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NUCLEAR
Pakistan Questions Top Atomic Scientist
Pakistan says nuclear scientists quizzed after information from Iran
Nuclear scientists quizzed on leaks
Libya depended on foreign help for atomic weapons bid: diplomats
Blix says Libyan example shows that Iraq could have been contained
U.N. Eyes Verification on Libya's WMD
Libya Agrees to Rapid Nuclear Inspections
Chief Arms Inspector Is Set to Go to Libya
Pakistan Says Greed Motivated Nuclear Transfers
Pakistan Admits Having Rogue Scientists
Pakistan Questions Top Atomic Scientist
Pakistan Says 3 Nuclear Scientists Are Under Investigation
DOE identifies rail route for Nevada nuke waste shipments
Dean left speechless on Libya arms move
Powell Defends Diplomatic Role
Kucinich Presses U.N. Involvement in Iraq
MILITARY
Afghan Delegates Favor a Presidential System
Northrop Grumman Gets $419 Million Deal
Talk of Tikrit's Favorite Diner: Hatred of Hussein, Fury at U.S.
2 G.I.'s Killed in a Bombing; Hussein Aide Is Captured
Israeli Forces Raid Gaza Camp, Killing at Least 8 Palestinians
Japan's Troops Leave for Iraq Aid Mission
Russia to Use Only Professional Troops
Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids
Judge Halts Military's Required Anthrax Shots
Anthrax Shots Require Consent, Military Told
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Under Bush, Expanding Secrecy
Canada Court to Keep Marijuana Illegal
Security Tightens, but Public Seems to Take It in Stride
U.S. Broadens Air Patrols Due to Threat
A Calm Shade of Orange Americans Heed Call to Stay Busy
Heightened Terrorism Alert May Last Beyond Holidays
ENERGY AND OTHER
Wind energy investment options are starting to fly
Germans turn waste to energy
Fuel Cell Research Touted for New Mexico
Energy Department Fuels Hydrogen Three Wheelers for India
Licorice Extract Curbs Breast, Prostate Cancers
-------- NUCLEAR
------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Questions Top Atomic Scientist
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 23, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/asia/23NUKE.html?pagewanted=print&position=
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 22 - Government officials confirmed Monday that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the developer of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was being questioned about reports that some Pakistani nuclear scientists had shared secrets with Iran and North Korea.
"Some questions have been raised with him in relation to ongoing debriefing sessions," Masood Khan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Officials said Dr. Khan was not under arrest, however.
Earlier this month, Pakistani authorities detained three nuclear scientists associated with the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, 20 miles southeast of Islamabad, the capital. The center, named for Dr. Khan, is the country's main nuclear-enrichment laboratory. On Sunday one of the three scientists, Yasin Chohan, was allowed to return home, according to Foreign Ministry officials.
Pakistan has come under increasing international pressure in recent weeks as reports about suspected links between nuclear programs in Iran and Pakistan have surfaced.
Pakistan denies having shared nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea or any other country.
The scientists who were detained, identified in newspaper reports as Dr. Chohan, Farooq Muhammad and Sayeed Ahmed, have been described as close aides to Dr. Khan, who retired in 2001.
Any move against Dr. Khan, a popular figure in Pakistan, would probably set off a backlash by Islamist and opposition parties, which have already criticized the detentions, accusing the government of rolling back the nuclear program.
Prof. Khurshid Ahmed, an opposition senator, accused the government of harassing the scientists to please "their American masters."
----
Pakistan says nuclear scientists quizzed after information from Iran
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Dec 23, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031223123722.w9kcssxi.html
Pakistan said Tuesday it had placed some of its top nuclear scientists under investigation following information from Iran that they might have cooperated with Teheran's nuclear programme.
"We had been given some information by the government of Iran," foreign office spokesman Masood Khan said at his weekly news briefing.
"The information that was shared with us pointed to certain individuals and we had to hold these debriefing sessions," he said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also "approached" Pakistan which led to "debriefing" of a few scientists, he said.
Local media reported this month that Yasin Chohan and Farooq Mohammad, directors of the country's key facility of Kahuta Research Laboratory (KRL), were taken from their homes in early December for questioning.
Chohan has since returned home but Mohammad Farooq is still being questioned.
Khan said the creator of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had also been questioned but denied reports that the government had placed unspecified restrictions on him.
"No restrictions have been imposed on him," he said.
However, "questions are being asked from Qadeer Khan with regard to debriefing sessions," he said.
The New York Times reported Monday that information Iran turned over to the IAES two months ago had strengthened suspicions that Pakistan sold key nuclear secrets to Iran.
But Khan reiterated that the government of Pakistan had never authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology to any country.
"Pakistan has never proliferated and will never proliferate.
"The president of Pakistan has given his 400 percent assurance and commitment that no violation of Pakistan's commitment will ever take place," he said.
Pakistan has a "very strong command and control system and a very stringent export control regime. There should be no doubt about it," he said.
"Pakistan takes its responsibility as a nuclear weapons state very seriously. Since a strict command and control system was established, nothing of the sort has happened."
Khan said Pakistan had taken a "proactive approach" by interviewing the scientists and if at the end of debriefing sessions it found the individuals were responsible for passing on nuclear information, it would act against them under the law.
"If they are found responsible at the end of debriefing sessions, we shall take action against such individuals if warranted and if they are found culpable under our laws. Nobody is above the law."
He also denied reports that officials of other countries were involved in questioning Pakistani scientists.
"These are purely in-house investigations. No foreigners or foreign agencies are associated with the debriefing sessions."
----
Nuclear scientists quizzed on leaks
December 23, 2003
By Sadaqat Jan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031222-105916-7506r.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The founder of Pakistan's nuclear program has been questioned as part of investigations into whether any scientists leaked sensitive technology to other countries, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
Abdul Qadeer Khan is not in custody, but was questioned in connection with "the ongoing debriefing sessions" of a "very small number of scientists," a ministry spokesman said.
"No restrictions have been imposed on him," the spokesman said.
Pakistan's government strongly denies accusations that it spread nuclear technology to countries such as Iran, North Korea and Libya, but acknowledged that individual scientists may have acted without authorization.
At least two scientists from Khan Research Laboratories, the country's top nuclear laboratory named after its founder, were held for questioning this month - including Mohammed Farooq, its former director-general and aide to Mr. Khan.
Mr. Farooq is still in custody "undergoing a dependability and debriefing session," the ministry spokesman said.
Pakistan, which carried out nuclear-weapons tests in 1998, "takes its responsibilities as a nuclear-weapons state very seriously," Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed said.
"The government of Pakistan has not authorized any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology to other countries. We have a strong command-and-control system. Only individuals are being investigated," he said.
Pakistan's admission came just days after Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's surprise announcement Friday that his country was abandoning its program for weapons of mass destruction.
Libya also agreed to open its nuclear activities to pervasive inspection by the U.N. atomic agency as early as next week.
According to diplomats, the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has identified Russia, China and Pakistan as probable sources for equipment used by Iran for nuclear-weapons development.
Mr. Ahmed said the investigations followed "IAEA reservations and recent news reports in the Western world."
Iran signed a key accord Thursday that gives U.N. experts full access to its nuclear facilities. That followed international pressure on Iran to prove it had not tried to build atomic weapons.
-------- mideast
Libya depended on foreign help for atomic weapons bid: diplomats
VIENNA (AFP)
Dec 23, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031223174231.tngugntc.html
Lacking its own know-how and technology, Libya shipped in scientists and materials from Europe in a bid to create weapons programmes that Moamer Kadhafi's regime hoped would make Tripoli a nuclear power, diplomats and experts said on Tuesday.
Libya, seeking to reintegrate into the international community after more than two decades in the cold, had stunned the world at the weekend by formally renouncing its past attempts to build weapons of mass destruction.
The sources revealed the extent to which Libya, treated as a pariah by the West since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, depended on European countries to acquire technology that it claimed was merely for peaceful energy purposes -- but was also used to try to develop a weapons programme.
"Libya did its shopping in Europe and Asia to try and build nuclear and chemical weapons," said a nuclear arms expert based in Vienna, the home of the United Nations atomic agency the IAEA.
"Having neither the scientists nor the know-how of the parts and equipment needed to build what would have been the first Islamic bomb, it acquired abroad dual technologies for achieving that goal," added the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Kadhafi, the maverick leader who has ruled Libya since 1969, started the nuclear programme by building in 1979 an experimental reactor with 10 megawatts capacity with the help of the Soviet Union, a Western diplomat said.
The facility, in Tajura, 15 kilometres (nine miles) southeast of Tripoli "is the core of the Libyan nuclear programme", the diplomat said.
The site went live in 1981 and within three years 750 Libyan technicians were working there alongside Soviet scientists. Its job was to produce radioactive isotopes seperated by centrifuges and produce research in applied nuclear and chemical physics.
To modernise the Tajura plant, Libya approached in 1984 the Belgian nuclear company Belgonucleaire. But after pressure from the United States, the firm turned down a contract said to be worth one billion dollars.
Meanwhile, according to one diplomat, Libya's nuclear technicians were studying in the United States and Europe, a process that continued "until the early 1990s."
Libya occupied in 1975 the Aouzou strip in Chad, an area said to rich in uranium deposits. It also signed an agreement with India over peaceful uses of atomic energy in 1978.
In 1976, France agreed to build a nuclear power station that would provide energy for a desalination plant. Libya also signed a four-billion-dollar deal for the Soviet Union to build a massive 880 megawatt plant west of Tripoli.
But neither of these projects were realised.
"With this technical cooperation, Libya was trying to acquire peaceful technologies and use them for military purposes," said the second diplomat.
A report published in November by the CIA also indicates that Libya was using its foreign contacts to buy nuclear technology that could be used for both military and civilian purposes.
"Libya participated in various technical exchanges through which it could have tried to obtain dual-use equipment and technology that could have enhanced its overall technical capabilities in the nuclear area," the report said.
US intelligence officials announced on Saturday they had found on secret visits to Libya a more advanced uranium enrichment programme than publicly disclosed, but no evidence of actual production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile Libya was also attempting to manufacture materials for chemical weapons, such as mustard and nerve gas, in a factory constructed at the end of the 1980s some 40 kilometres (25 miles) southwest of Tripoli.
The existence of this plant, known as Pharma 150, was only discovered in 1988, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The site was built by a German company, which placed equipment orders with companies in France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria on the pretext that they would be used to construct a factory in Hong Kong.
According to SIPRI, Kadhafi's regime also tried to manufacture chemical weapons in an underground factory in Tarhunah, 65 kilometres southeast of Tripoli and in the site "Pharma 200" in the Sebha oasis, 650 kilometres south of the Libyan capital.
----
Blix says Libyan example shows that Iraq could have been contained
LONDON (AFP)
Dec 23, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031223151353.jb84w5gc.html
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Libya's renunciation of weapons of mass destruction under diplomatic pressure shows that Iraq could have been contained in the same way, without the need for war.
Asked in a BBC interview if Libya's decision was the direct consequence of a US military threat, Blix replied, "No, I think that's going a bit far."
He said military pressure "might have been a factor," but he noted that Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi had ceded after years of pressure.
"You could just as well say that the example shows that perhaps Iraq could have been handled also with continuous containment," Blix said.
His inspectors failed to find any evidence that Iraq was producing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The United States and its allies, nevertheless insisted the weapons existed and US forces led the invasion of Iraq on March 20.
"Pressure, including military pressure, is important but does not necessarily mean that one should go to war," Blix commented.
Asked about reports that David Kay, the head of the US-led coalition's weapons search group in Iraq, is about to step down, Blix said: "Certainly, it is an indication that the US government is giving much higher priority to the search for terrorists than the search for weapons."
He added, "they might even have given up on the weapons."
Blix said earlier this month that Baghdad probably destroyed the arms after the 1991 Gulf war as Iraqi leaders claimed all along.
----
U.N. Eyes Verification on Libya's WMD
December 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Libya.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council called Tuesday for swift international verification of Libya's decision to scrap its weapons of mass destruction programs.
In a statement, the council said it ``warmly welcomed'' the announcement last Friday by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi that the North African country would abandon its efforts to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them.
Libya has agreed to submit to U.N. weapons inspections and to provide full details of programs to develop nuclear and chemical weapons that were more advanced than suspected by the United States and Britain, which conducted nine months of secret talks to work out the arrangement.
The Security Council statement said ``members looked forward to the early implementation of all the commitments made in the announcement including the subjection to urgent international verification.''
Libya initially took issue with a reference in the proposed council statement encouraging international cooperation ``to ensure the verified elimination of all Libya's weapons of mass destruction programs.'' But council diplomats said that after a meeting Monday night with British diplomats, Libya dropped its objection.
However, the council did drop a statement from the draft which said, ``Libya's actions could become a model for others, including in the Middle East, toward reversing the proliferation.''
Pakistan, which possesses nuclear weapons and admitted Tuesday that rogue nuclear scientists driven by ``personal ambition and greed'' may have spread sensitive technology to Iran, insisted on eliminating the reference to Libya's actions becoming ``a model'' for other countries.
The United States objected to singling out the Middle East on the grounds that it was clearly aimed at Israel, which is believed to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan and Libya wanted the Middle East reference, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The final statement said the council ``encouraged Libya's cooperation with others, including the U.N. and other relevant international bodies, to ensure the verified elimination of all Libya's WMD programs.''
On Monday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said he will lead the first inspection of Libya's nuclear facilities as soon as next week.
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Libya Agrees to Rapid Nuclear Inspections
U.S. Says Sanctions Cannot Be Lifted Until Disarmament Is Confirmed by Monitors
By Peter Slevin and Dan Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 23, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23080-2003Dec22?language=printer
Libya agreed Monday to allow U.N. inspectors to move quickly to examine the country's nuclear program as the nation hurried to make good on its promise to surrender weapons of mass destruction.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he would travel with experts in the coming days to the Libyan capital, where he intends to ask for a full accounting of nuclear research and procurement as a first step in a detailed verification project.
