraqi officials, Boucher said. The first step is to establish a new office in Baghdad by February and start work on projects within about six months, he said.
--------
Kay Plans to Leave Search for Iraqi Arms
Members of Survey Group He Heads Being Diverted to Fight Against Insurgents
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9823-2003Dec17?language=printer
David Kay, the head of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has told administration officials he plans to leave before the Iraq Survey Group's work is completed and could depart before February, U.S. military and intelligence officials said.
The move comes as more of Kay's staff has been diverted from the weapons hunt to help search for Iraqi insurgents, and at a time when expectations remain low that any weaponry will be discovered.
Kay requested the change for personal and family reasons, officials said. When he accepted the job in June, they said, he expected to quickly find the expansive evidence that the administration had claimed as its primary reason for going to war. Rather, Kay's preliminary report in October said the group had so far discovered only that Iraq was working to acquire chemical and biological weapons, had missile programs under various stages of development and possessed only a rudimentary nuclear program.
Two officials confirmed that Kay is planning on leaving early, and said the question remaining is how soon. Kay, who is on holiday leave in the Washington area, could not be reached for comment.
"Kay is thinking of leaving before a final report and perhaps before the next interim report," which is due in February, a senior administration official said yesterday. The survey group is slated to submit its final report next fall. The official said there will be a meeting next week at CIA headquarters where "the next steps will be discussed."
U.S. government officials said Kay's departure will have little practical impact on the day-to-day work of 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group. More worrisome for the administration is that his departure may foster an impression -- incorrect in their view -- that the search is effectively over. His departure leaves the administration looking for a replacement at a time when it is dogged by questions about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.
In an interview Tuesday night with President Bush, ABC correspondent Diane Sawyer asked why the administration stated as a "hard fact" that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had such weapons when it appears now he only had the intent to acquire them.
"So what's the difference?" Bush responded. "The possibility that he could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger."
In recent weeks the U.S. search for weapons has been hampered by the insurgency in Iraq. The threat of attack has impeded the ISG's ability to move around easily. "You can't go where you want to go when you want to go," one senior administration official said.
The insurgency has forced the Pentagon to divert personnel from Kay's team to help commanders identify and question insurgents.
"They took away a lot of his folks, some critical people, the linguists and analysts," Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in an interview yesterday from Israel.
In mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed to a request by Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, to make more ISG resources available to the hunt for insurgents, according to a defense official who has seen the order Rumsfeld signed.
The insurgency "now has the same priority as WMD," said another U.S. government official, who added that members of the ISG had interrogated the men who helped identify Hussein's location, for example.
Three intelligence officials said Kay may not return to Iraq from holiday leave, but said he firmly believes the search for weapons should continue.
"Our hope and belief and desire is that he will be going back," said CIA deputy director John McLaughlin said in a recent interview. "If he isn't, it will have to be his call, and we will work with him to choose" a successor.
Charles A. Duelfer, former deputy director of the U.N. weapons inspectors in the early 1990s, said Kay "signed up for six months and I don't think he was keen on staying the [length of] time he was there."
Kay publicized his expectations on Iraq in January, in a Washington Post article, before he was appointed: "When it comes to the U.N. weapons inspection in Iraq, looking for a smoking gun is a fool's mission. That was true 11 years ago when I led the inspections there. It is no less true today. . . . That's because the answer is already clear: Iraq is in breach of U.N. demands that it dismantle its weapons of mass destruction."
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and who worked on Iraq inspections in the 1990s, said Kay went to Iraq "with preconceived notions that were so strong" that the weapons programs existed but were hidden. Albright, who recently was in Iraq talking with scientists, said it was important, however, that the ISG work be completed to make sure Iraqi weapons data or expertise is not overlooked "so that a terrorist group could in fact get help."
Harman said that Kay's departure would be "a big loss" because he has been "apolitical and thorough." But, she added, "I don't think it will set back the effort a lot; I'm not personally convinced there's anything there."
The ISG's staff continues to take soil samples, collect suspect equipment, interview Iraqi scientists and analyze hundreds of thousands of documents in a warehouse in Qatar. On Tuesday, for example, they interviewed a dozen Iraqi scientists in detention -- yet again. The interviews have not yielded information that has allowed U.S. authorities to pinpoint the location of weapons caches and related equipment.
The fact that no weapons have been found has become a sore point at the CIA, which is under scrutiny for its assessment by the House and Senate intelligence committees.
In a Nov. 20 memo to employees, CIA Director George J. Tenet defended the agency's analysis. "I continue to believe, as I have said all along, that the work of the intelligence community in assembling the Iraq WMD" National Intelligence Estimate "was solid and professionally done and that this will be borne out."
Responding to a USA Today article asserting that Tenet had ordered investigators to probe whether the agency missed telltale signs on WMD issues, Tenet said he had asked a former top CIA official, Richard J. Kerr, to review intelligence on Iraq and judge it next to what Kay ultimately finds.
The ordering of Kerr's review demonstrates open-mindedness and "confidence rather than implies any excessive concern about performance as the news story suggests," the Nov. 20 memo says.
-------- japan
Japan reviewing arms export ban to join US missile defense system
TOKYO (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218102043.qfbyjgqm.html
Japan said Thursday it was reviewing its self-imposed ban on arms exports to develop sophisticated missile defense systems with the United States.
The government is expected to lift the ban for parts that could be used by the United States to produce missile defense-related equipment, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Thursday.
Japan has been jointly researching with the United States development of missile defense systems since 1999 after North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998.
"There is a debate on whether it is acceptable that we cannot exchange the results of our (joint) research," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also told reporters: "Such a debate has been going on for a while and we will continue to study it."
Trade ministry officials said it was too early to contact domestic contractors, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which is charged with making Japan's satellite-launching H-2A rockets after April 2006.
"If they (domestic firms) are to produce parts, of course there needs to be some debate, but the discussion has not proceeded at all," ministry official Hiroshi Katagiri told AFP.
The export ban, in place since 1967, prevents Tokyo from exporting weapons to communist nations, those subject to UN-imposed arms embargoes and those involved in armed disputes.
The policy was widened to ban all military exports in 1978.
By the end of 2004, the government also plans to review the nation's basic defense framework adopted in 1976 and reviewed in 1995, as well as the current five-year defense program, the Yomiuri said.
Under the review, the government will change the focus of defense programmes from threats of Cold War-style foreign invasion to "new threats" such as terrorist attacks and ballistic missiles from other nations, it said.
These plans will be completed at a meeting of the Security Council of Japan and at a cabinet meeting Friday, the paper said.
Defense Agency officials said in August that they would seek 4.96 trillion yen (46 billion dollars) in defense spending for the year to March 2005, including 142.3 billion yen as part of a four-year plan to build up the ballistic missile defense system.
The system will comprise US-developed SM-3 missiles launched from Japan's high-tech Aegis guided missile destroyers and land-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) anti-missile systems.
-------- korea
North Korea Resolute on Nuclear Program
By SANG-HUN CHOE
Associated Press Writer
December 18, 2003
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031218/API/312180677
North Korea said Thursday it will never give up its nuclear weapons program unless Washington provides economic aid and security assurances.
Pyongyang's official newspaper Rodong Sinmun reiterated its demand that Washington agree to a "simultaneous package solution" to the nuclear dispute.
North Korea wants to trade its nuclear weapons for economic aid and security assurances. Washington wants North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons first, calling Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions violations of international agreements.
"The DPRK's stand to beef up its nuclear deterrent force will remain unchanged no matter what others may say, as long as the United States keeps pursuing a policy to threaten and stifle the DPRK ... while turning down its proposal for simultaneous package solution to the nuclear issue," Rodong said in a commentary.
DPRK is the acronym for North Korea's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia are trying to convene a new round of six-nation talks with North Korea, possibly early next year, to ease tensions over the nuclear crisis.
In the past week, North Korea's state-run media have trumpeted the country's hard-line demands.
Rodong's commentary, carried by the North's official news agency KCNA, said the country has watched U.S. strategies in Iraq and determined that it must "keep and steadily increase its nuclear deterrent force" against a pre-emptive U.S. nuclear attack.
"The U.S. used a huge amount of depleted uranium shells, a type of nuclear weapon, when attacking Iraq, a country with no strategic forces and with very weak military capacity in terms of latest weaponry," Rodong said. "It is self-evident that it will use nuclear weapons of higher performance when it invades the DPRK, a country with strong military power."
The Pentagon and many experts contend that depleted uranium, because of its low radioactivity, poses no risk to the health of soldiers handling munitions made from it, or to civilians living in areas where those shells were used.
On Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said there has been "meaningful progress" in trying to arrange another round of talks on resolving the crisis, but gave no possible timeline.
The first round of six-nation talks, held in Beijing in August, ended without much progress. Participants had hoped to meet again by the year's end, but backed off that goal, saying differences between North Korea and the United States still had to be worked out.
-------- terrorism
British Man Faces 'Dirty Bomb' Charge in U.S.
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-missiles.html
NEWARK, N.J. (Reuters) - A Briton held in the United States on charges of trying to sell missiles to shoot down airliners will face additional charges of plotting to procure a ``dirty bomb,'' prosecutors said on Thursday.
Hemant Lakhani, an Indian-born 68-year-old London arms dealer arrested in August in a FBI sting operation, was indicted with new allegations that he offered to procure anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers, radar systems and a dirty bomb, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie of Newark, New Jersey, said in a statement.
Dirty bomb is the term used by law enforcement officials to refer to an unconventional device designed to spread radioactive or chemical agents. Christie declined to give details about the bomb.
Lakhani's lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Lakhani was charged with one count of attempting to provide material support to terrorists, which carries a maximum 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The indictment contains other charges carrying possible prison terms of between two and 20 years.
Lakhani, who has been in jail since his Aug. 12 arrest at a hotel near Newark International Airport, was charged with trying to sell a shoulder-fired missile imported from Russia to an FBI informant. He will appear in court in the coming days, the prosecutor said.
``I feel more strongly today than I did in August that the arrest of Mr. Lakhani has made the country a safer place,'' Christie said at a news conference on Thursday.
``He was not just a businessman looking to make a buck. This was someone who believed that American citizens should be attacked and killed.''
New York jeweler Yehuda Abraham and Moinudden Ahmed Hameed were also charged in the case in August. Prosecutors described them as being financial middlemen who did not know transactions involved illegal weapons.
Christie said Lakhani has also been accused of having told his intended purchaser, with whom he was arranging the sale of 50 more missiles, that the weapons could be used most effectively if 10 to 15 commercial aircraft were shot down simultaneously across the United States.
In another unrelated dirty bomb case, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla has been held for 18 months by the government, which said he plotted with the militant Islamic group al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb in the United States.
The two cases were not linked, but the prosecutor announced the new charges on the same day an appeals court ruled that Padilla could no longer be held incommunicado by the government as an enemy combatant.
-------- treaties
The additional protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty
VIENNA (AFP)
Dec 18, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031218114923.ghpco7d2.html
The additional protocol to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty that Iran might sign on Thursday was established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1997 and is the world's main tool for curbing the spread of nuclear weapons.
Seventy-four states have already signed an additional protocol with the IAEA although only 35 of them have ratified the legally-binding agreement.
Its main aim is to allow the United Nations' nuclear watchdog to verify a country's declared nuclear activities and ensure the latter is not hiding material it could use to build a nuclear bomb.
The protocol obliges countries to provide the IAEA with much more precise information about their nuclear activities than is required under the NPT. And it authorises the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities.
Under the agreement, states commit to giving IAEA inspectors information about, and short-notice access to, all parts of their nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mines, fuel production and enrichment plants, and nuclear waste sites. They must also offer access to any other location where nuclear material is or may be present.
The IAEA may give as little as two hours' notice before it visits a site to check for evidence of undeclared nuclear material or resolve inconsistencies in the information the government has provided about its nuclear activities.
Once at a site the IAEA is authorised to inspect it, examine records, take samples, use radiation detection equipment and impose seals or other tamper-indicating devices. The agency may also make use of established satellite surveillance systems.
States which sign the protocol have one month, from the time of the request, to issue nuclear inspectors with multiple entry visas valid for at least one year.
The additional protocol cannot work miracles but it does improve the IAEA's chances of discovering the true extent of a country's nuclear activities.
"There's never a 100-percent guarantee when it comes to verification but the additional protocol raises the level of security," an IAEA official told AFP recently.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
No new nukes to U.S. arsenal, Nunn urges
Ex-senator says move may hurt nation's security
By GEORGE EDMONSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
12/17/03
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/17turnernti.html
WASHINGTON -- Former Democratic U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn criticized the Bush administration Tuesday for exploring the possibility of developing new nuclear weapons.
Nunn, senator from Georgia from 1972 to 1997, said the recent move dims prospects for reducing the international threat of nuclear attacks.
"I think it's very damaging to America's security position because I think it sets back our effort and our moral persuasion effectiveness in trying to move the world away from nuclear weapons," he said. "So I think it's counterproductive to our own security interests."
Congress recently approved funding for research into smaller nuclear weapons and what are called "bunker-buster" bombs to attack deep underground facilities. Funding also was approved to improve the testing site in Nevada.
