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NUCLEAR
India Disappointed by U.S. - Pakistan Ties
India Plays Down Warning to U.S. on Pakistan Alliance
U.N. Chief Skeptical of Iran Nuke Program
The spy - and the man she busted [Vanunu]
Japan Power Company Regains Right to Use Reprocessed Nuclear Fuel
Australia, US boost military collaboration with radar research project
Al - Qaida's No. 2 Claims to Have Nukes
Al - Zawahri Says Al Qaeda Has Nuke Bombs - Biographer
Conflict brews on Hanford cleanup goals
Ex-Aide Assails Bush on War on Terrorism
Did Bush Press For Iraq-9/11 Link?
Iraq vs. Vietnam: The Scorecard
MILITARY
U.S. Steps Up Activity on the Afghan Border
Afghan Forces Reclaim Control in Herat
Sources: Two Israelis suspected of smuggling weapons to Iran
Nepal Says Kills 500 Rebels in Day - Long Battle
Albanians Blamed For Kosovo Unrest
Kosovars Survey the Damage of Ethnic Violence
Report: Britain Unprepared for an Attack
A firm in position to profit
Taiwanese President Narrowly Reelected
China Puts Army on Alert Over Taiwan Crisis - Paper
Terrorism Fight Top Agenda for EU Summit
Head of Haiti Force Says Won't Disarm Gunmen
Bremer Pushes Iraq on Difficult Path to Self-Rule
Mortars Hit U.S. Coalition HQ in Iraq
2 Million Miles, Makeshift Armor And No Fatalities
Iraqi security forces now at 200,000
The Iraqi who started it all
5 Palestinians Killed in Gaza
Israeli Troops Kill Two Militants in Gaza - Sources
Hamas vows to hit Israel with 'earthquake' to avenge Yassin death
U.S. Mideast Initiative Faces Arab Backlash
A Saudi Response on Reform: Round Up the Usual Dissidents
Not a good time to withdraw forces from Iraq: NATO chief
Pakistanis Seize Scores of Rebels
Pakistan Battle Pierces Solitude of Tribal Area
U.S. Envoy: Pakistan Still Taliban Haven
Indian defence minister plays down rift with US over Pakistan
The Royal Navy closes one of al-Qa'eda's last escape routes
U.S. Soldiers Charged in Abuse of Iraqis
6 G.I.'s in Iraq Are Charged With Mistreating Prisoners
Six U.S. soldiers accused of abuse
EU intelligence chiefs to crank up response to terror threat
U.N. peacekeepers unprepared for violence of Kosovo conflict
Unusual Herd of Deer Is at Center of Decision Over Uses for Army Land
When Spin Spins Out of Control
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
War on Terror Is Suffering in Courtrooms
Guantánamo Detainees Deliver Intelligence Gains
Criminal rehab gets budget boost
OTHER
Carbon Dioxide in Air Rises at Faster Rate, Scientists Say
C02 seen at record-high levels
ACTIVISTS
On Anniversary of a Divisive War, Italians Cry to Withdraw Troops
Worldwide protests mark first anniversary of US-led invasion of Iraq
Soldier's kin find an outlet in anti-war rally
Thousands in Manhattan Protest War
From Midtown to Madrid, Tens of Thousands Peacefully Protest War
Taiwan Protesters Vow to Stay Until Vote Recount
Thousands rally across Japan on first anniversary of Iraq war
Thousands Protest on Iraq War Anniversary
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- india / pakistan
India Disappointed by U.S. - Pakistan Ties
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-India-US.html
NEW DELHI (AP) -- The United States' failure to inform India of its decision to designate Pakistan a major non-NATO ally has ``disappointed'' New Delhi, the foreign ministry said.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in Islamabad on Thursday that the United States had elevated military ties with Pakistan, granting it benefits enjoyed by only a handful of countries outside the NATO alliance.
The new status will make nuclear-armed Pakistan, India's rival, eligible for priority delivery of defense material, and for the stockpiling of military hardware.
Powell flew to Islamabad from New Delhi, where he held discussions on regional security and bilateral issues with Indian leaders.
``It is disappointing that he did not share with us this decision of the United States government,'' India's Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.
Washington's decision to elevate military ties with Pakistan has ``significant implications'' for India-U.S. relations, Sarna said. ``We are studying the details of this decision... We are in touch with the U.S. government in this regard.''
The U.S. Embassy underlined the close ties between the two countries.
``The U.S.-India strategic relationship was the central focus of Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to New Delhi last week and continues to be the top priority,'' embassy spokesman David Kennedy said.
Other major non-NATO allies of the United States are Japan, Thailand, Australia, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand and the Philippines.
The new measures could assist the Pakistani military as it pursues remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban near the border with Afghanistan.
India, however, has been asking allies to restrain military aid to Pakistan, which it accuses of helping militants in the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
More than a dozen Islamic groups have been fighting in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir for its independence, or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. The 14-year insurgency has killed more than 65,000 people.
India accuses Pakistan of aiding the militants. Pakistan says it only extends diplomatic support, and does not supply material aid.
The South Asian nuclear rivals have fought three wars, two over Kashmir, since winning independence in 1947 from Britain. Both claim the divided Himalayan territory in its entirety.
----
India Plays Down Warning to U.S. on Pakistan Alliance
By REUTERS
March 21, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia-india.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's defense minister played down on Sunday a terse warning by New Delhi to Washington over its decision to make rival Pakistan a special military ally.
``Strategic partnership and friendship does not depend only on one thing,'' George Fernandes told reporters while campaigning in India's south for April-May national elections expected to return his coalition government.
``It also does not get diluted by one action alone. Therefore, it is not necessary to hype up things.''
Fernandes was commenting after a strongly worded statement issued by Indian's foreign ministry on Saturday which said that Washington's decision to make Pakistan a major non-NATO ally had ``significant implications for India-U.S. relations.''
India said Secretary of State Colin Powell, who announced the decision in Islamabad last week, did not speak of the move when he visited New Delhi before going on to Pakistan.
``While he was in India, there was much emphasis onIndia-United States strategic partnership. It is disappointing that he did not share with us this decision of the United States government,'' a ministry spokesman said.
Washington's decision to elevate Islamabad to major non-NATO ally status puts it on the same footing as countries such as Israel, Japan and Australia and makes it easier for Pakistan to buy U.S. weapons and receive U.S. military training.
India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947 and which is also seeking to build closer ties with Washington, does not have this status.
Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan came close to another war over Kashmir in mid-2002 but, with the election looming, India's Hindu nationalist-led coalition government has sought to improve ties with Islamabad.
Washington's decision came despite its own demand for a full accounting from Islamabad on Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's top nuclear scientist who has admitted selling nuclear arms secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Seen as a gesture to recognize Pakistan's support for the U.S.-led war on terror, Powell's announcement also came amid a major Pakistani offensive against al Qaeda and Taliban forces that continued on Sunday.
Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who has called Pakistan ``the epicenter of terrorism'' for supporting Kashmiri rebels -- which Islamabad denies -- said on Sunday Indian forces remained on alert despite the recent thaw in ties.
``I can say that there is no room for letting down our guard,'' Advani told reporters.
Hopes of a peaceful solution to the row over Kashmir received a boost on Sunday when Indian Kashmir's main political separatist alliance dropped its threat to walk away from talks with Advani.
But violence continued in the disputed Himalayan region, with at least six guerrillas killed over the past 24 hours.
-------- iran
U.N. Chief Skeptical of Iran Nuke Program
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-UN-Iran-Nuclear.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Sunday his inspectors remain skeptical about the intentions of Iran's nuclear program because of Tehran's past secrecy.
In an interview on CNN's ``Late Edition,'' Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged Iran to be completely open about its nuclear program if it wants to clear itself of suspicions it is developing weapons.
The IAEA has made ``very good progress'' in learning details of the Iranian nuclear program, ElBaradei said.
``Iran has agreed to fully suspend its enrichment program as a confidence-building measure, so we have to acknowledge we have made a good headway along our effort to make sure that Iran's program is completely for peaceful purposes,'' ElBaradei said.
However, he said Iran has not been able to remove all doubts because ``it's a program that has been undeclared for over 15 years.
``There's still a lot of skepticism that something might still be hidden,'' ElBaradei said.
Iran says its nuclear activities are designed to generate electricity.
ElBaradei said he hoped to visit Iran in the next couple of weeks and intended to make clear ``that transparency is an absolute key if they want to clear their name, and for us to be able to conclude that the program is completely for peaceful purposes.''
Earlier this month, Iran barred U.N. nuclear inspections for two weeks after the IAEA adopted a resolution deploring recent discoveries of uranium enrichment equipment and other suspicious activities Tehran failed to reveal. Iran later agreed to allow inspections to resume March 27.
ElBaradei has said he hopes to have a more definitive assessment of Iran's nuclear activities by June, when he is due to give his next report to the IAEA Board of Governors.
ElBaradei, who met last week with President Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said it is important to learn the right lessons from the experiences of U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq.
ElBaradei said the Iraqi experience showed that ``an inspection takes time, that we should be patient, that an inspection can, in fact, work.''
But he also faulted Saddam Hussein's regime for not openly cooperating with U.N. inspectors.
On the same CNN program, Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, said evidence brought forward by the Bush administration about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs ``was rapidly falling apart'' just before the United States attacked Iraq.
Blix said the Bush administration initially gave the U.N. inspectors a lot of support and information but ``lost their patience much too early.''
After Secretary of State Colin Powell presented America's case against Saddam to the U.N. Security Council, Blix had his experts look into it and reported back to the council that the ``evidence was shaky.''
``I told that to Condoleezza Rice, as well, so I think they were aware of it, but I think they chose to ignore us,'' he said.
-------- israel
The spy - and the man she busted [Vanunu]
Using womanly skills, a young Israeli agent snares a whistleblower. Now, his pending release revives the notorious case.
By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN,
Times Senior Correspondent
March 21, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/03/21/Worldandnation/The_spy___and_the_man.shtml
ORLANDO - She drives a red Cutlass convertible and lives in a gated community. Like thousands of others, she worked in that quintessential Florida profession - selling real estate.
At 44, Cheryl Hanin leads an unremarkable life. It is a far cry from the past, when she was known as "Cindy" and had a very different career:
Spying for the Mossad, Israel's crack intelligence service.
In 1986, Hanin was an undercover agent when a British newspaper published a sensational story about Israel's vast and secretive nuclear weapons program.
Posing as an American tourist, "Cindy" lured the whistle-blower - a former nuclear technician named Mordechai Vanunu - from London to Rome. There, other agents drugged him, chained him and shipped him back to Israel to stand trial.
Vanunu was convicted of treason and espionage. After 18 years in prison, he is due for release next month - raising a fresh storm of controversy about Israel's nuclear program and one of the most notorious cases in modern spy history.
To many, Hanin was a hero who helped bring a turncoat to justice. Without her, they say, Vanunu might have continued to spill secrets that threatened Israel's national security.
"His reputation is very bad," says Yossi Melman, who covers security issues for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. "He is considered by many as a traitor."
But to his legion of supporters in the United States and elsewhere, Vanunu is the true hero, a peace-loving man who thought the world had a right to know about the huge nuclear arsenal Israel was developing. His admirers - who repeatedly have nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize - charge he was illegally seized on foreign soil by a spy agency that knows no bounds.
"This woman destroyed Mordechai's life," says Peter Hounam, the reporter who first interviewed Vanunu in 1986. "He trusted her, she deliberately placed him in a position where his defenses were down. He was lonely, and she and her Mossad team took advantage of that. I have nothing but contempt for what she did."
Neither Hanin nor Vanunu has ever spoken publicly about the case. That has sparked the inevitable questions:
Does Vanunu still have warm feelings for Cindy?
And is Cindy still working for the Mossad?
"A woman has skills' Born in 1960, Cheryl Hanin grew up in Pennsylvania and Orlando in a Jewish family that owed its affluence to tires.
Her father, Stanley Hanin, founded Allied Discount Tires, a chain of stores best known for its shrill ads with a tipsy pitchman:
"Tahrs ain't pretty, but you gotta have them!"
Hanin attended Orlando's Edgewater High, where she joined Jewish youth clubs and served on the yearbook committee. In a foreshadowing of her future cover as a spy, she even appeared in a yearbook ad for an Orlando beauty salon.
Other photos show her as plump but attractive, with round cheeks, full lips and plucked eyebrows arching like half moons.
As her parents went through a bitter divorce, Hanin had her own life-changing experience: She spent a semester in Israel, studying Hebrew and Jewish history. She was so captivated by the country that upon graduation in 1978, she joined the Israeli army.
In 1985, Hanin married Ofer Ben Tov, a stocky officer six years her senior. And at some point, her good looks, keen intelligence and passion for Israel also attracted the attention of the Mossad.
Started in 1951, three years after Israel became a nation, the Mossad ranks as one of the world's most skilled and daring intelligence agencies. Among its legendary exploits were the 1960 capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, then living under an alias in Argentina, and the 1976 commando raid that freed 100 Israeli passengers on a French jet hijacked to Uganda.
As a Mossad recruit, Hanin would have gone through a regimen designed to test an agent's mettle under the most challenging of circumstances.
She learned to draw a gun while sitting in a chair. To memorize as many names as possible as they flashed across a screen.
"She was sent on practice missions - breaking into an occupied hotel room, stealing documents from an office," wrote Gordon Thomas in Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. "She was roused from her bed in the dead of night and dispatched on more exercises: picking up a tourist in a nightclub, then disengaging herself outside his hotel. Every move she made was observed by her tutors."
Hanin's gender was an asset. As Meir Amit, a former Mossad director, put it: "A woman has skills a man simply does not have. The history of modern intelligence is filled with accounts of women who have used their sex for the good of their country."
After her training, Hanin joined the Mossad unit that worked with Israeli embassies, where she posed as the wife or girlfriend of other agents. In 1986, she got the assignment that would be the highlight - and the end - of her undercover career. She was to go to London and catch the eye of a slight young man with thinning hair. Mordechai Vanunu. "Bigger than Watergate'
Vanunu was born in the Arab nation of Morocco but immigrated with his family to Israel in 1963.
Although he got top grades in school, he failed the test to become an air force pilot, his dream. He joined the army and did well enough to be asked to make it a career. But Vanunu wanted to pursue his education, another goal that eluded him when he flunked tests required for a university physics program.
Discouraged, he returned home to Beersheba in southern Israel. There he learned that the Negev Nuclear Research Center, in nearby Dimona, was advertising jobs in its control room.
Ever since construction began in 1958, rumors abounded that the center's true purpose was not to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, as Israel insisted, but rather to make nuclear weapons.
In 1976, Vanunu was accepted as a trainee and began a crash course in nuclear physics and other subjects. He was required to sign the Official Secrets Act, which forbid disclosure of sensitive material.
Vanunu spent the next eight years at the center, working in increasingly sensitive areas and making good money. He also completed a philosophy degree at Ben-Gurion University, where he became active in student politics and supported Palestinian causes. As a Jew born in an Arab country, Vanunu felt he himself was looked down on by Jews of European descent.
Repeatedly, officials at Dimona told him to halt his political activities. He ignored them.
"The warnings added to his feelings of discontent, and the nuclear issue weighed on his mind," wrote Hounam, the British journalist, in his 1999 book The Woman from Mossad. "He worried about the monumental destructive power of the weapons he was helping to supply."
By 1985, Vanunu had already decided to leave Dimona when he was told he was being laid off. But first, he clandestinely took dozens of photos in the complex, including models of different types of bombs.
With a backpack and the two rolls of undeveloped film, Vanunu left Israel in early 1986. He wound up in Sydney, Australia, where he got a job driving a taxi and began to attend an Anglican church.
Even as a boy, forced to memorize the Torah in religious school, Vanunu had questioned his Jewish faith. Now he found a welcome by parishioners, who, coincidentally, were debating whether the church should oppose nuclear weapons.
Vanunu told his story about Dimona, although he did not develop the film. He also converted to Christianity, a move that would shock his father and other Jews almost as much as divulging Dimona's nuclear secrets.
Wrote Hounam: "Vanunu was now on a collision course with his fellow countrymen who, when they found out, would take it for granted that he was deliberately mocking his country's two most cherished beliefs - its religion and national security."
Among Vanunu's new friends was Oscar Guerrero, a flamboyant Colombian who had been painting the church. Guerrero, realizing an expose of Israel's nuclear program could be a gold mine, told Vanunu he was an "international journalist" who could help get the story published. At the Colombian's urging, Vanunu developed his film, and Guerrero shopped the story to news organizations.
"This is bigger than Watergate," he dramatically announced.
Rejected by Newsweek and others, Guerrero approached London's Sunday Times in August 1986. Hounam, then a reporter, was assigned to determine if his story was credible.
Guerrero was full of bluster, but a British physics professor said the Dimona photos appeared genuine. Based on that, the Sunday Times sent Hounam to Australia to talk to Vanunu directly. He seemed to be telling the truth, admitting when he didn't know something, and over two days described a far more extensive weapons production program than anyone had realized.
"These were weapons that could obliterate a major city - they had no sensible battlefield application," Hounam later wrote. "I was utterly absorbed in the wealth of detail he was able to supply."
The Sunday Times, burned a few years earlier by fake Hitler diaries, decided to fly Vanunu to London so experts could probe his story. Under their agreement, he would not be paid for information he gave the paper, but would get $100,000 from a book deal and serialization in a German magazine.
As the vetting dragged on for days, Vanunu grew increasingly bored and lonely despite the paper's attempts to keep him entertained (including a trip to the opera, his passion). And while the Sunday Times urged him to stay in his hotel room, he persisted in roaming around London.
It was in Leicester Square, the heart of the theater district, that Vanunu first saw her - a slightly plump but attractive blond, with full lips and heavy makeup. She appeared to be in her 20s. Their eyes met, and on a whim he spoke to her:
"Are you a tourist like me? Why don't we go for a coffee?"
The woman called herself "Cindy" and said she was a beautician on vacation from America. She suggested they meet the next day at the Tate Gallery; Vanunu, pleased she shared his interest in the arts, agreed.
Although he did not realize it, Vanunu had fallen into a classic "honey trap." The Mossad, familiar with his desires and weaknesses, knew exactly how to lure him.
Frustrated with the Sunday Times' delays, Vanunu began seeing more and more of Cindy. The paper's reporters observed them together but almost none but Hounam had any suspicions.
"Morde," he said, using Vanunu's nickname, "this woman might be lying. She might be a Mossad plant."
Don't worry, Vanunu assured him, "she is just a tourist who is critical of Israel. I think you would like her."
They made plans for Vanunu to bring his new friend to dinner at Hounam's home that night. But Vanunu called to cancel because he was "going out of the city."
Then he disappeared.
"He should never have been allowed to wander around London on his own," Hounam says. "But there was this problem in that he hadn't actually signed the contract and we had no hold on him."
The fact-checking finally complete, the Sunday Times went ahead with publication even though Vanunu had vanished. On Oct. 5, 1986, readers picked up their papers to find a front-page photo of the Dimona reactor. The accompanying story, spread over three pages, revealed Israel had an arsenal of as many as 200 devices, ranking it as a major nuclear power.
The program "is considerably more advanced than indicated by any previous report or conjectures of which I am aware," one expert told the paper.
Israel did not deny the story, and refused to say anything about Vanunu. It was not until he was led into an Israeli court in December - two months later - that he used an ingenious way of letting the world know what had happened.
"Vanunu M was hi-jacked in Rome. ITL. 30.9.86. 21.000. Came to Rome by fly BA504," he had written in black ink on his hand, held up so photographers could see.
>From that shred of information, Hounam slowly pieced together the story of a kidnapping:
As Vanunu grew increasingly frustrated with the Sunday Times, Cindy - Cheryl Hanin - had urged him to go with her to Rome, where she claimed her sister had an apartment. She even bought him a business-class ticket on British Airways Flight 504. On Sept. 30, they flew to Rome. A friend met them and drove them to an apartment where a dark-haired woman opened the door.
Two men struck Vanunu and pinned him to the ground, while the woman injected him with a hypodermic syringe. From there Vanunu was taken to a speedboat, then transferred to an Israeli navy ship disguised as an old cargo vessel. Hanin accompanied him - crew members later complained she was rude, bossy and took freshwater showers although the water supply was limited.
A week later, the ship reached Israel and Vanunu was deposited in a cell at Mossad headquarters. A man tossed a copy of the Sunday Times at him and said, "See the damage you have done."
Why didn't the Mossad nab Vanunu before the story could be published?