"Libya's decision to reverse course is a positive development and a step in the right direction," said ElBaradei, as weapons specialists, foreign governments and oil companies worked to understand last week's startling disarmament pledge by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
U.S. officials cautioned that trade sanctions would not be lifted until Gaddafi had delivered on his promises and the results had been confirmed by international monitors. A White House spokesman said "the initial signs are positive."
Gaddafi told CNN's Andrea Koppel on Monday that Libya wanted better relations with the United States and investments from American and British companies. In his first public remarks since the disarmament deal was announced, he said other countries in the region, including Syria and Iran, should follow Libya's example.
Oil companies are eager to return to Libya 17 years after they were forced by President Reagan to quit their valuable stakes in the aftermath of a 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed an American soldier. An oil-industry source said the agreement came almost too suddenly.
"Any road map -- 'If they do this, we'll do that' -- has been accelerated, maybe faster than the U.S. government wants," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We don't know what it means for us. Until we know, we just keep obeying U.S. law."
Under that law, the companies have been permitted to send technicians to Libya regularly to assess oil fields and production facilities, which Gaddafi has said he hopes will be revived if the United States lifts sanctions. No further U.S. investment has been allowed under a series of sanctions linked to Libya's record on terrorism and unconventional weapons.
"Congress will be vital," said George Perkovich, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who said Libya was likely to fall into line. "I assume this deal was made at such a high level involving principals that Gaddafi means it, that he's not really going to play a lot of games."
Libya surprised U.S. leaders in March when an emissary to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government sought a deal to eliminate Libya's pariah status. After nine months of secret negotiations that included unprecedented visits to Libya's nuclear sites, Gaddafi agreed to abandon nuclear, chemical and biological programs and halt attempts to extend the range of Libya's missiles.
ElBaradei told reporters that a Libyan government official, Matooq Mohamed Matooq, told him that Libya had imported natural uranium and processing equipment in an effort to produce weapons-grade fissile material. Libya spent more than a decade on the uranium enrichment project without reporting it to the IAEA, as required.
Matooq told ElBaradei during a visit to the IAEA's Vienna headquarters on Saturday that no industrial-scale facility had been built, nor any enriched uranium produced. To speed verification of Libya's statements, the Gaddafi government agreed to allow investigators to visit atomic facilities on short notice.
The source of Libya's sophisticated imported material remains an unanswered question. U.S. authorities have refused to discuss publicly what the Libyans have told them about nuclear materials or what they concluded by examining gas centrifuges that extract the fissile material present in natural uranium.
International experts are much interested by an investigation of the role of Pakistani nuclear scientists and their companies in nuclear programs abroad. Evidence discovered in Iran points persuasively to Pakistan as the provider of critical technology in that country, according to U.S. and European sources.
Blueprints of centrifuges in Iran are nearly identical to those used by Pakistan in the early stages of its successful nuclear program, according to designs reviewed by the IAEA. ElBaradei declined to discuss Libya's potential sources or any possible connection with Iran or Iraq.
"There has been, of course, a good deal of importation from abroad of equipment and material. We do not know yet whether there was any linkage with other nations," ElBaradei said.
Libyan Prime Minister Shokri Ghanem said the decision to work with the British, the Americans and the IAEA was intended to "turn swords into plowshares."
Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said "some inspections could start next week" and expressed hope that U.S. oil companies would return to Libya to develop its petroleum fields. Washington first imposed oil import bans on Libya in 1982, then expanded them to include commercial contracts and travel in 1986.
Gaddafi's government succeeded in obtaining the lifting of U.N. sanctions earlier this year by taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreeing to pay as much as $10 million to the relatives of each of the 270 victims.
ElBaradei said Libya's actions provided an opportunity to turn the Middle East into "a zone free from nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction." Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation known to possess nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran and Libya, it has not faced U.S. pressure to give up its nuclear program.
Gaddafi told CNN that a decision by other Arab countries and Iran would "tighten the noose around the Israelis so that they would expose their programs and their weapons of mass destruction."
If Gaddafi follows through, Washington will have to deliver rewards, said Perkovich, if Libya's turnaround is to serve as a message to other governments.
Williams reported from Rome
--------
Chief Arms Inspector Is Set to Go to Libya
December 23, 2003
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23LIBY.html
PARIS, Dec. 22 - The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, said Monday that he will go to Libya next week to "kick start" inspections of Libya's nuclear weapons program.
Dr. ElBaradei's plans follow Libya's sudden admission of its past nuclear weapons ambitions and its agreement with the United States and Britain to dismantle all its unconventional weapons programs and submit to international inspections. The moves are part of a broader initiative by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to rehabilitate his country's international standing.
"The purpose of my visit will be to initiate an in-depth process of verification of all of Libya's past and present nuclear activities," Dr. ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna. He said the inspections would help define what actions would be needed to eliminate any nuclear weapons program.
Dr. ElBaradei said senior Libyan government officials confirmed to him over the weekend that Libya had been developing uranium enrichment technology to enable it to build nuclear bombs. The program included buying uranium from abroad, as well as centrifuge and conversion equipment that was used to build a small, now dismantled enrichment plant.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan Says Greed Motivated Nuclear Transfers
December 23, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-iran-nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan admitted on Tuesday that scientists involved in its atom bomb program may have been driven by ``personal ambition or greed'' to export technology to Iran, but added the government had no part in any such deals.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said Pakistan was determined to get to the bottom of allegations that nuclear technology may have been transferred to Iran.
He said it began questioning scientists from a state-run laboratory set up by the father of its bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, five to six weeks ago after approaches by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and information from the Iranian government that ``pointed to certain individuals.''
``There are indications that certain individuals might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed. But we have not made a final determination,'' he said.
He stressed that the government itself had never been involved in nuclear proliferation. ``It takes its responsibility as a nuclear weapons state very seriously,'' he said.
``The government of Pakistan has not authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology or information to other countries,'' he said. ``This is out of the question.''
The spokesman said anyone involved in any nuclear technology transfers would be punished: ``Nobody is above the law.''
On Monday, Islamabad revealed that A.Q. Khan, revered as a national hero for developing a nuclear bomb tested in 1998 to match that of rival India, was being questioned in connection with ``debriefings'' of several scientists working at his Khan Research Laboratories, a uranium enrichment plant near Islamabad.
IDENTICAL CENTRIFUGE DESIGNS
The admission came after diplomats said last month that the IAEA was probing a possible link between Iran and Pakistan. This followed Tehran's acknowledgement that it had used centrifuge designs that appeared identical to ones used in Islambad's quest for the bomb.
Tehran, accused by Washington of seeking to develop nuclear arms, told the IAEA it had obtained the designs from a ``middleman,'' a Western diplomat said at the time.
On Sunday, Islamabad said Yasin Chohan, one of three Pakistani scientists detained earlier in the month, had been allowed home after a ``personnel dependability and debriefing session.'' It said two others, Mohammad Farooq, and another identified only as Saeed, were ``still undergoing debriefing.''
On Monday, Bush administration officials said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had assured Washington that his government had not -- at least ``in the present time'' -- provided any nuclear secrets to countries like Iran and North Korea.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called Musharraf's personal assurances ``important'' and added that close cooperation between the United States and Pakistan in the war on terrorism would continue -- despite any transfers of nuclear technology and know-how that might have taken place in the past.
Past allegations of Pakistani technology transfers, not only to Iran but also to North Korea, have been an embarrassment for the White House, which relies on Pakistan as a key ally in its battle against al Qaeda and allied Islamic militants.
It was inevitable that the spotlight of the Iran probe should turn to A.Q. Khan, who worked in the 1970s at a uranium enrichment plant run by British-Dutch-German consortium Urenco.
According to diplomats, the centrifuge designs used by Iran were of a machine made by the Dutch enrichment unit of Urenco.
In 1983, after his return to Pakistan, Khan was sentenced in absentia to four years' jail by an Amsterdam court for attempted espionage, a decision later overturned on appeal.
Earlier this year, Washington announced commercial sanctions on Khan Research Laboratories, alleging it had arranged transfer of nuclear-capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan. Islamabad protested over the decision.
--------
Pakistan Admits Having Rogue Scientists
December 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Scientists.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan said Tuesday that rogue scientists driven by ``ambition and greed'' may have spread nuclear technology to Iran -- Islamabad's most explicit acknowledgment of such help, prompted by questioning from the U.N. atomic watchdog.
The admission, after months of denials, is the latest in a wave of nuclear disclosures, following revelations from Libya and Iran.
Pakistan said it was cooperating with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency after the agency's inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities showed that international and ``Pakistani-linked individuals'' had acted as ``intermediaries and black marketeers.''
The IAEA has also approached Pakistan and other countries in connection with traces of weapons-grade plutonium discovered on nuclear equipment in Iran, a diplomat familiar with the investigations said.
The contamination ``certainly was one of the reasons they would be in contact with Pakistan and not a few other countries as well,'' the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Those traces, discovered earlier this year, raised alarm bells at the IAEA and in Washington over fears Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran said the equipment was contaminated before being imported in Iran -- prompting an IAEA search into where the equipment came from.
Pakistan, a close U.S. ally in the war on terror, has long been suspected of proliferation during its 30-year odyssey to build nuclear weapons as a deterrent against nuclear rival India. The two nations tested their first nuclear weapons in 1998.
Islamabad strongly denies allegations it sent nuclear technology to North Korea's communist regime in exchange for missiles or helped Libya or Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. A middleman claiming to represent Pakistan's top nuclear scientist offered Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq help in building an atomic bomb on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, according to U.N. documents shown to The Associated Press last year.
But a sudden new openness about secret nuclear programs could raise new questions about Pakistan's role.
Libya over the past week has made a dramatic turn-around, promising to shut down its program to develop nuclear weapons and allowing IAEA to inspect its facilities. Under intense international pressure, Iran agreed this month to allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities and to answer IAEA questions about a program Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes.
A Pakistani spokesman insisted Tuesday that the government never authorized technology transfers to Iran.
``The IAEA has asked us for our cooperation. Based on that request, we are investigating individuals who might have violated Pakistani laws for individual commercial gains,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told The Associated Press.
He did not elaborate on how they profited and what technology was involved, but he said among those being questioned was the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan -- a national hero and 1990 winner of Pakistan's ``Man of the Nation Award.''
Some Pakistani scientists ``might have been motivated by personal ambition or greed,'' he told a press conference earlier. ``But let me add we have not made a final determination. Let's not jump to conclusions.''
Pakistan started investigating several scientists at its top nuclear laboratory, the Khan Research Laboratories, last month. Mohammad Farooq, the lab's former director general and aide to Abdul Qadeer Khan, remains in detention. The questioned scientists could not be reached for comment.
The revelations about Iran could revive the allegations over North Korea and Libya.
``Even if irresponsible individuals were behind it (the alleged proliferation to Iran), it can't be ruled out that the same did not happen with North Korea,'' said Dr. A. H. Nayyar, a physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University who has closely followed his country's nuclear program.
Masood Khan made repeated references in his press conference to the current strong ``command and control system'' governing Pakistan's nuclear program, an apparent hint that any nuclear leak happened before President Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999.
The White House on Monday said Musharraf -- a key U.S. ally in the war on terror -- has assured the United States that Pakistan is not currently offering technology related to weapons of mass destruction to Libya and Iran.
Nayyar saw two scenarios: The proliferation took place either during the late 1980s -- when trading nuclear technology ``was not the taboo it is today'' -- or in the 1990s, when Pakistan faced sanctions from the United States because of its nuclear program and its coffers were empty.
Pakistan itself is believed to have developed its program from the early 1970s onward using technology imported from China and from Western firms.
``It's very possible that individual scientists are being made scapegoats and there was some kind of state involvement,'' Nayyar added.
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Pakistan Questions Top Atomic Scientist
December 23, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/asia/23NUKE.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 22 - Government officials confirmed Monday that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the developer of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was being questioned about reports that some Pakistani nuclear scientists had shared secrets with Iran and North Korea.
"Some questions have been raised with him in relation to ongoing debriefing sessions," Masood Khan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, was quoted by news agencies as saying.
Officials said Dr. Khan was not under arrest, however.
Earlier this month, Pakistani authorities detained three nuclear scientists associated with the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, 20 miles southeast of Islamabad, the capital. The center, named for Dr. Khan, is the country's main nuclear-enrichment laboratory. On Sunday one of the three scientists, Yasin Chohan, was allowed to return home, according to Foreign Ministry officials.
Pakistan has come under increasing international pressure in recent weeks as reports about suspected links between nuclear programs in Iran and Pakistan have surfaced.
Pakistan denies having shared nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea or any other country.
The scientists who were detained, identified in newspaper reports as Dr. Chohan, Farooq Muhammad and Sayeed Ahmed, have been described as close aides to Dr. Khan, who retired in 2001.
Any move against Dr. Khan, a popular figure in Pakistan, would probably set off a backlash by Islamist and opposition parties, which have already criticized the detentions, accusing the government of rolling back the nuclear program.
Prof. Khurshid Ahmed, an opposition senator, accused the government of harassing the scientists to please "their American masters."
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Pakistan Says 3 Nuclear Scientists Are Under Investigation
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 23, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23082-2003Dec22.html
ISLAMABAD, Dec. 22 -- Pakistani officials acknowledged Monday that three scientists affiliated with the country's nuclear program were under investigation to determine whether they independently provided nuclear weapons technology or assistance to Iran and North Korea.
In an interview, Information Minister Rashid Ahmed confirmed the thrust of a report in Sunday's Washington Post that the scientists had been detained for questioning on the basis of information provided to Pakistan by U.N. nuclear inspectors probing Iran's secret procurement network.
Rashid asserted that if there was any sharing of nuclear technology, it was done without the Pakistani government's knowledge or approval. Investigators, he said, are trying to determine whether the scientists may have offered their services as individuals.
"We are saying the government never, ever is involved in this proliferation," Ahmed said, adding that the alleged sharing of nuclear technology took place "many, many years ago, maybe."