Nunn said averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction will require unprecedented cooperation: "We have to have that cooperation, not because cooperation will give us a warm, fuzzy feeling of community, but because every other method will fail," he said.
Any unilateral action "that is not absolutely necessary" works against further cooperation, he said, adding that even the massive military power of the United States is not sufficient to deal with the problems.
"And when we take actions in other arenas of the world that look like we don't need or want any help, I think it's counterproductive to what I consider to be our most important security problem," Nunn said. He added that he hoped the issue would be addressed by all candidates in the upcoming presidential campaign.
Nunn is co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization he founded with Ted Turner in 2001. He and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) helped establish a threat reduction program to help Russia and the former Soviet republics deal with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Nunn spoke at a symposium on Capitol Hill the NTI sponsored with Kazakhstan, which has been praised for dealing with nuclear weapons after it declared independence 12 years ago.
At that time, the country had 1,410 nuclear warheads and was the site of a nuclear test site as well as an anthrax production facility. All of the warheads have been removed from Kazakhstan. The nuclear test site has been shut down and the anthrax facility's capability has been eliminated.
"Iran and other nations could learn from Kazakhstan that a nation can grow, modernize, make progress and gain stature not in spite of renouncing nuclear weapons but because of it," Nunn said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
2 Times Reporters to Testify in Scientist's Case Against U.S.
December 18, 2003
By JACQUES STEINBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/national/18PAPE.html
Two reporters for The New York Times are scheduled to give depositions today in a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who was suspected of espionage in 1999.
In the suit, Dr. Lee asserts that his privacy rights were violated by leaks of personal information from his employment records to The Times and to other news organizations.
A federal judge in the District of Columbia has ordered the reporters to provide information about their sources - an order that they indicated in previous court filings that they might not obey, despite the potential prospect of jail time. That order, issued in October, represents more than the latest development in the case of Dr. Lee. It is also an example of what some First Amendment lawyers view as the recent undermining of longstanding protections of how reporters gather information.
In August, for example, Judge Richard A. Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago writing in another case, expressed skepticism about any special privilege for reporters. Courts that had extended the privilege to nonconfidential sources "may be skating on thin ice," Judge Posner said.
"We do not see why there needs to be special criteria merely because the possessor of the documents or other evidence sought is a journalist," Judge Posner wrote, in a decision that compelled a group of reporters to produce recordings of their interviews with a witness in an Irish terrorist case.
Last week, Judge Lynwood Smith of Federal District Court in Alabama ordered that a reporter for Sports Illustrated provide the court with the name of a confidential source for an article published in May about Mike Price, who was then the head football coach at the University of Alabama. The article included accusations of sexual indiscretions by Mr. Price in a Florida hotel. Mr. Price was later fired.
He is now suing both Time Inc., which owns Sports Illustrated, and the reporter, Don Yaeger, for libel.
In ordering the depositions of The Times journalists and others in the case of Dr. Lee, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of Federal District Court in the District of Columbia wrote that "the court has some doubt that a truly worthy First Amendment interest resides in protecting the identity of government personnel who disclose to the press information that the Privacy Act says they may not reveal."
The Times reporters ordered to provide depositions are Jeff Gerth and James Risen. In addition, Judge Jackson has ordered that three other reporters - Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times, Josef Hebert of The Associated Press and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN - cooperate with similar depositions in the coming weeks. Those who do not answer certain questions - specifically regarding "the identify of any officer" who "provided information to them directly about Wen Ho Lee" - could be found in contempt and sent to jail to compel disclosures.
Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy organization partly financed by The Times Company's charitable foundation and other media companies, said that Judge Jackson's order represented a particular threat to journalists in states that had not enacted so-called shield laws to protect journalists' sources and often their notes. Such laws have been adopted in recent years in more than 30 states.
Those laws, as well as similar protections extended by courts across the country, generally trace their roots to a 1972 Supreme Court case, Branzburg v. Hayes. That case, the last one in which the court ruled on the issue, has been interpreted as setting forth a series of tests for compelling a reporter's testimony, including whether the reporter's information goes "to the heart" of a particular case and cannot be obtained through other means.
"This particular case has the potential to be the first major `reporter's privilege' showdown in 30 years," Ms. Dalglish said.
George Freeman, assistant general counsel for The Times Company, said that what was at stake in the questioning of the reporters was a fundamental element of the journalistic process: the protection of people who supply information to reporters on the condition of anonymity.
Dr. Lee is seeking the reporters' testimony because in order to sue the government under the Privacy Act, he must identify which government agency provided the journalists with information from his records. Writing in 1999, Mr. Gerth and Mr. Risen described Dr. Lee as a suspect in the supposed transfer of information about American nuclear technology to China. In the articles, they wrote about aspects of his employment history and personal finances.
Dr. Lee was later indicted on 59 felony counts, but after nearly nine months in solitary confinement, no evidence of espionage emerged. He was released after pleading guilty to one felony count of mishandling nuclear weapons data.
A lawyer for Dr. Lee, Brian A. Sun, declined to comment.
-------- nevada
Nev. Lawyers Outline Nuke Dump Strategy
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nevada's legal team will tell a federal appeals court that the government is trying to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain even though it does not meet the original legal requirements for a dump, lawyers said Thursday.
The hearing Jan. 14 before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will cover six lawsuits that the state filed against the federal government between 2000 and 2002, and that have been consolidated.
For Nevada, which has failed in the political arena for over two decades to stop the dump, the courts might represent the state's best chance of keeping out 77,000 tons of the nation's most radioactive waste, lawyers said at a media briefing. The waste would be buried for 10,000 years at a desert site 90 miles from Las Vegas.
``I think that this is the first time that any court in this country is really going to look at the fundamental legal merits of this project,'' said Joe Egan, Nevada's lead lawyer in the Yucca case.
Egan and other lawyers outlined a series of arguments that accuse the government of learning, after it began studying Yucca Mountain, that the site could not satisfy Congress's original mandate of ``geological isolation.'' Instead studies demonstrated that the site would be at risk of dangerous seepage, they said.
Rather than abandon the site, the Energy Department changed the rules and declared it suitable, the lawyers said.
They accused the department of improperly evaluating the environmental effects of the project and said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham unlawfully recommended its approval to President Bush. They contend the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to comply with the law in developing licensing rules and standards for the project.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the department has followed the law and that a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain would be safe. He said Nevada's lawsuits ``are simply misguided.''
``In the end, if the science doesn't meet the standards, it's not going to be built. In the end, we believe the science will meet the standards,'' Davis said.
Congress and Bush approved sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain last year, but the department does not expect to open the site until at least 2010.
The department still must apply for a license from the NRC, which it plans to do a year from now.
-------- washington
Hanford's first plutonium facility being dismantled
By Shannon Dininny
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 18, 2003
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001795339_hanford19m.html
YAKIMA - For four decades, the Hanford nuclear reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal, including the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki in World War II.
Now, more than half a century later, workers at the south-central Washington site are tearing down a plutonium facility for the first time as they clean up a legacy of radioactive and hazardous waste.
"There are only a couple of places in the country, in the world, that deal with producing, let alone processing, plutonium," Keith Klein, manager of the federal Energy Department's Richland office, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
"These facilities are unique, and they pose some unique challenges in terms of taking them down."
Hanford has about 1,400 buildings that need to be deactivated and demolished as part of the effort to clean up the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Most of the buildings are industrial, about 400 are considered radioactive and another 200 are labeled as nuclear.
Nuclear sites are the most heavily contaminated and difficult to clean up. The Plutonium Concentration Facility falls into that category and is the first plutonium facility that Hanford workers are dismantling, Klein said.
The three-story, 3,500-square-foot building played a critical role in the production of plutonium at Hanford during the first decades of the Cold War.
Spent fuel rods from Hanford's nine nuclear reactors were dissolved into solution, which was then sent to this building for processing so the plutonium could be concentrated back to a solid metal form.
The building is highly contaminated, both due to the nature of the work and several incidents during its operation from 1956 to 1964, including a 1963 fire that spread significant amounts of radioactivity.
For that reason, a lot of planning and engineering goes into figuring out how to dismantle or demolish these structures, Klein said.
Cleanup at the site is estimated to cost between $50(billion and $60(billion and will be completed by 2035.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Serbs May Help Patrol Afghanistan, but Qualms Abound
December 18, 2003
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/europe/18SERB.html?pagewanted=all&position=
PRESEVO VALLEY, Serbia and Montenegro - A convoy of jeeps sped though an Albanian village in southern Serbia one recent day. Inside, troops with their faces hidden by camouflage masks sat with their guns at the ready.
The men were part of Serbia's gendarmerie, an elite paramilitary police force that routinely patrols this region in search what they call Albanian terrorists.
In 1999 similar Serbian forces were bombed by NATO warplanes as they rooted out ethnic Albanian rebels - and killed ethnic Albanian civilians - in the neighboring province of Kosovo. American officials now see these special forces as potential allies.
The governments of Serbia and Montenegro, the two republics that until early this year made up what was left of Yugoslavia, have offered a contingent of 700 troops and policemen to work alongside NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.
The offer, first made in July and explored in September at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., is in abeyance pending the outcome of parliamentary elections in Serbia on Dec. 28.
But Serbia's very readiness to send troops - and Washington's apparent willingness to consider accepting them - show how much the world has changed since the ethnic conflicts of the 1990's and the atrocities attributed to Serbs and their leader at the time, Slobodan Milosevic, dominated world headlines.
Now Serbia, which was isolated and impoverished by a decade of war and violence, wants to join NATO. The United States wants to foster democracy, although the old nationalisms still make the task difficult.
For instance, the United States Congress insists that Serbia hand over war crimes suspects to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague if it expects to receive further aid.
But Milos Vasic, a defense analyst and writer with the Serbian weekly Vreme, said that United States had put the issue of human rights to one side in its desire to see a broad coalition of troops serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
"The Americans want a token Serbian force," he said in an interview. "This is regarded as a completely separate issue from cooperation with The Hague."
Serbian nationalists and human rights groups alike have united in criticism, believing for different reasons that it is too soon for Serbian forces to serve with NATO soldiers.
Vojislav Kostunica, the former Yugoslav president whose Serbian Democratic Party is predicted to fare well in the coming elections, warned in a Montenegrin newspaper, Vijesti, "Our soldiers will come back in metal coffins, like the Americans."
Natasa Kandic, a lawyer and veteran human rights campaigner in Belgrade, is one of many liberals who say the security forces - blamed for thousands of civilian deaths during the Kosovo conflict - should not take part in any foreign mission until they have been properly reformed, and until senior commanders accused of war crimes have been tried.
"The Serbian police are not a formation who should go anywhere," Ms. Kandic said, adding that any checks were not sufficient. "How they are going to bring peace and human rights to another country, it is impossible to know," she said.
Serbia's current deputy interior minister and head of public security, Sreten Lukic, has been indicted by The Hague tribunal for his alleged role in the Kosovo conflict. He was the commander of the uniformed police in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. The current prime minister, Zoran Zivkovic, has refused to hand him over to the tribunal.
Whatever the politicians decide, the commander of the gendarmerie, Gen. Goran Radosavljevic, is preparing to supply at least 250 of the 700-member contingent, all of whom would be volunteers.
In an interview, he said senior officers were learning English and receiving human rights training. He maintained that his troops were well suited to work in Afghanistan.
"Our people have a lot of experience in war situations," said the general, who was a deputy commander of police operations during the war in Kosovo.
His 2,800-member brigade was formed in September 2001 and is recruited from units that have been accused of direct involvement in war crimes. It specializes in antiterrorism operations and is also trained in coping with natural disasters, using explosives and finding and disarming mines.
Some of its most recent recruits include 80 former members of the Red Berets, a paramilitary police unit that was disbanded earlier this year after some of them were implicated in the killing of the Serbian prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, in March.
A NATO official said the possibility of Serbian forces working in Afghanistan was a "viable idea" if those taking part were checked. Implication in war crimes would exclude service, he said.
Ms. Kandic, for instance, says General Radosavljevic is guilty of complicity in genocide in Kosovo. She said operations by the Serbian police to remove hundreds of bodies from mass graves and transport them to Serbia at the end of the war could not have taken place without his help.
General Radosavljevic denied that there was "any evidence" that he or any of his senior officers were responsible for war crimes. But he openly opposes cooperation with The Hague tribunal. In October he attended a protest organized by the police in support of Mr. Lukic.
The brigade's commander asserts that his force is now multiethnic, including Muslims, ethnic Hungarians, and even seven or eight ethnic Albanians. But new recruits who trained near the town of Kula, some 70 miles northwest of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, marched to the tune of Serbian nationalist songs alongside murals depicting battle scenes from Serbian history.
The gendarmerie already has contact with American troops serving with the NATO contingent that helps keep the peace in Kosovo, which is still formally a Serbian province, though one with an overwhelmingly Albanian population and a United Nations administration.
The Serbian units and foreign peacekeepers meet each month to discuss monitoring of the province's boundary - in 2000 and 2001, Kosovar Albanian insurgents fought Yugoslav troops here in the Presevo Valley in an attempt to unite three Albanian-populated towns in southern Serbia with Kosovo.