Hounam thinks the spy agency began trailing Vanunu in Australia, but didn't have enough time to set in motion a plan to kill or kidnap him there. And Britain also posed problems - Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres didn't want to embarrass his British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, by seizing Vanunu on British soil.
"They therefore had to lure Mordechai out of the country and do the dirty deed elsewhere," Hounam says. "This was a time-consuming operation. It is probable that Cheryl was not the only Mossad Mata Hari lurking around and flashing her eyes in Morde's direction. It all depended on Morde believing he had made the first move."
"They're attracting fire'
The most serious charge against Vanunu was treason, which carried the death penalty. His lawyer argued he didn't commit treason because he did not share information with a hostile foreign government. Instead he went to the press in a case of the public's right to know.
The three-judge court, which conducted Vanunu's trial in secret, didn't buy it. By revealing information to a newspaper, the court said, he made it available to foreign governments, including Israel's Arab enemies.
Vanunu escaped death, but was sentenced to what many felt was an unusually harsh sentence of 18 years. He spent the first dozen in solitary confinement.
Among the few visitors allowed are Nick and Mary Eoloff, antinuclear activists from Minnesota who adopted Vanunu after his father renounced him because of his conversion to Christianity. The Eoloffs say an English-speaking guard writes down everything they say and warns them not to discuss the kidnapping, Dimona or the trial.
"If we began to talk about that, they would end the visit," says Mary Eoloff a retired teacher.
As his April 21 release nears, debate has flared in Israel over whether Vanunu continues to pose a security risk and should be held longer. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says he will be released on schedule, but subject to restrictions that might include denying him a passport or permission to travel abroad.
Vanunu, in a statement issued recently through his brother, said he remains opposed to nuclear weapons and has a "right like all others to express my stand." But, he stressed, he knows nothing about Dimona beyond what he told the Sunday Times 18 years ago.
Melman, the Ha'aretz reporter, thinks the government's real concern is not that Vanunu will reveal anything new, but that his case focuses unwanted attention on Israel's nuclear weapons program at a time when Iran, North Korea and other countries are being pressured to abandon theirs.
Israeli officials "want to lower Israel's profile but by talking about what they would do (to Vanunu), it's a boomerang, they're attracting fire," Melman says.
Scores of supporters are expected to be on hand for Vanunu's release, including Irish peace activist Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the 1976 Nobel Prize and nominated Vanunu for the award in 2001. Now 49 and nearly bald, Vanunu "just can't wait to get out," his adoptive mother says, and would like to move to the United States and teach history.
And, more than anything, he hopes to marry and have a family.
Over the past 18 years, Vanunu has rarely mentioned "Cindy," beyond insisting that the woman he met in London was not the one shown in a Sunday Times sketch.
"Some people suggested he was trying to protect her, maybe he was still in love with her," says Melman. "But at the time he said that, he was going bananas and on the verge of insanity" because of his solitary confinement.
Vanunu's brother, Meir, says Vanunu now realizes Cindy was a Mossad plant. Hounam, the British journalist, has his doubts.
"He still says he doesn't think I have the right person. There's an element of denial on his part. For a time, he even entertained the idea that she might be an innocent dupe as well."
"An overseas assignment'
After Vanunu's capture, Hounam tracked Cheryl Hanin to Netanya, a city on Israel's Mediterranean coast. She and her husband were living in a shabby bungalow.
"I deny it, I deny everything," she shouted when asked if she was "Cindy." Before leaving, Hounam snapped a few photos that showed Hanin's distinctive cheeks and eyebrows, but with her hair its natural brown.
By that night, the house was deserted. Hanin and Ben Tov disappeared from public view for several years: Some thought they went to South Africa, others wondered if she had been murdered by Vanunu's supporters.
In 1997, another Sunday Times reporter found Hanin back home in Orlando, in a "secluded villa." Again, she said little except to voice concern that any story about her should not "harm her position in America."
According to the paper, the couple also had a villa in Israel, in an area that is home to many security officials. Hanin "continues to work for Mossad, according to her Israeli neighbors," the Sunday Times said. "She and her husband, they believe, have rented out their house, while she is engaged in an overseas assignment, and are expected some day to return."
Today, Hanin and Ben Tov, parents of two daughters, seem firmly rooted in Central Florida. They live in Alaqua, which bills itself as "Seminole County's most exclusive estate home community." Their 4,000-square-foot golf course home - purchased in Hanin's name in 1998 and assessed at $528,000 - is among the more modest in a place where custom residences sell in the millions.
Now 50, Ben Tov is a trainee appraiser for one of Orlando's largest real estate appraisal firms. Among the company's clients have been military bases and local governments.
The burly Ben Tov, dressed in khakis and a maroon knit shirt, declined a request for an interview when a reporter visited the firm's headquarters in downtown Orlando. "So long, see you later," he said, and quickly retreated to his office.
Hanin's brother and his wife, Cindy - from whom Hanin got her Mossad cover name - also declined to talk about Hanin, as did her mother. All live in the Orlando area.
Until recently, state records showed Hanin had an active real estate sales license and was employed by CFI Sales & Marketing of Orlando. But CFI, whose Westgate Resorts is one of the world's largest timeshare companies, said Hanin was terminated in 1997, the same year the Sunday Times found her in Orlando.
CFI president David A. Siegel said Hanin likely was fired because she did not meet sales goals. He said he had heard about the Vanunu controversy, but had no idea Hanin was involved.
"We had someone like that working for us?" he asked.
After the St. Petersburg Times began looking into Hanin's background, state records were changed to show her license is inactive, with no reference to CFI. Officials could not say who requested the change: CFI says it did not.
Could Hanin still be working for the Mossad?
"No way," says Melman of Ha'aretz. "She was burned - her identity was revealed and she was too prominent."
But Hounam, the former Sunday Times reporter who became one of Vanunu's staunchest supporters, is not so sure.
"I think she probably is still doing some stuff for the Mossad . . . because once you train someone to do a job like this, you don't want to lose them. . . . The only satisfaction I've had in 18 years is being able to track her down and expose her identity, which means her future career was damaged," he said. "Indeed, she was not able to travel to the (United Kingdom) again in case the British authorities might have tried to arrest her."
And what did Hanin have to say, reached by phone at home one morning?
"I have no interest in talking," a brusque voice replied.
Click.
- Times researchers Cathy Wos and Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. - Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com
-------- japan
Japan Power Company Regains Right to Use Reprocessed Nuclear Fuel in Reactors
Kyodo News International,
Tokyo Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Sun, Mar. 21, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8243225.htm
Mar. 20--FUKUI, Japan - Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) was formally given the go-ahead Saturday for restarting a stalled program to use reprocessed spent nuclear fuel in power reactors, clearing the policy hurdles for such fuel to debut in Japan amid lingering safety worries.
In a meeting with KEPCO President Yosaku Fuji, Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa conveyed a decision to follow the state and the Takahama municipal government in allowing KEPCO to use mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel at its nuclear plant in Takahama.
With the consent, KEPCO is expected to sign later this month a contract to manufacture MOX fuel overseas. Japan's second-biggest power company aims to introduce MOX fuel in 2007 at the No. 3 and No. 4 Takahama reactors after government checks and other technical procedures.
KEPCO's plan to use MOX fuel for plutonium-thermal or "pluthermal" nuclear power generation had been stalled after a data falsification scandal surfaced in September 1999.
However, the Fukui governor decided to restart the project earlier this month after the utility took preventive steps last October.
Nishikawa told Fuji in the meeting, "I request you take each step appropriately in order not to repeat the problem." "We regret that we had inadequacy," Fuji responded. "We intend to advance (the project) carefully to ward off a recurrence." In a press conference afterward, Fuji said, "The important thing is to start it (the project) at some point to promote our country's national policy of nuclear fuel cycle." KEPCO's MOX plan was originally approved by the central government in 1998 and by the Fukui and Takahama governments in June 1999.
But the plan was stalled after the data falsification scandal, in which British Nuclear Fuels PLC (BNFL) doctored inspection data on MOX fuel it produced for the Takahama plant.
Fuji declined to say if KEPCO would rule out BNFL in the planned new contract, although it is widely expected that it will prefer French nuclear fuel firm COGEMA in view of apparent local sentiment against the scandal-tainted British company.
"At the moment, we are not completely excluding it. We will seek products that are as safe as possible," Fuji said.
In Takahama, Mayor Riichi Imai asked KEPCO Vice President Tetsuji Kishida to "work on the plan by placing utmost priority on safety and responding to residents' trust." Local opponents, though, still express concern about the safety of the project, which advocates say will help address Japan's energy needs.
Takashi Watanabe, a town assembly member, said, "We cannot trust the claim by the government and Kansai Electric Power that pluthermal is safe. The data falsification scandal has proved this." "Takahama residents are living with worries about the four reactors located here and have no obligation to cooperate further in the national energy policy," Watanabe said. "The safety of the four reactors is what they should recheck and they should stop the (pluthermal) plan." A series of measures KEPCO took last October to prevent a reoccurrence of the scandal included stationing staff overseas to inspect the manufacturing process, establishing a system of double-checking to ensure that manufacturers properly manage data on the nuclear fuel, and asking third parties to verify the data.
The state and the Takahama government earlier endorsed the measures, which prompted the Fukui government to follow suit March 15.
-------- missile defense
Australia, US boost military collaboration with radar research project
SYDNEY (AFP)
Mar 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040322044910.u3dgfen7.html
Australia and the United States announced a new boost to their extensive military cooperation Monday with plans for a five-year joint research project into advanced radar and early warning systems.
Under the agreement, the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the US Air Force Research Laboratory will work on active array radar modelling and radar detection performance prediction, the DSTO said in a statement.
"The results of the research are likely to be critical to long-term radar support and the development of future phased array radars," said Len Sciacca, chief of the DSTO electronic warfare and radar division.
He said key Australian military projects would directly benefit from the joint research, including the "Wedgetail" airborne early warning and control system being developed for the air force.
The radar research project is the latest example of the close and growing military ties between Australia and the United States.
Australian troops fought alongside US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and recently announced it was studying the possibility of establishing a joint training base with the Americans in the country.
-------- terrorism
Al - Qaida's No. 2 Claims to Have Nukes
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Al-Qaida-Nuclear.html
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of al-Qaida's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.
In an interview scheduled to be televised on Monday, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir said Ayman al-Zawahri claimed that ``smart briefcase bombs'' were available on the black market. It was not clear when the interview between Mir and al-Zawahri took place.
U.S. intelligence agencies have long believed that al-Qaida attempted to acquire a nuclear device on the black market, but say there is no evidence it was successful.
In the interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp. television, parts of which were released Sunday, Mir recalled telling al-Zawahri it was difficult to believe that al-Qaida had nuclear weapons when the terror network didn't have the equipment to maintain or use them.
``Dr Ayman al-Zawahri laughed and he said `Mr. Mir, if you have $30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist, and a lot of ... smart briefcase bombs are available,''' Mir said in the interview.
``They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated, and we purchased some suitcase bombs,'' Mir quoted al-Zawahri as saying.
Al-Qaida has never hidden its interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
The U.S. federal indictment of bin Laden charges that as far back as 1992 he ``and others known and unknown, made efforts to obtain the components of nuclear weapons.''
Bin Laden, in a November 2001 interview with a Pakistani journalist, boasted having hidden such components ``as a deterrent.'' And in 1998, a Russian nuclear weapons design expert was investigated for allegedly working with bin Laden's Taliban allies.
It was revealed last month that Pakistan's top nuclear scientist had sold sensitive equipment and nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, fueling fears the information could have also fallen into the hands of terrorists.
Earlier, Mir told Australian media that al-Zawahri also claimed to have visited Australia to recruit militants and collect funds.
``In those days, in early 1996, he was on a mission to organize his network all over the world,'' Mir was quoted as saying. ``He told me he stopped for a while in Darwin (in northern Australia), he was ... looking for help and collecting funds.''
Australia's Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the government could not rule out the possibility that al-Zawahri visited Australia in the 1990s under a different name.
``Under his own name or any known alias he hasn't traveled to Australia,'' Ruddock told reporters Saturday. ``That doesn't mean to say that he may not have come under some other false documentation, or some other alias that's not known to us.''
Mir describe al-Zawahri as ``the real brain behind Osama bin Laden.''
``He is the real strategist, Osama bin Laden is only a front man,'' Mir was quoted as saying during the interview. ``I think he is more dangerous than bin Laden.''
Al-Zawahri -- an Egyptian surgeon -- is believed to be hiding in the rugged region around the Pakistan-Afghan border where U.S. and Pakistani troops are conducting a major operation against Taliban and al-Qaida forces.
He is said to have played a leading role in orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
--------
Al - Zawahri Says Al Qaeda Has Nuke Bombs - Biographer
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-alqaeda-nuclear.html
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri claims the militant Islamic organization has bought briefcase nuclear bombs on the central Asian black market, according to Osama bin Laden's biographer.
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program, to be aired on Monday night, that when he interviewed Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahri in 2001 he asked whether al Qaeda had nuclear weapons.
Mir said al-Zawahri laughed and said: ``Mr Mir, if you have US$30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available.
``They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs,'' Mir quoted al-Zawarhi on the ABC program ``Enough Rope,'' recorded last Monday from Islamabad.
The Egyptian al-Zawahri, a doctor, is regarded as the brains of al Qaeda and a key figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Al Qaeda is suspected of having an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, biological or chemical, but no evidence of a program was found in searches of its bases after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Security experts say it is highly unlikely that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network have got anywhere close to acquiring nuclear weapon technology, but they do not rule it out.
Experts have long said it might be easier for al Qaeda to create a dirty bomb -- a cocktail of non-fissile material and explosives capable of creating damage -- but that would spread radioactivity over only a limited area.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
Conflict brews on Hanford cleanup goals
Critics say the U.S. Department of Energy is hurrying work at the nuclear site, but officials say standards are being met
03/21/04
Oregonian
by ANDY DWORKIN
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/107978793070950.xml
In the past year, the long saga of Hanford Nuclear Reservation has reached a dramatic turning point.
There is unprecedented progress on cleaning the vastly polluted site, say regulators and environmentalists. But many add they have never been more worried that the U.S. Department of Energy will try to limit further cleanup, leaving Hanford significantly polluted for generations to come.
"The Department of Energy is articulating now where they want to go," said Greg deBruler, Hanford analyst for the Columbia Riverkeeper environmental group. "The Department of Energy wants to get out real fast."
The conflicting feelings on the former nuclear-processing site flow from two historic changes in the Energy Department's project to clean the 586-square mile location on the Columbia River in Southeast Washington.
In recent years, workers have finished several pressing, safety-related projects -- such as stabilizing potentially explosive waste tanks -- that have let them focus on long-term cleanup plans. At the same time, the Bush administration accelerated efforts to clean all U.S. nuclear-waste sites by emphasizing efficiency, such as paying contractors more for working quickly. But critics say the government is also "accelerating" by lowering its standards, so it can leave sites sooner, with more pollution remaining.
"There are two sides to this coin. One side is tremendous on-the-ground progress," said Doug Riggs, coordinator of the Hanford Information Network advocacy group. "What I see today is the flip side of this coin, which is a rejection of public comment . . . and a top-down, we-know-best approach."
Hanford's leaders agree big changes are being made but deny that they are out to shortchange legal requirements for cleaning the site.
"What we're trying to do is look at a range of options," said Keith Klein, manager of the site's Richland Operations Office. But Klein said any choices will hew to state and federal environmental laws, and follow agreements with Washington state and federal environmental regulators.
Worry and pride in progress bubbled up at public "State of the Site" meetings Hanford officials held last week.
Recent accomplishments include stabilizing radioactive waste at the site's "Plutonium Finishing Plant," moving all spent nuclear fuel from riverfront basins and carting about half the polluted soil away from the river. Workers have channeled most of the liquid waste in leak-prone, single-shelled, underground tanks to safer double-shelled tanks. Construction crews are making progress on a complex of factories that will melt the liquid waste into glass, which can be stored more safely.
Such progress raises a series of questions for the future: How should empty liquid waste tanks be cleaned and disposed of? How far must the government go to clean every last bit of riverfront?
Klein and others use one phrase to define the problem: "How clean is clean?"
Many environmentalists want most of the site cleaned for "unrestricted use," meaning people could drink the water or live on the land, even if the cleanup takes decades.
But Klein says parts of Hanford may be so polluted that cleanup hits a point of diminishing returns, bringing much more cost and worker-safety risk than benefit. Some Energy Department officials question how much deep-buried groundwater or soil can reasonably be cleaned, for instance.
Instead, Hanford administrators say it may be wiser to clean defined parts of the site to lower standards, such as for industrial use.
At the same time, Energy officials want to explore faster and cheaper ways to finish cleanup, such as novel ways of treating liquid waste.
But advocates balk at many of those ideas, including proposals to: Designate some groundwater at Hanford as suffering "irreversible and irretrievable" pollution, freeing the government from some cleanup. Designate the 51-mile stretch of Columbia shorefront as a park for recreational use. That assumes people would use the land only about 56 hours a year, letting the government clean less than if it planned for "unrestricted" use. Figure out new ways to treat 60 percent of the liquid waste instead of sending it all through glass melters, like those under construction. Permanently close 40 underground waste tanks within several years, though only one tank is empty of waste now, and no one has defined how to treat and "close" tanks.
Such ideas worry Oregon and Washington officials, who are asking the Energy department to reconsider some recent proposals. Linda Hoffman, interim director of Washington's Department of Ecology, sent a letter asking top Energy Department leaders "to engage in thoughtful conversation" about their plans, which "bring to a head" debates on the site's long-term use.
Oregon officials worry that the Energy Department is too quickly moving to make irreversible decisions about such issues as Hanford's future land use.
"We think it's ludicrous to assume that you know what the future land use will be there for hundreds or thousands of years," said Ken Niles, assistant director for nuclear safety of the Oregon Department of Energy. "Rather than restrict the use of land in the future, we would rather see a better cleanup now."
Environmental advocates have sharper words for the Energy Department. Several say officials in Washington, D.C., are making decisions with less public opinion and scientific data than ever.
Paige Knight, president of the advocacy group Hanford Watch, said Hanford administrators recently decided, without promised public debate, to pursue an alternate technology for treating tank waste that hasn't been scientifically proved.
"They're trying to make decisions without the data," she said. "I'm wondering how much we're going to be left high and dry. . .I don't believe that these people sincerely have our best interests at heart."
Advocates say their fears are exacerbated by a federal proposal to ship tons of radioactive waste from other Energy Department sites to Hanford for treatment and, in some cases, storage. Moreover, the site's plans call for using unlined soil waste trenches into 2007, instead of moving entirely to lined trenches this year, as once discussed.
"The Department of Energy wants to get out of cleaning this," deBruler told dozens of people gathered at a Portland meeting last week. "I've been working on this 15 years, and now is the time for people to come together and say, 'No.' "
Andy Dworkin: 503-221-8239; andydworkin@news.oregonian.com
-------- us politics
Ex-Aide Assails Bush on War on Terrorism
Associated Press
Sunday, March 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11436-2004Mar20.html
Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism coordinator, accuses the Bush administration of failing to recognize the al Qaeda threat before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and then manipulating the nation into war with Iraq with dangerous consequences.
He accuses President Bush of doing "a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
Clarke, who is expected to testify Tuesday before a federal panel reviewing the attacks, writes in a book going on sale Monday that Bush and his Cabinet were preoccupied during the early months of his presidency with some of the same Cold War issues that his father's administration had faced.
"It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier," Clarke told CBS for an interview tonight on "60 Minutes."
CBS's corporate parent, Viacom Inc., owns Simon & Schuster, publisher of Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies: Inside the White House's War on Terror -- What Really Happened."
Clarke acknowledges that, "there's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too." He said he wrote to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan. 24, 2001, asking "urgently" for a Cabinet-level meeting "to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack." Months later, in April, Clarke met with departmental deputy secretaries, and the conversation turned to Iraq.
"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke said. "But, frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something."
Clarke retired in 2003 after 30 years in government. He was among the longest-serving White House staffers, transferred from the State Department in 1992 to deal with threats from terrorism and narcotics.
Clarke previously led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group.
----
Did Bush Press For Iraq-9/11 Link?
March 21, 2004
(CBS)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, President Bush ordered his then top anti-terrorism advisor to look for a link between Iraq and the attacks, despite being told there didn't seem to be one.
The charge comes from the advisor, Richard Clarke, in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes.
The administration maintains that it cannot find any evidence that the conversation about an Iraq-9/11 tie-in ever took place.