It has been widely reported, both here and abroad, that Pakistan this month detained three top nuclear scientists for questioning. Until Monday, however, Pakistani officials had refrained from publicly discussing the reason for the detentions. They broke their silence following Sunday's report in the Post and an account in Monday's New York Times that also described suspicions that Pakistanis had shared technology with North Korea and possibly other countries.
Both articles detailed the possible involvement of scientists from the country's main nuclear weapons lab, the A.Q. Khan Laboratories, in providing Iran with designs for centrifuges to enrich uranium -- a key ingredient of nuclear bombs -- in the 1980s and early 1990s. The center is named for the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
[Khan has also been questioned but is not in custody and "no restrictions have been imposed on him," the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Masood Khan, told the Associated Press.]
The disclosures have embarrassed the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president and a strong ally of the United States in the war on terrorism who has vowed to purge his country of radical Muslim groups with longstanding ties to the country's military and security apparatus.
In an interview Monday evening, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said Pakistan launched its investigation of the scientists about six weeks ago on the basis of information supplied by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. "We have been fully cooperative with the IAEA," said Khan, the spokesman. "The government of Pakistan has never authorized or initiated any transfers of sensitive nuclear technology."
He said that two of the detained scientists -- Mohammed Farooq and Sayeed Ahmad -- were still "undergoing debriefing sessions" while a third, Yasin Chohan, had been allowed to return home.
Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
DOE identifies rail route for Nevada nuke waste shipments
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer
12/23/2003
http://www.rgj.com/news/stories/html/2003/12/23/59913.php
The Energy Department picked a route Tuesday to haul radioactive waste to a planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada, and said a 319-mile rail line should be built to loop around the Nevada Test Site to Yucca Mountain.
Nevada officials and activists immediately derided the route, called the Caliente Corridor, as unrealistically expensive, circuitous and dangerous. They promised a legal challenge if they can find flaws in environmental studies.
"Obviously, the state of Nevada has not been consulted on this,"said Bob Loux, director of the state Nuclear Waste Projects Office and the governor's top anti-Yucca official."They couldn't have picked a more difficult route."
A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jon Porter said Porter would seek congressional hearings before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Railroads, which Porter vice-chairs.
U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., insisted that transporting radioactive waste is not safe.
"They could walk it, fly it, waltz it, truck it or send it here by rail,"Berkley said."It doesn't make it any safer. This is an open invitation to terrorists around the world."
"Even the timing is preposterous,"Berkley added,"given the fact that we are one day from an orange alert."
Federal Homeland Secretary Tom Ridge on Sunday raised the nation's terror alert level from"elevated"to"high,"or orange.
Yucca Mountain spokesman Allen Benson declined to discuss the timing of Tuesday's announcement.
The new rail line could cost $881 million, Benson said, citing a 2002 Energy Department study.
But Loux insisted that laying enough rail to link Philadelphia and Boston across what he called treacherous mountain and desert would cost well more than $1 billion.
Cross-country nuclear waste rail corridors to Nevada won't be picked until a final route is chosen within Nevada, Benson said. The Energy Department also is considering truck routes. No firm dates have been set for those decisions.
An Energy Department statement cited 21 public hearings over six months on alternate rail routes for shipping waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
"The shipment of spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste is safe,"the statement declares, citing 3,000 shipments during the last 30 years with no harmful release of radiation.
The department picked a backup route, referred to as the Carlin Corridor, that would cut 323 miles north-to-south from between Carlin and Battle Mountain in northern Nevada, past Crescent Valley, Round Mountain and Tonopah to end at Yucca Mountain.
The primary and secondary corridors avoid two routes skirting Las Vegas _ home to 1.6 million of Nevada's 2.2 million residents _ and one north-south route through the vast Nellis Air Force Base bombing range and the Nevada Test Site, home to decades of nuclear tests.
The Air Force warned Congress in September that shipping radioactive waste across the bombing range might ground crucial training flights at Nellis, one of the nation's top pilot training bases.
Benson declined to expand on the reasons for picking the Caliente and Carlin corridors, pointing to the statement that said:"Their more remote location and the reduced likelihood of land use conflicts, appear to best assure the safe, secure, and timely transport of materials to Yucca Mountain."
Peggy Maze Johnson of the anti-Yucca group Citizen Alert in Las Vegas, said she was outraged.
"None of it is acceptable, but this one is the most costly, difficult and circuitous of all the choices,"she said."And we expect thousands of truck shipments to go through Clark County."
Congress in 2002 picked Yucca Mountain to entomb 77,000 tons of radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants and the military around the nation. The Energy Department wants to open the repository in 2010.
Nevada Sen. John Ensign accused the Energy Department of attempting to ram the transportation route through despite unanswered legal, technical, and safety issues.
"Their rail line will lead to nowhere but a dead end,"he said.
-------- us politics
Dean left speechless on Libya arms move
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 23, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031223-121116-7239r.htm
Libya's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction is making it harder for Democrats such as Howard Dean to disparage President Bush's war against Iraq, which prompted Libya's move.
Mr. Dean, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been uncharacteristically silent about Mr. Bush's bombshell announcement on Friday that Libya has agreed unconditionally to relinquish its chemical-, biological- and nuclear-weapons programs.
Although Mr. Bush pointed out that the disarmament offer coincided with the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March, a Dean spokesman yesterday downplayed any causal relationship.
"Look, the agreement with the Libyans is good news and an important step forward in the effort to combat weapons of mass destruction," conceded Dean spokesman Jay Carson.
"But the agreement is the result of years of diplomacy and sanctions, conducted in concert with the international community, which Governor Dean believes is the most effective means of pursuing that goal," he added.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi made it clear that his decision to disarm was prompted by Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"I will do whatever the Americans want because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid," Mr. Gadhafi told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, according to a Berlusconi spokesman who was quoted in yesterday's Telegraph of London.
"I haven't seen that quote," Mr. Carson said. "It's tough for me to respond to something I haven't seen."
Mr. Dean has staked his candidacy on the notion that it was wrong to wage war against Iraq, even though Operation Iraqi Freedom was supported by 70 percent of the American public. Support remains nearly that high in the wake of postwar developments, such as the capture of Saddam Hussein and Libya's decision to disarm.
Although U.S. forces have not found Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - which the president cited as one of the main reasons for deposing Saddam - the decision by Libya to surrender its weapons complicates Mr. Dean's recent assertions that America is no safer since Saddam's capture or even since September 11.
"You have Howard Dean saying that our nation and our world are not safer with Saddam Hussein in custody," said Christine Iverson, press secretary for the Republican National Committee. "You have [Senator] Joe Lieberman, who says that our nation and our world are safer.
"I mean, those are radically divergent views on a very central foreign-policy question," she added. "The Democrats continue to undermine their own position by failing to agree on even the most basic foreign-policy questions."
Libya's disarmament also appears to undermine statements by other Democratic hopefuls, including Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. Shortly after Saddam was captured last week, Mr. Edwards criticized the president's policy on weapons of mass destruction.
"This administration's approach to protecting America from weapons of mass destruction can be summed up simply: Wait until our enemies gather strength, and then use force to stop them," Mr. Edwards said. "We should be exercising every option we have to stop the spread of deadly weapons before war becomes our only option."
Mr. Bush said the Libya agreement was made possible by nine months of "quiet diplomacy," which prompted criticism from Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat.
"Ironically, this significant advance represents a complete U-turn in the Bush administration's overall foreign policy," Mr. Kerry said. "An administration that scorns multilateralism and boasts about a rigid doctrine of military pre-emption has almost in spite of itself demonstrated the enormous potential for improving our national security through diplomacy.
"If the president can put aside his go-it-alone unilateralism to engage with a longtime enemy like Gadhafi, why are the ideologues in this administration so hesitant to negotiate with North Korea to end their nuclear-weapons programs?" he added. "Why not rally the United Nations and NATO to forge a new cooperative effort to combat proliferation around the globe?"
Other Democrats also treated Libya's disarmament as an opportunity to criticize the president.
"Libya's certainly good news, but we've got a long way to go before we can feel we've really made the American people safe in a time of terrorism," Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri said on "Fox News Sunday." "There are failures that are still bedeviling us on a number of other fronts.
"We've got North Korea apparently going ahead and making nuclear weapons," he added. "And we still don't have the international help in Iraq that we should have gotten a long time ago."
--------
Powell Defends Diplomatic Role
December 23, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/politics/23POWE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - This is another season of frustration for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
After a difficult year of trying with mixed success to placate American allies over the Iraq war, Mr. Powell is recovering from surgery while former Secretary of State James A. Baker III has been representing the Bush administration in high-level meetings in Europe on Iraq's future.
When Saddam Hussein was captured, Mr. Powell was notified not by President Bush but by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. The breakthrough with Libya was announced at the White House by Mr. Bush last Friday, while the secretary of state was recuperating at home.
As he enters the final year of President Bush's current term in office, while refusing to address the question of whether he would serve during a second term, Mr. Powell says, however, that he is more determined than ever to counter the perception that diplomacy in general - and his own role in particular - have been marginalized in an administration obsessed with war and terrorism.
"When you have a story like the Iraq story, which so dominated everything for most of the year, the message of what we are trying to do could not overcome the daily news that was coming in," Mr. Powell said in a telephone interview. "I think there are a lot of things we've done that sometimes get missed in the rush of business."
Many of his recent pronouncements have seemed combative, defensive and wistful, reflecting the paradox that although he is the best known member of Mr. Bush's cabinet, and a popular figure around the world, he evidently feels his accomplishments have been grossly misunderstood.
In an article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, one of many summations of policy offered in recent weeks, Mr. Powell declares that contrary to popular perception, the United States has worked closely with other countries to confront the threat of terrorism, nuclear proliferation and instability.
"U.S. strategy is widely accused of being unilateralist by design," Mr. Powell wrote. "It isn't. It is often accused of being imbalanced in favor of military methods. It isn't. It is frequently described as being obsessed with terrorism and hence biased toward preemptive war on a global scale. It most certainly is not."
In the interview, Mr. Powell acknowledged a certain disappointment at having to set the record straight so late in the administration. "It's been frustrating for me at times, and I have been trying in recent months, once Iraq got under way, to talk in these broad terms," he said. "I find you've got to keep chipping away at it."
There have been frustrations almost since he took office. But Mr. Powell argues that while the public has focused on the administration's doctrine of pre-emptive war and going it alone if necessary, he has forged solid alliances behind American policies on North Korea and Iran and worked closely with the United Nations on Iraq.
Too few people have recognized, he said, that American relations with China and Russia are better than they have been in many years, and that there is a partnership with Europe on a range of issues, from Afghanistan to the India-Pakistan conflict.
"I think we have managed China, Russia and Europe rather well if you look at where we are at the end of the year since the beginning of the year," Mr. Powell said.
His other proud achievements, he says, are the increase in financing to combat AIDS and to channel foreign aid to poor countries generally. He is also proud of his involvement in trying to resolve such disparate regional conflicts as civil wars in Sudan and Liberia and in pressing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But there have been other signs of Mr. Powell's unhappiness over how the war in Iraq has gone, and how his reputation has suffered from various disclosures, including the fact that the Pentagon had rejected the State Department's advice to plan for problems for the American occupation of Iraq.
There have been difficulties in getting a major role for the United Nations in Iraq's transition to self-rule. Finally, Mr. Powell has been stung by repeated criticism of his declaration at the United Nations last February that Iraq's weapons programs posed an imminent threat.
He has defended his use of intelligence information in that speech but acknowledged that he had expected stocks of chemical and biological weapons to have turned up by now.
To his aides, he rarely lets his frustrations spill into bitterness. He also views Mr. Baker not as a threat but as a potential ally in pushing for greater partnership with other nations on Iraq.
"He's the most fundamentally optimistic person I've ever met," said an associate. "There really is a sense with him that every day is a new day. He always believes that, whatever he's given, he can make it better."
These days Mr. Powell is on the phone constantly from his home in McLean, Va., letting his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, serve as the State Department's public face. Aides say Mr. Powell has brought the same businesslike attitude toward his cancer.
"He's always known he was high-risk," said an aide, referring to the high rate of prostate cancer among African-American men. "He's had himself tested periodically. A couple months ago, a test showed there was cancer in there, and he was able to schedule his surgery when there would be time." On Friday, a pathology report showed that his cancer was limited to the prostate, clearing the way for a full recovery.
Only rarely has Mr. Powell shed light on any interior dissatisfactions he may have experienced in three years. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Powell volunteered that one of the things he most admired about one of his predecessors, George C. Marshall, was that he did not resign even after his advice not to recognize Israel in 1948 was rejected.
Does that mean, though, that Mr. Powell has even thought about resigning, such as when President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq? Not at all, his aides say. Mr. Powell all along believed that war was justified if Saddam Hussein continued to flout international demands to come clean with his weapons.
"It is not as if he was against the war," said an aide to Mr. Powell. "It is just that the war was not his priority. It was Rumsfeld's and Cheney's priority. Powell's priority was to make sure the war was carried out in the right way."
Though most people around him assume that he would not serve a second term as secretary of state, Mr. Powell, in the interview, continued with his practice of not talking about whether he would stay on if Mr. Bush wins re-election. He did say emphatically that he expected Mr. Bush to be returned to office.
To Mr. Powell, there has never been any doubt that President Bush supports diplomacy at least as enthusiastically as he has supported going to war when that became necessary. "He's been a magnificent wartime president," said Mr. Powell. "But he and I talked about the importance of diplomacy even before he took office."
"A war tends to clear the sinuses," Mr. Powell concluded. "It means that you also can't spend as much time on other things. But you'll notice that when he announced the Libya settlement on Friday, he emphasized the importance of diplomacy."
Judging from his recent comments, diplomacy is what Mr. Powell feels this administration should be remembered for.
--------
Kucinich Presses U.N. Involvement in Iraq
December 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Kucinich-Iraq.html
MESILLA, N.M. (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said Tuesday the United States needs the United Nations to develop a constitution for Iraq and warned that America cannot be the only nation calling the shots to rebuild the country.