The rebellion was quashed in May 2001, and NATO officials praised the Serbian military for its comparative restraint in dealing with the uprising. The gendarmerie is now responsible for patrolling the region.
"I'm very happy with the results our unit has had in southern Serbia," said General Radosavljevic.
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A Young Afghan Dares to Mention the Unmentionable
December 18, 2003
By AMY WALDMAN and CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/asia/18AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 17 - Malalai Joya pushed her black head scarf forward to cover her hair fully, then opened her mouth.
Out poured a torrent of words, in a voice rising with emotion. Why, she asked the delegates assembled here on Wednesday to ratify a new constitution for Afghanistan, were her countrymen and women tolerating the presence of the "criminals" who had destroyed the country?
"They should be brought to national and international justice," she said. "If our people forgive them, history will not."
It took a moment for the 502 delegates to absorb the import of her words. When they did, the result was bedlam: shouts of "Death to Communism!" and a rush by some toward the stage, and toward the diminutive Ms. Joya as well.
All of 25, Ms. Joya, a social worker from Farah Province, in the southwest, had crossed several lines at once. She had spoken her mind as few Afghan women dare to do. More important, as many interpreted her words, she had spoken against the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who fought and humbled the Soviet Union. They are a sacrosanct constituency in this country, and a powerful political force in this assembly, a traditional meeting called a loya jirga.
Many Afghans, however, now call those commanders warlords, blaming them for the destruction of Kabul in a vicious civil war that began in 1992 after the fall of the Communist government and ended only when the Taliban conquered the country in 1996 and imposed their harsh brand of Islamic law.
But few dare say "warlord" aloud.
Ms. Joya's experience helps explain why. The assembly chairman, Sebaghatullah Mojeddidi, himself a former mujahedeen leader, called for security officers and tried to throw her out. He was persuaded not to, but he then asked her to apologize to the gathering. She refused. He finally accepted the apologies of others on her behalf.
"My sister, you did an astounding thing," Mr. Mojeddidi said. "You have upset everybody here."
At a news conference, he said: "In fact we wanted to take her out for the good of herself. Who can stand against mujahedeen to defend her? They've stood against big powers. "You know mujahedeen when they get angry at these things. They don't care about anyone."
Two hours after she spoke, an ashen-faced Ms. Joya was in the United Nations tent at the assembly, escorted by two women, members of the security force. She later returned to the assembly but was closely watched to ensure her safety. Amnesty International issued a press release saying that some people present when she spoke had been heard vowing to kill her.
After a similar assembly last year, a man who had complained about jihadis, the most religiously conservative mujahedeen, was so seriously threatened that he and his family won political asylum in the West.
By accident or intent, Ms. Joya had stepped directly on the fault line of a power struggle that has already emerged in the first few days of this gathering.
On one side are the country's American-backed interim president, Hamid Karzai, and his allies, who support a draft constitution that ensures a strong presidency, in part to check the power of the warlords.
On the other side are the jihadis. Many favor a parliamentary system that would limit the power of Mr. Karzai and give greater weight to Islam than the current draft does. They are suspicious of Western involvement in the country's political affairs.
While Mr. Karzai's faction, backed by the international community, may ultimately have the edge, his opponents have repeatedly showed their strength.
When, for example, the chairman could not restore order after Ms. Joya's speech, one of the men she was probably referring to - Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an imposing mujahedeen commander and Islamist scholar whom many accuse of human rights atrocities - had little trouble doing so.
He took the stage to quiet the crowd, then delivered a 15-minute lecture (most delegates, Ms. Joya included, get two or three minutes) implicitly accusing her of being a Communist. "When you are calling those heroes who fought for the freedom of the country criminals," he said, "it means you are a criminal yourself."
The previous day, Mr. Sayyaf and his allies had managed to gain control of most of the assembly committees, where the real discussions on the draft constitution will take place.
Under a plan devised by the constitutional commission and the United Nations, the 502 delegates will divide into 10 committees of 50 people each to allow for more manageable discussion. The real aim, however, is to prevent religious conservatives and those opposed to a strong presidency from steamrolling the debate by intimidation or sheer force of numbers, officials have admitted.
The jihadis had opposed the idea of committees on just those grounds, then suddenly agreed to the idea on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Sayyaf called for the committees to be carefully structured so that each included religious scholars, jihadis, lawyers and elders.
Later he won his way, a major concession by the constitutional commission, which had intended to use a computer-run random selection, one foreign official said.
At least six of the 10 committees have chosen jihadis as chairmen, including the former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Mr. Sayyaf. No women were chosen to lead any committees, though there are about 100 women serving as delegates.
The 10 committee chairmen will wield considerable influence because they will be part of the final reconciliation group that will prepare amendments to put to the vote of the full assembly.
The jihadis' control of the committees had upset moderate delegates, and may have provoked Ms. Joya's tirade on Wednesday. She referred to the chairmen in her speech.
In a brief interview on Monday, before she became a very public figure, Ms. Joya said she worked for a nongovernmental organization in Farah, helping at the main hospital and running literacy programs for women, and a nursery and an orphanage.
Her one goal, she said, was to "improve the women of Afghanistan." She complained that security in Farah Province, where factional commanders hold sway, often fighting amongst themselves, was so bad that it was impossible to provide health care outside the capital. And she had pointed out that she was the namesake of a legendary Pashtun woman, Malalai, who had fought the British in 1880.
Ms. Joya's comments fiercely divided the women at the assembly. Some called her brave. Others called her unprintable names for soiling the memory of the warriors who had spilled blood for her country.
Fatima Gailani, a member of the constitutional commission, called her rash. "I think she's very young," Ms. Gailani said.
She said she had met with Ms. Joya and explained to her that for the country to move forward with unity, women had to proceed carefully.
"Till when should we keep quiet?" Ms. Joya had responded.
The answer was easy, Ms. Gailani said: "Till we are strong, till the country is strong, till our democracy is strong, till women's situation in this country is strong. Then we can open our mouths."
But Safia Sidiqi, a deputy chairwoman of the assembly, defended Ms. Joya's right to speak freely. "If you are working for democracy here in this country, this is one way, this is one step," she said. "People should have freedom of expression."
-------- arms
European Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Market Growing Rapidly
London - Dec 18, 2003
SpaceDaily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-03zzl.html
The latest study from Frost & Sullivan reveals that due to recent military developments and the United States' use of UAVs the global market for unmanned aerial vehicles is expanding and accelerating the development of such specialized weapons in Europe.
Over the last two decades, the propensity for small-scale, low-intensity conflicts (LIC) has increased dramatically worldwide. As various armies participate in more expeditionary roles in overlapping geographic areas and use interoperable systems, seamless information sharing has become vital.
"UAVs play a key role in the run for battlespace information dominance and will be increasingly present in future conflicts," notes Shai Shammai, research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. He goes on to say, "Their strongest selling point is probably their endurance capability of quietly loitering over targets for over 24 hours."
Another strong appeal to the military sector is the ability of the technology to enable remote fighting, reducing the number of troops in the front line. With better viewing and launching angles than helicopters, modern UAVs are more accurate and cause less collateral damage.
In Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy will invest most heavily in UAVs. France, Germany and Israel already host some of the leading UAV manufacturers such as Elbit, IAI, Sagem SA, EADS and Dassault Aviation, and is gearing up for the next generation of UAVs.
The European aggregated military UAV budget is expected to reach around EUR 5.5 billion between 2003 and 2012.
"This is a clear indication of a market willing to rely on UAV solutions. Application-wise, the market is moving into tactical UAVs (TUAVs) and lethal UAVs (LUAVs), and possibly high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAVs and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs)," reports Shammai.
European manufacturers lag far behind their U.S. competitors and the largest gap lies within the HALE UAVs and UCAV segments. While the United States already has an operational HALE system, the Global Hawk, Europe is yet to develop any corresponding application. With respect to UCVAs, the United States invests heavily in these applications and is expected to have an operational application by the end of the decade. Europe is engaged in a couple of projects not yet in the same level of intensity.
With the realization that unmanned aircraft form the aerial weapons of the future, the United Kingdom might abandon its plans to acquire more Eurofighters and instead increase focus on developing UAV based capabilities.
There are high expectations from the commercial and civil markets for UAVs in Europe. In civil and commercial applications, UAVs are deemed capable of replacing manned aircraft as well as some ground and satellite applications.
In the commercial market, increasing potential client awareness of these novel applications and developing business models that eliminate initial high investments can drive up market revenues. The introduction of a pay per usage (PPU) model, for example, allows customers to pay only for flying hours instead of requiring a purchase of the system.
The commercial market is also application-led, where customers are more interested in cost-effective value additions than the technology itself. Hence, UAV manufacturers need to focus on comprehensive solutions with short investments cycles. Initially, the demand market is likely to be dominated by big companies such as oil majors that operate in remote non-urban environments and have potentially fast payback times.
In the civil markets, most UAV deployments are expected to be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) applications. The challenge for manufacturers would be to introduce downgraded, cheaper military applications. The growing focus on homeland security solutions is the main revenue driver as the European Union expands and new ISR needs emerge.
The demand for HALE UAVs for maritime surveillance is also expected to grow with Europe's need to monitor its coastline for security and environmental protection. Potential applications for UAVs include wildfire monitoring, illegal fishery monitoring and swifter oil spill discovery.
-------- business
Halliburton Unit Denies Gouging KBR
Says It Saved U.S. Money in Iraq Fuel Deal
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9734-2003Dec17?language=printer
The Halliburton Co. subsidiary fighting allegations that it charged too much to import fuel into Iraq said yesterday that it actually saved the U.S. government $164 million by not relying on a sole supply source.
In outlining the company's written rebuttal to Pentagon auditors, which it submitted yesterday, KBR chief executive Randy Harl said the Army Corps of Engineers pushed the company to buy the fuel from Kuwait, where it paid a single subcontractor $2.27 a gallon to import it into Iraq.
Harl said KBR balked at having only one fuel source and asked the Corps to allow the company to bring in fuel from Turkey as well. According to Army Corps documents, KBR paid $1.18 a gallon to import fuel from Turkey.
Defense auditors have accused KBR of overcharging $61 million by purchasing fuel from Kuwait instead of from Turkey.
"The real story here is that the original mission detailed by the Army Corps of Engineers only included buying fuel from Kuwait," Harl said during a conference call. "KBR initiated the idea to source fuel from Turkey and presented it to the Corps. Because of KBR's initiative, we actually saved the U.S. taxpayer approximately $164 million by having two sources of fuel for the Iraqi people."
Bob Faletti, spokesman for the Army Corps, said that the Corps "might have" directed KBR initially to buy only from Kuwait but that KBR needed to go to both places.
"Kuwait could not provide the quantity needed. Turkey could not provide the quantity needed. Kuwait was much closer to the download point when we started this. The main thing was the importance to get fuel to the Iraqi citizens who were very close to civil unrest, thus a potential danger to our troops and citizens in the city of Baghdad."
The Army Corps has said that its own audits found nothing improper.
Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said yesterday that KBR did not profit from the potential overcharge, adding that the problem may have stemmed from an antiquated accounting and cost-estimating system.
"From what I've seen so far . . . I have no basis whatsoever to see anything nefarious," Zakheim told reporters at a breakfast meeting, according to Bloomberg News.
The allegations of overcharging appear in the preliminary findings of a draft report by the Defense Contract Audit Agency. KBR had until yesterday to respond. The audit agency will prepare a formal report and send it to the Army Corps contracting office in Texas. It will be up to the Corps to take any action based on the report.
The draft audit also found that KBR may have tried to overcharge the government $67 million to operate U.S. military mess halls. KBR estimated that the project would cost $220 million but found a subcontractor that could do the work for $153 million.
KBR's Harl said yesterday that that potential overcharge is a "misunderstanding" because KBR never did the work or billed for it.
"Even if our proposal had been accepted, it would not have resulted in an overcharge because invoices are always supported by actual costs, not estimates," he said.
Harl said the company can explain the discrepancy in fuel-importing costs between Turkey and Kuwait. For example, although the trip to import fuel from Kuwait is shorter, he said, security risks are greater in the southern part of Iraq, which increases costs.
He said Kuwait also has a more limited pool of bidders for the subcontracts. "Financial and industrial resources are controlled by a relatively small number of people, many of whom have intermingled business relationships," he said. "This is not a criticism. It is just a fact."
But Walid Khadduri, editor of the Cyprus-based Middle East Economic Survey, said the fuel from Kuwait still should not cost that much more. "You don't expect to see a real big difference," he said. "It shouldn't cost that much."
Researcher Richard S. Drezen contributed to this report.
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Pentagon Boosts High-Tech Tagging
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9964-2003Dec17?language=printer
The Pentagon, just like Wal-Mart, is counting on a couple of start-ups to help it change the way it does business.
Both the Department of Defense and the world's largest retailer have said in recent months that they want their suppliers by 2005 to use a tracking technology called radio frequency identification, or RFID for short.
It's a higher-tech version of bar codes, using tags that have wireless antennas that can be placed on individual items or large cases of merchandise. The technology is supposed to improve a company's (or government's) bottom line by smoothing the "supply chain." If the technology works, say advocates, products arrive on time, get where they're supposed to and are easily trackable along the way.