Clarke also tells CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl that White House officials were tepid in their response when he urged them months before Sept. 11 to meet to discuss what he saw as a severe threat from al Qaeda.
"Frankly," he said, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."
Clarke went on to say, "I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
The No. 2 man on the president's National Security Council, Stephen Hadley, vehemently disagrees. He says Mr. Bush has taken the fight to the terrorists, and is making the U.S. homeland safer. Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq, even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan.
Clarke suggests the idea took him so aback, he initally thought Rumsfeld was joking.
Clarke is due to testify this week before the special panel probing whether the attacks were preventable.
His allegations are also made in a book, "Against All Enemies," which is being published Monday by Free Press, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster. Both CBSNews.com and Simon & Schuster are units of Viacom.
Clarke helped shape U.S. policy on terrorism under President Reagan and the first President Bush. He was held over by President Clinton to be his terrorism czar, then held over again by the current President Bush.
In the 60 Minutes interview and the book, Clarke tells what happened behind the scenes at the White House before, during and after Sept. 11.
When the terrorists struck, it was thought the White House would be the next target, so it was evacuated. Clarke was one of only a handful of people who stayed behind. He ran the government's response to the attacks from the Situation Room in the West Wing.
"I kept thinking of the words from 'Apocalypse Now,' the whispered words of Marlon Brando, when he thought about Vietnam. 'The horror. The horror.' Because we knew what was going on in New York. We knew about the bodies flying out of the windows. People falling through the air. We knew that Osama bin Laden had succeeded in bringing horror to the streets of America," he tells Stahl. After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.
"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.
"Initially, I thought when he said, 'There aren't enough targets in-- in Afghanistan,' I thought he was joking.
"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we've looked at this issue for years. For years we've looked and there's just no connection."
Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.
"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.
"I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'
"He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report."
Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'
"I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer." Clarke was the president's chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn't until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn't take the threat seriously.
"We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.
"There's a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently -- underlined urgently -- a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo-- wasn't acted on.
"I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years."
Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn't with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.
For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.
Clarke relates, "I began saying, 'We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.' Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, 'No, no, no. We don't have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.'
"And I said, 'Paul, there hasn't been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!' And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, 'Isn't that right?' And he said, 'Yeah, that's right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States."
Clarke went on to add, "There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever."
When Stahl pointed out that some administration officials say it's still an open issue, Clarke responded, "Well, they'll say that until hell freezes over." By June 2001, there still hadn't been a Cabinet-level meeting on terrorism, even though U.S. intelligence was picking up an unprecedented level of ominous chatter.
The CIA director warned the White House, Clarke points out. "George Tenet was saying to the White House, saying to the president - because he briefed him every morning - a major al Qaeda attack is going to happen against the United States somewhere in the world in the weeks and months ahead. He said that in June, July, August."
Clarke says the last time the CIA had picked up a similar level of chatter was in December, 1999, when Clarke was the terrorism czar in the Clinton White House.
Clarke says Mr. Clinton ordered his Cabinet to go to battle stations-- meaning, they went on high alert, holding meetings nearly every day.
That, Clarke says, helped thwart a major attack on Los Angeles International Airport, when an al Qaeda operative was stopped at the border with Canada, driving a car full of explosives.
Clarke harshly criticizes President Bush for not going to battle stations when the CIA warned him of a comparable threat in the months before Sept. 11: "He never thought it was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his National Security Adviser to hold a Cabinet-level meeting on the subject."
Finally, says Clarke, "The cabinet meeting I asked for right after the inauguration took place-- one week prior to 9/11."
In that meeting, Clarke proposed a plan to bomb al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan, and to kill bin Laden. The president's new campaign ads highlight his handling of Sept. 11 -- which has become the centerpiece of his bid for re-election.
Does a person who works for the White House owe the president his loyalty? "Up to a point. When the president starts doing things that risk American lives, then loyalty to him has to be put aside," says Clarke. "I think the way he has responded to al Qaeda, both before 9/11 by doing nothing, and by what he's done after 9/11 has made us less safe. Absolutely."
Hadley staunchly defended the president to Stahl: "The president heard those warnings. The president met daily with ... George Tenet and his staff. They kept him fully informed and at one point the president became somewhat impatient with us and said, 'I'm tired of swatting flies. Where's my new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda?'"
Hadley says that, contrary to Clarke's assertion, Mr. Bush didn't ignore the ominous intelligence chatter in the summer of 2001.
"All the chatter was of an attack, a potential al Qaeda attack overseas. But interestingly enough, the president got concerned about whether there was the possibility of an attack on the homeland. He asked the intelligence community: 'Look hard. See if we're missing something about a threat to the homeland.'
"And at that point various alerts went out from the Federal Aviation Administration to the FBI saying the intelligence suggests a threat overseas. We don't want to be caught unprepared. We don't want to rule out the possibility of a threat to the homeland. And therefore preparatory steps need to be made. So the president put us on battle stations."
Hadley asserts Clarke is "just wrong" in saying the administration didn't go to battle stations.
As for the alleged pressure from Mr. Bush to find an Iraq-9/11 link, Hadley says, "We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."
When told by Stahl that 60 Minutes has two sources who tell us independently of Clarke that the encounter happened, including "an actual witness," Hadley responded, "Look, I stand on what I said."
Hadley maintained, "Iraq, as the president has said, is at the center of the war on terror. We have narrowed the ground available to al Qaeda and to the terrorists. Their sanctuary in Afghanistan is gone; their sanctuary in Iraq is gone. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now allies on the war on terror. So Iraq has contributed in that way in narrowing the sanctuaries available to terrorists."Does Clarke think that Iraq, the Middle East and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein out of power?
"I think the world would be better off if a number of leaders around the world were out of power. The question is what price should the United States pay," says Clarke. "The price we paid was very, very high, and we're still paying that price for doing it."
"Osama bin Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country. He had been saying this. This is part of his propaganda ... we stepped right into bin Laden's propaganda," adds Clarke. "And the result of that is that al Qaeda and organizations like it, offshoots of it, second-generation al Qaeda have been greatly strengthened."
When Clarke worked for Mr. Clinton, he was known as the terrorism czar. When Mr. Bush came into office, though remaining at the White House, Clarke was stripped of his Cabinet-level rank.
Stahl said to Clarke, "They demoted you. Aren't you open to charges that this is all sour grapes, because they demoted you and reduced your leverage, your power in the White House?"
Clarke's answer: "Frankly, if I had been so upset that the National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism had been downgraded from a Cabinet level position to a staff level position, if that had bothered me enough, I would have quit. I didn't quit."
Until two years later, after 30 years in government service.
A senior White House official told 60 Minutes he thinks the Clarke book is an audition for a job in the Kerry campaign.
"I'm an independent. I'm not working for the Kerry campaign," says Clarke. "I have worked for Ronald Reagan. I have worked for George Bush the first, I have worked for George Bush the second. I'm not participating in this campaign, but I am putting facts out that I think people ought to know."
60 Minutes received a note from the Pentagon saying: "Any suggestion that the president did anything other than act aggressively, quickly and effectively to address the al Qaeda and Taliban threat in Afghanistan is absurd."
----
Iraq vs. Vietnam: The Scorecard
By Richard Leiby
The Washington Post
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page D03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12061-2004Mar21.html
A year ago, while hundreds of eager reporters embedded with U.S. troops pushing into Iraq, some wag circulated the "Vietnam II Preflight Check," a list of questions comparing the just-launched war with that previous long and nasty one. How prescient was it? Here's the list, for which no author has ever taken credit or blame:
1. Cabal of oldsters who won't listen to outside advice? Check.
2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
3. National boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
4. Unshakable faith in our superior technology? Check.
5. France secretly hoping we fall on our [rear ends]? Check.
6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our [rear ends]? Check.
7. China secretly hoping we fall on our [rear ends]? Check.
8. Secretary of Defense pushing a conflict the Joint Chiefs never wanted? Check.
9. Fear we'll look bad if we back down now? Check.
10. Corrupt Texan in the White House? Check. [Editor's note: Absolutely no proof of this.]
11. Land war in Asia? Check.
12. Right-wing unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
14. Soldiers about to be exposed to our own chemicals? Check.
15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
17. B-52 bombers? Check.
18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
19. Infighting among the branches of the military? Check.
20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
21. Local experts ignored? Check.
22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
23. Locals accustomed to conflicts lasting since before the USA has been a country? Check.
24. Against advice, Prez won't raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don't go our way? Check.
27. Unpopular war? Check.
28. It's the media's fault? Check.
"Vietnam II, you are cleared for takeoff."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Steps Up Activity on the Afghan Border
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11434-2004Mar20.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 20 -- U.S. forces and Islamic militant groups in Afghanistan appeared to have intensified their attacks in the past several days, raising the stakes in a protracted, two-year battle for control of the southeast, an ethnic Pashtun area where the former Taliban militia still has deep roots.
According to Afghan officials in Uruzgan province, a U.S. airstrike Friday on a village in the Charcheno district killed six civilians and injured seven. The report could not be confirmed, but the officials said the bombing came in retaliation for an attack on U.S. and Afghan forces Thursday in which two U.S. troops died and two were wounded.
The attacks have raised tensions in Afghanistan as Pakistani troops just across the border continue to battle tribal fighters believed to be protecting senior members of al Qaeda.
"There's a lot more going on," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, the senior U.S. military spokesman here. "We continue to mount aggressive patrols. . . . We are cooperating and coordinating with the Pakistanis. We are aware of their efforts, and obviously we are making appropriate operations on this side." He declined to comment on reports that the Pakistanis may have surrounded or even wounded a top al Qaeda leader, Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri.
Hilferty also declined to give details about the recently launched U.S. military campaign here, known as Mountain Storm, or to say how many troops were involved. The week-old operation has been described as part of a "hammer and anvil" strategy to squeeze Islamic extremist groups from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Human rights groups and Afghan authorities have criticized previous U.S. air raids on civilian areas, including an assault on a wedding party in Oruzgun Province in June of 2002, in which at least 50 people were killed and a large number wounded, including women and children.
Meanwhile, in Paktika province, Afghan police reported that about two dozen Taliban or foreign fighters with heavy weapons launched an attack Friday in the border district of Barmal but were repelled after four hours of fighting. They said three attackers were killed and the rest and fled into Pakistan when U.S. helicopters fired on them.
Barmal has been without any Afghan government presence since the district chief was assassinated in a Taliban assault six months ago. The district is directly across from South Waziristan, where the Pakistani troops have been battling tribal fighters for four days.
In Zabol province, Taliban forces threatened Saturday to kill a Turkish highway engineer who was kidnapped weeks ago, demanding that Afghan authorities release two Taliban militia members who were sentenced to death for the November slaying of a French woman working for the U.N. refugee agency.
In the past year, Islamic extremists have killed or kidnapped half a dozen foreigners and Afghans who were working to rebuild the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the country's two main cities. They have also ambushed and killed other aid workers, including landmine clearers, well-diggers and political pollsters.
Afghan officials in Kabul said Friday that a number of "mid-level terrorists" had been arrested in Afghanistan in recent days, but Hilferty did not confirm the report. He said U.S. and Afghan forces had "continued to place people in custody," but he would not describe their level of importance.
Hilferty said U.S. and Afghan forces near the border were coordinating more closely with their Pakistani counterparts than in the past. They are sharing radio communications, for example, which makes it more difficult for enemy fighters to slip from one region to the other.
There are also reports of U.S. Special Operations units and intelligence agents operating in and around the hilly border area as part of the new anti-terrorist campaign, but U.S. officials have insisted they are respecting Pakistani wishes by keeping their forces in Afghanistan.
--------
Afghan Forces Reclaim Control in Herat
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Minister-Killed.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Soldiers loyal to a local Afghan governor claimed to have retaken control of a western city Monday after fierce factional fighting that killed as many as 100 people, including the country's aviation minister.
Militia commander Zaher Naib Zada, who had accepted blame on behalf of his forces for Sunday's shooting of Aviation Minister Mirwais Sadiq, escaped capture when fighters loyal to Gov. Ismail Khan retook his militia division's barracks in Herat, police chief Zia Mauddin Mahmud said by telephone.
Twenty-five of Zada's fighters were in custody, Mahmud said.
Mahmud said between 50 and 60 people died during hours of fighting with guns, rockets and tanks.
On Sunday, Zada suggested the death toll could be as high as 100. By daybreak Monday, no one was answering Zada's telephone.
``The city of Herat is quiet,'' Mahmud said.
-------- arms
Sources: Two Israelis suspected of smuggling weapons to Iran
By Yossi Melman,
Haaretz Correspondent
21/03/2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/406826.html
Two Israelis are currently under suspicion - for the third time in the last decade - of smuggling arms to Iran, police and Defense Ministry sources told Haaretz over the weekend.
Eli Cohen and Avihai Weinstein are suspected of smuggling components for Hawk missiles and radar systems used in Phantom fighter jets. The components were purchased in the United States, and allegedly were to be sold to Iran via additional middlemen.
Police questioned the two men about the affair a few weeks ago, and raided the warehouses of a company owned by Cohen and Weinstein, seizing the suspected shipment. The sources said the shipment was small and not worth a lot of money, but "what we are trying to clarify is the trend - whether they were involved in previous shipments or planned future shipments."
The two men denied that the equipment was destined for Iran.
In a rare move, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has decided that Malmab, the Defense Ministry unit responsible for internal security in the defense establishment, be allowed to investigate the affair, even though his predecessor, Elyakim Rubinstein, had ordered the unit dismantled about a year ago on the grounds that there is no justification for any ministry to maintain an independent investigation unit not responsible to the police. Mazuz made the decision in order to advance the investigation.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations and other American agencies are also participating in the inquiry.
On Friday, a 70-year-old American Jew named Leib Kohn was indicted in Bridgeport, Connecticut for allegedly buying components for Hawk missiles and Phantom radars on behalf of partners in Israel. According to the indictment, Israel was merely going to be a way station, with the components ultimately destined for another state, whose name was not mentioned. The American prosecutor, Kevin O'Connor, praised the Israel Police in court for its help with this investigation.
The shipment seized by the Israel Police from the warehouses of Cohen and Weinstein's company in Netanya contained some of the components allegedl y purchased by Kohn from the Radio Research International Corporation of Westbury, Connecticut.
The last time Cohen and Weinstein were investigated - in August 2002 on suspicion of trying to smuggle parts for Israeli-made armored personnel carriers to Iran - the Defense Ministry decided to suspend their license to export arms. But following various court hearings and in light of the fact that they were never indicted, their arms dealing license was restored.
-------- asia
Nepal Says Kills 500 Rebels in Day - Long Battle
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nepal-toll.html
KATHMANDU - Nepali troops killed 500 Maoist rebels in a battle on Sunday in the bloodiest single clash since a revolt against the country's constitutional monarchy began in 1996, the army said.
``We believe more than 500 rebels might have died in the battle,'' a Nepalese army spokesman told reporters in Kathmandu. ``It is based on what our soldiers saw -- they saw the Maoists falling and being dragged off by other Maoists.''
There was no immediate rebel comment about the 12-hour battle at Beni, in Nepal's west, and no independent confirmation of the toll. The army said 18 soldiers and police had also been killed.
-------- balkans
Albanians Blamed For Kosovo Unrest
U.N. and NATO Criticize Extremists
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11585-2004Mar20.html
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, March 20 -- The violence that convulsed Kosovo last week, leaving 28 people dead and driving 3,500 Serbs from their homes, was partially orchestrated by extremist ethnic Albanian groups, according to U.N. and NATO officials and Albanian observers.
The groups, which mobilized supporters to reinforce violent protests and attack specific targets, made it more difficult for international and Kosovo police to contain the situation, they said. An initial reluctance by international peacekeeping forces under NATO command to use deadly force against assailants allowed the marauding to intensify, U.N. officials say.
"Maybe this began spontaneously, but after the beginning, certain extremist groups had an opportunity to orchestrate," said Harri Holkeri, the special U.N. representative who is the chief international administrator of Kosovo. "That is why we urgently have to work to get the perpetrators."
The violence began Wednesday after reports that three Albanian children had drowned in a river in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, north of Pristina, the capital. Ethnic Albanians accused Serbs of chasing the boys into the river. By Thursday, anti-Serb violence had spread across the province.
In 1999, the Albanians were the victims of mass expulsions, which ended when NATO intervened with airstrikes and drove Serbian forces from the province. Since then, Kosovo has effectively been separate from Serbia proper and from Montenegro.
Talks to forge a final peace between Serbia and its erstwhile province have yet to take place. Under a U.N. framework, Serbs and Albanians would live as equals in Kosovo, regardless of whether the province is declared independent, as the Albanians want, or if it remains under Serbian control. But U.N. administrators in Kosovo say the recent attacks have undermined chances for reconciliation.
U.N. police and officials with the NATO-led peacekeeping force said the mayhem this week took on characteristics of ethnic cleansing of Serbs. Homes were burned, sometimes with occupants inside. Mobs also torched schools and Serbian Orthodox churches. Other ethnic minorities were also driven from their communities.
Holkeri said Saturday that the situation had calmed down but added, "I cannot say the situation is over."
But Lt. Col. Jim Moran, a spokesman for the peacekeeping force, said: "I don't think we will have any more problems."
U.N. officials were cautious about saying who was responsible for the violence. Some suggested the People's Movement of Kosovo, an anti-Serb party that wants independence for Kosovo, was behind it. The movement issued a statement during the rioting that laid out conditions for halting the violence. The demands included a reduction of or end to the U.N. role in the province and abolishment of autonomous Serbian authority that currently exists in Serbian enclaves.
But a leader of the party, Emrush Xhemajli, said that the United Nations should stop "spreading rumors" about his group.
Veton Surroi, the Albanian editor of Koha Ditore newspaper, wrote about a situation "dictated by figures almost anonymous in our institutional life." Their "organizing capacity was confirmed by the number of weapons that emerged immediately in the 'peaceful demonstrations.' "
In analyzing the violence, police officials said several incidents exhibited a high level of organization. In Mitrovica on Wednesday, the size of a crowd trying to cross a bridge to the Serbian north side of the city quickly swelled as convoys of buses from Pristina began arriving with supporters. Large mobs also gathered within a half-hour of each other in the western town of Pec, the eastern city of Gnjilane and several towns in between, suggesting that orders had been conveyed to groups already prepared to move, a police official said.
On Thursday, police intercepted three busloads of Albanians leaving Pristina for the nearby hamlet of Caglavica shortly after a group of Albanians were blocked by barbed wire and peacekeepers from entering the village. A U.N. official said attacks on neighborhoods to the west and south of Kosovo built especially for Serbs who returned since 1999 also indicated "coordination."
"There has definitely been orchestration," said Col. Horst Pieper of Germany, a spokesman for the peacekeepers.
Pieper said the peacekeepers initially made protecting their own forces a priority, a decision that delayed the aggressive pursuit of gunmen and rioters.
He added that the arrival Friday and Saturday of more than 2,000 NATO reinforcements, including Americans from Bosnia, would send a "message" that NATO meant business. Pieper said, however, that the increase would not be permanent. Since 1999, the number of peacekeepers in Kosovo has fallen from 48,000 to 17,000 as responsibility for security was transferred to police.
Holkeri, the U.N. administrator, rebuked Albanian leaders for initially failing to speak out against the rioting. "At least now," he said, "they have spoken out quite clearly." Another U.N. official argued, however, that as late as Friday, top Albanian leaders had condemned only the attacks on international peacekeepers, civilians and religious sites but not on Serbs.
The expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo has presented the United Nations with a new problem: caring for displaced people and eventually finding housing for them. About 1,100 Serbs are living in the peacekeeping force's compounds; the rest are in Serbian safe areas or in hiding.
--------
Kosovars Survey the Damage of Ethnic Violence
March 21, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/europe/21KOSO.html
LIPJAN, Serbia and Montenegro, March 20 - Bogdanka Miric's eyes looked tired and red. Her 6-year-old daughter clung to her legs for comfort as she recounted how last Wednesday she, her family and about 20 of her neighbors, all ethnic Serbs, escaped from their apartment block as an ethnic Albanian mob rampaged through the town.
They escaped, they said, by jumping from a second-floor balcony onto a waiting military truck. On the other side of the Communist-era concrete building, gunmen fired from nearby buildings into the apartments. Ms. Miric said she and her neighbors managed to get away unharmed, and they are now staying in a Serbian enclave north of the town.
The family's narrow escape mirrored that of hundreds of other Serbs across this province, illustrating the apparent inability and failure of the United Nations mission that governs the region to provide protection.