``We must give up the ambition of operating the country of Iraq by remote control, and when we do that, we'll take another step in developing a new constitution and governance in Iraq,'' Kucinich told about 150 supporters at a rally. ``We must renounce any interest in the privatization of Iraq.''
The Ohio congressman said a policy of taking over in other countries makes the United States less safe because other countries will take a more active approach to protect their borders.
``My presidency will be about working with the world community, will be about the need for focusing on the need for peace and getting rid of all nuclear weapons,'' he said.
Kucinich charged that the North American Free Trade Agreement has cost American jobs and also criticized the World Trade Organization.
``My first act in office, numero uno, would be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO and go back to bilateral trade conditioned on workers' rights and environmental quality principles,'' he said. ``We must recognize the effect NAFTA has had on El Paso (Texas) and communities around the country. We need a whole new approach to trade, and that begins with the cancellation of NAFTA.''
Kucinich and other Democratic candidates have made numerous stops in New Mexico, whose profile has been raised on the national scene by its Feb. 3 Democratic caucus.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is being criticized for his response to a questionnaire from an Iowa newspaper that critics contend implied his brother was in the military.
Dean said the dispute is overblown, arguing he's repeatedly spelled out his brother's fate as a civilian captured by U.S. enemies in Southeast Asia.
The issue arose when the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, sent a survey to Democratic presidential candidates asking them to complete the sentence ``My closest living relative in the armed services is ...'' Dean responded to the question by telling the story of his brother, Charles.
Charles Dean was 23 when he disappeared while touring Laos 29 years ago. Remains believed to be his were discovered last month. He did not serve in the military, and the newspaper said Dean's reply ``certainly is not an accurate response.''
``Charlie Dean's capture and death in Southeast Asia certainly shaped his brother's opinion about the American military,'' an editorial in Sunday's edition said. The newspaper went on to explain that Charles Dean had opposed the Vietnam War and was visiting Laos as part of a trip around the world.
``Knowing that story tells us something about the candidate,'' the editorial said. ``So does inaccurately implying a direct family connection to the armed services for the 72,000 Quad Citians who received Sunday's newspaper.''
Dean wrote a letter to the newspaper saying he was ``deeply offended'' by the newspaper's position, arguing that his brother's story is widely known and there was no effort to mislead readers.
Dean has spoken in detail about his brother's fate and said it would be impossible to conclude from his answer that he was attempting to link his brother to military service.
Wesley Clark is stepping up his efforts to raise campaign money with the help of some famous supporters -- husband-and-wife actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen.
In a holiday-themed fund-raising e-mail, Steenburgen recalls growing up near Clark in Little Rock, Ark., and how their mothers were close friends.
``Wes and I grew up together, and I'm not afraid to admit that I have always pushed myself to live up to his high standards.
The Democratic presidential candidates are involved in a high-profile competition to draw the most high-powered Hollywood help. Howard Dean has a long list of Hollywood celebrities his campaign considers supporters, including Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen. Dean also listed Steenburgen among the campaign's supporters or contributors -- a reminder that wealthy, famous people may help more than one candidate.
The Clark campaign is collecting celebrities -- and counts singer Madonna among its backers. Other candidates, including John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich, can also produce well-known entertainers who've helped their campaigns.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Delegates Favor a Presidential System
December 23, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/asia/23AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 22 - The grand council, or loya jirga, assembled in Kabul for the last nine days to debate a new constitution, has overwhelmingly opted for a democratic system - and specifically the strong presidential system advocated by President Hamid Karzai.
In what appears to be a major success for Mr. Karzai and his United Nations and American supporters, delegates said all 10 working groups formed to discuss the draft articles in detail had voted to adopt the presidential system.
The final draft and proposed amendments will be put to a vote of the full assembly this week, but with every committee supporting a presidency, it will probably be approved. Some delegates boycotted the committees, each of which had about 50 of the 502 delegates, but their opposition is thought not to be strong enough to alter the overall support.
"The fundamentalists will resist and push for a parliamentary system, but we have the votes," said Abdul Hakim Nurzai, a delegate and member of a new political party, the National Unity Movement. He said that his committee had voted 43 to 0 to adopt a strong presidential system and that all the other committees had similar votes.
Another delegate said only one man in his committee had supported a parliamentary system.
"For the moment all the districts are controlled by warlords, so this would not allow for free elections and we would end up with a parliament of warlords," Mr. Nurzai said during a prayer break in the afternoon session. "We prefer a strong president to break the power of the warlords, and to prepare for free and fair elections."
A 15-member Reconciliation Committee will tabulate the votes and the suggested amendments from the 10 committees, said Safia Seddiqui, the spokeswoman for the council chairman. A committee will then draw up a final draft to be put before the full assembly. The final session could take place Wednesday or Thursday, allowing the council to break up by Friday, officials said.
"There are not many articles where there is diversity of opinion," said Farooq Wardak, director of the Constitutional Commission secretariat.
Despite fears that the loya jirga could be highjacked by militants, or dragged into protracted debate over the role of Islam and women's and human rights, a presidential spokesman, Jawed Ludin, said it has nevertheless been progressing well.
Government ministers and officials from Mr Karzai's immediate circle have lobbied for a presidential system. But officials also admit to being surprised at the voice of moderation that has won out on many occasions.
"I'm rather encouraged to see that, all in all, there is enough resistance to the demagogy that one feared - especially about Islam," the United Nations special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said in an interview over the weekend.
Several delegates said their committees had rejected proposed amendments to include more references to Islam. But others predicted that religious conservatives would renew their efforts at the open session.
There could also be efforts to curb human rights or rights for women, despite efforts by the United Nations and government officials to promote their representation here.
-------- business
Northrop Grumman Gets $419 Million Deal
December 23, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-northrop.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC.N) on Tuesday was awarded a $419 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a third destroyer in the company's four-ship, multiyear deal.
Northrop's contract with the Navy includes the option for a fifth ship, a total value the company says is worth more than $2 billion.
In a statement, Philip A. Dur, president of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems said: ``We are very pleased that our customer recognizes our pre-eminence in the shipbuilding industry, and has chosen to award another vital Navy asset into our care.''
Northrop will build the Aegis-guided missile destroyer, known as DDG 107, at the company's Pascagoula, Miss., operation. It is the 26th such ship to be built there since 1992, and the 57th in the company's DDG series.
-------- iraq
Talk of Tikrit's Favorite Diner: Hatred of Hussein, Fury at U.S.
December 23, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23INN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
TIKRIT, Iraq, Dec. 18 - If there is a favorite meeting place here in Saddam Hussein's hometown, it is a tightly packed, crockery-clattering, $1-a-plate restaurant called Al Mudhaif - Arabic for a place of hospitality, or inn - on the town's scrappy main street.
Anybody wanting to know Tikrit can stop by and listen to the talk as waiters shuttle by with plates of flat-baked bread and spit-roasted chicken. All types gather here, including, one recent day, a posse of heavyset men with traditional Arab tribal dishdasha robes and checkered kaffiyeh headdresses. With jutting beards, old combat jackets and narrowing eyes, they were identified by other diners as members of the "resistance," still working, other diners said, for the restoration of their fallen idol, Mr. Hussein.
The restaurant lies around the corner from one of Mr. Hussein's pillared palaces, now the headquarters of the town's new rulers, the Fourth Infantry Division of the United States Army, whose tanks and armored vehicles ceaselessly thunder by. From the restaurant, it seemed a pageant of Iraq's wider drama, with the grim-faced resistance men looking out at the Americans driving by with flags fluttering from radio antennas, helmeted soldiers with wraparound goggles at their turrets, machine-gunners swiveling, watching for trouble.
But not all is quite as it seems in Tikrit, or at least quite as imagined by many Westerners here.
Tikrit, the legend goes, is the Dodge City of Iraq, a place of such fervor for Mr. Hussein that there can be no accommodation with the American vision for the country, no tolerance for democracy or a civil society that would strip power from the Sunni Muslim minority cliques that have dominated since the nation's founding in 1921; above all, no acceptance that Mr. Hussein, the town's great patron, might face trial for mass murder.
A hint that this image of Tikrit was incomplete came when the Americans took reporters out to Ad Dwar, the site of Mr. Hussein's capture on Dec. 13, aboard low-flying Black Hawk helicopters that curved across the Tigris and out over the silted wheat fields and citrus orchards by the river. The pilots flew in fear of rocket-propelled grenades, which have brought down American helicopters elsewhere, but days after the arrest of Mr. Hussein, villagers were running from their homes to wave as the Americans flew by.
When a reporter and a photographer for The New York Times walked into The Inn, apprehensively, it was a relief to be invited to sit down. A man at a table near the entrance identified himself as Hatim Jassem, a 35-year-old theology professor, Muslim by creed, recently returned to his home village of Al Alam near Tikrit from teaching at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, having judged the capital too lawless under American rule to remain.
His home village has been identified by American military intelligence as a bastion for Mr. Hussein, where many families are linked to the former dictator by extended family ties. Mr. Jassem, speaking loud enough to be overheard tables a distance away, addressed the matter forthwith.
"Look, it's not as if I love Saddam," he said. "I don't. They arrested me in August 1998, after I'd warned one of my younger brothers he was getting too close to Saddam's men and that they would hurt him and the family if he carried on. Somebody overheard me and told one of Saddam's bodyguards. Then they came and put me in prison for six weeks. They tortured me - I still have the scars on my back - but it could have been worse."
Among the complexities of post-Hussein Iraq is that many who speak in support of the toppled dictator, or oppose the Americans, are victims of his terror, either personally or through the brutalities inflicted on relatives and friends. By any reckoning of the number he killed - Iraqi human rights groups' estimates begin at 300,000 - a large proportion of this nation of 25 million were directly affected, and many more admit that they carry the trauma's scars.
Mr. Jassem is among the many with conflicted views. Having begun by condemning Mr. Hussein, he switched to castigating American troops for the "humiliation" they visited on him at his arrest. Next, unprompted, he was back to saying Iraqis had been unable for years to rid themselves of the tyrant. "We thought it was a good thing, that the Americans invaded and threw him out, because we Iraqis couldn't do it ourselves," he said. "Only American troops could do that."
"Even the psychological atmosphere is improving, after the overthrow of Saddam," Mr. Jassem said. "Wherever you were under the regime, you always felt people were watching you, you always felt people were listening. Now, it's better - you can criticize and complain. When I go to a restaurant now, I don't look about and wonder if the secret police are watching."
But for the rest of the 90-minute conversation, the professor spoke bitterly of the Americans. At those moments, with the rush of passion for the overthrow of Mr. Hussein, against the troops that did it, Westerners in Iraq sometimes feel tempted to reach for reflections on Arab culture in books like "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," written in the 1920's by T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.
Some Arabs consider the book chauvinistic, but the sense of Arab tribal culture conveyed by Mr. Lawrence, an Englishman who lived among Bedouin warriors and helped lead them during the Arab rebellion against Turkish rule during World War I, may yet have relevance to Americans trying to make sense of the crosscurrents in Iraq.
"They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns," he wrote. "They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings. They knew only truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades."
He added: "Sometimes inconsistents seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity."
Mr. Jassem's words, at times, seemed unconsciously to echo Lawrence's sense of tribal psychology, one contested among Arabs ever since. The issue in Al Alam, Mr. Jassem said, is not the overthrow of Mr. Hussein, but the offenses against Arab dignity that the Americans were committing with their raids.
"Why are the Americans being attacked?" he said. "Not because all Iraqis are pro-Saddam, no. If Saddam had come out of his palaces and into the streets of Tikrit without guards, somebody would have killed him for sure.
"Iraqis are attacking the Americans now because they have humiliated us. We feel if somebody trespasses in your home, breaks the door and beats the head of the household and cuffs his hands in front of his family, it is the greatest humiliation. It happened to Saddam. If it happened to me, I wouldn't hesitate to go and buy a Kalashnikov and look for an American to kill."
But was it not Mr. Hussein who brought humiliation on himself, a visitor asked, by hiding underground and emerging from his bunker, hands up, looking like a vagrant? Mr. Jassem agreed, but switched to a homily.
From his studies of Christianity, he said, he knew of a truth that Americans should observe in seeking a way home from Iraq. "There is a very famous saying of Jesus Christ," he said. "'Glory to God, and peace on earth. Let the Americans bring peace on earth."
Lunchtime was coming to an end, and other Tikritis stopped by to offer a welcome to the visitors. Many offered extravagant invitations to their homes. The men of the resistance remained stone-faced, but as they left, pistols in their waistbands, they pulled Mr. Jassem aside and whispered that he might want to bring his new friends to Al Alam.
"They would like a conversation," he said.
--------
CASUALTIES
2 G.I.'s Killed in a Bombing; Hussein Aide Is Captured
December 23, 2003
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 22 - Two American soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were killed here on Monday morning when an improvised bomb exploded near their convoy, military officials said. Two other soldiers were wounded.
Military officials said that on Sunday night, American soldiers captured a high-ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's government. The man, Maj. Gen. Mumtaz al-Taji, a former intelligence officer, was believed to be coordinating attacks against occupying forces north of Baghdad, the military said. General Taji was detained during night raids in the town of Baquba, in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where disaffection with the American occupation runs high.
Now that Mr. Hussein has been caught, the most wanted man on the American government's list of fugitive Iraqis is Izzat Ibrahim, believed to be in hiding north of Baghdad.
The north, with its various ethnic groups and tribes, is one of the most difficult areas for the American occupiers to placate. Thousands of Kurds took to the streets of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Monday, demanding that the city be turned over to Kurdish control. The two dominant Kurdish parties in the north intend to ask the Iraqi government to give them broad governing authority over the Kurdish regions.
Also on Monday, the Iraqi minister of telecommunications signed contracts with three cellular phone companies to provide service in Iraq. The contracts were some of the most hotly contested ones given out since Mr. Hussein's government was ousted. Rival companies have accused the Iraqi government and the winners of favoritism and corruption, charges that the parties have denied.
Orascom Telecom Holding, an Egyptian company, will provide service in central Iraq, including Baghdad, where service is expected to start on Jan. 1. AsiaCell will operate in the north, and AtheerTel, a Kuwaiti company, will cover the south. The three contracts, worth a total of $5 million, are good for two years.