At the moment, the two main companies developing RFID technology are Alien Technology of Morgan Hill, Calif., and Matrics of Columbia, according to Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Alan Estevez, who is promoting the technology in the Defense Department.
Concerns about privacy and the technology's high cost have so far prevented widespread commercial adoption of RFID. (If someone buys a tagged t-shirt, will he be followed by a Wal-Mart employee or, worse yet, a government worker wherever he goes?)
Nevertheless, Estevez said the Pentagon is embracing RFID because it can improve operations. "This works," said Estevez. "We've got to quit fooling around and make this our standard." The Pentagon has been using RFID intermittently for years, including during conflicts in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, he said.
Matrics, which has just 50 employees, was founded by former National Security Agency technology experts. "We have a vision of creating a network where items talk to humans and talk to computers," says Piyush Sodha, Matrics chief executive. For instance, Sodha envisions a clothing tag that tells a washing machine it needs a delicate cycle, and a refrigerator that notifies people when they're out of milk.
Such uses for RFID, says Sodha, are 10 years away. But eventually, "items and appliances will be talking to each other," he said.
Several investor groups in the Washington area have bet on Matrics. Local venture capital and angel funds that have invested in the company include Novak Biddle Venture Partners, the Carlyle Group, Allied Capital, Venturehouse Group, Riggs Capital Partners, the Washington Dinner Club, WomenAngels.net and Capital Investors.
Matrics now has a total of $16 million in private equity investments. Because some high-net-worth individuals in Washington have invested in several of these funds, they stand to lose or win a big chunk. Mark Ein, who runs Venturehouse Group, says he knows people who are in the Matrics deal five different ways.
Meanwhile the area's largest venture fund, New Enterprise Associates, has put its money on Alien Technology.
Matrics now has seven paying customers, says Sodha, including a Las Vegas airport, a paper mill and a car manufacturer. The airport, McCarran International, has agreed to pay Matrics $25 million over five years to tag its bags. About 20 companies or organizations are trying out the technology, Sodha says.
On Dec. 2, the Pentagon held a summit to discuss the possibilities of having its 43,000 suppliers use RFID. A pilot program will start around February and will most likely be with a large aerospace company, said Estevez.
The Pentagon also plans to start using tags itself, and currently has two trials underway -- one tracking food sent to servicemen and women, and the other following shipments of biohazard suits. Estevez wouldn't say which company or companies are running those tests. In July, the Defense Department will start collecting bids for creating the tags for the Pentagon, he said. Estevez said he does not know how much this effort will cost the government.
One reason the technology has not been widely used in the private sector is its high cost.
Estevez admits he's getting letters from people worried that the government will soon be watching their every move. "I'm not tracking them," he says. "I'm tracking my inventory."
But even supporters of the technology acknowledge that the Big Brother fears remain a major obstacle for those promoting RFID in the government or private sector.
Estevez says he's talked to representatives at the General Services Administration, the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security who are all watching to see how the Defense Department fares.
There is a staggered rollout schedule and it is still in flux. The Pentagon now expects its top 100 suppliers to be on board by January 2005, then the top 500 by July of that year and the remaining companies by 2006. Many questions remain about exact standards and radio frequency regulation; a second summit has been planned for all the players to gather in Washington in February or March of the new year.
Shannon Henry writes about Washington's technology culture every other Thursday. Her e-mail address is henrys@washpost.com.
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Europeans Seek More U.S. Defense Work
EADS Intensifies Rivalry With Boeing
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9920-2003Dec17.html
Europe's largest aerospace and defense company is spending heavily to crack the U.S. defense market but is making slow progress in the face of the Pentagon's reluctance to award sensitive programs to foreign contractors and persistent tensions between the United States and its European allies over support for the war in Iraq.
Even the business and ethical troubles at Boeing Co. have provided no major opening for European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., known as EADS, which is 15 percent-owned by the French government and has headquarters in Paris and Munich.
"My view is that Boeing is a fierce and able competitor in all markets," said Ralph Crosby, chief executive of EADS North America. "I don't see it abating."
EADS has proved its competitiveness in recent years as its Airbus subsidiary has steadily chipped away at Boeing's lead in commercial aircraft. For the first time, Airbus will surpass Boeing this year in worldwide sales of airliners for the commercial market.
But in the U.S. defense market the European giant pales next to Boeing. EADS had worldwide revenue last year of about $36 billion, of which only an estimated $500,000 was in U.S. defense contracts. Chicago-based Boeing, in contrast, had sales to the Pentagon last year of about $25 billion.
EADS's only major contract before its latest push was a 1980s deal to provide 98 helicopters to the U.S. Coast Guard. Its most recent sales have largely come in partnership with Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the Pentagon's largest contractor. With Lockheed Martin, EADS is expected to sign a contract this month to deliver two patrol planes to the Coast Guard in 2006 and has signed a contract to provide radar for a Coast Guard cutter.
EADS set up a U.S. holding company in May and tapped Crosby, a well known industry figure who spent 20 years at Northrop Grumman Corp., to lead it. The company opened a helicopter plant this year in Mississippi, a state with two Republican senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who is chairman of the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on homeland security.
The company is spending $80 million to upgrade its refueling tankers to make them more attractive to the Air Force. It is also considering a listing on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq to raise its American profile.
"As a newly focused competitor in the market, we [must] build confidence among our customers," said Crosby. "I am pleased with the progress that we're making. . . . Not everything can be done 100 percent here, but we're mindful of the need for a substantial amount of work to be done in the U.S."
One key area that EADS has targeted for potential growth is the tanker market, now dominated by Boeing. It is also a market that is causing Boeing enormous headaches. The company has come under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general for possible unethical behavior during recent negotiations to sell and lease 100 tankers to the Air Force.
-------- iraq
Saddam shown videos of mass graves
GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN,
Thu 18 Dec 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1386352003
INTERROGATORS trying to get Saddam Hussein to confess to his crimes have shown him video recordings of mass graves, torture and executions in the hope that they can break his spirit.
The former Iraqi leader, who is being held in the Baghdad area, has also been shown footage of anti-Saddam protests, although US officials said his initial response had been disappointing.
Two officials with access to interrogation reports told the USA Today newspaper that the video technique was being used in a bid to provoke Saddam into making unguarded statements. One official said interrogators were analysing his every "sweat gland, word and twitch".
The Iraqi Governing Council yesterday denied reports that US forces had moved Saddam to the Gulf state of Qatar for the interrogation. A council member, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, said: "There is no proof or confirmed information on this. Saddam is still in Iraq ... God willing ... he will be tried in Iraq in public by an Iraqi court."
Another council member, Adnan Pachachi, said the US administrator, Paul Bremer, had categorically denied Saddam had been taken out of the country. US officials have said in public only that Saddam, captured by US forces near Tikrit on Saturday, was at an "undisclosed location".
The arrest has failed to bring a respite from violence. Yesterday a petrol tanker exploded in al-Bayaa, a poor south-western district of Baghdad, killing at least ten Iraqis.
Iraqi police said the tanker had been packed with explosives and might have been driven by a suicide bomber planning to attack a nearby police station.
However, eyewitnesses said the tanker's petrol exploded when police opened fire on the vehicle. US forces said the explosion was caused by a traffic accident. About 20 people were injured in the incident.
Ahmed Kadhim Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, said the dead were Iraqis, and that the lorry's driver had planned to strike the police station.
A charred, crumpled bus lay in the intersection after the blast.
"I was leaving home when I heard an explosion and saw vehicles burning at al-Bayaa intersection," said Ahmed Ayyoub, 23, a bus driver.
"I ran to the place to see if there were people injured. There were lots of human remains on the sidewalks and we started collecting them."
The rescue effort was more difficult because it was still dark at the time, he added.
Despite the coalition's major victory over the weekend with Saddam's capture, violence has continued in predominantly Sunni areas west and north of Baghdad, once Saddam's power base.
Violent protests in Ramadi and Fallujah followed a period of relative quiet, although attacks on US troops there are occurring less often than in early November.
In the northern city of Mosul, assailants shot and killed a policeman who was on his way to work, and Iraqi security forces there opened fire on pro-Saddam protesters, injuring nine, witnesses said.
With attacks on coalition troops showing no signs of abating, US forces north of Baghdad staged a raid in the town of Samarra, detaining at least a dozen guerrilla suspects after catching almost 80 others, including an alleged rebel financier.
The 4th Infantry Division, which was responsible for the capture of Saddam, launched the raids, codenamed Operation Ivy Blizzard, with the assistance of Iraqi forces.
Backed by armoured vehicles and Apache helicopters, US troops conducted door-to-door searches designed to stamp out guerrilla resistance. At least a dozen people were detained.
"Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side," said US army Colonel Nate Sassanan.
"It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed."
As US officials are questioning Saddam, further charges are being added to the list of crimes he could face at trial.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said yesterday fresh evidence suggested that most, if not all, Kuwaitis who disappeared after Iraq invaded its oil-rich neighbour in August 1990 were killed.
"After many years of manoeuvring and denial by the previous government of Iraq, a grim truth is unveiling itself," he said. "The discovery of mass graves in Iraq containing the remains of Kuwaitis is a gruesome and devastating development."
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U.S. Soldier Killed in Ambush in Iraq
December 18, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 18 - An American soldier was killed in an ambush in Baghdad on Wednesday, the United States military said today, in the first American combat-related casualty since the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was captured.
A United States Central Command statement said that the soldier from the First Armored Division was ambushed while on patrol in the Iraqi capital. Another soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded, it said.
"The one this morning was the first since his capture," a military spokesman said by telephone, referring to Mr. Hussein and the death reported today.
The insurgency against the American occupation in Iraq has shown few signs of abating since Mr. Hussein was uncovered hiding in an underground hole dug into the courtyard of a farm in the northern city of Tikrit, Mr. Hussein's hometown.
A powerful explosion early on Wednesday morning killed at least 13 people and injured 22, when a truck collided with a bus at an intersection in western Baghdad.
The Iraqi police initially reported that the explosion was caused by a bomb in the truck, but the United States military said later that tests showed no traces of explosives, and that the truck appeared to be a fuel tanker that had crashed.
The explosion set nerves on edge in Baghdad, where violence has risen since the capture of Saddam Hussein on Saturday night.
The force of the blast was huge, even by the standards of a nation now accustomed to stupendous explosions, and among the victims were two young girls and a boy.
"It was horrible," said Ahmed Suheil, an Iraqi policeman at the scene, who said the truck was packed with large amounts of explosives. "I have never seen a bomb this big."
The military kept up its pressure in Samarra, north of Baghdad, a city considered a major center of the insurgency. It reported the arrests of two dozen people in raids there on Wednesday, after a sweep the day before in which 73 suspected resistors were detained, along with a substantial amount of bomb-making material.
"Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side," Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, of the Fourth Infantry Division, told reporters. "It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed."
On Wednesday night the raids continued, as Apache helicopters hovered over Samarra and tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles rumbled through the streets.
Since Mr. Hussein was captured, there have been violent demonstrations, several of which have ended in firefights with American troops in areas north and west of Baghdad, where support for Mr. Hussein remains strong.
On Wednesday in Bayji, a northern oil-producing city, soldiers fired warning shots over the heads of protesters who were spitting at soldiers and yelling as they paraded with portraits of Mr. Hussein. Several threw rocks at tanker trucks ferrying gasoline from Turkey.
"We are demonstrating because those Americans are Jews and we are Muslims," said one protester, Arkan Abdullah, who was carrying a picture of Mr. Hussein. "We can never accept their presence in Iraq, with Saddam or without Saddam."
On Wednesday delegates on the Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-member body appointed by the Americans to help run Iraq, denied reports that Mr. Hussein had been taken out of Iraq, possibly to Qatar, on the Persian Gulf.
"Saddam Hussein is still in greater Baghdad and will remain there to be tried in Iraq," Mowaffak al- Rubaie, a council member, said at a news conference here.
Before the explosion on Wednesday, there had been two fatal suicide bombings in Iraq since Mr. Hussein was arrested.
On Sunday, only hours after Mr. Hussein was caught but before the news became public, at least 17 Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide bombing in Khaldiya, west of Baghdad. The next day at least six police officers were killed in one of two suicide bombings at police stations in Baghdad.
In Baghdad on Wednesday, the Iraqi police said the yellow tanker truck was seen moving at high speed through an intersection just before 6 a.m. Mr. Suheil said the truck was not hauling a tanker or a trailer, and that investigators believed it was heading toward a police station about half a mile up the road. He said the truck hit a bus and then exploded.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Says Israel Might Use Wall to Create Palestinian Border
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=all&position=
HERZLIYA, Israel (AP) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel was willing to move some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but delivered an ultimatum that Palestinians had only a few months to make peace or Israel would impose its own solution.
Palestinians, Israeli doves and Jewish settlers promptly criticized Sharon's long-awaited policy speech. The White House credited Sharon with taking significant steps toward peace but criticized any go-it-alone moves by Israel that would undercut negotiations on a U.S. ``road map'' peace plan to create a Palestinian state by 2005.