The violence, which seemed initially to be a spontaneous response to the death of three Albanian boys who drowned in a river - an incident Albanians said occurred when the boys were chased by Serbs - was described by United Nations police officers and peacekeepers as being well planned and organized.
It was unclear four days after the first clashes whether those behind the marauding mobs had succeeded in altering the ethnic balance of the province. In the short term, the burning of Serbs' homes and churches forced many Serbs to leave areas that were once ethnically mixed.
At least one town, Kosovo Polje, just outside Pristina, the regional capital, had no Serbs left. But in other areas, including Lipjan, Serbian men were returning to their homes to inspect the damage, and possibly to stay.
The number of Serbs now believed to have been killed in the violence was lower than had been reported earlier. The United Nations says now that the official death toll is 31, though police officials say they have found 28 bodies, 15 of which are known to be Albanians and 7 Serbs.
The arrival of up to 2,000 new troops in the province, to reinforce the 17,000 already there, came as police officers and soldiers admitted they were ill-equipped to respond to the unrest.
"No one had any idea it would be so violent," said Angel Feliciano, a 39-year-old police sergeant from Milledgeville, Ga., who was working with the United Nations police in Lipjan. "We felt there was nothing we could do but sit back and watch the destruction."
Sergeant Feliciano said that he and about 14 other officers tried to prevent a crowd of several hundred people from reaching a group of houses owned by Serbs but that the police were outnumbered. Three armored personnel carriers stood by, they said, but the Finnish troops in them said they had received no orders to back up the police.
Capt. Ari Lehmuslehti, a member of the Finnish contingent, said his troops had no equipment to control the crowds when the violence started. But over the next two days, he said, the soldiers helped rescue 300 Serbs besieged in their homes, including the Mirics and their neighbors.
In Mitrovica, where the first outbreaks took place, similar events were described by witnesses. Local journalists and United Nations officials said angry crowds swept aside small groups of police officers who attempted to bar their way.
A spokesman for the peacekeeping forces said they did not have enough troops to deal with the scale of the violence.
"When NATO first came to Kosovo we had around 50,000 troops," said Lt. Col. James Moran. "Now we are a small peacekeeping force. But when you have 30 to 40 percent of the population out on the streets, there is not much you can do about it."
While international condemnation of the ethnic Albanians involved in the violence was unanimous, some of the severest criticism of the last few days' events was directed at international figures and bodies.
Over the past two years, United Nations officials have repeatedly pointed to falling crime rates as proof that the province was becoming more like a normal European state. But it now seemed clear that the underlying causes of the conflict between Serbs and Albanians in the province have not been resolved.
Critics said the province has been left in limbo for too long, with the world refusing to deal with whether it should become an independent state, something the majority Albanian population desires. European officials in particular have argued that an independent Kosovo could destabilize the Balkans.
"The delay is what caused this crisis," Richard C. Holbrooke, a former American envoy to the Balkans, said in a telephone interview from New York. "It was exacerbated by the United Nations, the European Union and the U.S., and now we are left with a situation where we had to send more troops to bring the situation under control again."
-------- britain
Report: Britain Unprepared for an Attack
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-britain-planning.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain would not be able to cope with a major attack on civilians, top emergency planners say, according to the Independent on Sunday newspaper.
Patrick Cunningham, chairman of the Emergency Planning Society, said that local authority planners would be able to offer little more than ``a token gesture of support'' in the aftermath of an attack such as the Madrid bombings this month.
The society represents professionals involved in emergency planning, crisis and disaster management, and its membership is drawn from local government, industry, the utilities and the emergency services.
``It is absolutely unbelievable,'' Cunningham was quoted in The Independent on Sunday as saying. ``We are concerned that our own emergency plans are not going to meet public expectations. It just does not make sense.''
Iain Hoult, the organization's chairman in southern England, said that Britain was ``very, very badly prepared'' for an attack on the scale of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid in which 202 people died.
Their comments come less than a week after Britain's top police officer, Sir John Stevens, said such an attack on London was inevitable.
On Sunday, Stevens said European police forces needed to cooperate more in their efforts against terrorism.
``There needs to be a structure which is useful, which analyzes on a pan-European way some of the information we get, and the forensics,'' he told BBC television.
Cunningham said he was not criticising the police, fire and ambulance services, all of which have received extra funds and equipment over the last two years.
But he warned that local authority planners, who are supposed to play a vital role in the aftermath of a disaster, could cope with a ``traditional bomb'' by the Irish Republican Army but not with an attack on the scale of the Madrid bombings.
Staff, whose roles could include organizing evacuations, housing victims and providing information to the public, lacked essential equipment and training.
``It is a totally unacceptable position; something has got to happen,'' Hoult said.
This week representatives from Britain's local authorities are expected to tell the government that funds for emergency planning - currently drawn from a 19 million pound annual budget - must be increased, the newspaper said.
-------- business
A firm in position to profit
David Lazarus
Sunday, March 21, 2004
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/21/BUG4E5O77A1.DTL
The war in Iraq is a year old, and the military-industrial complex is making out like a bandit.
That at least was what protesters were telling me the other day outside the Bechtel headquarters in downtown San Francisco, where people were chanting, the names of slain soldiers were read aloud and signs said "Shut Down the War Profiteers."
"We're lining Bechtel's pockets at the expense of a number of people's lives," said Paul LaFarge, a New York artist who was in town for the demonstration.
But why Bechtel? The engineering giant, with about $3 billion in Iraq- reconstruction contracts, has been accused of no wrongdoing (unlike, say, Halliburton, which the Pentagon says received millions of dollars in kickbacks from Mideast subcontractors and overcharged for services provided to U.S. troops).
"They're all part and parcel of the same thing," explained Amy Trachtenberg, a San Francisco artist, as she paused from reciting the names of the dead just feet from where somber-faced Bechtel workers were slipping past a police barricade and into their office building.
Yet Bechtel wasn't the only object of protesters' ire. Michael Daloisio, a San Francisco teacher, lamented that U.S. schools are struggling for cash while a variety of companies are "making billions off this illegal war."
Aside from Bechtel, he cited Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, ChevronTexaco and the Carlyle Group.
Well now.
Since the subject has come up, here's a little something about Carlyle that most people don't know. I can say that with confidence because even a Carlyle representative said he didn't know until I pointed it out to him.
The Washington investment firm, run by a who's who of Republican heavyweights, including former Secretary of State James Baker and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, has put money into about 300 different companies and properties.
Those investments include United Defense Industries, a maker of combat vehicles, naval guns and missile launchers; and Sippican, a maker of submarine systems and countermeasures to protect warships.
They also include a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm called MedPointe, which just so happens to be one of only three companies licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to manufacture over-the-counter potassium iodide pills.
That's significant because potassium iodide can help protect against thyroid cancer in the event of exposure to large amounts of radiation -- from a small, easily transported nuclear weapon, say, or a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant.
And that's significant because, in June 2002, President Bush signed into law the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act. It requires state and local officials to "provide adequate protection" by distributing potassium iodide to all public facilities within a few miles of a nuclear power plant.
And that, in turn, is significant because if you're one of just a handful of authorized makers of potassium iodide, you're in a position to profit handsomely if the worst-case scenario should actually come to pass.
The Carlyle Group and another investment firm, the Cypress Group, spent more than $400 million to acquire a controlling stake in MedPointe in May 2001. Carlyle alone owns about 42 percent of the firm.
Chris Ullman, a Carlyle spokesman, said he had no idea that MedPointe produces a potassium iodide pill called Thyro-Block. But when I explained what Thyro-Block can be used for, he said this was something to feel good about.
"Carlyle is proud to own companies that make products that keep America safe," Ullman said, adding that MedPointe allows Carlyle "to participate in the specialty pharmaceutical space."
The other two FDA-approved makers of potassium iodide are a small Florida outfit called Anbex that, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, sold its pill, Iosat, primarily to doomsday-fearing survivalists; and a Swedish outfit called Recip that brought its lower-dosage pill, ThyroSafe, to the U.S. market in 2002.
John Hawkins, a MedPointe spokesman, said the company has no current contracts to supply Thyro-Block to any federal agency. He also said that sales of the drug totaled less than $500,000 in 2003 (MedPointe expects sales of all products, led by its allergy and respiratory medicines, to reach $400 million this year).
But Hawkins acknowledged that MedPointe has bid for government contracts in the past. He also declined to elaborate on the company's intentions for Thyro-Block.
"Our plans for all of our commercial products are confidential," he said.
Asked whether production of Thyro-Block might be increased due to continuing terrorism fears or whether government officials have spoken with MedPointe about ensuring an adequate national supply of potassium iodide, Hawkins remained vague.
"For competitive reasons, our production plans for the product and communications with customers are confidential," he said.
This much at least is clear: If a "nuclear incident," as the bioterror law quaintly puts it, should occur, MedPointe and the Carlyle Group would be uniquely positioned to benefit from catastrophe. That's not danger-mongering. That's a fact.
(For what it's worth, the New York Times reported Friday that government officials have quietly revived a cold-war program for rapidly analyzing fallout from a nuclear attack on U.S. soil. The program is intended to determine the perpetrator of an attack and help coordinate a military response. )
Bechtel might make a convenient target for protesters seeking a high- profile recipient of Iraq-reconstruction dollars. "It's all about capitalism," one masked protester, a self-styled anarchist, told me outside the company's headquarters.
But to find a company truly poised to profit from the unthinkable, he might want to make his way next time to the Transamerica Pyramid. That's where Carlyle's San Francisco office is located.
David Lazarus' column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He also can be seen regularly on KTVU's "Mornings on 2." Send tips or feedback to dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.
-------- china
Taiwanese President Narrowly Reelected
Opponent Rejects Result; China Referendum Nullified
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11528-2004Mar20?language=printer
TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 21 -- Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian won reelection by a slim margin Saturday, but his opponent refused to accept the results, accused him of foul play and demanded a recount, throwing the island's political system into turmoil one day after the president was shot and wounded in an apparent assassination attempt.
If it stands, Chen's victory would be a major setback for China, which refused to open talks with him during his first term and had condemned his pro-independence policies. China claims sovereignty over this self-governing island of 23 million and threatens to seize it by force if it formally declares independence.
While Chen's opponent, Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan, promised a conciliatory approach to China, Chen has aggressively promoted Taiwan's independence, and both U.S. and Chinese officials have expressed concern he might provoke a war.
In a win for China, though, election authorities nullified the results of a controversial referendum championed by Chen because too few voters took part in it. Beijing had condemned the referendum -- which asked voters about strengthening Taiwan's military and opening talks with China -- as an attempt to set a precedent for an island-wide vote on independence, and persuaded the United States, Japan and several other nations to criticize Chen for going ahead with it.
"The referendum turned out to be invalid," said a statement by the Chinese government. "Facts have proven that this illegal act goes against the will of the people. Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China is doomed to failure."
Chen won 50.1 percent of the presidential vote, barely edging out Lien, who won 49.9 percent, the island's election commission said. The margin of victory was only 29,518 votes in a race in which nearly 13 million people, or 80 percent of eligible voters, cast ballots.
Before the final count was announced, Lien appeared before a large crowd outside his campaign headquarters and declared on national television he would challenge the validity of the election. He cited irregularities in the ballot counting and unspecified "doubts" about Friday's shooting, which may have swayed voters toward Chen in the final hours of a tight race.
Some opposition lawmakers have alleged, without any evidence, that Chen somehow staged the shooting in an eleventh-hour bid for sympathy from voters. The president and his vice president, Annette Lu, suffered flesh wounds from shots fired at their motorcade as they campaigned in the southern city of Tainan.
"Its impact on this election was direct," Lien said, who described the timing of the shooting on the eve of the election as suspicious. "The doubts surrounding it give us one impression: This was an unfair election."
Lien also raised questions about 337,297 ballots that election authorities declared invalid, more than double the number of ballots invalidated in Taiwan's last presidential election. His campaign filed lawsuits early Sunday demanding that ballot boxes from all 13,000 polling places across Taiwan be seized and sealed pending a full investigation, and Taiwan's High Court granted the request.
The opposition's challenge to the election may test the strength of Taiwan's democratic system, which managed its first transfer of power between political parties only four years ago. In particular, Taiwan's judiciary, which has been asked to rule on the vote, is generally held in low regard by the public and rarely serves as the final arbiter in political disputes.
Police unrolled barbed wire and set up barriers to maintain order as crowds gathered at courthouses and other government buildings across the island. Television showed clashes in the cities of Kaohsiung and Taichung.
In Taichung, in the center of the island, hundreds of people pushed over a metal barrier at a courthouse, shoved through a police line and began smashing windows. Many chanted, "Check the ballots!"
"Any attempt to instigate riots or create instability in society will be harmful to the interests of Taiwan, and we condemn such actions," said Frank Hsieh, the mayor of Kaohsiung.
Speaking to a joyous crowd of thousands in the streets outside his campaign headquarters in Taipei, Chen declined to address Lien's accusations and claimed a full victory. He urged his supporters not to gloat and reached out to Lien and his vice presidential candidate, James Soong, by expressing his "highest respects."
"The election is over, and even though there are people who have different ideologies and beliefs, from now on we must all embrace each other," Chen said. "This is not only my appeal. It is a solemn request. The whole world is watching Taiwan's democracy."
Chen assumed a more moderate tone toward China than during his campaign. He repeated his call for China to remove missiles aimed at Taiwan but refrained from mentioning a promise to write a new constitution for the island, a move that Beijing has described as equivalent to a declaration of independence and a potential cause for war.
"We sincerely ask the Beijing authorities across the strait to view the election result from a positive perspective and to accept the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people," Chen said. "Let us together open the door to peaceful and stable cross-strait dialogue and negotiations."
Chen played down the failure of the referendum, saying that citizens did not fully understand its "democratic value" and noting that it still made history as the first to be held in Taiwan.
Only 45 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the referendum, short of the majority needed for it to be valid. Supporters of Lien and Soong had boycotted the referendum, arguing Chen did not have the legal authority to call the vote.
Of those who took the time to participate in the referendum after voting for Chen or Lien, more than 90 percent said yes to the two questions: whether to try to set up a framework for direct talks with China, and whether to buy more advanced weapons if China refused to move about 500 missiles aimed at the island.
Senior officials in Chen's Democratic Progressive Party said they did not object to Lien exercising his right under Taiwan's election laws to ask a court for a recount. But they said Lien had yet to present any concrete evidence of wrongdoing that might persuade a judge to grant the request.
Bikhim Hsiao, a legislator in the Democratic Progressive Party leadership, attributed the large number of invalid ballots to a campaign by a coalition of independent politicians who had urged voters to file invalid ballots as a protest against the dominant political parties.
She expressed concern that statements made by Lien and Soong challenging the election could prompt rioting by their supporters. "It has been a painful campaign for many people, and we are urging everyone to remain calm," she said.
She said security had been increased around the president, the vice president and their families. Police said they had not detained any suspects in the shooting, and government officials said they were treating the case as a criminal investigation, not as an attack that involved China.
Early Sunday, Lien and Soong led a crowd of supporters on a march to the presidential office, where they sang the national anthem soon after sunrise.
--------
China Puts Army on Alert Over Taiwan Crisis - Paper
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-taiwan-election-china-army.html
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China has ordered its army on combat alert, ready to strike Taiwan if the island's election dispute intensifies, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said on Monday.
The order was issued on Saturday, the paper said.
Chinese President Hu Jintao could cite the newly revised state constitution to declare a state of emergency over Taiwan, paving the way for a military attack, the paper quoted unidentified sources on the mainland as saying.
Beijing has ordered government departments in the capital and the coastal provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Zhejiang to put more officials on duty, it said. In a military operation, these provinces would serve as bases for missile attacks.
But analysts said there were no signs an attack was imminent, the paper said.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian narrowly won re-election on Saturday, a day after he was shot in a mysterious assassination attempt, but opposition leader Lien Chan has declared the vote unfair and demanded a recount.
China considers self-governing Taiwan a renegade province that must be eventually be reunified, by force, if necessary.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement on Sunday it was ``closely following'' the situation in the island.
-------- europe
Terrorism Fight Top Agenda for EU Summit
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-Terrorism.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Europe's foreign ministers, meeting Monday ahead of an EU summit, will look for ways to cooperate on fighting terrorism after Madrid train bombings that killed 200 people.
There were concerns, however, that legal differences and lingering disagreement over Iraq might prevent Europe's nations from working together.
A draft declaration under consideration for the Thursday-Friday summit labels terrorism a ``key threat'' to the European Union and commits the 25 current and soon-to-be EU members to ``act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if one .. is the victim of a terrorist attack.''
That includes a NATO-like pledge to mobilize ``all the instruments at their disposal, including military resources,'' to prevent attacks or assist governments afterward.
The package also would create an anti-terrorism coordinator at EU headquarters and aims to increase pressure on laggards to follow through on measures they signed up to after Sept. 11, 2001 -- such as an EU arrest warrant.
Calls from Belgium and Austria for a centralized European intelligence agency were ignored, however, due to national security and sovereignty concerns in bigger EU countries and fear of compromising intelligence gathering.
European Commission President Romano Prodi, in a weekend interview broacast on ``Fox News Sunday,'' insisted divisions within Europe over the Iraq war would not prevent cooperation in fighting terrorism.
``We are all under attack, and we behave with a joint action because of that,'' he said. ``Don't confuse terrorism with the Iraqi war. They are two different items ... We must fight terrorists and be united against terrorism even if we think, interpret in a different way the effects of the Iraqi war.''
On Sunday, London's police commissioner said Europe still needed a more coordinated response to international terrorism.
``There needs to be a structure which is useful, which analyzes on a pan-European way some of the information we get and the forensics,'' Sir John Stevens told the British Broadcasting Corp.
But German Interior Minister Otto Schily suggested a full-scale effort to exchange information between intelligence services may be slow to get off the ground.
``Some of my colleagues still had problems with their constitutions'' that limit intelligence sharing, he was quoted as saying in Sunday's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. That includes all the ``larger'' countries except Germany, he said.
Intelligence officials from France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain were meeting Monday in Madrid to review the March 11 train bombings and discuss how to improve cross-border cooperation.
Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy and security representative, was quoted Sunday as saying the new ``anti-terror czar'' in his office should improve coordination between police, judicial authorities and intelligence services, as well as boost efforts to dry up terrorist finances and enhance transport security.
But he also warned against infringing too far on civil liberties.
``Europe is not at war,'' Solana told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper. ``We must oppose terrorism energetically, but we must not change our way of life. We are democrats who love freedom.''
EU foreign ministers were also to address the recent violence in Kosovo and Iran's nuclear intentions, as well as prospects for reopening talks on a first-ever EU constitution and progress on creating jobs and improving economic competitiveness in Europe.
-------- haiti
Head of Haiti Force Says Won't Disarm Gunmen
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-haiti.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - The commander of a multinational force in Haiti insisted on Sunday it was not his mission to disarm militants, differing with earlier U.S. assertions that the force would confiscate weapons.
``This is a country with a lot of weapons and disarmament is not our mission. Our mission is to stabilize the country,'' U.S. Marine Corp. Brig. Gen. Ronald Coleman, head of the 3,000-strong U.N.-sanctioned force, told Reuters.
Army Gen. James Hill, who oversees the Haiti operation as head of Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, told a Pentagon briefing this month the 1,600 U.S. Marines in Haiti would begin confiscating weapons from everyone without a valid permit.
Saying, ``you've got to take guns off the street,'' Hill said Marines would start going after caches.
But in an interview at his headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Coleman described a much less active role for the international force in disarmament -- a thorny issue in the still tense Caribbean nation. He said it was up to the Haitian police.
The U.N.-sanctioned multinational force, also made up of French legionnaires and gendarmes and troops from Canada and Chile, was sent to restore order after the Feb. 29 ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, driven into exile by an armed revolt and U.S. pressure.
``If one of the good citizens of Haiti comes to us and informs us of a stockpile of weapons we will go, to the best of our ability, always with the Haitian national police. The Haitian national police will be in the forefront,'' he said.
Haiti, the poorest nation in the Americas, is awash with weapons -- from rusted rifles to modern automatic weapons.
Rebels who helped oust Aristide as well as pro-Aristide militias known as ``chimeres'' -- or ghosts -- remain armed to the teeth, and international observers say there will be no lasting peace until all rival groups lay down their weapons.
DISARMAMENT NOT RESOLVED
Senior commanders of some of the foreign units deployed in Haiti say the issue of disarmament has not been resolved.