Orascom said it was starting a weeklong experimental transmission on Monday before building up to full service, which will cost 8 to 10 cents a minute.
The minister of telecommunications, Heidar al-Abadi, said at the signing of the contracts that telecommunications exchange buildings in the country had been turned into "concrete armed barracks" to prevent attacks from guerrilla fighters.
Iraq has a population of 25 million people, and it has been considered one of the greatest untapped markets in the Middle East for cellphone companies. M.C.I. now runs service here for about 10,000 people, mostly employees or close associates of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Otherwise, people use mobile satellite phones, whose handsets cost $600 here.
The Iraqi Governing Council said Monday that 30,000 Iraqis this year would be allowed to make the hajj, the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. That is double the number who went last year. A third of those will be able to fly from Baghdad International Airport, where insurgents have tried repeatedly to shoot down planes. One group hit a DHL cargo plane in late November with a surface-to-air missile.
The other pilgrims will go by land through various borders, with the Iraqi military providing protection. Families of people killed by Mr. Hussein's government will be given priority in the hajj application process.
The attack on the American soldiers on Monday brought to 202 the number of soldiers killed in attacks or clashes since the United States declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. The total killed in combat since the war began in March is 317.
The number of daily attacks on American soldiers has dropped from a high of 50 a day at one point in November. Guerrilla fighters seem to be concentrating instead on strikes at soft targets, especially Iraqi police stations, which have little in the way of protection against car bombs.
But military officials have said intelligence reports indicate that there could be a rise in attacks against the occupying forces this week, as insurgents try to disrupt Christmas celebrations and avenge Mr. Hussein's capture on Dec. 13.
In Washington, the White House announced Monday that James A. Baker III, President Bush's special envoy, would travel to Asia next week to discuss reducing Iraq's debt with leaders in Japan, South Korea and China.
Mr. Baker traveled to Europe last week and won agreement from France, Germany, Russia, Italy and Britain to take part in negotiations intended to forgive, or reschedule on more favorable terms, some of the more than $100 billion that Iraq owes other governments.
To pave the way for Mr. Baker's trip next week, Mr. Bush spoke over the last several days with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan, President Hu Jintao of China and President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea.
Mr. Bush also met Monday morning with L. Paul Bremer, the chief American administrator in Iraq. Officials said the meeting, which was also attended by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was a chance for Mr. Bremer to update the president on the situation in Iraq, including efforts to negotiate a transition to self-government for the Iraqi people.
Mr. Bremer met later in the day with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at Mr. Powell's home in Virginia.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Forces Raid Gaza Camp, Killing at Least 8 Palestinians
December 23, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23CND-MIDE.html?hp
JERUSALEM, Dec. 23 - Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians, including militants and civilians, as tanks and armored vehicles charged into a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip today and uncovered a weapons smuggling tunnel, according to officials on both sides.
Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen clash frequently in the town of Rafah, but today's violence marked the highest one-day death toll in Gaza in the past two months, which have been comparatively calm.
The Israeli raid was launched only hours after two Israeli Army officers were killed by Palestinian attackers Monday night on a road in southern Gaza. The two Palestinian assailants were also killed. That gun battle took place less than 10 miles from Rafah, at the southern end of Gaza, on the border with Egypt.
The latest fighting also came a day after Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, as part of broader efforts to work out a cease-fire and revive a top-level dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians.
"The attack in Rafah is blatant aggression and a crime," said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister.
But Israel says it will press ahead with such operations because the Palestinian leadership has not acted to stop Palestinian groups responsible for violence against Israel. The military said today's incursion located its target: a large smuggling tunnel with a hidden entrance inside a three-story house.
The tunnel acts "as an oxygen pipe for terrorist organizations operating in the area," said Army Col. Pinky Zuaretz, the commander of the area.
The tunnel was used to bring in weapons from neighboring Egypt, and also allowed wanted Palestinians to flee to Egypt temporarily, the colonel told Israel radio. An additional five to 10 tunnels were believed to be in the area, he added.
Before dawn, several dozen tanks, jeeps and armored vehicles roared into Rafah's densely-packed refugee camp, and as is typically the case, Palestinian gunmen soon opened fire.
In intermittent gun battles that lasted through the night and much of the day, Israeli forces identified hitting eight Palestinians armed with guns or explosives, the military reported. However, the military said it did not have information on whether they were killed.
Three militants taking cover in one house were killed, along with a policeman who was fatally shot while on his way to work, according to Palestinians.
Ali al-Najar, one of the gunmen killed, heard the Israeli tanks and immediately rushed out of his home to fight, said his father, Hussein al-Najar.
Ali al-Najar and two fellow militants were preparing their weapons in another house when it was hit by an Israeli shell, killing all of them, said the father.
But Palestinians said several of those killed were civilians, including Weam Musa, 27, a medic who was hit by shrapnel while helping treat the wounded, according to his cousin, Dr. Ali Musa, the director of Rafah Hospital.
Overall, eight Palestinians were killed and about 40 wounded, with women and children accounting for several of those injured, said Dr. Musa.
Several Palestinian houses were destroyed and Israeli troops commandeered several tall buildings as lookout posts, Palestinian witnesses said.
Palestinian gunmen maintained a steady barrage of fire in an attempt to prevent the Israeli armored vehicles from reaching the house with the tunnel, the military said. But the soldiers eventually made it into the house and found the tunnel in the afternoon, about 12 hours after the operation began.
The tunnel descends about 40 feet underground and was among the largest of the more than 40 such tunnels the military has uncovered this year in Rafah, the military said.
The passageways connect houses on the Gaza side of the border with those on the Egyptian side.
Smugglers have used the tunnels for years to bring in assorted contraband, but Israel has aggressively targeted them during the current round of Mideast fighting, saying large quantities of weapons are now being imported from the Egyptian side.
In another development, the Army said today it had arrested 22 members of the Hamas faction in and around the West Bank city of Ramallah over the past few days.
Those arrested were suspected of involvement in attacks that have killed 10 Israelis, the military said.
-------- japan
Japan's Troops Leave for Iraq Aid Mission
By AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press Writer
Dec 26, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NARITA, Japan (AP) -- Japan's first troops left for Iraq Friday on a humanitarian mission, beginning the Asian country's biggest overseas deployment since World War II.
The advance air force contingent of more than 40 personnel was split between two commercial flights to Kuwait and Qatar from Tokyo international airport.
"The time has come for us to go," Col. Tadashi Miyagawa told reporters at the airport before going through security.
The contingent sent Friday was part of what will be a total dispatch of about 1,000 personnel, including land, air and sea forces, on a mission to help restore water services, offer medical aid and rebuild schools and other infrastructure.
The air force units will assess security and arrange a larger 276-member air force contingent. In addition, more than 500 Japanese ground troops will be deployed in southern Iraq in February and March.
The deployment has raised strong opposition in Japan, where many feel it violates the constitution.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government has stressed Japan's responsibility to help U.S.-led coalition forces restore stability to Iraq.
The deployment will be a milestone for Japan's military, which is strictly limited by the country's pacifist constitution.
A special law allowing the dispatch for humanitarian missions in Iraq was passed by Parliament in July, but only under the condition that the troops be sent to stable areas away from combat.
Koizumi's government says southern Iraq is safe, but the opposition alleges all of Iraq is dangerous and says Japanese troops are liable to come under attack.
Reflecting the government's assurances that the soldiers would not engage in combat, the air force personnel leaving Friday were dressed in blazers, sweat shirts or jeans, rather than military uniforms.
The government is eager for the recognition from Washington it is contributing troops and thus avoid the criticism it received during the first Gulf War when Tokyo sent money, but no personnel.
"We want the military to make big contributions to Iraqi reconstruction and humanitarian assistance. We expect them to fulfill their duties and make major contributions," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference Friday.
Along with the troops, Japan has offered the second-largest pledge for Iraqi reconstruction after the United States, promising $1.5 billion in grants for 2004 and $3.5 billion in loans for 2005-07.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia to Use Only Professional Troops
Tue Dec 23, 2003
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=518&ncid=732&e=10&u=/ap/20031223/ap_on_re_eu/russia_military
MOSCOW - Starting next year Russia will send only professional troops to Chechnya instead of draftees, the defense minister said Tuesday as he inspected the country's first all-volunteer division.
Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told the 76th Airborne that as the first unit to fully switch from conscripts it would serve as a model for the rest of the military.
"It has helped us obtain a lot of experience that we can later use in staffing other military units with contract servicemen," the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying as he visited the division's base in Pskov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made reforming the underfunded and demoralized military his top priority. But he has backtracked on his initial plan to fully phase out the unpopular draft, accepting the military's proposal for a mixture of draftees and volunteer professional soldiers.
Under that plan, professional soldiers and officers would account for half the 1.1 million-strong military by the end of 2007.
Most would serve in high-readiness units such as those serving in the Chechnya, which Ivanov said would be staffed by volunteer soldiers starting next year. The starting monthly salary for a volunteer private in Chechnya will be $510, he said.
By comparison, a private in the 76th division earns only $170, roughly the average monthly wage in Russia.
Clashes continue in Chechnya despite Kremlin claims that the war has ended and the Caucasus Mountains region is returning to normalcy.
On Tuesday two police officers were killed in a shootout with rebels in the capital Grozny that also left a female bystander dead, an official in the pro-Kremlin Chechen administration said.
They were among 15 people killed and 20 wounded in violence in Chechnya over the past 24 hours, the official said.
-------- spies / spy agencies
DOCUMENTS
Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids
December 23, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/international/middleeast/23RUMS.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - As a special envoy for the Reagan administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there that the United States was eager to improve ties with President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical weapons, newly declassified documents show.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time, was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.
During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly classified program involved more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other crucial information with Iraq.
The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main reason for ousting Mr. Hussein.
The documents, which were released as part of a declassification project by the National Security Archive, and are available on the Web at www.nsarchive.org, provide details of the instructions given to Mr. Rumsfeld on his second trip to Iraq in four months. The notes of Mr. Rumsfeld's encounter with Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister, remain classified, but officials acknowledged that it would be unusual if Mr. Rumsfeld did not carry out the instructions.
Since the release of the documents, he has told members of his inner circle at the Pentagon that he does not recall whether he had read, or even had received, the State Department memo, Defense Department officials said.
One official noted that the documents reflected the State Department's thinking on Iraq, but did not indicate Mr. Rumsfeld's planning for his meeting with Mr. Hussein nor his comments on the meeting after its conclusion.
Mr. Rumsfeld's trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his first visit, in late December 1983, he had a cordial meeting with Mr. Hussein, and photographs and a report of that encounter have been widely published.
In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests section reported that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's satisfaction with the meeting. "The Iraqi leadership was extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," the memo said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person."
When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr. Rumsfeld told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to forgo chemical weapons. But when presented with declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.
Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on Friday that there was no inconsistency between Mr. Rumsfeld's previous comments on his missions to Iraq and the State Department documents.
By early 1984, events threatened to upset the American-Iraqi relationship. After pleading for a year for international action against the chemical warfare, Iran had finally persuaded the United Nations to criticize the use of chemical weapons, albeit in vague terms.
Pressure mounted on the Reagan administration, which had already verified Iraq's "almost daily" use of the weapons against Iran and against Kurdish rebels, documents show. In February, Iraq warned Iranian "invaders" that "for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it." Within weeks, the American authorities intercepted precursor chemicals that were bound for Iraq. Finally, on March 5, the United States issued a public condemnation of Iraq.
But days later, Mr. Shultz and his deputy met with an Iraqi diplomat, Ismet Kittani, to soften the blow. The American relationship with Iraq was too important - involving business interests, Middle East diplomacy and a shared determination to thwart Iran - to sacrifice. Mr. Kittani left the meeting "unpersuaded," documents show.
Mr. Shultz then turned to Mr. Rumsfeld. In a March 24 briefing document, Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to present America's bottom line. At first, the memo recapitulated Mr. Shultz's message to Mr. Kittani, saying it "clarified that our CW [chemical weapons] condemnation was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs." The American officials had "emphasized that our interests in 1) preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's choosing, remain undiminished," it said.
Then came the instructions for Mr. Rumsfeld: "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."
The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling war with Iran was rife with such ambiguities. Though the United States was outwardly neutral, it tilted toward Iraq and even monitored talks toward the sale of military equipment by private American contractors.
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, said: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's, and it didn't make any difference to U.S. policy."
Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying the price for earlier indulgence. "The embrace of Saddam in the 1980's and what it emboldened him to do should caution us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our murky alliances," he said. "Shaking hands with dictators today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."
Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.
-------- us
Judge Halts Military's Required Anthrax Shots
December 23, 2003
By ROBERT PEAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/national/23ANTH.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - A federal district judge ruled Monday that the Defense Department could not compel members of the armed forces to be vaccinated against anthrax without their consent.
The judge, Emmet G. Sullivan, issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits Pentagon officials from "inoculating service members without their consent."
The judge found that the vaccine in question, intended to protect military personnel against the potentially deadly effects of inhaled anthrax, was "an investigational drug," being used for an unapproved purpose.
"The women and men of our armed forces put their lives on the line every day to preserve and safeguard the freedoms that all Americans cherish and enjoy," Judge Sullivan wrote. "Absent an informed consent or presidential waiver, the United States cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs."
Administering the vaccine without the consent of those who receive it "amounts to arbitrary action," the judge said.
A Pentagon official said that more than one million people had received the anthrax vaccine from the Defense Department since 1998. They include active-duty personnel, members of the National Guard and employees of military contractors.
Under federal law, scientists are generally supposed to obtain consent before giving anyone an investigational or unapproved drug. Another federal law says the president may waive this requirement for certain members of the armed forces if he determines, in writing, that obtaining consent is not feasible or "not in the interests of national security."
Judge Sullivan said President Bush had not issued such a waiver. Moreover, the judge said, if the Bush administration finds that compulsory vaccinations are truly imperative, "then obtaining a presidential waiver would be an expeditious end to this controversy."