Under Sharon's ``disengagement plan,'' Israel would pull back from some of the area it conquered in the 1967 Mideast War and relocate some settlements to create a more easily defended security boundary and reduce the number of Israelis in Palestinian areas. Israel would also speed up construction of a contentious barrier of fences, walls and trenches, whose planned path dips deep into the West Bank.
``This reduction of friction will require the extremely difficult step of changing the deployment of some of the settlements,'' Sharon said, without naming the settlements that would be taken down.
Sharon's plan, which he unveiled in a speech to a security conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya, came in the face of intense domestic pressure to take action to end the violent conflict that has unnerved Israelis and badly damaged the economy over the past three years.
The prime minister's popularity has plummeted in recent months as the road map stalled amid continuing bloodshed and intransigence on both sides.
The idea of a forced partition also reflects Israeli concerns about demographic projections that Arabs will, within a few years, outnumber Jews in the area currently controlled by Israel.
Sharon said Israel remained committed to the road map, but demanded Palestinians begin dismantling militant groups, as called for by the peace plan, or face an Israeli-imposed security border.
``We are interested in conducting direct negotiations, but do not intend to hold Israeli society hostage in the hands of the Palestinians. ... We will not wait for them indefinitely,'' Sharon said. ``If there is no progress toward peace in a matter of months, ``then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians,'' he said.
Sharon said the boundary would not be a permanent, political border: ``The disengagement plan is a security measure and not a political one.''
Under this approach, Sharon said, the Palestinians receive ``much less'' territory than they would have from direct negotiations.
He also said all his moves would be coordinated with the United States.
Israel also would reduce travel restrictions that have crippled the Palestinian economy over the past three years, promising to end closures, curfews and roadblocks, and to transfer some areas to Palestinian control, Sharon said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said he was confident the two sides could reach rapid agreement for a Palestinian state, but he bristled at Sharon's threats.
``These are ultimately dangerous words, and this type of talk is simply not acceptable,'' Qureia told The Associated Press.
U.S. officials have joined Palestinians in condemning any Israeli-imposed measures -- certain to leave Palestinians with less land than they want -- saying that only a deal acceptable to both sides can lead to peace.
``We would oppose any unilateral steps that block the road toward negotiations under the road map,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday. ``The United States believes that a settlement must be negotiated and we would oppose any effort -- any Israeli effort -- to impose a settlement.''
However, the White House found much to like in Sharon's speech as well, with McClellan singling out for praise Sharon's ``strong reiteration of his support for the road map as the way forward'' and his statement that unauthorized outposts will be dismantled.
``We are also pleased that for the first time he said flatly that there will be no new settlements, no confiscation of land for construction, no special economic incentives for settlers and no construction beyond present construction zones,'' McClellan said.
Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said he believes Sharon will give the Palestinians three months to begin complying with the road map before imposing his new plan.
Lapid, of the centrist Shinui Party, said Sharon's talk of moving some settlements was ``a major breakthrough.''
Sharon was a chief architect of Israel's settlement policy over his three-decade political career, and any steps to dismantle or move settlements would be a revolutionary step for him that could fracture his hard-right governing coalition.
``We will not be part of a government that uproots Jewish communities and will defame the entire Zionist enterprise,'' said Housing Minister Effie Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party.
On the other side of the Israeli political spectrum, Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said he too was disappointed with the speech.
``I am very frustrated,'' he told Israeli Television. ``In the speech we heard, there is nothing new.''
Sharon's speech comes after weeks of buildup. He began speaking of undefined ``unilateral steps'' last month, indicating he might consider moving West Bank Jewish settlements while seizing control of swaths of the West Bank.
Palestinian and U.S. officials have called on Israel to stick to the road map. Before a Palestinian state would be established in 2005, the plan requires Israel to freeze settlement activity and calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups -- steps neither side has taken.
Israel has some 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, with about 220,000 Jewish settlers. Roughly 3.5 million Palestinians live in the occupied areas.
West Bank settlers called Sharon's speech a ``plan of illusions that will escalate terror.''
``The dismantling of settlements and expulsion of Jews from their homes will only increase the appetite of the murderers and will bring about the destruction of Zionism,'' said settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef.
Islamic militants said the speech amounted to a victory for their attacks that have killed roughly 900 Israelis in the past three years.
``This is a new language by the Israelis, and this is evidence that the uprising has created a new fact on the ground,'' said Sheik Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader.
Violence continued Thursday, as Israeli troops killed at least four Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.
The army moved into the city's ancient bazaar quarter before dawn in a search for wanted Palestinian militants, a military spokeswoman said. Palestinian security sources said one of the dead was unarmed.
The military said one man ran toward troops with an explosive device and was shot as he approached, while in a separate incident, three masked men shot at soldiers from a rooftop and were killed by return fire. The army also reported 10 arrests, including two people it said were planning suicide attacks.
--------
Israel Awaits Latest Word From Sharon on Next Step
December 18, 2003
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 17 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is scheduled to speak at a conference in the seaside town of Herzliya on Thursday, and it seems that all of Israel, certainly all of the Israeli press, is speculating as to what he will say.
Mr. Sharon may say little more than he has said before, particularly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, merely reiterating his known position: that Israel is waiting for some concrete steps from the Palestinian side in fighting terrorism before returning to the negotiating table to try to carry out the road map, the American and European-supported plan for peace.
But Mr. Sharon will be speaking at a time of especially lively debate among Israelis, in which some new initiative or proposal seems almost a daily occurrence. Mr. Sharon surely knows that the public will be disappointed if he does not announce at least some modest new measures, most likely, according to local press reports, plans for a limited withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the occupied territories even in the absence of an agreement with the Palestinians.
Mr. Sharon's speech is scheduled at a dinner meeting on Thursday in Herzliya, where a sort of Israeli and international who's who list has been gathered for much of this week at the fourth annual conference of the Israeli Institute for Policy and Strategy.
"Even a limited evacuation of settlements, or other significant immediate measures, would prove to both the Israeli public and the international community that Sharon is capable of initiating rather than merely responding," a foreign policy commentator, Aluf Benn, wrote in Haaretz on Wednesday.
Many people here are expecting Mr. Sharon to outline one or another of two broad options. One would be to announce a concrete withdrawal of all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and some relatively remote settlements on the West Bank. This would be the bold option, as analysts here put it, but only if Mr. Sharon announces a definite timetable for the withdrawals.
A more cautious, and perhaps more likely, approach would be for Mr. Sharon to announce in principle a readiness to withdraw some settlements, but to present it only as a possibility if the road map is declared dead several months from now, as many here expect it will be.
Pressure to announce a new departure seems to be mounting from several directions in Israel and abroad. One is the intense international attention aroused by the Geneva Peace Initiative, announced in Switzerland on Dec. 1 by a pair of former Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators and praised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell among others.
In addition, prominent Israelis - including members of Mr. Sharon's own government and several former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence agency - have publicly criticized the government's reliance almost entirely on military action in the face of terrorist attacks. They say the tactics are not only failing to ensure Israeli security but are also perversely intensifying anti-Israeli feelings among Palestinians and thus potentially creating conditions for more terrorism.
This has led to widespread discussion about a redeployment of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, a measure that would amount to an effective withdrawal from some areas under Israeli control.
Another, entirely different, development is disappointment in Israel with the recently installed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qurei, who is seen as both weak and subservient to Yasir Arafat, whom Mr. Sharon's government has rejected as a negotiating partner.
The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday quoted a senior Israel Defense Force officer to the effect that Mr. Qurei "is a straw man, Arafat's mask," a view that is clearly shared at high levels of Mr. Sharon's government.
The main alternative to continuing the present policies, which has been floated by senior officials of Mr. Sharon's government, is for Israel to take unilateral steps. The most obvious such step is the construction of the series of chain-link and concrete barriers that already separate large swaths of Palestinian territory from mostly Jewish areas.
The other main unilateral move would be the removal of some settlements from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as part of a larger effort to separate the two populations.
The main figure in the government advancing that idea is Mr. Sharon's deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who told the Herzliya conference on Tuesday that Israel could not afford to wait indefinitely for the road map to be carried out.
--------
Israel prepares for mass move if road map fails
December 18, 2003
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031217-113457-8848r.htm
Tens of thousands of Jews will be moved out of their homes and behind an Israeli security fence next year if the U.S.-backed "road map" to peace fails, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday.
The process, Mr. Olmert said, will be "very painful and difficult and heartbreaking," but will be done to protect Jews both from terrorist attacks and from becoming outnumbered by Palestinian Arabs in their own state.
If Palestinians do not meet their obligations to fight terror and engage in "meaningful serious dialogue" he said, "we will have to take unilateral steps to separate ourselves from the Palestinians."
"Consequently, we will have to move out of territories that were administered by Israel for many years," Mr. Olmert said in a conference call with reporters from Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is to make a major policy address to the nation today regarding the stalled peace process.
Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to Washington, said Mr. Sharon would likely reaffirm Israel's commitment to the road map and its desire for a prompt meeting, without any preconditions, between Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian prime minister.
"We should expect a firm commitment to the vision of President Bush," Mr. Ayalon said.
"In the absence of any movement, we will consult again with our friends and allies, the Americans, to search together for new ways" to move the process forward, he said in a telephone interview.
Israeli press and experts said Mr. Sharon also will announce Israel's decision to unilaterally pull out of the Gaza Strip and certain West Bank settlements if the U.S.-backed peace plan crumbled.
Driven by the fear that sticking to the dream of some Zionists of having a single state reaching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River would eventually make Jews a minority within their own state, Mr. Olmert has repeatedly called for redrawing the lines between Israelis and Palestinians.
In order to maximize the number of Jews and minimize the number of Palestinians, Mr. Olmert said, "settlements will have to be removed into new locations within boundaries that will be set by this new line."
Mr. Olmert declined to detail where that line would run beyond saying that its parameters would be to maximize the number of Jews and minimize the number of Arabs of "what will then be the border line between us and them."
He did say it would be impossible to divide Jerusalem, a city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.
Israeli diplomats insist the combination wire-concrete barrier is being erected only to ensure the safety of Israelis from Palestinian bomb attacks, and is not a political border.
"I don't see us unilaterally deciding a border," said Mr. Ayalon. "We may decide for security reasons to change our deployment here and there, but it should not have any political connotations."
Mr. Ayalon also said that any talk on evacuating settlements in the occupied territory was premature.
"All our energies should be devoted to making sure we ensure the vision of President Bush succeeds and the road map succeeds," he said.
Designed by Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, the road map demands that Palestinians stop all terror attacks and dismantle terror organizations, and that Israelis dismantle all unauthorized outposts.
"I would expect to see action very soon - next week or so," Mr. Ayalon said of the outposts.
But Mr. Olmert said that if the road map did not work out "within short months" Israel would have to take action, after consulting with the Bush administration.
"I think the prime minister is committed first to carry out the effort to negotiate on the basis of he road map, [but] I think he feels strongly that if this doesn't work, something will have to be done. Whether or not he agrees that we will do it in one major step or gradually - that remains to be seen," he said.
"The basic understanding that we don't want it to get stuck forever I think is evident."
-------- japan
Iraq Deployment Shows the East German Syndrome
by Tim Shorrock
December 18, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/shorrock4.html
Four years ago, the author and critic Chalmers Johnson wrote a prescient book about U.S. foreign policy that unfavorably compared Japan's postwar prime ministers to the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker.
"Just as the two satraps of the German Democratic Republic faithfully followed every order they ever received from Moscow, each and every Japanese prime minister, as soon as he comes into office, get on an air plane and reports to Washington," Johnson wrote.
Those words stung in Tokyo, largely because they were true. Since World War II, Japan has played a subservient role to the United States in foreign policy on nearly every issue to come its way. Its servile role has often been embarrassing, and frequently left many observers with the impression that Japan was no more than a bit player to its master in Washington.
In 1972, for example, US President Richard Nixon gave Prime Minister Eisaku Sato just a few minutes notice before announcing to the world that he was recognizing the People's Republic of China as the official representative of China. Nixon's "shock" reversed years of official policy that Japanese diplomats and businessmen had been dreaming about for decades, and reportedly brought Sato to tears.
Nearly 10 years later, former US Ambassador Edwin Reischauer confessed in an offhand interview that US warships had been routinely bringing nuclear weapons into Japanese ports and territorial waters since 1960 with the full knowledge of Japanese leaders, thus violating Japan's antinuclear stance.
Now, nearly four years into the 21st century and more than a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the relationship between the United States and Japan that was forged in the early days of the Cold War does not seem to have changed much at all.
In fact, as the two nations celebrated the 50th anniversary of the US-Japan Security Treaty in November, Japanese leaders appeared to be bent on deepening their reliance on the United States, seemingly without any national debate about whether a close military alliance with the United States is in Japan's best interest or not.
The best example of Japan's willingness to do the United States' bidding is the Middle East, where the cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi agreed last week to deploy 1,000 soldiers from Japan's Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to Iraq at Washington's request.
Koizumi's dispatch of the SDF, which comes in the aftermath of the killing of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq, marks the largest overseas deployment of Japanese troops since the Second World War.