The force does not want to leave anyone vulnerable by taking away weapons that may be their only form of defense in a country with few police and a barely functioning legal system.
Nor do they want to appear to be taking sides in the bitter divide between supporters of Aristide and his foes who are again in the ascendancy.
In a sign of the difficulty in taking arms off the streets, rebel leaders on Saturday turned in only a dozen dilapidated weapons to Prime Minister Gerard Latortue when he visited the port city of Gonaives, where the revolt began on Feb 5.
Rebel chief Guy Philippe, a former soldier, told Reuters his men wanted to hand in all their guns, but they could not while there was still no security to protect the people.
In the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince, strongholds of Aristide supporters, gunmen enraged by the ouster of the poor Caribbean country's first democratically elected leader say they fear reprisal killings if they disarm.
Gang leaders last week handed in a few dozen weapons in the slum of Cite Soleil. But they were old and rusty and are not believed to have made much of a dent in their arsenal.
Attacks on patrols by U.S. Marines have eased after a Marine was shot in the arm a week ago by gunmen thought to be supporters of Aristide.
However, on Saturday night, U.S. Marines opened fire on a car as it sped toward a checkpoint in Port-au-Prince. Two Haitians were wounded. Marines confiscated one weapon -- a 9 mm pistol.
Coleman said there was ``still work to be done'' before his force could say it had restored sufficient order for a formal U.N. peace-keeping mission to land here in just under three months.
He said U.S. Marines were helping Haiti's new authorities to clear garbage from streets and that they planned to build a soccer field and a basketball court.
-------- iraq
Bremer Pushes Iraq on Difficult Path to Self-Rule
March 21, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/middleeast/21BREM.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 20 - For L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator here, the contradictions of Iraq seemed to crystallize in a single moment earlier this month.
In a hastily called public appearance, Mr. Bremer, 62, stood at a podium, grim and ashen-faced, to denounce a horrific wave of attacks that had killed more than 150 Iraqi civilians this month on one of the highest Shiite holidays.
That same day, Iraqi leaders canceled a ceremony to commemorate Mr. Bremer's most significant achievement to date: the completion of an interim constitution intended to chart the country's path to democratic rule.
But instead of bestowing accolades on Iraqi leaders, Mr. Bremer could offer only condolences to the dead.
"Tuesday showed the dark vision of the evildoers," he said, his voice shaking with anger. "They fight to ward off harmony and are happy to pave the road to power with the corpses of their innocent victims."
With that, he walked off the stage.
In the 10 months since Mr. Bremer became the American-appointed proconsul of Iraq, much of his tenure has been like that: full of impressive achievements, clouded by the restless, divided nature of the country he is trying to oversee. Despite a widely admired work ethic, he has made a number of decisions that have been widely criticized and which appears to have undermined the very enterprise he is trying to move forward.
His early decision to disband Saddam Hussein's army, critics charge, created ready recruits for the insurgency and fueled resentment among Iraqis who fault the Americans for failing to protect them. And, despite warnings of dissatisfaction with the American plan for the transfer, he failed to anticipate the political assertiveness of Iraq's Shiite majority.
Ultimately, criticism of his decisions will matter little if the new Iraqi state stands on its own after Iraqi sovereignty is restored on July 1. The democratic institutions Mr. Bremer has helped create are sure to be tested in the months ahead, when American officials believe terrorists are planning major strikes against American and Iraqi targets.
Since May, Mr. Bremer has guided a multibillion-dollar reconstruction campaign that has restored many of the public facilities, like telephone lines and electrical grids, that were stripped bare by the looting that engulfed the country after the collapse of the Hussein government.
He has put in place a vast security apparatus, made up of some 200,000 Iraqi police officers, soldiers and border guards, intended ultimately to replace the more than 100,000 American soldiers trying to crush the guerrilla and terrorist campaigns still roiling the cities and countryside.
Most ambitious of all, Mr. Bremer has spearheaded the Bush administration's plan to implant a democratic system here, a blueprint that includes nationwide elections, a federal constitution, and the rapid transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people.
To accomplish that, Mr. Bremer and his team have set up more than 250 city councils across the country, and are rapidly preparing the central government to take over when the American occupation officially ends on June 30. And that, finally, will be the measure of his success or failure: whether the institutions he has tried to implant here - at the accelerated pace he demanded - sink or floater.
Mr. Bremer, a polished diplomat who does not want for self-assurance, says the desire for democracy that he sees in the eyes of Iraqis will prevail over the efforts of those who are trying to destroy it. Success, he says, is much more likely than the nightmare set of events feared many Iraqis of terrorism and civil war.
"I think the chances are very slim," Mr. Bremer said of the chances for disaster, when he made public remarks on Friday to observe the anniversary of the start of the war. "You can always play `what if.' I just don't think it's going to happen. This country is very different from 12 months ago."
As the man who replaced Mr. Hussein, Mr. Bremer looms large over this occupied land. Dressed impeccably despite the insurgency raging around him, he is regarded by many Iraqis as earnest and hard-working, the benevolent despot they never had.
In January, when the Americans began replacing the old Iraqi currency, known here as "Saddam money," the face of the deposed Iraqi leader was removed from the new notes. Mr. Hussein's face was replaced by a date palm, but Iraqis quickly gave the currency a new name: "Bremer money."
Ali Bressem, an Iraqi villager had been searching for a year for a way to help his 12-year-old son. The boy's face was scorched by an American cluster bomb at the beginning of the war. One day, Mr. Bressem went to a computer shop and had a man type the following:
"Dear Mr. Bremer," the letter began. "Please accept our gratitude. During the last war of liberating Iraq, my house was exposed to a bombing. What is worse is that my son Ayad was exposed to a very severe injury in his eyes and face. We need help. We have no one to resort to but your excellency."
Mr. Bressem, a date farmer in the southern town of Kifil, recently took a bus to Baghdad, looking for Mr. Bremer's driver. "If I could find his driver," Mr. Bressem said, "he could take my letter to Mr. Bremer." But when he got to the heavily protected area known as the green zone, he said, soldiers shooed him away.
In the green zone itself, Mr. Bremer has inspired something of a fad. His one sartorial concession to the war zone is a pair of combat boots, usually worn with a wool blazer, silk tie and white handkerchief. Many American officials now wear combat boots with their suits and ties; so, too, when he visits, does Mr. Bremer's boss, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Summing up his accomplishments, Mr. Bremer reminds his questioners that he did not create the disaster that befell Baghdad and much of Iraq in the anarchic days that followed the collapse of Mr. Hussein's government. He was merely asked to clean it up.
"As I drove in from the airport, Baghdad was on fire, literally," Mr. Bremer said. "There was no traffic in the streets. There was not a single policeman on duty anywhere in the country. There was no electricity anywhere in the country. There was no economic activity anywhere."
When he gazes out on Iraq today, he sees a country where a measure of law and order has been restored, where economic growth has resumed, where the basic elements of a modern society, like electricity and running water and schools, have largely returned to what they were before the war. Oil production, the country's fountain of wealth, has returned to its prewar levels. There is a constitution, finally signed by the Iraqis, that provides for individual rights.
Iraq is now poised, Mr. Bremer says, to enter a period of rapid growth and development prosperity. "So when I look at where we have arrived from where started, it is an astonishing record," he said.
Americans and Iraqis who work closely with Mr. Bremer praise him for his drive and his ability to grapple with the range of Iraq's problems. To many Iraqi leaders, his finest moment came with the completion of the Iraqi interim constitution, an effort that succeeded in securing the assent of all 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council and reconciling the desires of Iraq's tapestry of ethnic and religious groups.
The agreement was reached after days of intricate bargaining, which Iraqi leaders say Mr. Bremer shepherded at almost every step. When the Iraqis hit a snag around midnight on Feb. 29, the deadline they had set for themselves, Mr. Bremer proved decisive in breaking the deadlock.
"It was past midnight, but Bremer said no one was going home," said Rozh Shawais, a senior leader in the Kurdish Democratic Party.
In fact, Mr. Bremer let the Iraqi leaders go home early that morning. They later returned and struck a deal at 4:20 the next morning.
"Bremer was involved in every detail of the constitution," Mr. Shawais said.
But while few doubt Mr. Bremer's commitment, some Iraqis say that in his drive to impose his vision on the country, he has sometimes failed to listen and, as a result, has made serious mistakes.
The most widely criticized of his decisions was one he made before he had even arrived. On the plane to Iraq, Mr. Bremer decided to disband the 400,000-man Iraqi Army, which left thousands of trained soldiers unemployed. American officials say that many of those former soldiers later formed the backbone of the guerrilla resistance to the American occupation.
Despite the criticism, Mr. Bremer stands by the decision, saying there was no Iraqi army left to deal with anyway. "I don't have any second thoughts about disbanding the army," he said. "Neither did the secretary of defense, and he's my boss."
Other pitfalls have marked Mr. Bremer's tenure here, many of them turning into political embarrassments. According to administration officials, Mr. Bremer assured officials in Washington last fall that he could persuade Iraqi leaders to accept the presence of Turkish troops in the country.
Instead, the Iraqis, deeply suspicious of Turkish motives, rebelled, forcing the Bush administration and the Turks to back off.
Like many Americans and Iraqis, Mr. Bremer also seemed to underestimate the political power of Iraq's Shiite majority, and in particular, of the religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Shiite leaders say they warned Mr. Bremer last fall when he presented them with a plan that called for caucus-style gatherings as the primary means for choosing a national assembly.
When Mr. Bremer persisted, Ayatollah Sistani declared his opposition and sent thousands of Iraqis into the streets. The caucus plan was abandoned.
"Bremer has a personality type which is domineering, determined and decisive," said Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a neurologist. "He makes decisions on the run. Nine out of ten times, he makes the right decision. But the tenth time, he makes the wrong one, and that's the really important issue."
Many Iraqi leaders have credited Mr. Bremer with helping transform the Governing Council from an unwieldy debating society into a functioning legislature. At the same time, some Iraqis say Mr. Bremer has sometimes gone too far, dictating to the Iraqis what they must and must not do.
In February, with Iraqi leaders nearly finished writing their constitution, Mr. Bremer publicly threatened to veto any attempt to impose Islamic law. The statement enraged Shiite leaders, who say they were so angered by Mr. Bremer's threat that they inserted stronger terms regarding Islam than they had originally favored.
"When Mr. Bremer said that, we felt that Islam might be excluded," said Hamed al-Bayati, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party. "So we decided to strengthen the role of Islam."
What seems certain is that the next few months will be dangerous. American and Iraqi officials are bracing for new waves of suicide attacks, intended to turn the Iraqis against their would-be protectors.
On a visit to Al Kut, a city southeast of Baghdad, Mr. Bremer found mixed signs. The chairman of the provincial council, Abid Suleman al-Satar, told Mr. Bremer that there was not enough time before June 30 to prepare for the transfer. The police were incompetent, Mr. Satar said, and he feared that some local political parties would take advantage of the instability.
"We have to have a longer period of time," he told Mr. Bremer. "This is a very short time to ensure that the political process is good."
Mr. Bremer waved away the warnings.
"People are going to have to learn faster," he told Mr. Satar. "Most Iraqis do not want elections to be delayed."
Later in the day, Mr. Bremer flew by helicopter to inspect an irrigation project financed by the American government. The scene, choreographed by Mr. Bremer's handlers, nonetheless contained signs that the Iraqi enterprise was gathering a momentum of its own.
The project, costing $167,000, refurbished or replaced five aging irrigation pumps on the Tigris River. It was the first time in 36 years, said an aging Iraqi supervisor, that the pumps had operated at full capacity.
"Thank you, thank you!" cried Hekmet Rasoq, a 64-year-old supervisor, shaking Mr. Bremer's hand. Behind him, a crowd of Iraqis had come of their houses to wave.
"They should thank you," Mr. Bremer said of the Iraqis. "You're doing all the work."
Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
--------
Mortars Hit U.S. Coalition HQ in Iraq
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Explosion.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Two mortar rounds landed in the headquarters compound of the U.S.-led coalition Sunday. A third struck nearby, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding 10.
People at the headquarters were told to move to bunkers following the explosions but an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties in the compound in central Baghdad.
People in the upscale neighborhood of Mansour outside the compound said the mortar rounds damaged cars and several shops. Officials at the nearby Yarmouk Hospital said one civilian was killed and 10 others wounded, including a child and two women.
``This is a terrorist act. There are no military targets in Mansour,'' said Raed Abdul Saheb, a doctor at the hospital.
Taxi driver Ahmed Khalid described the attack.
Mortar and rocket attacks on the coalition headquarters are common. The assaults often miss and hit nearby neighborhoods.
--------
2 Million Miles, Makeshift Armor And No Fatalities
A Virginia Guard Unit Survives Iraq's Dangers
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11616-2004Mar20?language=printer
BALAD, Iraq -- Of the many perilous things an American can do in Iraq, the most perilous of all is driving a U.S. military vehicle in a line of other U.S. military vehicles, up and down a highway, day after day.
The men and women of the 1032nd Transportation Company, a unit of the Virginia National Guard, have been doing just that for almost a year, logging more miles than any other unit in Iraq -- about 2.3 million so far, almost all of them on the potholed asphalt of the region north and west of Baghdad known as the Sunni Triangle.
That the 1032nd came through the past 12 months without a fatality is regarded as exceptional good fortune by its members, a motley, good-natured group that includes truckers, students and at least one police officer, one iron worker, one cell biologist and one bartender.
"We get outside the gate, we keep it to the floor," said Spec. Jeff Combs of Jonesville, in far southwest Virginia, near the Kentucky and Tennessee lines. "So far we've been really, really fortunate."
The absence of fatalities is all the more remarkable, the truckers say, because for the first three-quarters of their tour, the drivers, gunners and mechanics routinely traversed the deadliest sections of Iraq without bulletproof vests.
When a gunman in a speeding black BMW fired an AK-47 assault rifle into the chest of Spec. Nathan Williams, the slug was stopped by a steel plate Williams had purchased with his own money and then fitted into a Kevlar vest designed to stop only shrapnel. Otherwise, the high-velocity slug would have entered his heart.
"They were $3 apiece," said Capt. Joe Breeding, hefting one of the crudely cut, quarter-inch-thick steel plates a colleague had sent from a workshop in Virginia.
The shortage of body armor for U.S. troops recently emerged as an issue in the presidential campaign. Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has cited the shortage as evidence that President Bush cares too little about the welfare of the troops. Bush TV ads, in turn, have accused Kerry of casting a vote that would have deprived combat troops of body armor.
But it has been a matter of lively discussion for almost a year in Iraq, especially among the Guard and Reserve units that were called up to play support roles but found themselves in the thick of a guerrilla war.
"It was disappointing to me to see units that just got here had vests, and we had been here six months doing without proper protection," said Spec. Rodney Pilson from Stewart. "Something like that makes you feel kind of segregated."
Breeding, the unit's commanding officer, said the 1032nd arrived in Kuwait last year largely ignorant of the state of the art in personal protection. The Kevlar vests they carried from Virginia were designed to stop shrapnel or a low-velocity slug from a handgun. But they lacked the specially designed boron carbide ceramic plates that can absorb a bullet from an assault rifle.
Too few had been ordered before the war, senior commanders told Congress last fall, and first priority was given to dismounted infantry, the foot soldiers most vulnerable in a battlefield setting.
But within weeks, war turned to occupation, and the most basic assumptions were flipped upside down. "When we got here, it wasn't as bad. The war was still going on," said Spec. Cliff Vance, the bartender, from Wise.
An enemy that seldom chose to stand and fight preyed mostly on military vehicles, employing booby traps and ambushes using small arms. Transportation outfits such as the 1032nd, which made two runs a day through Baghdad to and from Nasiriyah, found themselves on the new front line with equipment designed for the rear.
"We realize they had a limited number" of ceramic-equipped vests, Breeding said. "One thing I didn't think they realized is how the transporters are on the front line, too."
Some things the truckers could change themselves. Makeshift armor was cut from steel plates at the machine shops in the sprawling base set up on a former Iraqi airfield outside Balad, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Driver-side doors got steel plating, later replaced by sheets of an alloy called Armox. Kevlar-coated ballistic blankets were laid on cab floors. Cargo Humvees became battle wagons, their back ends enclosed in steel that protected the soldier manning the .50-caliber machine gun mounted in the rear.
"You came here and basically you took care of yourself," said Spec. David Howard.
The improvised armor made the company, which is due to leave Iraq this month, the envy of incoming units.
Sgt. 1st Class Kelvin Davenport, who will return to work as a sniper on the police SWAT team in Bristol, said the newcomers ask, "When are you leaving? Can we get your vehicles?"
There was a limit, however, to how much the truckers could do to armor their own bodies. The Kevlar vests had no ceramic plates, and there was no space between layers of Kevlar to slip in an improvised plate.
Vests with slots to accommodate plates arrived in June, but the boron carbide ceramic plates did not begin making their way to the unit until November. The entire company was finally outfitted in January.
"We got that stuff after we got off the road," said Sam Stone, a mechanic and part-time driver, shaking her head.
The unit was in fact still driving in January, but by then much of the military transport was being handled by a civilian firm, Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., a subsidiary of Halliburton. The 1032nd provided the armed escort, sending its makeshift battle wagons ahead to scout for roadside bombs -- Davenport spotted more than 30 himself -- and bringing up the rear, still the most dangerous position.
"KBR was better equipped than we were," said Stone, a student from Chatham. "We used to joke about that. All their drivers had actual bulletproof vests."
Many of the unit's 105 drivers recount close calls. More than a dozen of their trucks were damaged by roadside explosives. But only five people were wounded, and all five returned to duty.
Two of the wounded were hit not by roadside bombs but by mortar attacks around the 1032nd's original quarters at the corner of Texas and David Letterman Drive on the Balad base. "I think that was scarier than driving," said Pilson, idling with his fellow drivers in the shade of a eucalyptus the other day. "You wake up in the night to a boom, your heart stops, man. You're supposed to feel safe here."
The men beside him nodded and chuckled. National Guard units grapple with a reputation as the military's second-class citizens, frequently accorded less respect than reservists. But the sense of family so often found in shared adversity has a more familiar feeling in a unit where the youngest member is 19 and the oldest 59. The only death in the 1032nd this year was from cancer. It killed a man who had survived Vietnam.
"We've been lucky," said Spec. Michael Bauman, 40, a construction worker from Hillsville. "I mean, you consider over 2 million miles in this area, we've been lucky.
"It's the heat that kills you."
--------
Iraqi security forces now at 200,000
March 21, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040321-042659-5291r.htm
AMMAN, Jordan, March 21 -- The British Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman, said Sunday approximately 200,000 Iraqi security workers are currently helping protect their country.
The embassy, in a statement, said the security personnel include members of the army, police, civil defense and customs, all working alongside the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq.
The new Iraqi army is said to include 2,000 soldiers, with more than 1,200 in training.
British officials said there are currently 60,000 members of the Iraqi police force, with that number expected to increase to 75,000. About 20 civil defense units are also now on duty.
The British mission said more than 70,000 Iraqis were stationed at the country's ports, while 23,000 were working with coalition forces.
The statement put the number of customs officers at 2,000.
----
The Iraqi who started it all
By Con Coughlin
21/03/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/03/21/do2102.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/03/21/ixopinion.html
Shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein last December, the deposed Iraqi tyrant received a visit in his underground prison cell from a rotund, balding, 59-year-old former banker. Saddam immediately recognised Ahmed Chalabi, one of the leaders of Iraq's new interim administration, and greeted him with a sneer: "So, are you going to be the new ruler of Iraq?" he inquired.
Chalabi, who had been taken to Saddam's secret prison cell by US troops to confirm the captured leader's identity, made no reply. "You don't take orders from a dictator and certainly not from a war criminal," he later explained.
Nevertheless Saddam had clearly hit a raw nerve, for, even before last year's military campaign to overthrow the Ba'athist regime had begun in earnest, Chalabi had already set himself up as Iraq's official leader-in-waiting.
Indeed, as we mark the first anniversary of the war, there are many people in both Washington and Iraq who would argue that Chalabi ultimately carries more responsibility than Saddam for starting last year's war - not least because of the intense propaganda campaign that he masterminded against the Iraqi regime in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), one of the Iraqi exile groups that received significant funding from the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency in the run-up to the war, is now blamed for planting false allegations in the American and British media. It was the INC that claimed Saddam had collaborated closely with Osama bin Laden for many years and was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, even though intelligence officials have found scant evidence of operational ties between Iraq and al-Qa'eda.