The judge gave the government until the end of January to file a response. A Pentagon official said the Justice Department was reviewing the decision. Defense Department officials will meet soon to determine "the appropriate next steps," he said.
Other Pentagon officials said it was not immediately clear if the department would have to stop giving the vaccine to service members while legal proceedings continue. The officials said they did not know when that decision would be made.
On its Web site, the Defense Department, in explaining the rationale for its anthrax vaccination policy, said, "Inhaled anthrax is 99 percent lethal in an unprotected, unvaccinated population, left untreated." Under Saddam Hussein, it said, Iraq had the ability to wage biological warfare, as "thousands of pounds of anthrax agent were loaded into missiles, aerial bombs and spray tanks." So far, neither military personnel, nor special teams of inspectors searching in Iraq have found any stocks of anthrax or other biological agents.
The Pentagon said the armed forces had "a long history of compulsory vaccination," including requirements for soldiers to be vaccinated against tetanus, typhoid and yellow fever in World War II.
"We fight and win as teams," the Defense Department said. If several members of the military fall victim to anthrax, it said, "they could jeopardize the lives of other team members."
Federal officials told the court that the anthrax vaccine posed a minimal risk of serious adverse reactions. Only 105 such reactions were reported among the first 830,000 people who received the vaccine from military authorities, they said.
But Judge Sullivan said, "It is impossible to tell with any certainty what the long-term effects of the vaccination will be." Moreover, he said, the effectiveness of the vaccine against inhaled anthrax has not been demonstrated by "adequate and well-controlled studies."
The case was filed by six people who had been ordered to appear for anthrax shots; Three had already begun the series of inoculations.
Postal Center Reopens
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - The Brentwood postal center here, where anthrax was found two years ago, has been renamed for two workers who died of the disease, Joseph P. Curseen and Thomas L. Morris Jr. The retail area opened Monday for the first time since the building was closed in October 2001, and about 100 employees returned to work.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Anthrax Shots Require Consent, Military Told
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 23, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22760-2003Dec22.html
A federal judge in Washington yesterday ordered the Pentagon to stop administering an anthrax vaccine to U.S. service members without their consent, ruling that defense officials cannot require troops to "serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs."
In blocking mandatory anthrax inoculations until a full trial can be held on the matter, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan agreed with the contention by six unnamed Defense Department plaintiffs that the anthrax vaccine is an experimental drug "being used for an unapproved purpose" -- namely, for exposure to airborne anthrax as well as exposure through the skin. As such, he ruled, it cannot under federal law be administered to service members on a mandatory basis.
Sullivan said he was not persuaded by arguments from Pentagon lawyers that administering the vaccine on a voluntary basis would interfere with military operations in Iraq and elsewhere. But if they believe that is the case, the judge said, federal law gives them the option of obtaining a presidential waiver of service members' right to informed consent. Such a waiver, Sullivan wrote, "would be an expeditious end to this controversy."
Sullivan's ruling comes with more than 800,000 U.S. troops having received the vaccine since 1998. Many of them received the vaccine -- a series of six injections -- last year, before deploying to fight the war in Iraq.
Hundreds of other service members have refused to take the vaccine out of concerns about its safety. Many of them have been court-martialed and forced out of the military. As recently as this month, an Ohio National Guard soldier was court-martialed for twice refusing the take the vaccine and sentenced to 40 days in jail.
A Pentagon spokesman had no immediate comment on Sullivan's ruling and would not say whether those who had been disciplined could now seek to have their cases reconsidered. Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, which represents the Pentagon in the case, said: "No determination has been made as to what our next step will be. In that it is a preliminary injunction, there is no finality to this ruling at this stage."
Mark S. Zaid, a Washington lawyer representing the Defense Department plaintiffs, said there is "no significant evidence that this vaccine is safe or effective against weaponized anthrax. It is simply an experimental vaccine."
"There have been several deaths potentially linked to the vaccine," Zaid said, "and there have been thousands of people who have become ill in cases allegedly linked to the vaccine."
Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a leading congressional opponent of mandatory anthrax vaccinations, said the ruling was "an affirmation of what we have been saying for years and years."
"The military needs to back off, make amends and restore in good standing those that have been punished," he said.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who introduced a resolution in November asking the Pentagon to reconsider its program of mandatory anthrax vaccinations, said Sullivan's ruling gives the Pentagon an opportunity to rethink its anthrax vaccine policy, particularly now that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq.
The Clinton administration launched the anthrax immunization program in 1998 with the intention of requiring all 2.4 million military personnel to receive the vaccine. But the program faltered almost immediately when the vaccine's only manufacturer, BioPort Corp. of Lansing, Mich., was unable to obtain a license from the Food and Drug Administration because of faulty manufacturing processes.
As it worked on plans for invading Iraq, the Bush administration announced in June 2002 that it was resuming mandatory anthrax vaccinations for service members being sent to "high-threat" areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan for more than 15 days.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer who is an expert on military law, lauded Sullivan for his ruling. "It is quite remarkable that at a time of active military operations, the federal courts remain open and ready, when the record supports it, to order the government around," Fidell said. "It's really quite remarkable."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Under Bush, Expanding Secrecy
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, December 23, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22764-2003Dec22.html
It was a banner week for government secrecy.
Last Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would consider an effort by Vice President Cheney to keep private the records of the energy policy task force he ran. On Friday, the White House announced that it has known for two weeks about an attack on a convoy carrying Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer -- but had decided not to divulge the information. Later that day, President Bush announced a disarmament deal with Libya reached during nine months of secret negotiations.
Also last week, it emerged that the government was acting to keep more Pentagon information out of the public domain and that it has removed from the U.S. Agency for International Development Web site remarks by an administration official that had badly understated the cost of Iraqi reconstruction.
In the meantime, however, the chairman of the federal Sept. 11, 2001, commission, in remarks released last week, criticized needless government secrecy.
"I've been reading these highly, highly classified documents. In most cases, I finish with them, I look up and say, 'Why is this classified?' " said the chairman, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, a Republican. "And so one of the things that I hope is that maybe out of our work and maybe others, a lot of these documents that are classified, will be unclassified."
Well, governor, keep hope alive. But don't bet on it. As last week's events and discoveries make clear, the Bush administration seems to be going in the other direction. The administration has been unusually successful keeping its policy deliberations out of public view, and millions of government documents -- including many historical records previously available -- have been removed from the public domain.
Steven Aftergood, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, says it is nothing less than a "mutation in American politics" away from open government. "There is an unwholesome change in the deliberative process unfolding before our eyes," he said. "These are not technicalities. These are fundamental issues of American government that are now up for grabs."
Last week showed the full range of government secrecy efforts, from the universally accepted to the hotly disputed. At one extreme was the Libya announcement -- even the strongest proponents of open government say it is useful to handle such sensitive negotiations in secret, because a premature exposure of the talks could have scuttled an agreement. At the other end was the Cheney energy task force -- the vice president, sued by liberal and conservative groups, has fought the release of the information even though he has not invoked executive privilege or cited national security concerns.
The administration, of course, sees it differently. Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo last week called the energy case "critical to the effective functioning of the presidency and the vice presidency."
The Libya case shows why "it's perfectly acceptable to keep certain things secret," said Morton Halperin, a former Clinton State Department official now with the liberal Center for American Progress. "The government should be able to presumptively keep secret diplomatic negotiations, war plans and weapons systems."
But Halperin brands other actions "Orwellian," including the decision to wait two weeks before disclosing that Bremer's convoy was attacked. "A day or two you could understand," he said. "Two weeks? It's part of an effort to portray things as getting better when they're not."
After the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq on Friday confirmed a report of the attack, White House press secretary Scott McClellan acknowledged that the White House had previously known about the attack but chose not to disclose it. Asked why, McClellan repeatedly said: "Talk to the Coalition Provisional Authority."
Just as the White House was preparing to reveal the secret Libya negotiations, Defense Week published a Dec. 5 memo from the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General. "Pending a more thorough review," it said, "the following classes of information will not be available to the general public via the OIG DoD Web site."
The list included not just the usual exemptions for classified, national security or "official use only" information but also two new, and potentially broad, restrictions: "Information not specifically approved for public release," and "information of questionable value to the general public."
The Quotable Bush:
"I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well paid, well trained, well equipped. . . . See, without the tax relief package, there would have been a deficit, but there wouldn't have been the commiserate -- not 'commiserate' -- the kick to our economy that occurred as a result of the tax relief."
-------- drug war
Canada Court to Keep Marijuana Illegal
By TARA BRAUTIGAM
Associated Press Writer
Dec 23, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CANADA_MARIJUANA_RULING?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's supreme court upheld the country's current laws against marijuana possession on Tuesday, even as Prime Minister Paul Martin presses to eliminate jail sentences for people caught with small amounts of the drug.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that possession of marijuana would remain a criminal offense for now. In a separate, unanimous decision, it maintained trafficking of the drug was illegal.
The ruling does not preclude Martin from going ahead with a proposed bill that would soften penalities. President Bush has expressed concerns over the bill, fearing it could encourage drug smuggling along the border.
The court ruling prompted praise from law enforcement groups but disappointment from proponents of marijuana legalization.
"My huge patriotism may slowly be dissipating. I have a lot of faith in my country, in freedom and justice, but it doesn't seem like we have a whole lot of that left," said Dominic Kramer, a marijuana activist who runs a store that sells hemp products and paraphernalia in Toronto.
Tony Cannavino, president of the Canadian Police Association, welcomed the decision but expressed concern over Martin's intent to pursue the controversial bill. He said marijuana growing seemed to be on the rise.
"We have more and more `grow ops' across the country," he told reporters in Ottawa. "You wouldn't see that 10 years ago."
A key question in the Supreme Court decision was whether Parliament has the constitutional right to punish marijuana possession, given the lack of proven serious harms from its use.
The high court examined three cases involving two pot activists and one man who was caught smoking. All three failed to persuade lower courts that the pot law is unconstitutional.
Defendant David Malmo-Levine took a hit of hash last May before arguing his case in person at the high court while dressed head-to-toe in clothes made of hemp cloth. He once ran the Harm Reduction Club, a non-profit cooperative in Vancouver that offered advice on safe marijuana use while supplying it to some 1,800 members.
Another case centered on Christopher Clay, who ran the Hemp Nation in London, Ontario, a store he started with a government loan. He sold marijuana seeds and seedlings in a deliberate challenge to the law.
Alan Young, lawyer for Clay, said his initial disappointment shifted to anger after leafing through the lengthy decision.
"There's so much smoke and mirrors in this," he said. "This issue has been a political hot potato that has bounced between Parliament and the courts for the past decade."
Last week Martin said he planned to reintroduce a bill, first proposed under former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, that would wipe out potential jail time and criminal records for those convicted of marijuana possession.
The bill did not legalize the drug, and maintained or increased already stiff penalties for large-scale growers and traffickers. It made possession of less than 15 grams of pot a minor offense punishable by fines of $100 to $400, much like traffic tickets.
Critics said 15 grams, the equivalent of roughly 15 to 20 joints, was too much to equate with casual use.
But the legislation died when Parliament adjourned last month to give Martin a fresh start in January.
-------- homeland security
Security Tightens, but Public Seems to Take It in Stride
December 23, 2003
By PAM BELLUCK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/national/23REAC.html
BOSTON, Dec. 22 - The police mobilized at airports, at train stations and in subways on Monday. Bomb-sniffing dogs were stationed at bus, train and air terminals. Security was stepped up at ports and nuclear power plants.
More cars than usual were stopped and searched at Logan Airport.
In Connecticut, a state trooper was assigned to ride each commuter train. In Miami, a man was arrested at the airport after a hacksaw blade and a razor blade were found in his shoe.
At the main two airports in Chicago, every passenger with a wrapped holiday gift had to unwrap it. Afterward, airport employees rewrapped packages free.
In New York, the authorities increased security at landmarks, houses of worship and transportation systems. State troopers patrolled commuter trains, and patrols were added at the Canadian border. The police also stepped up truck searches at bridges and tunnels.
A day after federal officials warned of threats of a major attack and raised the national terrorism alert rating to orange, or high risk, officials around the country tried to be prepared for the holiday season.
Faced with the statement by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Sunday that the threat of an attack was at its greatest since Sept. 11, 2001, and that Al Qaeda remained interested in using aircraft as weapons, state and city authorities tried to strike a balance. They urged citizens to be alert, but not alarmed, and added security precautions, but exhorted people to continue their regular activities.
Military officials said they had increased the number of fighter patrols over cities.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Mitt Romney interrupted a vacation in Utah to return here on Sunday night. Mr. Romney said on Monday that he planned to return to Utah, possibly by the end of the day. Mr. Romney and Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston decided to delay a shipment of liquefied natural gas due on Tuesday in the harbor here.
"I can assure you that every reasonable step is being taken to protect our citizens and the commonwealth," Mr. Romney said at a news conference.
In Connecticut, Gov. John G. Rowland stationed National Guardsmen at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford and asked the Federal Aviation Administration to impose a no-fly zone near Waterford and the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in Buchanan, N.Y.
In Washington, the police closed a busy street for several hours after a person was seen placing a white powdery substance in a trash bin. Officials tried to identify the powder, saying they did not consider it dangerous.
In Colorado, Gov. Bill Owens announced that 2,500 members of the Colorado National Guard, as well as firefighters, health care providers, state troopers and emergency management workers, had been instructed to be within 30 minutes of their work sites at all times.
"We have several common-sense suggestions for Coloradans," Mr. Owens said. "Be aware of your surroundings. Report suspicious packages or other unusual materials immediately. Perhaps, most importantly, be calm and patient."
Many people were caught up in the bustle of the holidays, and most travelers, shoppers and vacationers seemed to proceed with their plans. Many others adjusted their transportation.
In Athens, Ga., Lois Jones, who was visiting her mother, decided to take the afternoon bus home to Atlanta instead of her 7 p.m. bus.
"It's scary," Ms. Jones, a retired worker from a sewing factory, said. "That's the reason I'm going back before it gets to be night."