But this significant turn in Japanese policy would never have taken place if President Bush had not reversed two centuries of US policy with his unilateralist, preemptive strike on Iraq. "Rebuilding Iraq is necessary for the stability of the entire Middle East and the rest of the world, and is in Japan's best interests," Koizumi said in a nationally broadcast news conference on Dec. 10.
This, of course, exactly mirrors Bush's belief that rebuilding Iraq is necessary for the stability in the Middle East and the world, as Bush has made clear in his many speeches on the subject.
Koizumi went on to say that Japan was meeting its responsibility as a longtime US ally, as opposed to a sovereign nation with its own obligations to the world. "The US 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 US."
Apparently those words were designed to assuage the Japanese public, which is overwhelmingly opposed to his decision to involve Japan in America's overseas ventures. Recent polls show that only about one-third of Japanese voters approve of the sending the non-combat troops to Iraq.
According to Nobukatsu Kanehara, a counselor for political affairs in the Japanese Embassy in Washington and the former director of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan's adherence to US foreign policy goals will only increase in the coming years.
"We are dependent on the U.S.-Japan alliance," he declared at a Dec. 10 forum on the Security Treaty sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Washington.
Kanehara described Japan's current policies as a continuation of the national strategy its leaders adopted in 1952 at the height of the Korean War, when Japan agreed to keep US bases on its territory indefinitely.
At that time, "we jumped into the new world and extended our national interests," he said. "Japan needs friends to expand its global influence. Our choice was the United States."
But Japan "won't be an expanding country," assured Kanehara, because its military is defensive in nature and lacks offensive capabilities.
Because the United States withdrew nearly all of its army forces from Japan after the Korean War, "that left the burden on Japan's ground forces," which remain three times larger than its air force, which has no ability to strike, and its navy, which can only monitor sea lanes out to 1,000 miles. "The US Seventh Fleet is our friendly fleet," said Kanehara.
Japan's overseas deployments have been closely aligned with US policy goals as well. Its first overseas peacekeeping mission, which took place under U.N. auspices in 1993 in Cambodia, was widely seen in Japan as an experiment to gauge both foreign and domestic reaction. It was followed by another "blue helmet" peacekeeping mission to Kenya.
In 1998, however, Japan's overseas military capacity expanded significantly when it signed a major agreement to provide logistics support to US forces in Asia. Then, following the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, which took the lives of 24 Japanese citizens, Japan sent 24 naval ships to the Indian Ocean. These oilers, Kanehara said, eventually carried 50 percent of the oil for the coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan.
Responding to Kanehara, James J Przystup, a research professor at the Institute of National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University and the former director of Asian Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, called the U.S.-Japan alliance a "central element" in the US global strategy.
The alliance is important because it defends Japan in Northeast Asia, provides "regional stability," and is "part of US global military strategy," said Przstup. He noted that the "first foreign deployment after Sept. 11 came from Japan." He concluded that "Japan's policies have changed remarkably over the last 10 years."
If Japan was an independent player on the world stage, that might be true. But as a junior partner to the United States in an alliance that has remained unchanged for over half a century, Japan may merely be moving in sync with the changes taking place in Washington - just as the former satellites of the Soviet Union might still be orbiting Moscow if their long-dead patron was still alive.
-------- un
Iraq Crowds AIDS, Hunger Out of Spotlight - Annan
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-un-annan.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Lamenting that Iraq has monopolized the headlines in 2003, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged world leaders on Thursday to worry more about AIDS, hunger and other crises in the new year.
``Yes Iraq is important, but the world is much bigger than Iraq,'' Annan said.
``All of us -- leaders, politicians, diplomats and journalists -- have been very focused on Iraq this year. We simply haven't paid enough attention to the many other pressing challenges facing us,'' he told a year-end news conference.
Every day, billions of people must deal with poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy, and if these problems are not addressed, ``we will all be poorer and less secure,'' he said.
He said struggling Afghanistan, war-torn Africa and a Middle East mired in violence were in dire need of greater global attention as well as particular problems like AIDS.
While nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are a grave threat, the AIDS epidemic is also ``a real weapon of mass destruction,'' he said. ``This is an epidemic that is killing 8,000 people a day.''
He called on governments to offer more development aid and debt relief, lower trade barriers that deprive poor nations of a marketplace, and funnel more money to education, health care, clean water and the global fight against AIDS.
``We've made promises in all these areas, and in many others too,'' Annan said. ``In 2004 I'll be doing all that I can to get world leaders to work harder to meet the promises that have been made.''
-------- us
Wounded Troops Denied Benefits?
(CBS)
Dec. 18, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/18/eveningnews/main589380.shtml
WASHINGTON - Many wounded U.S. soldiers are treated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where President Bush today awarded Purple Hearts to 21 soldiers.
But CBS News Correspondent David Martin reports, wounded troops may return from war to find themselves in a different kind of battle - with the U.S. military.
A disabled soldier will never see combat again, but he might find himself fighting a new fight against the government's medical bureaucracy.
Lieutenant John Fernandez, who lost part of both legs in Iraq, knows he can no longer be a soldier, but he's not ready to leave the army.
"I personally don't think it's right to be forced out of the - the military and all of a sudden be forced to live on half of the pay that I was getting," he says.
Ryan Kelley, who lost his left leg below the knee, makes about $20,000 a year as a staff sergeant. Once he leaves the army, he will receive about $8,000 a year in benefits.
Fernandez is appealing his medical discharge. "I'm not gonna let myself be pushed around," he says.
He and his wife Kristen have become self-taught experts in the bureaucratic ins and outs.
"I can see how many soldiers can get confused," says Kristen Fernandez.
"I think that the military wants to get them off their hands," says David Gorman, who lost both legs in Vietnam.
Gorman is executive director of Disabled American Veterans, a group he says normally has easy access to wounded soldiers; but not this time.
"I don't know if it's a clouded secret about who's coming back, who's there, the nature of their disabilities, the nature of their wounds or not but there is not the kind of unfettered access that we used to have at Walter Reed," says Gorman.
A spokesman for Walter Reed Army Medical Center says the restricted access is the result of post 9/11 security concerns and new federal guidelines protecting patient privacy, which by coincidence took effect just as the war in Iraq was starting.
"We can't do our job which means in many cases, I believe personally, that there's just an outright denial of benefits coming to these young men and women because they simply don't know about it," says Gorman.
The army cannot be expected to keep badly disabled soldiers on active duty and no one is suggesting they're deliberately being kept in the dark. But even inadvertently denying them benefits is a wound they shouldn't have to suffer.
-------- propaganda wars
White House Web Scrubbing Offending Comments on Iraq Disappear From Site
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html
It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.
White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.
Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.
This is not the first time the administration has done some creative editing of government Web sites. After the insurrection in Iraq proved more stubborn than expected, the White House edited the original headline on its Web site of President Bush's May 1 speech, "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended," to insert the word "Major" before combat.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, administration Web sites have been scrubbed for anything vaguely sensitive, and passwords are now required to access even much unclassified information. Though it is not clear whether the White House is directing the changes, several agencies have been following a similar pattern. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead. The National Cancer Institute, meanwhile, scrapped claims on its Web site that there was no association between abortion and breast cancer. And the Justice Department recently redacted criticism of the department in a consultant's report that had been posted on its Web site.
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said the Natsios case is particularly pernicious. "This smells like an attempt to revise the record, not just to withhold information but to alter the historical record in a self-interested way, and that is sleazier than usual," he said. "If they simply said, 'We made an error; we underestimated,' people could understand it and deal with it."
For months after the April 23 Natsios interview on ABC's "Nightline," USAID.gov displayed the transcript. "You're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?" an incredulous Ted Koppel asked Natsios.
"Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do," Natsios said. "This is it for the U.S. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada and Iraqi oil revenues. . . . But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this."
A White House spokesman, asked later about these remarks, responded vaguely that he had not seen the statement in question. Then, sometime this fall, USAID made it easier for the administration to maintain its veil of ignorance on the subject by taking the transcript off its Web site.
For a while, the agency left telltale evidence by keeping the link to the transcript on its "What's New" page -- but yesterday the liberal Center for American Progress discovered that this link had disappeared, too, as well as the Google "cached" copies of the original page.
USAID spokeswoman Lejaune Hall, asked about this curious situation, searched the Web site herself for the missing document. "That is strange," she said. After a brief investigation, she reported back: "They were taken down off the Web site. There was going to be a cost. That's why they're not there."
But other government Web sites, including the State and Defense departments, routinely post interview transcripts, even from "Nightline." And, it turns out, there is no cost. "We would not charge for that," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "We would have no trouble with a government agency linking to one of our interviews, and we are unaware of anybody from [ABC] making any request that anything be removed."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
U.S. Federal Court Rebukes Bush on Detainees
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-security-guantanamo.html
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In a stinging rebuke of the Bush Administration, a Federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the U.S. government cannot imprison ``enemy combatants'' captured in the war in Afghanistan indefinitely at the American Naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that such indefinite imprisonment was inconsistent with American law and raised serious concerns under international law. It also said that the more than 600 detainees should have access to lawyers.
``Even in times of national emergency -- indeed, particularly in such times -- it is the obligation of the Judicial Branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the Executive Branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike,'' the 9th Circuit court panel said.
The court sharply added, ``For almost two years, the United States has subjected over 600 of these captives to indefinite detention, yet has failed to afford them any means to challenge their confinement, to object to the failure to recognize them as prisoners of war, to consult with legal counsel, or even to advance claims of mistaken capture or identity.''
The court's decision came on the same day that another appeals court, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, said that President Bush was wrong to detain an American citizen seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court said only the U.S. Congress can authorize such detentions and it ordered the government to release Jose Padilla from military custody within 30 days.
Padilla is a suspect in an alleged al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the United States. He was arrested 18 months ago as he arrived from Pakistan.
The two federal court rulings were the latest signs of a mounting legal backlash against the powers assumed by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Following the attacks, Congress passed the Patriot Act that broadly expanded law enforcement's surveillance and investigative powers. Attorney General John Ashcroft argued that the law was needed to protect the nation against terrorism.
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Courts Slam Anti - Terror Legal Strategy
December 19, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Rulings.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- In twin setbacks for the Bush administration's war on terror, federal appeals courts on opposite coasts ruled Thursday that the U.S. military cannot indefinitely hold prisoners without access to lawyers or the American courts.
One ruling favored the 660 ``enemy combatants'' being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The other involved Jose Padilla, an American who was seized in Chicago in an alleged plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' and was declared as an enemy combatant.
In Padilla's case, the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the former gang member released from military custody within 30 days and, if the government chooses, tried in civilian courts. The White House said the government would appeal and seek a stay of the decision.
In the other case, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base should have access to lawyers and the American court system. It was the first such ruling by a federal appeals court anywhere in the country.
``Even in times of national emergency -- indeed, particularly in such times -- it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike,'' Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in ruling in favor of a Libyan captured in Afghanistan and held in Cuba.
The two rulings highlighted the tensions between national security and civil rights since Sept. 11.
An order by President Bush in November 2001 allows captives to be detained as ``enemy combatants'' if they are members of al-Qaida, engaged in or aided terrorism, or harbored terrorists. The designation may also be applied if it is ``the interest of the United States'' to hold an individual during hostilities.
The Justice Department this week said such a classification allows detainees to be held without access to lawyers until U.S. authorities are satisfied they have disclosed everything they know about terrorist operations.
But the New York court ruled 2-1 that Padilla's detention as an enemy combatant was not authorized by Congress and that the Bush administration could not designate him as an enemy combatant without such approval.
Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and former Clinton administration Justice Department official, said the government ``is being painted into a corner that is not very favorable. How bad of a corner will be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.''
Padilla, a convert to Islam, was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. The government said he had proposed the bomb plot to Abu Zubaydah, then al-Qaida's top terrorism coordinator.
In ordering his release from military custody, the court said the government was free to transfer Padilla to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges. Padilla could also be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.
``As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation,'' Circuit Judge Rosemary S. Pooler wrote.
``But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress.''
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Richard C. Wesley said that as commander in chief, the president ``has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens.''
Chris Dunn, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling historic. ``It's a repudiation of the Bush administration's attempt to close the federal courts to those accused of terrorism,'' he said.
The White House said the ruling was inconsistent with the president's constitutional authority as well as with other court rulings.
``The president's most solemn obligation is protecting the American people,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. ``We believe the 2nd Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed.''
Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman, did not immediately return a call for comment. Newman has battled in court to be able to meet with Padilla; she has not done so since he was designated an enemy combatant the month after his arrest.
Thursday's 2-1 decision out of San Francisco was the first federal appeals court ruling to rebuke the Bush administration's position on the Guantanamo detainees, who have been held without charges, some for nearly two years.
The administration maintains that because the 660 men confined there were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and are being held on foreign land, they may be detained indefinitely without charges or trial.
The Supreme Court last month agreed to decide whether the Guantanamo detainees, who were captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, should have access to the courts. The justices agreed to hear that case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the prisoners had no right to access to the American legal system.
Reinhardt, who signed the 9th Circuit opinion last year that declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional when recited in public schools, stayed enforcement of the Guantanamo decision pending the outcome of the case already before the Supreme Court.