Chalabi is also being held responsible for a range of other unsubstantiated claims, including the suggestion that Saddam was training al-Qa'eda operatives in the aeroplane-hijacking techniques used in 9/11, and the charge that Iraq had mobile biological warfare facilities disguised as milk trucks. The latter claim featured prominently in the presentation made by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, to the UN last year on Saddam's WMD capability.
Nor was it just the more gullible sections of the media that were hoodwinked by Chalabi's alarmist reports. David Kay, the American weapons expert who until recently headed the search for Saddam's WMD arsenal, says the reason that so much of America's pre-war intelligence was so wide of the mark is that it relied too heavily on Chalabi and his supporters for information.
That American intelligence agencies dealt with Chalabi at all is a mystery, given his somewhat cheqeured CV. If he were ever foolish enough to set foot in Jordan, he would face immediate imprisonment, for a 22-year jail sentence that was passed in absentia following his conviction for banking fraud. There are also many officials in Washington, particularly at the State Department and CIA, who have not forgiven him for his involvement in a coup attempt against Saddam that failed disastrously in the mid-1990s.
Chalabi, like Saddam, is a survivor, and the fact that he can still entertain ambitions to be Iraq's first post-Saddam president is a testimony both to his resilience and arrogance.
But while Chalabi has proved remarkably adept at impressing his neo-Conservative audience in Washington, he has enjoyed less success in Iraq, where a recent opinion poll revealed that Chalabi had been voted the most unpopular member of Iraq's 25-member Governing Council. Even so, Chalabi cannot be written out of Iraq's future political equation. After all, popularity was never exactly Saddam's strongest suit.
a.. Con Coughlin is the author of Saddam: The Secret Life
-------- israel / palestine
5 Palestinians Killed in Gaza
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's powerful political rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, gave conditional support on Sunday to his plan to withdraw from most of the Gaza Strip.
Backing by Netanyahu, Israel's finance minister and an influential force within the right-wing Likud party, would help Sharon push through a wary cabinet his go-it-alone proposals for disengagement from the Palestinians.
A series of parliamentary confidence votes Sharon has only narrowly won in recent weeks highlight his precarious political position despite widespread public support for a Gaza pullout.
Netanyahu, a former prime minister, said in a speech that evacuation of Jewish settlements in Gaza must be accompanied by a ``clear American declaration'' opposing any right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.
Making his first public remarks on the plan, he said there could be no pullback from ``even one centimeter of Gaza'' until Israel completed its controversial West Bank barrier, a project it says stops suicide bombers. Palestinians call it a land grab.
Moreover, Netanyahu said, Israel must be able to act freely against militants who it fears will claim a withdrawal as a victory. He spoke after attending with other Likud ministers a meeting with Sharon on the pullout plan.
Israel kept up pressure on militants in the Gaza Strip, where it has stepped up raids since a double suicide bombing killed 10 people at an Israeli port a week ago.
Soldiers clashed with gunmen in the Gaza village of Abassan, killing three militants and two bystanders, witnesses and medics said. Ten other Palestinians were hurt.
U.S. TRIP
Much will depend on the outcome of Sharon's widely expected visit to Washington later this month or in April and President Bush's response to the Israeli leader's proposed go-it-alone steps.
Sharon shocked friend and foe alike in February by suggesting the uprooting of Jewish settlements in Gaza under a plan that Palestinians fear will mask an Israeli attempt to annex settler enclaves in the West Bank.
The former general, a long-time champion of settlement-building, has said he would draw a new security line and disengage from the Palestinians if a violence-stalled peace ``road map'' promoted by the United States collapses.
Netanyahu, prime minister from 1996 to 1999, is widely thought to harbour ambitions to reclaim the post. He enjoys strong support from political kingmakers within the Likud's central committee and influence among the party's ministers.
Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz of the Likud said no decision was made about the plan during the ministerial session with Sharon. Israel Radio said the deliberations would continue next week.
``I think that this is the stage at which everyone should put forward his view,'' Katz told reporters.
In Abassan, a local Hamas leader, Bassam Salem Qudeh and his wife were among the dead. The Islamic group said the couple blew themselves up as troops closed in. The army said soldiers fired at Qudeh, causing explosives in his bag to detonate.
In the West Bank village of Kharbatha al-Misbah, police fired rubber-coated metal bullets and teargas at stone-throwing Palestinians protesting against the barrier.
At least 26 Palestinians and an Israeli activist were hurt.
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Israeli Troops Kill Two Militants in Gaza - Sources
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-gaza.html
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers killed two armed Palestinian militants they said were planning to carry out an attack on Sunday night on a road used by troops and Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip, military sources said.
``Our forces saw a cell of armed terrorists crawling toward the Kissufim road... and fired at them,'' a military source told Reuters.
Soldiers found two bodies and an AK-47 assault rifle while searching the area shortly after the incident, the source said.
Palestinian security officials said they had been informed by the army that two Palestinians were killed near the Kissufim road. They had not received permission to evacuate the bodies, the officials said.
Shortly after the incident, Israeli forces raided the village of Qarara near the road. Military sources said troops were conducting searches in the area.
Persistent bloodshed has hampered a U.S.-backed ``road map'' to peace intended to end almost four years of violence since a Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
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Hamas vows to hit Israel with 'earthquake' to avenge Yassin death
GAZA CITY (AFP)
Mar 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040322043437.9hrhvjd1.html
Hamas' military wing, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, vowed to avenge the killing of its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in an Israeli air strike Monday with immediate reprisals, in statement received by AFP.
"We, the Ezzedin al-Qassam leaders, have decided to take immediate reprisals, like an earthquake that will hit everywhere to destroy the Zionist presence," said the statement, adding that the response would be "unexpected."
-------- mideast
U.S. Mideast Initiative Faces Arab Backlash
By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11433-2004Mar20.html
KUWAIT CITY, March 20 -- The Bush administration and Arab leaders are engaged in a delicate dance over President Bush's call for democracy in the Middle East, with each side struggling to find a balance between high-minded rhetoric and actual progress, U.S. and Arab officials said.
Facing an Arab backlash, the Bush administration has honed its Greater Middle East Initiative, due to be unveiled at the Group of Eight summit of industrial powers in June, to place greater emphasis on plans emerging from the region, such as a possible resolution from the Arab League later this month, U.S. officials said. Arab officials say they feel pressured to respond to the Bush administration proposals, but even reformers privately say they fear that any U.S. imprimatur would discredit the initiative in the eyes of the Arab public and strengthen radical Islamic forces.
The balancing act was on display last week as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Kuwaiti and Saudi officials about the U.S. initiative. Powell told reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Friday that the push for greater freedoms in the Middle East was "not a matter of satisfying the United States; it's a matter of satisfying the aspirations of the people in the Arab world." Powell flew back to Washington after meeting with Kuwait's emir, Sheik Jabir Ahmed Sabah, on Saturday.
In recent weeks, after administration plans for the June summit were leaked before U.S. officials had fully discussed them with Arab leaders, a bevy of U.S. officials have toured the region to make amends.
"When our ideas were first made known to the press, there was a great deal of angst in the region," Powell acknowledged. "It has caused a great deal of debate, a lot of argument in the press, and that's good. That's part of the democratic process."
"Each nation has to find its own path and follow that path at its own speed," Powell said.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, standing next to Powell, responded that the Saudi monarchy was ushering in reforms but not "to get a report of good behavior." He said reform would take place at a pace that would make it "a unifying force for the country and not a divisive aspect."
Saudi Arabia has scheduled its first municipal elections for later this year, and officials have hinted that women may be granted the right to vote. But shortly before Powell arrived, Saudi officials arrested 10 reformist figures, including a university professor, after they had called for the monarchy to move toward a more constitutional model. They also were planning to criticize a state-approved human rights group set up earlier this month. Saudi officials said the group was involved in "acts of sabotage."
Powell said he has expressed concern over the detentions. But Saud, the foreign minister, said, "These people sowed dissension when the whole country was looking for unity and a clear vision, especially at a time when it is facing a terrorist threat."
The pace of reforms has also been uneven in Kuwait. The news media are relatively free to criticize the government but not the emir. Some Islamic leaders have used the political process to block even modest reforms proposed by the emir, including granting women the right to vote, liberalizing the economy and allowing coeducation at universities. The finance minister faces a vote of confidence this week.
"Kuwait is moving in this direction rather steadily, with a legislature that is -- how should I put this gently? -- is showing some energy with respect to oversight of the government," Powell said Saturday after meeting with Kuwaiti officials. Officials are now focusing on the upcoming Arab League summit in Tunis, which begins March 29. The 22 members of the league have indicated that they will discuss democracy initiatives and possibly adopt a resolution. "I think if the Arab League could come to some conclusion that everyone agrees to, we would certainly respect that statement of vision," Powell said.
But U.S. officials said the text of such a resolution would determine whether it could be embraced as a step forward at the G-8 summit. Egypt, which has criticized the U.S. initiative, has submitted a proposed resolution that U.S. officials have suggested falls short of Bush administration goals.
The Egyptian proposal would affirm a commitment to "processes of modernization and reform that are undertaken by Arab societies in response to the wishes and needs of their people." The initiative supports the efforts of nongovernmental organizations "within the framework of legality" and links progress on the issue to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt recently said at a conference on reform issues that homegrown reforms must take society's cultural, religious and demographic character into account to avoid "instability or the overtaking of the reform process by extremists who would steer it in a different direction."
"From what we saw of the Egyptian idea, there were more red lines than forward-looking ideas for reform," said a State Department official involved in democracy planning in the Middle East.
Jordan, which in recent months has responded more positively to U.S. calls for reform, also plans to propose a resolution. While its text has not been made public, it is expected to cover similar ground but refer more specifically to good governance, freedom of expression, women's rights, judicial and educational reforms and commitment to human rights.
Jordan's foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, traveled to Washington recently to share his government's ideas with U.S. officials.
Powell told Muasher that the United States has "many tools available to nations that want to use those tools to enhance their reform efforts," such as an ongoing program at the State Department, according to a senior State Department official close to Powell who participated in the meeting. "Powell told Muasher that is the spirit of what we want to do at the G-8: We will try to define tools and reforms and how they can be used as we watch progress in the Arab world."
Wright reported from Washington.
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A Saudi Response on Reform: Round Up the Usual Dissidents
March 21, 2004
By ELIZABETH RUBIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/weekinreview/21rubi.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SHORTLY before I left Saudi Arabia in January, Dr. Tawfiq al-Khusayer, a Saudi engineering professor and veteran reformist, told me he had a premonition that he might be hauled off to jail, and he asked me to stay in touch. The professor, a moderate Islamist, is one of the authors of a petition that was delivered to Crown Prince Abdullah in December, and that seeks to transform the kingdom into a constitutional monarchy.
In recent months Dr. Khusayer like many Saudis, had become dangerously impatient with the sluggish rate of government reforms. Twelve days ago, after the Saudi government formally announced the country's first National Commission on Human Rights, he sent me an email message: "We now have our first human rights committee. 100 percent selected by the Interior Ministry. 75 percent are agents or loyal clerks. We will keep running in circles until we get tired."
Well, apparently he and several other prominent reformists decided to create their own circle first. They defied the ban on public gatherings, met in a hotel, set up their own independent human rights organization and planned to issue a paper criticizing the government's commission. Except that the royal family beat them to the finish, and last Monday, the professor's auguries bore fruit. The minister of interior, Prince Naif, who by all accounts was enraged by the petition, sent the police to round up several prominent reformists - professors, writers, activists. The roundup came days before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell visited the kingdom on Friday, and though the timing may be a coincidence it nevertheless sends out a signal that the royal family has no intention of adhering to American ideas of freedom. But it's also in keeping with the contradictory and often self-defeating ways of the royal family. The day after the arrests Abdul Rahman Alahim, a lawyer and rights advocate, was on the satellite television network Al Jazeera criticizing the government for just that. Arresting people for their opinions, he said, is against the very human rights the government is calling for. The next day he, too, was in prison.
The contradictions you can see all over Saudi Arabia today are a reflection of the country's and the royal family's schizophrenic state: They must change to survive, yet they're afraid of change. At the end of February, Saudi Arabia decided to issue tourist visas for the first time. Meanwhile, the religious establishment imposed a ban on the importation of dolls; in Wahhabism, human representations are heresy and may lead to idol worship.
In Riyadh you'll find high-rise glass malls selling Armani and Starbucks and displaying curvaceous mannequins in lacy lingerie - sold only by men. Then go to Imam University in Riyadh. Because of Wahhabi strictures on segregation, I found female students in a classroom where they watch their male professor on a television set - or rather watch part of him, his arm writing lessons on a board. When the students have questions, they must telephone the professor, who stands alone in a room before a camera. "Sometimes the silence was so unsettling," recalled Dr. Khusayer, who taught engineering at Saud University, "that I'd shout out, 'Hello, is anyone there?' "
The contradictions are even more convoluted in entertainment. Because most television programs, including music, are prohibited under Wahhabi restrictions, Saudis tune into foreign Arabic satellite stations that are in fact owned by the Saudi royal family. To evade the religious restrictions on entertainment, these networks transmit programs like "Seinfeld" and boisterous American, Arabic and European talk shows by satellite from Dubai or London.
Many Saudis were thus perplexed but not surprised by the arrests last week. As one analyst who asked not to be named said, "The authorities want to teach the liberals a lesson that they do not care what America thinks and that they can put them in jail at any time." The arrests may also have been a message to the Wahhabi establishment: Yes, Mr. Powell is coming but don't think our speeches about reform mean we're bowing to American pressures. Everything's still business as usual.
According to Front Line, an international human rights group, the reformists were locked up for criticizing the human rights commission's lack of independence, for submitting an application to form an independent human rights organization, and for petitioning the government over the past two years to take steps towards political reforms. To get out of jail, the detainees need only pledge to cease campaigning for reforms. Some have reportedly been released, but six dissidents have refused.
One of those refusing is Mohammad Sayeed al-Tayeeb, an elderly intellectual and rights advocate known for his Tuesday night "majles" or salon - a discussion group for intellectuals, business people, writers, activists (only men) at his home in Jiddah. After he and the others submitted the petition, he knew trouble was coming and told me: "The royals say suggest anything, but away from the media. Our reply is that this is not a personal affair. This is a public affair. This is a huge country and you're asking people for a secret petition?"
Under Islamic law, the king's door must be open. But, as many Saudis explained, you must follow the rules; if you want to give advice you should whisper it to the king in private. Once the advice is written and hence public, it's like a declaration of war. Yet, Mr. Tayeeb argued: "This constitutional reform is to save the leadership itself. We told them, 'Who else will guarantee it?' For 50 years, it depended on the U.S. government but they've lost that. They depended on financial power which can buy anyone. They've lost that. We have a debt of 600 billion rials and a population growing by more than half a million a year. So now the only power they can depend upon are the religious groups."
Which may explain why the rule about public and private advice was suspended in the case of radical Islamists. In January, 159 of them published a petition protesting the educational reforms imposed by the government - removing teachings like harboring hatred in your heart for non-Muslims or for Muslims not like you. The Islamists complained that the government was catering to American pressure and interfering in Islamic and religious teaching.
While the Islamists went unpunished, that same month, Prince Naif, the minister of interior, called 20 of the constitutional monarchy authors to his office expecting to intimidate them into backing down. Instead, several participants said, the prince was surprised by their intractability. What really seemed to incense him was the suggestion that the royal family "reign and not rule."
"He accused us of trying to dismantle them and turn the family into figureheads," said one participant.
"We said that's not our issue,'' Matrouk al-Faleh, a political scientist at King Saud University who was arrested last week, told me in January. What they seek is accountability and participation. "But," he added, "their mentality is so rigid. They can't accept society is changing."
Mr. Tayeeb said: "We told them, 'If you want to stay 200 years more you must change to constitutional monarchy. The only way to save this country is through civil institutions. Otherwise the ceiling will fall on all of us."
Elizabeth Rubin wrote about Saudi dissidents for the March 7 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
-------- nato
Not a good time to withdraw forces from Iraq: NATO chief
BUDAPEST (AFP)
Mar 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040321205345.192w7n0p.html
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said here Sunday it would not be a good moment now to withdraw forces from Iraq because NATO could later assume a formal role in the stabilisation of the occupied country.
Scheffer's statement came after the incoming Socialist government of Spain, a NATO member, reiterated on Sunday that it would pull its 1,300 troops from Iraq unless the United Nations took command of the occupation.
"This is not a good moment to withdraw forces from Iraq because it's not excluded that after the first of July ... a sovereign Iraqi government on the basis of a new (UN) Security Council resolution could call on NATO to participate in a stabilisation force," Scheffer said.
The NATO official, speaking at a press conference with Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs, said a possible NATO role in Iraq would be to "take responsibility also as part of the command structure."
"But it's still an 'if'," Scheffer said.
Currently 18 of the soon-to-be 26 member NATO military alliance have ground forces in Iraq, Scheffer said.
Spanish prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Sunday Spanish troops could remain in Iraq under a UN mandate, but blasted the current US-led authority in the country as a "disaster."
Scheffer, who is on a tour of NATO member-states, was due to meet Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy on Monday.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistanis Seize Scores of Rebels
Commander Says Resistance Suggests Presence of 'High-Value' Fugitive
By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11588-2004Mar20.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 20 -- Pakistani security forces laying siege to tribal and foreign Islamic fighters in a remote area near Afghanistan have taken about 100 prisoners and may have wounded one of the fighters' Chechen or Uzbek leaders, military officials said Saturday.
The senior army commander in the area told reporters that the rebels still appear to be protecting a "high-value" fugitive in the fortress-like mud-brick compounds where they have taken refuge near the town of Wana in the tribal region of South Waziristan.
The commander, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, described as "conjecture" reports that the fighters could be sheltering Ayman Zawahiri, the top deputy to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Intelligence reports had placed Zawahiri in the area last fall, officials said.
In a related development Saturday morning, a Pakistani helicopter gunship opened fire on a van fleeing one of the villages where the rebels are concentrated, killing five women, five children and a 70-year-old man, according to an aide to the governor of the province that includes South Waziristan.
The incident is the second of its kind in recent weeks and is sure to complicate the army's efforts to win local support in the area, a traditionally lawless realm whose ethnic Pashtun population includes many Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers.
Since launching the operation on Tuesday, thousands of paramilitary and regular army soldiers -- backed by artillery and Cobra attack helicopters -- have faced unexpectedly stiff resistance from an estimated 400 to 500 fighters armed with assault rifles, mortars and grenades. The acknowledged death toll among security forces is 17, although some security officials have put the number at almost twice that. The Associated Press reported that 26 militants have been killed.
The operation has already produced the heaviest fighting since the army moved two years ago to assert control over the semi-autonomous tribal areas, in keeping with Pakistan's commitment to support the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
"They are extremely professional fighters for whom life is meaningless," Hussain, the commander of the army's 11th corps, said of the tribal and foreign fighters in a briefing for reporters who were flown to the area by helicopter Saturday. "They have tremendous patience before they open fire."
In addition to those killed in the fighting, 12 paramilitary soldiers and two senior civilian officials have been captured by the rebels and are being held as hostages, according to the governor's aide in North-West Frontier Province. A delegation of tribal leaders has been dispatched to the area with instructions to seek the release of the hostages in exchange for guarantees that their captors will not be turned over to U.S. forces, Dilawer Khan Mohammand, a member of the delegation, said in a telephone interview.
Reporters who flew to Wana with the army were shown an army truck with about 40 captured fighters wearing blindfolds and with their hands tied behind their backs. Hussain described the captured militants as "absolutely mum" under questioning but said they included a "substantial number of foreign elements."
On the basis of intercepted radio transmissions, army commanders believe that a militant commander of some stature may have been wounded during the fighting this week. Hussain said the wounded man is "most probably a Chechen or an Uzbek, because all the intercepts we have been receiving have been in the Chechen or Uzbek language."
One leading candidate, a military intelligence official said, is Tahir Yuldash , an Islamic militant from Uzbekistan who goes by the alias of Qari Tahir.
Intelligence reports had indicated the presence of Yuldash in one of the besieged villages near Wana, the official said on condition of anonymity. Yuldash took over the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is affiliated with al Qaeda, following the death of its leader, Juma Namangani, during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in December 2001.
"I would not rule out any possibility, but with this level of resistance I believe the high-value target is still there," Hussain said.
For weeks, authorities in Wana have been urging tribal leaders to hand over foreign fighters who in some cases have been living in the area since they helped resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.
After failing to get results with fines and other forms of collective punishment, the government ordered troops from the paramilitary Frontier Corps to attack the foreign militants and their local tribal allies, who are holed up in fortified compounds in several villages west of Wana, just a few miles from the border with Afghanistan.