In Boston, the Angus family, in from Wells, Me., for a day of sightseeing, was avoiding the subway, known as the T, for fear of an attack with chemical or biological weapons.
"I'm feeling just a little bit more anxiety about the T," Linda Angus said. "You worry about them doing the gas thing. We're walking everywhere."
Mr. Angus, a retired truck driver, added: "It's not free and easy and relaxed like it used to be. Something's going to happen sometime. You're just not sure where or when."
Franklin Mitchell, a high school senior from Sanford, Fla., visiting his mother in Greensboro, Ga., said he might consider changing his plans to fly to Orlando, Fla., after Christmas.
"I'm not sure now that I'm hearing all this," Mr. Mitchell said.
Some people were jittery even they forged ahead.
While waiting at Logan for a flight to Orlando, Janet Solomon watched her husband, Bert, consuming a double hamburger with cheese. Mrs. Solomon could bring herself only to sip some tea.
"I must be nervous, because I'm sick to my stomach," Mrs. Solomon, a nurse practitioner from Worcester, said. "I was fine after 9/11. I was a little nervous. But there was more security, and I felt a little safer. But when they elevated it yesterday, it sort of made me a little anxious."
A few people discounted the warning.
"I really don't think the warning means anything," Robert Petit of North Little Rock, Ark., said. "I just feel that after Sept. 11 nothing's going to happen like Sept. 11."
Many people absorbed the new warning without feeling compelled to revise their plans.
John Graham, a Marine colonel flying from Chicago to Charleston, S.C., on Monday afternoon, said Americans had adopted an almost Israeli-like way of handling the terror threat.
"We're not numb to it," Colonel Graham said. "But we're adapting to our new environment. We're not going to run around being alarmed anymore."
Cindy Fang, a graduate student in electrical engineering, said she believed that her flight from Chicago to Newark would be safe because it was heading in the opposite direction from the flights that struck the World Trade Center. Ms. Fang said there was nothing that she could do to improve her safety, so she was not sure what value there was to knowing that the alert level had increased.
"I can't think of anything I can do to save myself besides pray," she said. "It's not like I'm going to run out and put on all of my lucky charms."
Courtney Monaco of Lynnfield, Mass., was going ahead with holiday shopping here.
"It's in the back of my mind," Ms. Monaco said of the alert. "But you can't stay at home. Got to live."
--------
U.S. Broadens Air Patrols Due to Threat
December 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Threat.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Intelligence gathered by the U.S. government indicates al-Qaida terrorists have a keen interest in striking targets that are far from major cities, such as power plants, dams and even oil facilities in Alaska. The Pentagon said Tuesday it is broadening air patrols throughout the country.
In addition, the military is deploying surface-to-air missile systems in the Washington area and is considering locating more anti-aircraft systems in the New York City region, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some of the intelligence ``chatter'' that led President Bush to put the nation on high ``orange'' alert for a terrorist strike dealt with threats against remote facilities, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials speaking Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
One specific threat, they said, was against oil facilities in Valdez, Alaska, where tankers load Prudhoe Bay oil destined for the continental United States. Other threats are more general, mentioning nuclear plants in rural areas and other electric facilities, major dams, bridges or chemical plants, the officials said.
One official cautioned that most of the reports were uncorroborated -- some were from only a single informant or communications intercept -- and may be unconnected to a larger al-Qaida plot. But local officials boosted security at many such facilities, including the Port of Valdez where armed Coast Guard patrol boats were more visible and ship boardings were on the increase.
``Making our presence known is a great deterrent,'' said Coast Guard spokesman Roger Wetherell.
Other intelligence points to possible attacks in cities such as New York, Washington or Los Angeles, which have been targeted by terrorists before. Aircraft continue to be a favored al-Qaida method, particularly aircraft originating from overseas and those carrying cargo -- both of which have less security than U.S. passenger aircraft.
Officials say there also seems to be interest in targeting holiday events that draw large crowds, such as college and professional football games and New Year's celebrations and parades.
Americans across the nation are likely to notice increased air patrols as the government continues its response to Sunday's decision to raise the nation's terror threat level to orange, or high, the second-highest point, the Defense Department said. It marked the fifth time the level has gone above yellow, or elevated, since the five-point system was developed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Patrols of warplanes will increase ``over select cities and facilities'' in the coming days, said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Myers said air defenses were put on higher alert in the Washington area and also at ``different air bases throughout the country.''
The patrols are ``more broad'' than in the past, Myers said, when fighter planes focused patrols on such expected al-Qaida targets as New York and Washington. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. warplanes have been summoned some 1,600 times to investigate incidents in American airspace -- an average of around twice a day, the general said.
Government officials continued to convey a sense of guarded urgency about the latest terror threats, which have been described as the most serious since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the government acted appropriately in raising the terror risk level given the volume and nature of intelligence. ``You do not do it lightly,'' Rumsfeld said. ``You ask, 'Is it serious?' Yes, you bet your life'.''
Security continued to tighten at the nation's airports, with more bomb-sniffing dogs in visible use, parking restrictions in force and baggage screeners taking extra care. Additional officers have been activated along the U.S.-Canada border.
Overseas, officials in Turkey said they fear militants may be preparing to organize new attacks on American, Israeli and other Western interests or on Istanbul's most popular shopping mall. The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain also warned of a terror attack in that Persian Gulf country, telling Americans to avoid places where Westerners gather and curtail unnecessary travel.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said American embassies regularly re-examine their operations to see what can be done to increase security when alerts are high.
``They look at things like access routes, police presence, whether there are other things we need to ask the local governments for,'' such as closing roads, he said.
Associated Press writers John Solomon and John J. Lumpkin contributed to this story.
--------
A Calm Shade of Orange Americans Heed Call to Stay Busy
By Kimberly Edds and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22911-2003Dec22?language=printer
Even as police and government officials braced yesterday for the possibility of a terrorist strike that authorities said could rival the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a nation busy preparing for the holidays appeared to take in stride this year's fourth escalation of the national threat index.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, speaking to reporters after a White House meeting on the new "code orange" alert, advised holiday shoppers and travelers to be vigilant but to stick to their plans.
"If you've got holiday plans, go. Don't change them," Ridge said. "We cannot be burdened by that threat or fear. We need to be alert to it."
Later, President Bush said that "our government is doing everything we can to protect our country. American citizens need to go about their lives, but as they do so, they need to know that governments at all levels are working as hard as we possibly can to protect the American citizens."
Across the nation, authorities reacted to Sunday's announcement by tightening security at bridges, tunnels, ports, landmarks, nuclear and chemical facilities, and other possible targets of attack. The police presence on New York's streets and in its subway system increased visibly. Inspections at ports of entry were increased, the FBI established 24-hour command centers at all 56 of its field offices and security at the United Nations was tightened.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said it had stepped up air patrols with F-16 fighter jets around "critical infrastructure."
At Chicago's Sears Tower, extra steps were taken to keep visitors to the landmark safe, including increased walking patrols. Police patrols across the city were stepped up. Canine patrols were increased at O'Hare and Midway airports, and flight paths over the city may be altered.
In Washington, Mayor Anthony A. Williams canceled a planned trip to Los Angeles. "Under the circumstances here, I think it is best for me as a public official to be here right now," Williams said. "This is to be taken seriously by public officials, and certainly first responders and responders in the private sector."
The Transportation Security Administration, concerned about intelligence reports that terrorists might target international flights bound for the United States, urged airports and governments overseas to make sure that their screening procedures were up to U.S. standards. Air carriers with flights headed for the United States were directed to take additional security precautions if overseas airports did not meet certain standards, administration and aviation sources said yesterday.
"Our international partners have been encouraged to step up security procedures of all passengers" coming to the United States, one administration official said.
At Reagan National Airport, police patrolled the grounds in squad cars outside the terminal and on foot with bomb-sniffing dogs. Police randomly searched vehicles arriving at the airport, as they have done in the past at Washington's three major airports.
Passengers taking off for the holidays were resolute about proceeding with family visits and other activities as planned. "It doesn't make a difference," said Deborah Cusack, who was flying yesterday to Chicago with her three daughters and husband. "My focus is my family and Christmas."
The latest decision to raise the nation's terror alert status from "elevated" to "high" risk was based on increased "chatter" picked up by intelligence agencies about an imminent attack and new information indicating that al Qaeda continues to explore the vulnerabilities of commercial and cargo flights originating overseas. Officials said Sunday they are concerned that the terror network may intend to repeat the tactic of using aircraft as missiles against U.S. targets. The approach of the holidays also was a factor.
"There are a number of credible sources that suggest the possibility of attacks around the holiday season and beyond," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
But on a warm, sunny morning in Santa Monica, Calif., Mary Dekernion's Christmas list was just too long to let elevated threat status keep her away from the Santa Monica Place shopping mall. Her 27-year-old son called her after he heard the news, wanting to know what to do.
"He's scared to death. He thinks it could be a chemical attack this time. He wanted to know what to do. I told him just to go about his business," Dekernion said as she scanned the mall's store directory. "I just block it out. I'm not going to deal with it."
An elevated terror alert also couldn't prevent Catherine Behiling from taking her three grandchildren to have their photos taken with Santa Claus at a Santa Monica mall. "You know what I think? I'm going to go when I'm going to go."
Despite the new warning, she said she hadn't noticed anything different. No additional police on the streets, and no additional security at the mall. Just the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers rushing to make last-minute purchases.
Homeland Security officials, concerned that the public had begun to ignore their warnings, had vowed earlier this year to avoid raising and lowering alerts frequently. Three orange alerts were sounded in just four months earlier this year. Each time the alert status is raised from yellow to orange, it costs government agencies across the nation $1 billion a week, according to David Heyman, director of homeland studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
"They really go up and down on those things, don't they?" Behiling said in Santa Monica. "I don't think people pay attention to it. I haven't noticed anything different when they've done it before and I don't notice anything different now."
At New York's Penn Station, travelers were calm as they watched for train arrivals and departures.
"We had a driver, and he said he knew how to get out of the city, fast," said Carol Flood, who spent a few days shopping and dining with her daughter and mother. "What can you do? They're winning if you live in fear."
In downtown Miami, Marcel Moellenbeck, 24, had no intention of changing his plans for a trip to Walt Disney World. "We have no fears of flying," said Moellenbeck, a student from Germany. "The chances of something happening are really, really low. I believe it's relatively safe. Everywhere could be a terrorist's target."
In Los Angeles, John Celick, a retired computer consultant, said he didn't think law enforcement would be taking additional security measures if there wasn't something to be worried about. The fact that there hasn't been another attack since 2001 is a testament to the progress being made in the war on terror.
"I think we've busted up a lot of potential terrorists. We know more today than we did before, and that's why we haven't seen another attack," Celick said. "I think we've made some progress."
Edds reported from Los Angeles, Garcia from New York. Staff writers Sara Kehaulani Goo and Yolanda Woodlee in Washington and special correspondents Kari Lydersen in Chicago and Catharine Skipp in Miami contributed to this report.
--------
Heightened Terrorism Alert May Last Beyond Holidays
December 23, 2003
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/national/23ALER.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - The Bush administration is considering extending its heightened terror alert into the new year, as national security officials brace for the possibility that operatives of Al Qaeda will try to hijack airliners or engage in other major attacks within days, officials said Monday.
"No one should assume that once we get to Christmas and after New Year's that people should let their guard down," a government official said. "Al Qaeda has suffered some serious setbacks, but we know they're still capable of launching major attacks."
A day after the administration raised the threat status from "elevated" to "high," President Bush met for about 45 minutes Monday morning with members of his Homeland Security Council. Among those present were Tom Ridge, secretary of homeland security; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence; Attorney General John Ashcroft; and Robert S. Mueller, director of the F.B.I.
A surge in recent terrorism intelligence points to the possibility of a spectacular attack that terrorists abroad "believe will rival or exceed the scope and impact of those we experienced on Sept. 11," said Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.
Even so, Bush administration officials, mindful that past threat alerts have been criticized in some quarters as alarmist, sought to convey a sense of calm reassurance to the public.
Mr. Bush said that "American citizens need to go about their lives, but as they do so, they need to know that governments at all levels are working as hard as we possibly can to protect the American citizens."
Mr. Ridge told reporters after the meeting that although people should be especially vigilant because of the increased threat of an attack, "if you've got holiday plans, go - don't change them, don't alter them."
Particularly concerned that Qaeda operatives might hijack commercial airliners, as they did in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials tightened security at airports, a step that could mean delays for millions of holiday travelers.
Coincidentally, the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that a long-planned program in which photographs and inkless fingerprints will keep track of foreigners' entering and leaving the country would go into effect on Jan. 5 at all 115 American airports that handle international flights.
All foreigners carrying visas - the program will not apply to the 28 countries, many in Europe, that waive visa requirements for 90-day visits to the United States - will be subjected to the extra security measures. The fingerprints will be checked instantly against a national database of criminal backgrounds and terrorist links, and, to ensure further safety, the process will be repeated when the visitors leave.
But private air cargo operations are also seen as a potential means of attack, officials said.
"Cargo plane security is not what we would like it to be," said a public security official in New York who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In terms of threats from the skies, that one is still largely unaddressed."
In any case, a senior F.B.I. official told reporters last week, before the elevation of the threat level, that terrorism analysts were not convinced that Al Qaeda would necessarily return to airliners as a means of attack.
"Their planning is wide open," the official said.
Other officials said they were stepping up security not only at airports but also at other potential targets like bridges and power plants. Federal agencies involved in law enforcement and border protection have ordered supervisors and operational employees to cancel leaves at least through the holiday period.
Bush administration officials emphasized the vital role that federal, state and local law enforcement officials would play in coordinating counterterrorism efforts. But a report issued on Monday by the Justice Department's inspector general offered a mixed assessment of the F.B.I.'s efforts to share counterterrorism intelligence. It found that while the bureau had begun "fundamental reform" in intelligence-sharing, some troubling obstacles, like a need for better computer systems, continued to impede the effective flow of information.