Stephen Yagman, the Los Angeles civil rights lawyer who filed the suit on behalf of Libyan detainee Faren Cherebi, said if the decision survives, ``The government has to put up some evidence that there is a reason to hold these people and charge them, or give them up.''
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it has appointed a military defense lawyer for a terrorism suspect held at Guantanamo. Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen becomes the second Guantanamo prisoner to be given a lawyer. Australian David Hicks got a lawyer earlier this month and recently met with an Australian legal adviser.
Both Hamdan and Hicks are among six Guantanamo prisoners designated by the president as candidates for trials by special military tribunals. Neither Hamdan, Hicks nor the others detained in Cuba have been charged.
Besides Padilla, only two other known people who are being detained in the United States have been designated as enemy combatants since the 2001 terrorist attacks: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan.
Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report from New York.
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Courts Deal Blow to Bush on Treatment of Terror Suspects
December 18, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18CND-DETA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 - Bush administration tactics in the campaign against terrorism suffered a pair of setbacks today in two federal appeals courts thousands of miles apart.
An appellate court in San Francisco ruled that prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba should have access to lawyers and the American court system.
Hours earlier, an appellate court in Manhattan ruled that President Bush does not have the power to detain as an enemy combatant a United States citizen who was seized on American soil and to deny him a lawyer.
Both decisions, by three-judge panels from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, and from the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, were by 2-to-1 margins.
The Justice Department said today that it would seek a stay of the Manhattan ruling as government lawyers consider whether to appeal to the full Second Circuit or try to go directly to the Supreme Court. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, called the ruling "troubling and flawed" and "really inconsistent with the clear constitutional authority of the president and his responsibility."
There was no immediate administration reaction to the San Francisco ruling, but an appeal to the full Ninth Circuit or to the Supreme Court is very likely.
Taken together, at least for the moment, the decisions amounted to a day of stinging judicial defeats for the administration, which has also experienced several recent embarrassing episodes in its approach to fighting terrorism. The decisions also constituted the latest chapters in a constitutional drama that has been playing out since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Second Circuit panel rejected the administration's treatment of Jose Padilla, who is accused of plotting to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb."
The Ninth Circuit rejected the administration's arguments that because the 660 men being held at Guantánamo were picked up overseas on suspicion of terrorism and being held on foreign soil, they might be held indefinitely, without charges or trial.
"We share the desire of all Americans to ensure that the executive enjoys the necessary power and flexibility to prevent future terrorist attacks," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for the Ninth Circuit majority, ruling on a suit brought by a California relative of a Libyan being held in Cuba.
"However," Judge Reinhardt said, "even in times of national emergency - indeed, particularly in such times - it is the obligation of the judicial branch to ensure the preservation of our constitutional values and to prevent the executive branch from running roughshod over the rights of citizens and aliens alike." He was joined in his ruling by Judge Milton I. Shadur.
At one point, the majority decision amounted to a rebuke. "In our view," the decision said, "the government's position is inconsistent with fundamental tenets of American jurisprudence and raises most serious questions under international law."
But the dissenting Ninth Circuit judge, Susan P. Graber, argued that a 1950 Supreme Court decision makes it clear that an enemy alien detained overseas by the American military does not have standing in American civilian courts.
In the Second Circuit case, the issue was somewhat different, since it deals with an American citizen held on American soil.
Mr. Padilla, a convert to Islam, was arrested last year at O'Hare International Airport near Chicago on his return from Pakistan after extensive travel in the Middle East. Attorney General John Ashcroft drew worldwide attention soon after when he said the government believed that Mr. Padilla, who has a long criminal record as a gang member in Chicago, had been planning to explode a bomb that would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive particles over a wide area.
Subsequently designated an "enemy combatant" by the government, Mr. Padilla was briefly held in Manhattan before being sent to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where he has been denied access to a lawyer and held incommunicado ever since - treatment that the Second Circuit panel said today was wrong despite the fact that the government had ample reason to charge Mr. Padilla.
"As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center once stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat Al Qaeda poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation," Judges Barrington D. Parker Jr. and Rosemary S. Pooler declared today.
"But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum," two jurists wrote, "and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress."
Alluding to the constitutional import of the Padilla case, the majority wrote: "Where, as here, the president's power as commander in chief of the armed forces and the domestic rule of law intersect, we conclude that clear Congressional authorization is required for detentions of American citizens on American soil."
Today's ruling does not mean that Mr. Padilla will go free, even if the ruling is sustained on appeal. The two judges said, rather, that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should release Mr. Padilla from military custody within 30 days, after which he could be prosecuted in civilian courts or held as a material witness.
"Under any scenario, Padilla will be entitled to the constitutional protections extended to other citizens," the appellate court majority wrote today, a clear reference to access to counsel.
In dissent, Judge Richard C. Wesley wrote, "In my view, the president as commander in chief has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens."
At another point, Judge Wesley said the majority had failed to cite constitutional precedent for the notion that Congress is given "exclusive constitutional authority to determine how our military forces will deal with the acts of a belligerent on American soil.
"There is no well-traveled road delineating the respective constitutional powers and limitations in this regard," Judge Wesley wrote.
The administration has encountered several embarrassing episodes related to the campaign against terrorism. A federal judge in Virginia recently ruled that the government could not seek the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. That ruling is being appealed.
The administration has also been criticized at home and abroad for its handling of detainees at the Guantánamo naval nase in Cuba. And most recently, the government's case against Capt. James J. Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, has seemed unsteady, as prosecutors have had trouble sustaining charges that he may have been guilty of security violations.
Mr. Padilla is the only American who has been taken into custody on American soil and declared an "enemy combatant." While the Second Circuit majority said it had no conclusion on his guilt or innocence, it pointedly noted that "the government had ample cause to suspect Padilla of involvement in a terrorist plot."
The dissenter, Judge Wesley, contended that the Congressional resolution passed shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, gave President Bush all the authority he needed to hold Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant, his American citizenship notwithstanding. The judge rejected any suggestion that the resolution was a broadside attack on basic constitutional rights.
"The president is not free to detain U.S. citizens who are merely sympathetic to Al Qaeda," Judge Wesley said. "Nor is he broadly empowered to detain citizens based on their ethnic heritage. Rather, the joint resolution is a specific and direct mandate from Congress to stop Al Qaeda from killing or harming Americans here or abroad."
The words of the majorities and dissenters in the two cases made it abundantly clear that the issues do not concern just the separate, sometimes conflicting powers of the president and Congress, but something perhaps even more fundamental - the delicate balance between personal freedoms and the security of the nation, especially in wartime.
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U.S. to Seek Stay of Court Ruling on Padilla
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-padilla-bush.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday it would seek a stay of a court ruling that ordered the release of an American being held by the military as an ``enemy combatant.''
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, said it was illegal for the government to hold Jose Padilla in military custody and said he should be released within 30 days. The court said that the government can transfer Padilla to a civilian authority.
``We believe the Second Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed. The president has directed the Justice Department to seek a stay and further judicial review,'' White House spokesman Scott McClellan told a news briefing.
The administration accuses Padilla of involvement in an alleged al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the United States. He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport 18 months ago as he arrived from Pakistan.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Hussein Enters Post-9/11 Web of U.S. Prisons
December 18, 2003
By JAMES RISEN and THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18SADD.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to government officials.
It is a secretive universe, they said, made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq.
Many of the prisoners are still being held in a network of detention centers ranging from Afghanistan to the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Officials described it as a prison system with its own unique hierarchy, one in which the most important captives are kept at the greatest distance from the prying eyes of the public and the media. It is a system in which the jailers have refined the arts of interrogation in order to drain the detainees of crucial information.
Mr. Hussein's new address is still a closely guarded secret, although he is still inside Iraq, American officials said Wednesday. No one will say precisely where, but it seems likely that he is at a highly secure detention facility established at Baghdad International Airport, where the United States is holding the other top Iraqi leaders it has captured. When asked if Mr. Hussein was at airport, American officials declined to comment.
The C.I.A. has quietly established its own detention system to handle especially important prisoners. The most important Qaeda leaders are held in small groups in undisclosed locations in friendly countries in the developing world, where they face long interrogations with no promise of ever gaining release. For example, at least two of the top Qaeda figures captured since the Sept. 11 attacks - Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh - were held for a time in a secure location in Thailand. They were later moved to another country, officials said.
C.I.A. officials refuse to say precisely how many Qaeda operatives the agency has in detention, but they say about 75 percent of the top two dozen Qaeda leaders in place at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks have been killed or captured. That suggests the agency's detention capacity is far smaller than the large system established by the Pentagon.
In dealing with its captives, the C.I.A. has the advantage of almost complete isolation. Officials say that allows the agency's interrogators to alter the physical surroundings of the Qaeda detainees to try to disorient them and also convince them that they are being held by Arab security services feared for their use of torture. Guards are sometimes dressed in the uniforms of the native countries of the detainees, a technique that may be particularly effective on captives who have experienced jail time back home. Officials said the C.I.A. might not be able to use the full range of interrogation techniques on Mr. Hussein that have been employed with Qaeda leaders. Unlike Qaeda operatives, Mr. Hussein seems destined to face some sort of public judicial review, either through an international war crimes tribunal or other trial, and so the agency's handling of him may eventually come under scrutiny.
Pentagon and C.I.A. officials have denied that they use torture against detainees captured in either Iraq or the wider campaign against terror. The agency's officials have declined to comment on the techniques they use with detainees, but a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday that interrogations conducted by the Pentagon followed "well-established techniques" that do not violate the human rights of the detainees.
Certain techniques that interrogators may wish to apply to elicit information from important detainees require "a higher level of scrutiny" by officials before they can be used, the Pentagon official said.
One military officer said the use of sleep deprivation, for example, must be approved by senior Pentagon officials.
American military officials said Wednesday that 38 of the 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders had either been killed or captured, and several hundred lower-level government officials and Baath Party operatives are also being held. While the most senior officials captured are being held at the Baghdad Airport, many of the lower-level Iraqis are now in Abu Gharib prison west of Baghdad, which was infamous as a torture den under Mr. Hussein's rule but has since been refurbished by American forces. Smaller, regional facilities have also been set up around Iraq temporarily to handle Iraqis caught up in street-level military operations intended to stem the insurgency.
In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the United States military is running a large detention center at Bagram Air Base, where Taliban, Qaeda and other foreign fighters caught in the country are held and questioned. Smaller, short-term detention centers have also been run in both Kandahar and Kabul.
Many of those caught in Afghanistan were eventually flown to Guantánamo, which has become the best-known prison in the global campaign against terror. Guantánamo now holds about 660 prisoners, although that number is expected to decline as some of them are turned over to their home countries.
Still, Guantánamo's inmates are among the least significant of any detainees captured since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to several American counterterrorism experts. The C.I.A. has not sent any of the highest-ranking Qaeda leaders it has captured to the base, officials said.
A final category of detainees are those Qaeda operatives who really are being held by Arab countries, like Egypt, which then provide debriefing reports to the United States.
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Appeals Court Orders Release of American Held as Combatant
December 18, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Suspect.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- President Bush does not have power to detain American citizen Jose Padilla, the former gang member seized on U.S. soil, as an enemy combatant, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The decision, which ordered that Padilla be released from military custody within 30 days, could force the government to try the ``dirty bomb'' plot suspect in civilian courts. The White House said the government would seek a stay.
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Padilla's detention was not authorized by Congress and that Bush could not designate him as an enemy combatant without the authorization.
The former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam was arrested in May 2002 Chicago's O'Hare airport as he returned from Pakistan. Within days, he was moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C.
The court directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to release Padilla from military custody within 30 days, but said the government was free to transfer him to civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges.
If appropriate, Padilla also can be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings, the court said.
``As this court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al-Qaida poses to our country and of the responsibilities the president and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation,'' the court said.
``But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the president is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress,'' it added.
In a dissenting opinion, District Judge Richard C. Wesley said the president as commander in chief ``has the inherent authority to thwart acts of belligerency at home or abroad that would do harm to United States citizens.''
The White House said the ruling was inconsistent with the president's constitutional authority as well as with other court rulings.
``The president's most solemn obligation is protecting the American people,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday. ``We believe the 2nd Circuit ruling is troubling and flawed. The president has directed the Justice Department to seek a stay, and further judicial review.''
Padilla's lawyer, Donna Newman did not immediately return a telephone message for comment. Newman has battled in court to be able to meet with Padilla; she has not done so since he was designated an enemy combatant the month after he was arrested.
Chris Dunn, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ruling ``historic.''
``It's a repudiation of the Bush administration's attempt to close the federal courts to those accused of terrorism,'' he said. The group had submitted a legal brief supporting Padilla.
``It's right on the money,'' added Barbara Olshansky, deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which argued in court papers that Bush lacked authority.
Padilla is accused of plotting to detonate a ``dirty bomb,'' which uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials. The government said he had proposed the bomb plot to Abu Zubaydah, then al-Qaida's top terrorism coordinator. Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002.
Only two other people have been designated enemy combatants since the 2001 terrorist attacks: Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who has been accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent, and Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana native captured during the fighting in Afghanistan.