Hussain said the Frontier Corps soldiers were "totally surprised" by the ferocity of the resistance. "We thought it was going to be a small target, but as soon as they jumped into the fray, there was a hail of bullets."
The army has since moved into the area in force, deploying 2,500 soldiers in an outer cordon with a circumference of 40 miles. A similar number of soldiers have been designated to carry out operations inside the circle.
Khan reported from Karachi.
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Pakistan Battle Pierces Solitude of Tribal Area
March 21, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/middleeast/21STAN.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
ANA, Pakistan, March 20 - Viewed from a helicopter, there is little that differentiates a cluster of farming villages just outside this remote town near the border with Afghanistan from the barren surrounding countryside. Small patches of irrigated fields appear as specks of green in a sea of brown dirt and dust.
Residences are mud-brick fortresses, low buildings surrounded by walls that rise 20 feet, each compound buffered from the next by distance - usually at least half a mile.
This is the territory where a battle is raging between more than 7,000 Pakistani troops and 400 to 500 surrounded Islamic militants. The fighting, which erupted unexpectedly during a government raid on Tuesday, grew so fierce that Pakistani officials concluded that their forces had surrounded a top terrorist leader, and intelligence reports had put Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in the area.
But there was never any corroboration, and on Saturday, Pakistani military officials began to back away from the possibility that the trapped leader was Dr. Zawahiri. In a briefing for journalists at a military base here, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the commander of Pakistani Army forces in the border area, broadened the range of possibilities, adding a senior Uzbek militant, Quaran Ata, or even a local Pakistani tribesman, Nek Muhammad.
"It could be Quaran Ata," General Hussain said. "It could be Zawahiri. It could be Nek Muhammad. He could be very important for these people."
Speaking as helicopter gunships circled overhead, General Hussain said Pakistani forces had intercepted radio communications in Chechen and Uzbek and in a few cases Arabic, and had captured more than 100 militants. But he would not discuss the content of the radio intercepts, or say what the prisoners were telling interrogators.
He said his forces continued to encounter stiff resistance. In the base's parking lot, he showed journalists at least 10 bound and blindfolded men he said had been captured that day. The journalists were not allowed to speak to the men, who were being held in a truck. Most of them wore traditional Pakistani clothes and Muslim prayer caps.
The Pakistani military flew two dozen foreign journalists here for a tightly controlled, two-hour visit that included a military briefing and a rare glimpse of the isolated region where Dr. Zawahiri, and some say Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda's leader, may be hiding.
Foreign journalists are banned from entering these perilous tribal areas without a special government permit and a military escort. Since the fighting began Tuesday, the area around Wana has been sealed to even Pakistanis.
Famed as a haven for smugglers, kidnappers and conservative tribes living in a world that time has passed by, Pakistan's tribal areas appear far more developed than towns just over the border in Afghanistan. Here in Wana, with its army base, roads are paved, electrical power lines run through town and a handful of factories can be seen.
Local officials describe it as a thriving market town, with a resident population of 50,000, and 70,000 more people coming in to do business daily. Wana is also the administrative center for the South Waziristan tribal area, the largest and poorest of seven such areas in Pakistan.
Afghan officials have long complained that Pakistan was not making a strong effort to find militants in these tribal areas. The Pakistani Army deployed 70,000 troops in the tribal areas in 2001 to hunt down militants, but the hundreds of militants fighting here appear to have arrived after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Pakistani officials say.
The army increased its efforts recently, after two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December. Pakistani officials say they are also under enormous pressure from Washington.
The sheer number of the militants involved in the fighting indicates that they were able to live here because of significant, if passive, local support, Pakistani officials say. Only a small minority of the local people may actively help them, the officials say, but most refuse to inform the government of their whereabouts.
On both sides of the border, the Pakistani and American militaries have begun huge operations to win the trust of the local population in the hope of turning up information about Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts. Roads are being paved and schools are being built in the hope that the two armies can show they produce more concrete benefits for people here than hard-line Islamic clerics.
"It's only the economic well-being of these people, which will help with what we are fighting," said Brig. Shaukat Ali Khan, a Pakistani officer based here.
But suspicion of any kind of outsiders and the gulf between the tribal areas and the rest of Pakistan was evident on Saturday afternoon.
Small girls tending sheep and wizened old men sporting long white beards stared suspiciously at both Pakistani Army convoys and the foreign visitors.
Pakistan's tribal areas, which hold six million people and cover 10,000 square miles of mountainous terrain, have some of the country's worst rates of poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition. They are still largely governed by strict tribal codes that focus on honor, revenge and feuds.
Almost all the people in these areas are members of fiercely independent ethnic Pashtun tribes, which also inhabit much of southern and eastern Afghanistan.
That is because British colonial mapmakers, intending to use the tribal areas as a buffer between the Russian and British Empires, attached a part to Pakistan instead of giving all to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, most of the Pakistani Army comes from Punjab, the country's largest and most prosperous province, which borders India. These troops speak a different language from that of the tribal villagers.
Pakistani officials say the United States helped radicalize this area in the 1980's. During that time, as foreign Muslim fighters joined Afghans in trying to oust Soviet forces, the United States indirectly financed hard-line religious schools in the tribal areas that churned out young men eager to fight. Twenty years later, their students are convinced that they must defend Pakistan and other Muslim countries from American invasions.
Some of them appear to be involved in the current battle near here. Pakistani officials said radio monitors listening to the fighters were picking up foreign languages, but also Pashto.
The Pashtun code of honor, Pashtunwali, may help explain the willingness of local people to join the fight.
Some members of a local tribe appear to have taken in militants as guests. A tribe must fight and die for a guest it agrees to protect. Failing to do so can shame a tribe for generations.
General Hussain said he intended to punish one specific tribe, the Yargulkhel, whose members are believed to be fighting alongside the militants here.
"I am determined to make sure that I punish this," he said, "and make it an example" for all of South Waziristan.
Muhammad Azam Khan, the political agent and top Pakistani civilian official in South Waziristan, said the government must work with tribal elders and religious leaders to change 25 years of thinking in the tribal areas. After praising Islamist fighters for driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the American and Pakistani government have abruptly reversed course.
"One fine morning, you wake and say this is terrorism," Mr. Khan said.
Also, while tribes in neighboring Afghanistan have lived under the Taliban and seen its excesses, those on the Pakistani side of the border idealize strict Islamic law, a system they have never experienced.
Mr. Khan said changing Pakistan's tribal areas would take time.
"This is a two-and-a-half-decade-old problem," he said, as he stood in the heavily fortified army compound here. "You won't solve it with a single raid."
American troops in Afghanistan, meanwhile, surrounded and searched a village in central Uruzgan Province, where two American soldiers and one Afghan soldier had been killed Thursday. The three were on a cordon-and-search operation of a compound when one or more assailants opened fire, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman for the American-led military coalition in Afghanistan. Two American soldiers were also wounded.
American planes - an A-10 attack jet and a B-1 bomber - bombed the village on Friday, Colonel Hilferty said.
Reuters quoted unidentified Afghan officials as saying that six civilians were killed in the bombing, but that report could not be confirmed. Abdul Basir, the deputy police chief for the province's Charcheno district, said he did not know how many casualties there were because he and other Afghan officials had not been able to gain access to the village. But he said they could see that two or three houses had been destroyed by the bombing.
Mr. Basir said American troops had surrounded and cordoned off the village after sending the women out. Colonel Hilferty said the soldiers were conducting "sensitive site exploitation" in which they were searching house by house, drawer by drawer. He said that six men had been taken into custody and that dozens of other men were being detained for questioning.
Amy Waldman contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, for this article.
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U.S. Envoy: Pakistan Still Taliban Haven
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-US-Ambassador.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Senior Taliban leaders still plot attacks on Afghan and U.S. targets from safe havens in Pakistan, the American ambassador said on Sunday while urging Islamabad to continue its crackdown down on fugitives from the hard-line Muslim group and their al-Qaida allies.
``We know several key Taliban figures are there and there is some sense that some of the remaining al-Qaida leaders are in the border area on the other side,'' Zalmay Khalilzad told The Associated Press.
``It doesn't serve Pakistan's interest for them to operate in Pakistan and to come across and attack Afghanistan or the coalition forces here,'' Khalilzad said in an interview.
The remarks keep up the pressure on Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the Bush administration's war on terror, who is in the midst of a drive to rid semiautonomous tribal areas along the Afghan border of al-Qaida militants.
Khalilzad said the U.S. was ``very encouraged'' by the Pakistani offensive against hundreds of foreign fighters and allied Afghan tribesmen in villages in South Waziristan.
He said he could not discuss intelligence on whether the thousands of Pakistani troops using helicopters and mortars to pound the area had cornered al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, but said he hoped it was true.
Khalilzad said key commanders of the Taliban regime ousted by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden were operating from Pakistan.
He said they included Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Brader, Taliban commanders believed to be orchestrating attacks in southern Afghan provinces including the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.
Khalilzad also cited a statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai late last year that Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar had been spotted in a mosque in the Pakistani city of Quetta -- a remark that drew strong denials from Islamabad.
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Indian defence minister plays down rift with US over Pakistan military ties
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Mar 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040321105824.et1se418.html
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes said Sunday India's "strategic partnership" with the United States remained intact after a rift over the US designation of Pakistan as a major military ally.
The Indian foreign ministry had said Saturday that the US reward for its rival neighbour had "significant implications for India-US relations."
But Fernandes said Sunday that India's relationship with the United States "would not split because of any one issue."
"Strategic partnership and friendship does not revolve around one issue," Fernandes said on a visit to southern India, as quoted by the Press Trust of India news agency.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Thursday that Pakistan would be designated a "major non-NATO ally," making it eligible for priority delivery of military supplies.
India, despite warming ties with the United States, does not have the same special status, which is also enjoyed by close US allies such as Israel and Japan.
Powell made the announcement in Islamabad just as Pakistani troops launched an attack on some 500 Islamic militants holed up near the rugged border with Afghanistan.
India said Powell gave no forewarning of the move during his visit to New Delhi two days earlier.
"While he was in India, there was much emphasis on India-US strategic partnership. It is disappointing that he did not share with us this decision of the United States government," the foreign ministry statement said.
The United States has tried to ease Indian concerns and said it hoped eventually to have a similar military relationship with India.
Pakistan was an ally of the United States during the Cold War, when India tilted to the Soviet Union.
Washington has moved increasingly close to New Delhi since the late 1990s but has had to balance the shift with its renewed alliance with Pakistan in the "war on terrorism."
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The Royal Navy closes one of al-Qa'eda's last escape routes
21/03/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/21/walq121.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/21/ixnewstop.html
Philip Sherwell reports from on board a British frigate in the Arabian Sea, where foreign warships have been invited to patrol the coastal waters of Pakistan
Pakistan has agreed to allow coalition ships to hunt al-Qa'eda fighters deep inside its territorial waters, in an unprecedented move that will let British and American ships sail close to the country's coast.
President Pervez Musharraf's decision to invite members of a British-led naval task force to patrol in Pakistani waters, within the official 12-mile limit, reflects fears that terrorists will try to escape by sea from the latest military offensive being waged against them.
Gen Musharraf has committed Pakistan's navy to join ships from seven nations led by Britain in a coalition taskforce that is guarding the Arabian Sea against the illicit movement of people, weapons and drugs - all vital elements of terrorist networks.
When the Taliban regime was toppled in Afghanistan in 2001, hundreds of al-Qa'eda militants fled south from the mountains to the unguarded coastlines of Pakistan and Iran, escaping by boat to the Gulf, Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
Washington and London are determined to ensure that that it does not happen again as United States forces launch Operation Mountain Storm in Afghanistan's mountainous frontier belt, and Pakistani troops pursue their fresh offensive against Osama bin-Laden and senior al-Qa'eda lieutenants.
Diplomats in both capitals regard Gen Musharraf's decision to become the eighth member of the taskforce conducting Operation Enduring Freedom as a significant breakthrough. It came after talks in Islamabad last week between Gen Musharraf and Adml Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff.
Last week, as British Nimrod surveillance aircraft patrolled the skies over the region, Sir Alan said that the maritime campaign to deny terrorists a free run of the oceans had been made a top priority in recent weeks.
"The whole point of coming somewhere like this is to show that terrorists cannot dictate what we do or where we go," Sir Alan told the Telegraph, speaking aboard the frigate Grafton in Karachi. The Pakistani port city, a known hub for al-Qa'eda terrorists and home-grown militants, has been plagued by violence and bomb attacks against Western targets.
At the heart of Operation Enduring Freedom, which was launched after the September 11 attacks, is the so-called HIV (high interest vessels) database. Among other suspicious ships, the database holds details of about a dozen freighters, some up to 300ft in length, that are believed to be under the control of al-Qa'eda or its supporters.
One dhow, which is at present thought to be moving along the East African coast, has "al-Qa'eda links", according to naval officials, and is believed to be carrying explosives for a terrorist attack.
"We are still getting to grips with the scale of the problem," Sir Alan said. "The smuggling of drugs, terrorists and arms are inter-related. Terrorism is all-pervasive and we need to counter it wherever we can."
Al-Qa'eda and other fundamentalist groups have increasingly funded their operations from drugs as other sources of income - notably foreign bank accounts, front companies and sympathetic "charities" - have been curtailed by increased security since September 11. The militants are selling drugs to "infidels" which they know will be used by non-Muslims.
The multinational force including Grafton and St Albans - both Type 23 frigates - made several breakthroughs in December and January, according to Navy officials. Their mission assumed fresh importance after the end of official hostilities in Iraq. Cdre Tony Rix, a British officer who has been overseeing operations across one million square miles of seas, will soon become overall task force commander for the region.
In recent actions, US vessels seized four dhows smuggling drugs in the Persian Gulf, apparently to raise money for Osama bin Laden's network. In the biggest operation, boarding teams from the USS Philippine Sea took control of two dhows carrying heroin and amphetamines with a street value of several million pounds.
The task force blends intelligence-gathering - including the use of satellite surveillance - with boarding parties that conduct routine questioning of passing vessels. A random check on a fisherman by St Albans recently elicited key details about drug and gun smugglers in the area.
"We are involved in a long-term battle against terrorism," said Adml David Snelson, the commander of Britain's maritime forces, during a visit to coalition naval headquarters in Bahrain. "Our work here is ultimately designed to protect the people back home from terrorism. That is what the Armed Forces are for."
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. Soldiers Charged in Abuse of Iraqis
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11587-2004Mar20?language=printer
BAGHDAD, March 20 -- Six U.S. soldiers were criminally charged Saturday in the abuse and mistreatment of about 20 Iraqis at a military jail west of Baghdad. The charges, which include assault and sexual abuse, are among the most serious involving military detainees since the start of the war in Iraq one year ago.
In addition, the Army sharply questioned news reports about the killings of two Iraqi journalists working for the al-Arabiya television network. The journalists were shot dead Thursday evening near a military checkpoint outside a Baghdad hotel. At about the same time, soldiers fearing a car bomb shot and killed the driver of a Volvo that had rammed a Humvee at 30 mph and tried to pass the roadblock.
Al-Arabiya officials said the soldiers opened fire on the journalists' small all-terrain vehicle as the journalists drove away. Two dozen Arab journalists walked out of a news conference with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to protest the slayings. The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, opened an "urgent review" of the killings.
A military spokesman said Saturday that the investigation was continuing but that forensic evidence indicated the soldiers may not have been responsible.
The spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said the Army had counted the rounds fired by troops at the car that drove through the checkpoint, accounting for all but two bullets. Autopsies concluded that at least five bullets struck the journalists, he said.
In addition, Kimmitt said, the journalists' wounds suggested they were not in a moving vehicle. "That was very accurate shooting, and at this point it would not lead one to believe that [the soldiers] had the capability for that kind of marksmanship at night," Kimmitt said.
At the time of the incident, Kimmitt said, the commander of the unit -- the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Division -- and one of his top officers were at the checkpoint and they did not see any troops firing on the journalists' car.
"There are numerous discrepancies between what was reported . . . and the facts on the ground," Kimmitt said. He said the military was not denying al-Arabiya's version of events but had asked the network to examine the vehicle and interview its driver.
In another development, Asharq Al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic-language newspaper, said it received an e-mail from a man who claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing attack Wednesday at the Mount Lebanon Hotel, which killed at least seven people. The purported writer, Abu Mohammed Ablaj, is known to U.S. officials as an al Qaeda operative. Kimmitt said the military is looking into the newspaper's report but could not confirm its accuracy.
The criminal charges announced Saturday resulted from an investigation into abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison ordered by Sanchez on Jan. 14.
The sprawling compound, which was the most notorious prison in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein, holds about 1,425 of the roughly 9,500 Iraqis confined by the U.S. military. Human rights advocates have complained about harsh treatment of the detainees, who are suspected of supporting terrorism or insurgency.
"We are committed to treating all persons under coalition control with dignity, respect and humanity," Kimmitt said. "Coalition personnel are expected to act appropriately, humanely and in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions."
In January, Sanchez put 17 members of a military police unit at Abu Ghraib on paid leave pending separate criminal and administrative investigations. The soldiers, who included the six charged on Saturday, were given different assignments but remained in Iraq.
The administrative investigation had been completed, but its findings and recommendations were not yet approved and could not be released, Kimmitt said.
The criminal charges are conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another, the military's term for sexual abuse.
The penalties vary, but are serious. The maximum punishment for indecent acts, for example, is five years in prison, loss of all pay and a dishonorable discharge or dismissal.
Each soldier must have a preliminary hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, at which an investigative officer will decide whether to refer the case for court-martial. Kimmitt said he could not disclose the soldiers' names, units or ranks before the hearings are held.
The abuse allegations at Abu Ghraib are the latest of several such episodes.
In January, three Army reservists were discharged for kicking and punching prisoners at a detention center near the southern city of Basra.
In December, an Army officer, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, was fined $5,000 for firing a pistol near the head of an Iraqi detainee during an interrogation. West was not court-martialed, but his military career was effectively ended.
In October, eight Marine reservists were charged with mistreating prisoners of war at a camp near Nasiriyah, about 200 miles south of Baghdad. Two of them were charged with negligent homicide in a prisoner's death in June.
In separate announcements, the military said that two U.S. troops died in separate incidents Friday. A member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and a soldier in the Army's 1st Infantry Division was electrocuted near Baqubah, north of the capital. In addition, enemy fire downed a military helicopter in Amiriya, south of Fallujah, on Friday, but the two pilots escaped injury.
One Iraqi civilian was killed and three were wounded in the northern city of Mosul when the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was attacked with five mortar rounds at 10:20 a.m. Saturday. The organization is one of two main political parties that have controlled a wide swath of northern Iraq since 1991.
--------
THE MILITARY
6 G.I.'s in Iraq Are Charged With Mistreating Prisoners
March 21, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/middleeast/21IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, March 20 - The American military brought charges on Saturday of assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees against six soldiers in connection with alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
Eleven other soldiers remain suspended from duty while the investigation continues into possible mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the joint task force here, announced the charges against the six members of a military police battalion.
The military also said that American troops might not have been responsible for killing two journalists for an Arabic-language station at a checkpoint this week but that the investigation was continuing. In the tense area near Falluja on Saturday, an American marine was killed by guerrillas, the military said.
General Kimmitt, making his announcement of the charges, said: "The coalition takes all reports of detainee abuse seriously, and all allegations of mistreatment are investigated. We are committed to treating all persons under coalition control with dignity, respect and humanity."
Even so, the announcement will doubtless be cited by human rights groups, as well as former Iraqi detainees, as further evidence to bolster their claims that the American military has treated prisoners harshly or abused them in certain cases.
Besides the criminal investigation, an equally significant inquiry is under way, a possibly far-reaching administrative review of commanders' policies regarding detainees and of internal procedures in use at all of the prisons in Iraq that are controlled by occupation forces.
The American-led multinational force is holding about 9,500 suspected insurgents and criminals, a military spokesman said Saturday. Just under 1,500 are at Abu Ghraib, a prison that was notorious under Saddam Hussein for overcrowded cells and torture chambers.
The current investigation into possible abuse involves the treatment of about 20 of those prisoners in November and December of last year.
No specifics about the alleged mistreatment have been released. The names, ranks and even branch of service of the six military police battalion members charged with the crimes also have not been released.
Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice that governs members of the armed services, the six now face a hearing to determine whether the case will go forward to trial.