While officials would not discuss specific information that led the administration to raise the threat level, they said not only that it was considered credible but also that the volume of it picked up by both electronic intercepts and human intelligence had increased significantly in recent days and weeks. The source of that intelligence is largely overseas, officials said.
"We've never seen it quite at this level before," Mr. Ridge said.
Analysts are studying whether tapes broadcast in the Middle East in recent days carried signals to terrorists to launch attacks against the United States. In the last few days, an Arab satellite television station, Al Arabiya, has broadcast an audiotape of apparently dated material from Osama bin Laden. But another network, Al Jazeera, has broadcast portions of a fresher audiotape it said had been made by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. bin Laden's deputy.
Officials said the tapes had been a factor in raising the threat level.
"This was one of a number of things," one official said. "But that certainly wasn't the driver. There's a lot of other threat information that factored into the decision."
Government officials are concerned that the holiday season in particular may prompt an attack by Al Qaeda or other terrorists, as a way of both dealing an emotional blow to the United States and blunting the political capital that Mr. Bush has gained through the capture of Saddam Hussein.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Wind energy investment options are starting to fly
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
By Roddy Scheer,
E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-23/s_9206.asp
As the fastest-growing energy source in the world, abundant, safe, reliable and renewable wind power seems like a very promising investment opportunity. But Americans looking to jump on the wind bandwagon had best be careful, because no U.S.-based wind power companies are publicly traded. Adventurous investors willing to leave the comforts of the domestic stock exchanges behind, however, can look abroad to find publicly traded wind power firms.
According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), a record 6,868 megawatts (MW) of new wind power capacity was installed worldwide in 2002, bringing the total global capacity to more than 31,000 MW. By the end of 2002, U.S. wind energy capacity had grown to almost 4,700 MW, providing enough electricity to power three million homes. Twenty-seven states now host utility-scale wind power development. This industry growth can be attributed to a greatly reduced cost of production, an increased demand for clean, diverse sources of energy, and state and federal incentives designed to stimulate the market. The average U.S. growth rate for the past five years is 24 percent, with still only a tiny fraction of the nation's wind resources tapped.
The sky's the limit
This untapped potential is why analysts are so jazzed about the future of wind power. According to Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute, "Even excluding environmentally sensitive areas, the global wind energy potential is roughly five times current global electricity use." Flavin adds that wind turbines installed on just 0.6 percent of the land area of the 48 contiguous states - mainly in the Great Plains - could meet 20 percent of current U.S. power needs.
The American wind energy market first began to surge in the 1980s, as three California-based turbine manufacturers - Kenetech (now bankrupt), Zond Systems (today a subsidiary of General Electric), and Seawest (still operating as a privately held company) - competed for dominance. These companies developed and installed thousands of the world's most technologically advanced wind energy turbines in windy mountain passes throughout the west, and blazed the trail for wind energy development across the country.
In 1992, in an effort to further bolster the wind market on home soil, the U.S. government established the wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC). Yet by structuring the credits to expire every couple of years, the government actually did a disservice to the wind industry. Congress has allowed the PTC to expire twice in the last five years, and it is set to expire again at the end of 2003.
"For the past decade, the wind industry has been on a roller-coaster caused by the two-year cycle of the PTC," says Randall Swisher, executive director of AWEA. "In 2002, the U.S. wind industry installed 410 MW. The year before that, we saw a record 1,700 MW of new wind power installed. With this instability, the industry does not attract the kind of investors we need to sustain long-term growth."
Meanwhile, in Europe, government incentives have helped make wind power a booming business in several countries. Denmark, which initially led the global wind power renaissance of the 1970s, is the acknowledged world leader in the production and installation of wind turbines. Today, the Danish companies Vestas, NEG Micon, and Bonus account for more than half of all wind turbines installed throughout the world. Germany is the largest consumer of wind energy, and homegrown producers Enercon and Nordex dominate that country's turbine manufacturing market. Meanwhile, Spain's Gamesa is reportedly in the process of opening a U.S. manufacturing facility in order to gain a foothold in the expanding American wind market.
While none of these European companies are listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, they are publicly traded, and American investors can purchase their shares as over-the-counter stocks. If you're interested, you should consult an experienced stockbroker about the risks and benefits of overseas investing.
U.S.-based mutual funds that include European wind firms in their portfolios, such as Progressive Investment Management's Portfolio 21 fund, are perhaps a more circumspect option, as they offer the protection of a domestic investment but have the flexibility to invest internationally.
Despite difficulties for the individual investor, energy analysts remain bullish on wind energy and expect it to expand significantly in the coming decades, both domestically and abroad. Savvy American investors willing to risk putting their money overseas could benefit down the road by getting in early now. But when the economy turns around and the federal government works out the kinks in its wind power incentives program, some strong wind power players are sure to take the public markets by storm.
Roddy Scheer is E's webmaster and a wind energy enthusiast.
----
Germans turn waste to energy
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
By Mattes Standke,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-12-23/s_11525.asp
BERLIN - Germany has only a small amount of its own natural oil reserves, but an enterprising power plant chief believes it has found an alternative source of energy with a bright future in an aging nation: used incontinence pads.
"It's an environmentally friendly source of energy," said Thomas Lesche, director of a Bremen incinerator plant that has signed a pioneering deal with a local retirement home to buy up 100 tons of used pads and soiled tissues each year.
"The pollution emissions with used pads are far lower than with oil or coal," added Lesche, who said he did not know of any other plant in Europe that turns incontinence pads into energy. "The content of nappies provide a great source of energy. The demand for used incontinence materials will grow in the future."
Lesche said the used pads may not be quite as good a source of energy as conventional fossil fuels such as oil, but he added they were nearly as efficient a source of energy as lignite, a softer coal with a higher water content.
"On top of that, it's much better for the environment to turn the waste into energy by incinerating it than leaving the pads to rot," Lesche said, "It's a ... sensible way to save natural resources."
Lesche's Muellheizwerk Bremen turns 330,000 tons of waste into energy each year.
Lesche recently signed a deal with a retirement home in the northern town of Harburg to buy its used 100 tons of waste, which translates into about 10,000 pads, in exchange for a 2,000 euro rebate on their annual waste collection bill.
Local Harburg authorities had first tried to block the move because it meant they would lose their fees for the waste disposal, but a local administrative court ruled in favor of the retirement home, allowing it to deal directly with the waste plant.
Lesche said the incontinence materials make up about one percent of the plant's energy output now, but he was confident that figure would rise. Germany has a rapidly aging population with three percent of its 82 million people over 80, a figure whcih is projected to rise to 10 percent by 2040.
Germany is western Europe's largest oil importer. There are some oil and natural gas reserves in northern Germany and the country's oil demand in 2004 is expected to reach to 116 million tons in 2004.
Additional reporting by Vera Eckert in Frankfurt
----
Fuel Cell Research Touted for New Mexico
December 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Fuel-Cell-Research.html
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- State officials pushed fuel cell research for New Mexico as Toyota showcased a full-size sports utility vehicle that runs entirely on hydrogen, sending only water vapor out its tailpipe.
Toyota vice presidents and senior engineers visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, and later the state Capitol, where Gov. Bill Richardson drove their prototype, as they stopped Monday in New Mexico while looking for potential hydrogen-power research sites around the country.
Bill Reinert, national manager for Toyota's Advanced Technologies Group in Torrance, Calif., said hydrogen power could revolutionize business.
``If hydrogen works -- and there's no guarantee it will work -- it's a fundamental shift,'' he said.
Fuel cells produce electricity through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, creating heat and water as byproducts. One significant hurdle: figuring out how to store the hydrogen.
Even with major advances in fuel-cell technology, it could be decades before a vehicle hits the market.
Reinert said developing hydrogen power will take private-public partnerships.
Los Alamos researchers helped design some of the key innovations that have made hydrogen fuel cells more efficient and economically feasible.
``There are certain breakthrough technologies that have to happen for hydrogen fuel cells to become safe and economic and accessible,'' Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans said. ``And that kind of research is what's taking place at Los Alamos.''
Researchers, environmentalists and politicians see fuel-cell vehicles as a way to obtain limitless energy, clean air and freedom from oil dependence in the Middle East.
The vehicle the Toyota delegation showed off looked just like the company's normal Highlander.
``This is amazing, really, to see this technology work, and to see it work in a vehicle of this size,'' said Piotr Zelenay, who has studied fuel-cell applications for years at Los Alamos. ``It runs just like a regular car, with one difference: It's quiet.''
The Toyota officials met with representatives of the Hydrogen Technology Partnership and heard about research efforts at Sandia National Laboratories, White Sands Missile Range and New Mexico universities. Homans met with Toyota officials during a recent trip to Asia.
``The only promise we got was a promise to continue talking. When you are recruiting somebody to your state, that's what you want to hear,'' Homans said. Richardson sparked the New Mexico visit by contacting Toshikaki Taguchi, president and CEO of Toyota Motor, North America.
``We want to become the hydrogen fuel cell research center in America,'' the governor said.
----
Energy Department Fuels Hydrogen Three Wheelers for India
ROCHESTER HILLS, Michigan, (ENS)
December 23, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-23-09.asp#anchor5
The U.S. Department of Energy is funding a project to introduce three wheel hydrogen powered vehicles into India. The project, which is also supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), exemplifies the kind of public private partnerships the Bush administration is keen to support according to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "Hydrogen engine technology can have a dramatic impact in the developing world by improving air quality and energy security, and promoting sustainable economic growth," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "This project could ultimately hasten introduction of hydrogen-fueled transportation into the United States by building upon lessons learned in widescale deployment of small vehicles in India."
USAID brought the American and Indian partners together and supported them with $500,000 to pursue the conversion of a three wheeler internal combustion engine to run on hydrogen fuel.
Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Inc. on behalf of Texaco Ovonic Hydrogen Systems LLC, both of Rochester Hills, Michigan, is undertaking conversion in the United States in a 50-50 joint venture with a unit of ChevronTexaco. ECD will carry out the project in cooperation with one of India's largest automobile manufacturers, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd.
The automaker has selected two vehicles for conversion, which will be carried out by ECD. The firm will convert the engine to run on hydrogen, design an appropriate metal hydride storage system, integrate the storage system into the vehicle, and perform vehicle testing.
One converted vehicle will be returned to India and the second vehicle will remain at ECD for tests and demonstrations in the United States.
The project falls under the Energy Department's hydrogen initiative, which the Bush administration says will help jumpstart an environmentally clean hydrogen economy.
-------- health
Licorice Extract Curbs Breast, Prostate Cancers
NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, (ENS)
December 23, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2003/2003-12-23-03.asp
A newly discovered molecule extracted from licorice root has the ability to stop two of the most common cancers, according to new research conducted at Rutgers University and four other institutions. Lab tests showed the substance stopped the growth of prostate and breast cancers, scientists say.
Dr. Mohamed Rafi, assistant professor in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers' Cook College, discovered the new molecule, ß-hydroxy-DHP (BHP), in common dietary supplements made from licorice root, a natural remedy with curative powers recognized for thousands of years.
Rafi tested the compound in the laboratory on tissues taken from prostate and breast cancer tumors. "We were able to conclusively demonstrate for the first time that BHP stopped the growth of cancer cells in prostate and breast cancers," he said.
Prostate and breast cancers are the leading cancers affecting men and women respectively, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BHP belongs to a class of organic chemicals known as polyphenols that includes the potential anticancer compounds found in green tea and wine.
"The precision with which ß-hydroxy-DHP acts in treating these cancers offers new hope for more effective therapies," said Rafi.
Standard chemotherapy kills normal cells along with cancer cells, causing side effects such as hair loss, nausea and reduced immunities.
BHP, a small, highly specific molecule, focuses precisely on cancer cells. It works by deactivating a protein associated with tumor cells known to promote the rampant cell growth characteristic of cancer.
The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese and Hindus recognized the natural medicinal qualities of licorice. The Egyptian pharoh Tutankhamen was buried with licorice root.
Today, licorice root is a botanical ingredient in modern Chinese medicines used to manage cancers. While some previous scientific studies confirmed the ancient wisdom of using licorice, the anticancer mechanisms remained unknown until Rafi's discovery.
"While licorice root is currently in clinical trials, we still need to isolate, synthesize and clinically test the BHP compound," Rafi says. "There is still a lot more to do both in the laboratory with animal models and in clinical trials on humans."
Rafi specializes in nutragenomics, an emerging applied science to develop future foods, new ways of incorporating bioactive compounds, known as nutraceuticals, into foods and the development of healthy personalized foods. Last spring he gave the first graduate level course in the world on nutragenomics and nutraceuticals.
The paper reporting this discovery was first published in the "Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry" by Rafi and his colleagues. Collaborators in this research included other scientists at Rutgers' Cook College and Center for Advanced Food Technology, as well as researchers at the Environmental and Occupational Health Science Institute, the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
The team's findings have gained new prominence since the National Institutes of Health included it in its Annual Bibliography of Significant Advances in Dietary Supplement Research in October 2002.
In 2001, Rafi was part of research team that identified a compound in myrrh, one of the gifts presented to baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men, that they believe could be developed into a potent anticancer agent. The compound, which kills cancer cells in the laboratory, also shows particular promise for the prevention and treatment of breast and prostate cancer.
As part of a larger search for anticancer compounds from plants, the researchers obtained extracts from a particular species of myrrh plant, Commiphora myrrha, and tested it against a human breast tumor cell line (MCF-7) known to be resistant to anticancer drugs. Research data indicated that the extract killed all of the cancer cells in laboratory dishes.
Rafi estimates that the myrrh compound tested is 100 times less potent than paclitaxel, the anti-cancer drug commercially sold as Taxol. But this drug is toxic to healthy cells, says Rafi.
The myrrh compound appears to fall within the moderate strength range of other recently discovered phytochemicals isolated from plants, including resveratrol from grapes, genestein from soy, lycopene from tomatoes, and catechins from tea.
The good news is that these compounds all come from food and are unlikely to be toxic to healthy cells, Rafi says, which could mean fewer side effects when used as chemotherapy agents.
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