In its ruling, the court said it was not addressing the detention of any U.S. citizens seized within a zone of combat in Afghanistan.
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Australian at Guantanamo in 'Legal and Moral Black Hole,' Lawyer Says
By Michelle García
The Washington Post
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9675-2003Dec17.html
NEW YORK, Dec. 17 -- The first attorney to meet with a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison Wednesday characterized his client's situation as a "legal and moral black hole."
At a news conference after his return from a five-day trip to the U.S. Navy facility, Stephen Kenny, the civilian attorney representing Australian David Hicks, criticized the legal process for detainees.
"They do not get the same standard of justice that has been afforded to an American citizen," Kenny said, referring to John Walker Lindh, who was prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts. "The usual rules of evidence do not apply here [and] . . . there is no normal avenue of appeal. The process does not measure up to minimum international standards."
Hicks, 28, a former ranch hand and alleged Taliban fighter, was captured in Afghanistan two years ago and has been held at the prison, which houses 660 detainees. He is one of six men designated as eligible to face trial in military tribunals.
Government officials granted Kenny, who is also Australian, permission to visit his client. Hicks also has been assigned a military lawyer. The Bush administration has assured the Australian government that Hicks will not face the death penalty, and has allowed him to talk with his parents by telephone.
Kenny said the legal team hopes to negotiate Hicks's return to Australia "with no restrictions." No charges have been filed against Hicks, but Kenny speculated that military prosecutors may ultimately accuse him of conspiracy.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a lower court ruling that held that Guantanamo detainees are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.
Kenny said he met with Hicks in his cell. He said Hicks "has not been ill treated . . . if you ignore the isolation, the lack of access to the outside world and denial of his basic human rights." In a letter to his parents, Hicks said he has been separated from other detainees.
Kenny said his client was in "reasonable good spirits although quite depressed about his conditions."
Maj. John Smith, a spokesman for the Pentagon's office of military commissions, said all of Kenny's public statements regarding detainees must be cleared with the Defense Department. He said the department had denied Kenny permission to comment on two areas relating to security procedures.
Kenny said he could not discuss a report in The Washington Post last week that government officials had attempted to secure a plea agreement with Hicks before he met with his legal counsel. But said he could not "discredit" the report.
"There were clearly discussions between him and interrogators about his future," he said, adding that Hicks did not seem to fully grasp his situation.
Kenny said that if he cannot strike a deal with U.S. authorities, there is no guarantee that Hicks ever will appear before a military tribunal. He has asked that Hicks be tried in Australia, and has called on the United Nations to intervene.
Hicks "could simply be held there without trial and without charge," Kenny said. "It appears that Saddam Hussein will be afforded a fairer trial than Hicks."
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10 Years For Man Who Aided Jihad Probe
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9809-2003Dec17.html
The last member of an alleged Virginia jihad network who has pleaded guilty was sentenced yesterday to more than 10 years in prison, even after he was praised by prosecutors for his extensive cooperation in the case.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema sentenced 30-year-old Muhammed Aatique on a gun charge. She labeled the sentence "draconian" but said she had no choice because federal guidelines mandated 10 years to life. Brinkema then chose a six-month term for a charge of aiding and abetting; Aatique could have received up to three years in prison for that count.
Aatique of Norristown, Pa., apologized for his actions and said he tried to atone by helping the investigation into a group of men who prosecutors say were fighting for Muslim causes abroad and may have taken up arms against the United States. "It was because of these feelings that I chose to cooperate from the moment I was first approached in this investigation," Aatique said.
His lawyer, Alan Dexter Bowman, said that the judge's hands were tied and that he hoped to persuade prosecutors to file a motion asking Brinkema to reduce the sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg told the judge, "Our view is that Mr. Aatique was cooperative from the start," but he did not comment on the prospect of a reduced sentence.
Aatique was the fourth man to plead guilty in the high-profile case that the Justice Department has publicized as an important milestone in the war on terrorism. A federal grand jury charged 11 men in June with weapons counts and with training with Lashkar-i-Taiba, a group that is trying to drive India from Kashmir and has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
The men -- all but Aatique from the Washington suburbs and nine of them U.S. citizens -- were accused of possessing a variety of weapons and practicing military tactics while playing paintball in the Virginia countryside. Although some defense attorneys have insisted that the paintball games were harmless, Aatique said when he pleaded guilty in September that they "were conducted as sort of a military training."
Aatique, who was charged with aiding and abetting several other defendants in preparing to fight India and with using and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, also acknowledged then that "the United States could have been one of the possible opponents" if the conspirators had not been arrested.
The other three men who pleaded guilty received sentences ranging from less than four years in prison to 111/2 years.
In September, the charges were upgraded against the seven remaining defendants, and two now face allegations that they conspired to provide material support to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization and to his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. A third is accused of supplying services to the Taliban.
All seven men charged in the upgraded indictment have pleaded not guilty. Six of them are scheduled to go on trial in February, with the seventh facing trial in March.
-------- terrorism
U.S. Intensifies Its Alert on Saudi Arabia
December 18, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/middleeast/18SAUD.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - The State Department intensified its warnings about terrorism in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, advising Americans not to travel there and giving nonessential diplomatic employees the option to leave.
"The U.S. government continues to receive indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western interests, including the targeting of transportation and civil aviation," the department said in a statement that superseded an alert of Dec. 8.
"American citizens in Saudi Arabia should remain vigilant, particularly in public places associated with the Western community," the department said. It is common for the State Department to issue warnings about travel to certain countries, but recent events in Saudi Arabia have heightened concerns.
Last May, attacks at three housing projects in the capital, Riyadh, killed more than 30 people. American and Saudi officials blamed Al Qaeda for the bombings, and on Nov. 8, an attack by suspected members of Al Qaeda on a residential compound in Riyadh killed 18 people and wounded scores of others.
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New Warning About Threat of Terrorism Is Issued in Saudi Arabia
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 18, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9674-2003Dec17.html
Just 10 days after its last security alert in Saudi Arabia, the United States yesterday issued another warning about the threat of new terrorist attacks there and authorized the reduction of its diplomatic staff in the kingdom.
The warning also urged the estimated 37,000 private American citizens in the oil-rich Persian Gulf state to evaluate their situation and "consider departing." The United States will offer free flights for all nonemergency diplomatic staff and any family members at the embassy in Riyadh or two U.S. consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran. The United States took the latest step because U.S. intelligence "continues to receive indications of terrorist threats aimed at American and Western targets, including the targeting of transportation and civil aviation," it warned. A State Department official called the intelligence "specific and credible" aimed at the U.S. community in general.
U.S. citizens who opt to remain in Saudi Arabia should "remain vigilant, particularly in public places associated with the Western community," the State Department warning said.
The Bush administration stressed that the reduction is not permanent. The decision will be reviewed within 30 days.
"This is not a full bug-out. The core mission will remain," a senior U.S. official said.
The United States has issued a growing number of travel alerts since three suicide bombings in Riyadh on May 12 killed 35 people, including nine Americans. All three bombings, blamed on Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, targeted housing compounds for Westerners.
Just one day after a security alert last month, another suicide bomber in Riyadh struck a fourth foreign compound, occupied mainly by Arabs, Asians and non-Americans, killing 17 and injuring more than 100. And earlier this month, the State Department imposed a curfew on diplomatic staff leaving the diplomatic compound between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
The latest warning reflects the "accumulative effect" of terrorism in Saudi Arabia over the past seven months, the State Department official said. "It's a general environment -- when we continue to see intelligence that tilts toward this, plus the number of recent attacks -- and now the Saudis feel they are targets, too."
An FBI official in Washington said there has been a notable increase in intelligence volume indicating that something is being planned in Saudi Arabia, but "there is no specific target" that is known. There is no indication of an increased risk of attack within the United States, the official added.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- health
Appeals court OKs medicinal pot
December 18, 2003
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031217-100137-2512r.htm
Prosecuting sick people under federal law for using medical marijuana on a doctor's advice is unconstitutional, if users grow the drug themselves or obtain it free, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled.
In a 2-to-1 decision Tuesday, the San Francisco-based appeals court concluded that federal law outlawing marijuana does not apply to people who smoke it on a doctor's recommendation in a state that allows it - if the drug is not sold and is not transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes.
In the majority opinion, Judge Harry Pregerson, appointed to the court in 1979 by President Carter, wrote that smoking marijuana on the advice of a doctor is "different in kind from drug trafficking." The court held that "this limited use is clearly distinct form the broader illicit drug market."
At this time, the appellate ruling is limited to two seriously-ill California women, who sought a court order that would let them obtain and smoke marijuana without facing federal prosecution, and two "John Does," who grow the pot consumed by one of the sick women, according to Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman.
Mr. Miller declined to speculate on the potential effect of the ruling.
Keith Stroup, executive director and founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said it is "technically true" that the immediate effects of the ruling are limited to four persons.
"But the legal doctrine laid out by the 9th Circuit applies to all states in the 9th Circuit with medical marijuana laws ... so this decision is enormously significant," Mr. Stroup added.
States under the 9th Circuit include California, Alaska, Nevada, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Arizona.
Robert Raich, a lawyer in the case, said the decision would be "binding only in the 9th Circuit," but he believes the ruling could be "persuasive" in its influence throughout the country.
Mr. Miller said Justice Department lawyers are currently reviewing the ruling to determine whether to appeal. He said federal lawyers have 45 days to go to the full 9th Circuit - considered one of the more liberal courts in the nation - or 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The ruling was a setback for the Justice Department, which has held that federal drug laws supercede state statutes that authorize medical use of marijuana. The department argued it could prosecute medical marijuana users under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act.
In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that medical need was not a valid defense for distributing an illegal drug to sick people.
A California law passed in 1996 allows people to grow, use or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's prescription. Colorado, Maryland and Maine have similar laws. Since the law's enactment, the courts have been a battleground between the federal government and state and local authorities over their respective drug laws.
The 9th Circuit reversed a decision a federal judge rendered in March, who dismissed the four plaintiffs' suit. The lower court said federal law barred it from blocking any enforcement action against medical marijuana patients. The appellate ruling sends the case back to the district judge.
In ruling against the government, the 9th Circuit said that the Supreme Court, in its 2001 opinion, had left open the possibility that individual patients and care givers could claim the federal government was exceeding its authority over them.
Mr. Stroup of NORML pointed out that the Justice Department has always asserted that it had the right to intervene with state medical marijuana laws because such legislation could "adversely affect interstate commerce."
But given that plaintiffs Angel Raich of Oakland, Calif., and Diane Monson of Orville, Calif., either grew their own marijuana or had it provided free by local growers, the court "found there was no impact on interstate commerce," Mr. Stroup said.
As a result, it held that the federal government "lacked jurisdiction" in this case, he said.
"Up till now, there had been no break in federal [court] adamancy that there are no exceptions to federal marijuana laws. This is the first crack in the barrier," Mr. Stroup observed.
--------
AIDS Is Cutting African Life Span to 30-Year Low, Report Says
December 18, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/international/africa/18WHO.html
GENEVA, Thursday, Dec. 18 - In AIDS-ravaged parts of southern Africa adult mortality is higher than it was 30 years ago, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
In 14 African countries, the United Nations agency said in its annual World Health Report, child mortality is higher than it was in 1990, with more than 300 children out of every 1,000 born in Sierra Leone dying before the age of 5.
The 194-page report, which includes information on life expectancy, road traffic deaths and the fight against polio and AIDS, also warned of a growing gulf in health care and exposure to disease between the poorest countries and other countries.
The report concluded that life expectancy is on the increase in most of the world, but it also highlighted problem areas.
"Today's global health situation raises urgent questions about justice," Dr. Jong Wook Lee, the director general of the health agency, wrote in an introduction.
"In some parts of the world there is a continued expectation of longer and more comfortable life, while in many others there is despair over the failure to control disease though the means to do so exist."
Of the 57 million premature deaths in 2002, 10.5 million were children younger than 5, and 98 percent of those were in developing countries.
In Zimbabwe, the average life expectancy for men and women was 37.9; in Zambia it was 39.7; and in Angola it was 39.9. In Switzerland it was 80.6, and it was 80.4 in Sweden and 79.7 in France.
A baby girl born now in Japan could expect to live 85 years, while one born in Sierra Leone would probably not survive beyond 36.
"A world marked by such inequities is in very serious trouble," Dr. Lee wrote. "We have to find ways to unite our strengths as a global community to shape a healthier future."
The report said AIDS was the leading cause of death for people between 15 and 59, reducing the life expectancy of adults in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe by 20 years.
Deaths from the virus and the complications it brings were almost twice those from the next top killer - heart disease - and well over twice as high as the toll from the third most fatal disease - tuberculosis - according to the report.
The health agency said diseases related to tobacco were responsible for about five million deaths a year.
It said that in 2002, over 1.2 million people died of lung cancer - largely caused by smoking - which was a 30 percent increase over 1990. Three out of four of those who died were men, the agency said.
Among men, average life expectancy is 77.9 years in Australia and 75.9 in France. In China, the average man lives to 69.6, in Brazil to 65.7 and in Egypt to 65.3.
But in Russia, a man can expect to live to only 58.4.
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