All 17 of the soldiers being scrutinized in the case remain in Iraq, and the 11 suspended from duty remain under investigation and are performing administrative tasks.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the senior military officer in Iraq, ordered an investigation on Jan. 14 after allegations of abuse surfaced.
But complaints go far beyond specific allegations of harsh treatment and abuse. The families of many of those held by the military have complained to commanders that they cannot find their relatives within the detention system, and are demanding that the detainees be charged with crimes or freed.
The Abu Ghraib case is not the only set of accusations against soldiers for abuse of detainees.
In early January, three Army reservists were discharged for abusing prisoners at a detention center near Basra, in southern Iraq. Their commander determined that the three soldiers had kicked and punched prisoners or encouraged others to do so.
Late last year, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, a battalion commander in the Fourth Infantry Division, resigned from the Army after it was disclosed that he fired a pistol near a detainee during an interrogation, apparently in an effort to frighten the man into disclosing information about impending attacks. Colonel West defended his actions as necessary to protect his troops.
-------
Six U.S. soldiers accused of abuse
March 21, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040320-074751-3333r.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 20 -- U.S. officials are investigating charges that six U.S. soldiers in Iraq abused detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, the BBC reported Saturday.
The military police officers face charges from the U.S. Army ranging from assault and maltreatment to indecent acts against prisoners.
An Army spokesman said the alleged crimes involved less than 20 prisoners, and occurred around November and December.
The six MPs are among 17 soldiers the Army suspended last month during its inquiry into the alleged abuses.
"That is the kind of cancer you have got the cut out quickly," Brigadier General Mark Kimmit told the BBC.
U.S. officials said the charges include conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty, maltreatment, assault and indecent acts with another.
-------- spies
EU intelligence chiefs to crank up response to terror threat
MADRID (AFP)
Mar 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040321223255.bz2rxsal.html
Intelligence chiefs from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain will meet in Madrid on Monday to draw up a coordinated response to the heightened terrorist threat Europe faces in the wake of the March 11 bombings in Madrid.
The attacks which killed 202 people on four commuter trains in the Spanish capital have galvanised EU states into action as a threat which governments had long warned could be in the offing has become reality.
A Spanish judge is currently questioning 10 suspects, at least three of them suspected Moroccan Islamic extremists, over the bombings, which constituted the worst attack in Spanish history and the worst in Europe since the 1988 bombing of a Pan-Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Spain has, aside from the March 11 attacks, suffered 36 years of sporadic violence by the armed Basque separatist group ETA and the outgoing right-wing government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar initially insisted the organisation was behind the bomb blasts.
But evidence which has since emerged points to an attack by Islamic extremists with a potential link to last May's bombings in the Moroccan city of Casablanca.
Monday's meeting will take place against a backdrop of political ferment in Spain following last week's general election victory by the Socialist Party (PSOE) of Spanish prime-minister elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Zapatero has called for a complete overhaul of Spanish foreign policy, starting with Iraq, given the perceived link between the Aznar government's support for the US-led war and the bombings, which many Spaniards see as an act of revenge by Islamic extremists for that policy.
Zapatero has promised to pull out the 1,300 Spanish troops serving in Iraq unless they come under a UN mandate by the end of June, while his foreign minister-elect, Miguel Angel Moratinos, has vowed to press EU allies and Washington to seek a "new strategy" to counter terrorism.
"First we must reflect on what has failed, what has not worked," Moratinos said Friday as he called for "unity in the fight against terrorism."
Spanish interior ministry sources were giving little away on the closed-door talks, with a spokesman confirming only that they would tackle "the events of recent days".
The intelligence meeting comes days after EU interior ministers announced they had agreed to appoint an anti-terrorism coordinator and, in principle, to set up an "operational unit" to exchange intelligence between member states. Following an emergency meeting on Friday, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was asked to draw up proposals by June for a unit to share information between intelligence services.
Monday's talks will also coincide with a two-day meeting of police chiefs of the enlarged European Union's 25 member states, to take place in Dublin.
British officials in particular have admitted ahead of Monday's meeting that defences need tightening up. Britain, as a key US ally in the Iraq, is widely regarded as a potential target for a Madrid-style attack.
On Sunday, the country's leading emergency planner was quoted as warning that Britain hopelessly unprepared for a major terrorist attack of the sort which devastated Madrid earlier this month.
Resources to deal with such an emergency had actually been reduced since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the chairman of the Emergency Planning Society said, calling the situation "absolutely unbelievable".
"We are concerned that our own emergency plans are not going to meet public expectations. It just does not make sense," Patrick Cunningham told the Independent on Sunday newspaper.
But British Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon rejected that opinion.
"I simply don't accept that that is true," Hoon said. "I believe that significant efforts have been made, led by the Home Office, in order to ensure that we can react properly and effectively."
Last week the mayor of London and the head of the capital's police force warned a terrorist attack on Britain was virtually inevitable.
Britain's top police officer, Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens, meanwhile called in a BBC interview for a new pan-European structure to fight terrorism along the lines of Europol, the Hague-based organisation which coordinates crime fighting in the European Union.
"There needs to be far more coordination between member states in Europe to counter this threat," Stevens said.
-------- un
U.N. peacekeepers unprepared for violence of Kosovo conflict
03/21/04
Nicholas Wood
New York Times
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1079866601234610.xml
Lipjan, Serbia-Montenegro - Bogdanka Miric's eyes looked tired and red. Just below her waist, her 6-year-old daughter clung to her legs for comfort as Miric recounted how Wednesday she, her family and about 20 of her neighbors, all ethnic Serbs, escaped from their apartment block as an ethnic Albanian mob rampaged through the town.
They escaped, they said, by jumping from a second-floor balcony onto a waiting military truck. On the other side of the communist-era concrete building, gunmen fired from nearby buildings into the apartments. Miric said she and her neighbors managed to get away unharmed, and they are now staying in a Serbian enclave north of the town.
The family's narrow escape mirrored that of hundreds of other Serbs across this province, illustrating the apparent inability and failure of the U.N. mission that governs the region to provide protection to the people here.
The violence, which seemed initially to be a spontaneous response to the death of three Albanian boys who drowned in a river - an incident Albanians said occurred when the boys were chased by Serbs, was described by U.N. police officers and peacekeepers as being well planned and organized.
It was unclear four days after the first clashes whether those behind the marauding mobs had succeeded in altering the ethnic balance of the province. In the short term, the burning of Serbs' homes and churches forced many Serbs to leave areas that were once ethnically mixed.
At least one town, Kosovo Polje, just outside Pristina, the regional capital, had no Serbs left. But in other areas, including Lipjan, Serbian men were returning to their homes to inspect the damage, and possibly to stay.
The number of Serbs now believed to have been killed in the violence is lower than had been reported earlier. The United Nations says now that the official death toll is 31, though police officials say they have found 28 bodies, 15 of which are known to be Albanians and seven Serbs.
The arrival of up to 2,000 new troops in the province, to reinforce the 17,000 already there, came as police officers and soldiers admitted they were ill- equipped to respond to the unrest.
"No one had any idea it would be so violent," said Angel Feliciano, a 39-year-old police sergeant from Milledgeville, Ga., who was working with the U.N. police in Lipjan. "We felt there was nothing we could do but sit back and watch the destruction."
Feliciano said he and about 14 other officers tried to prevent a crowd of several hundred people from reaching a group of houses owned by Serbs but that the police were outnumbered. Three armored personnel carriers stood by, they said, but the Finnish troops in them said they had received no orders to back up the police.
Capt. Ari Lehmuslehti, a member of the Finnish contingent, said its troops had no equipment to control the crowds when the violence started. Over the next two days, however, he said he and his troops helped rescue 300 Serbs besieged in their homes, including the Mirics and their neighbors.
In Mitrovica, where the first outbreaks took place, similar events were described by witnesses. Local journalists and U.N. officials said angry crowds swept aside small groups of police officers who attempted to bar their way.
A spokesman for the peacekeeping forces said they did not have enough troops to deal with the scale of the violence.
"When NATO first came to Kosovo, we had around 50,000 troops," said Lt. Col. James Moran. "Now we are a small peacekeeping force. But when you have 30 to 40 percent of the population out on the streets, there is not much you can do about it."
-------- us
Unusual Herd of Deer Is at Center of Decision Over Uses for Army Land
March 21, 2004
By MICHELLE YORK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/nyregion/21deer.html
ROMULUS, N.Y. - On thousands of acres that stretch across this town and a neighboring one, a creature exists so striking that decades ago military men decided to be, instead of its hunters, its protectors.
The creature is a deer, but not the kind most people associate with hunting season or a lightning-quick leap across a road. It is a deer with a white coat and wide, flat horns. And brown is usually confined to its eyes.
"I think they're beautiful," said Amanda Jensen as she gazed toward a cluster of the deer foraging for food, their coats bright amid the trees even at dusk.
So do many other people, including a group of poorly financed conservationists who hope to persuade local government officials that it would be worthwhile to turn a herd of the white deer into an ecotourism attraction instead of parceling out the land that such a venture would require to businesses - even though the region needs traditional, reliable jobs. "There's no place else like this in the world," said Dennis J. Money, a member of the conservationists' group, known as Seneca White Deer.
The herd began through happenstance. In 1941, the Army built a munitions depot on 10,600 acres of farmland parallel to Seneca Lake, in the towns of Romulus and Varick, and put up a security fence around the perimeter.
Inside the fence were hundreds of concrete munitions bunkers. But much of the land was left untouched, creating a refuge for wildlife, including several dozen white-tailed deer that carried a recessive gene allowing for white-coated offspring. In the mid-1950's, Army personnel first began seeing white fawns and decided to protect them even though the population had to be thinned every year to prevent collisions with military vehicles.
The herd of white deer grew, eventually becoming noticeable to passers-by on the two-lane road outside the depot. While some local residents joked that the deer were mutants resulting from nuclear weapons materials stored on the grounds, and others mistakenly thought they were albinos, a few, like the environmental photographer Leland Brun, recognized that they were a rare offshoot of the white-tailed species. "They look like they're made out of marble," he said.
The visibility of white deer makes them easy prey to hunters and natural enemies like coyotes. A few herds exist in North America and Europe, but none are as populated as the one here, which numbers 200 to 300, according to Mr. Money and Mr. Brun, who have studied it as part of the plan to turn the land into an ecotourism attraction.
After the first Persian Gulf war, the Army closed the depot and eventually transferred ownership of the mostly desolate property to Seneca County. The security fence remains, but is weathered and has been slit by poachers, Mr. Money said.
For the last several years, state and county officials have searched for uses for the land, hoping that its extensive infrastructure - including an airstrip, road system and rail line - will entice manufacturers. "The only way to make a living here is to work for the government or farming," said Barry O'Neill, a member of the Seneca County Board of Supervisors.
Some new uses have been found. The northern tip is home to a boot camp for troubled teenagers. A state prison was built on the eastern rim, near a company that has transformed some Army buildings into a warehouse for restaurant supplies sold on eBay. A county jail is planned, too.
But that still leaves most of the land untouched, including the meadows and woods that are home to the deer, osprey and other wildlife.
In 2002, the county rejected all plans for development of that section, including one for a junkyard for old railroad cars and another for a hotel and a high-end range for hunting the white deer.
The conservationists' plan, which has the approval of the state Audubon Society but little funding, was also rejected.
The plan calls for the group to manage, not buy, the land and turn the abandoned munitions bunkers into a cold war museum. Much of the open space would be used for bird- and deer-watching tours, and a fall hunt would be allowed to maintain the herd's overall health. The group estimates that about 100,000 people would visit each year, pumping $3 million into the local economy.
With the county preparing for a new round of proposals this year, the conservationists' group plans to try again and has been almost as visible in the community as the deer themselves. "They gave a talk to us the other night,'' Mr. O'Neill, the Board of Supervisors member, said. "I had never given two thoughts about the proposal, but all of a sudden, it took on a new life."
Meanwhile, travelers are stopping their cars along the shoulder of the highway to catch a glimpse of the herd. "From a distance you could see them," said Diane Starr, who was on her way home to Buffalo after visiting wineries with her friend, Aimee McCann. "I said, 'Oh my gosh, wow.' "
The women might have thought it was a wine-induced hallucination if not for a man taking pictures nearby. Ms. Starr jumped out to join him.
Ms. Jensen, who lives right in town, has not tired of the deer since her fiancé brought her to see the herd five years ago when they were dating. They have married, and now they bring their two young children to see them. Three-year-old Mikala, with eyes as big as a doe's, points to them, then covers her face shyly.
"She loves them," Ms. Jensen says.
-------- propaganda wars
TRUE FACTS
When Spin Spins Out of Control
March 21, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/weekinreview/21sgay.html
WASHINGTON -- THE facts, in the capital, are never just the facts.
Last week, an obscure government actuary named Richard S. Foster rocked Washington with accusations that the Bush administration had muzzled his economic forecasts for overhauling Medicare. Mr. Foster calculated that it would cost more than $500 billion to provide a prescription drug benefit over the next 10 years, but says his boss threatened to fire him if he shared the information with Congress. Lawmakers passed the bill relying on a much lower - and politically palatable - figure of $400 billion.
The health and human services secretary, Tommy G. Thompson, immediately ordered an internal investigation, while Mr. Foster's boss, who has since left government to become a health industry lobbyist, denied making any threats. But Democrats wasted no time in charging that the White House had tampered with the truth.
The Foster case was only the latest in a string of high-profile controversies over how the Bush White House handles information, from scientific data to health facts to intelligence in the war in Iraq.
In recent weeks, Environmental Protection Agency employees have said they were told to forgo the customary scientific and economic studies in developing a rule on mercury emissions. Nobel laureates issued a statement asserting the administration had distorted scientific fact on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry. Mr. Thompson acknowledged his agency had altered a report on racial disparities in health to sound more positive. And the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan research institution, found that administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.
"This is not an administration that believes the truth will set you free," said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, echoing the sentiments of others in his party. Mr. Emanuel, who served as a top adviser to President Bill Clinton before running for elective office, went on to offer his own coda for life in Washington: "You can spin, but you can't deceive."
But the line between spin and deception is a thin one indeed, as Mr. Clinton ("I did not have sex with that woman") amply demonstrated. And as the Medicare controversy unfolded last week, Republicans noted pointedly that President Bush won election by vowing to restore integrity to the White House, a goal they say he has more than achieved.
"President Bush is about one of the most straightforward, straight-shooting executives we have seen, particularly in comparison to his predecessor," said Senator George Allen of Virginia, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He added, "This is just purely political gamesmanship on the part of Democrats."
The truth is that every president, Democrat and Republican, spins the facts to put his policies in the best possible light, and many have withheld information when it suited their needs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, fearing a backlash from isolationists, secretly helped the British before the attack on Pearl Harbor. John Kennedy dissembled about his medical condition. Lyndon Johnson exaggerated the progress of the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon lost his presidency over a cover-up.
So the question is not whether the Bush administration has shaded the facts, but whether in doing so, it has approached a tipping point, beyond which even its Republican allies in Congress no longer trust what it says.
"I think the White House has come under such disrepute over the years that whether we have approached what would be the tipping point is hard to say," said James MacGregor Burns, a presidential historian at the University of Richmond, who studies leadership. "A lot of the cynicism among the public results from failures on the part of not only this president, but also earlier presidents, in putting out full and accurate information."
With its agencies and research institutions churning out analyses, Washington is awash in facts and figures. Alice Rivlin, who has served Democratic presidents from Johnson to Clinton, said Americans have been "very lucky as a nation" to have career bureaucrats dedicated to producing accurate information. "What has characterized our government, over all the time I've been in it, is that the numbers are honest," she said.
HOW politicians use those numbers is another story. As President Clinton's budget director, Ms. Rivlin said, she thought the administration's estimates of the cost of its health care plan were too low. "I had to defend numbers that I thought were optimistic," she said.
That is a conundrum political appointees often face. In 1981, David A. Stockman, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan, nearly lost his job after he confessed to a magazine reporter that upon discovering that the White House could not simultaneously reduce taxes, increase military spending and cut the deficit, he altered his computer models to suggest that it could.
"This thing pales in comparison to what David Stockman did," said Lou Cannon, a biographer of President Reagan, referring to the Medicare controversy. Of the Bush administration, he said, "If you invented some deceptiveness scale, I don't think this administration stands out. "
Others, though, say the Bush administration bends the facts more than most.
"I think the Bush administration, for various reasons, seems to have a higher ratio of statistical prevarication than most," said Kevin Phillips, the author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," a book that is highly critical of the president.
One reason may be the ballooning deficit, which Mr. Phillips said is forcing the White House to put a positive spin on its economic numbers - especially in an election year. The deficit was clearly an issue with the Medicare bill. With conservative Republicans balking at the $400 billion cost, it might have been defeated, or significantly altered, had Mr. Foster's estimates been widely known.
While Democrats on Capitol Hill are trying to evoke memories of Watergate ("What did the president know; when did he know it?" Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts asked last week about the Medicare numbers), Mr. Cannon, the Reagan biographer, says it is difficult to imagine the president paying attention to the work of a lowly actuary. Questions about Mr. Bush's credibility, he said, will ultimately be decided on the far bigger issue of how the administration handled intelligence information leading up to the Iraq war.
Mr. Burns, the presidential historian, agrees. "If you make a mistake or a misstatement about domestic policy, you can retrieve it, but if you make a mistake in military policy of the sort that involves bad information, there may be no remedy," he said. "That, it seems to me, is the tipping point."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
War on Terror Is Suffering in Courtrooms
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Terror-and-the-Courts.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BERLIN (AP) -- The post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism is suffering as much in the courts as in the streets with several legal setbacks involving suspected members of al-Qaida and other groups around the world.
The biggest reversal came in Germany when a court threw out the only conviction of a Sept. 11 suspect. But other cases have been hindered, too, including against a militant Indonesian cleric and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only alleged Sept. 11 conspirator charged in the United States.
The U.S. reluctance to let witnesses in custody testify and the sheer complexity of cross-border investigations are mostly to blame.
And the Madrid bombings that killed 202 people last week showed that while investigators struggle to build judicial cases against suspects, terrorists are still successfully plotting and carrying out attacks.
Spanish authorities had one of the chief suspects in the Madrid bombings, Jamal Zougam, on their radar since at least 2001 as a possible al-Qaida operative, even once searching his apartment, but were unable to build a case against him. Zougam, arrested two days after the bombings, operated in at least two countries, Morocco and Spain.
The court decision in Germany to order a retrial for Mounir el Motassadeq -- charged with aiding the three Hamburg, Germany-based Sept. 11 hijackers -- focused attention on the limits of international cooperation.
``The threat is a very broad global Islamic front where terrorist operatives of one nationality will go to a second country to plan a terror operation then move to a third country to carry out their attacks,'' said Richard Evans, editor at Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center in London.
``Intelligence cooperation between countries like the United States and its allies has increased enormously, but there's still a long way to go,'' he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
In granting el Motassadeq a retrial last month, a German appeals court pointed to the lack of evidence from Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni in secret U.S. custody who is believed to have been the key al-Qaida contact for the Hamburg cell that included lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.
Judges ruled that the lower court, which found the Moroccan guilty in February 2003 of more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and belonging to a terrorist organization, failed to weigh how the United States' refusal to allow Binalshibh to testify influenced the case.
Fighting terrorism is no ``wild, unregulated war,'' Presiding Judge Klaus Tolksdorf explained in the March 4 verdict, saying authorities' need for secrecy can't outweigh a defendant's right to a fair trial.
A German investigator in the case said the dilemma persists.
``Every country and every service has its own ideas and purposes and has to be careful with human sources and information or the politics of their country. So of course the flow of information is not one-to-one,'' said Manfred Murck, deputy head of the Hamburg state agency that tracks extremists. ``Nobody gets the full information of the other services.''
U.S. authorities provided German intelligence with interrogation transcripts from Binalshibh, who was captured in Pakistan on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. But they came with the proviso that the information not be used in court.
Even if they were allowed, Murck said the judges likely would have wanted the witness in person to evaluate the testimony.
The ban was also a key factor when the Hamburg state court found el Motassadeq's friend and fellow countryman Abdelghani Mzoudi not guilty of the same charges last month.
In the United States, the federal conspiracy case against Moussaoui has stalled because the Justice Department refuses to let Binalshibh testify.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia ruled that unless Binalshibh appears in court, she would ban any evidence connecting Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks, and bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty.
An appeals court is considering Moussaoui's right to question Binalshibh and two other al-Qaida suspects.
While the United States never explained its stand in the Hamburg trials, government attorneys argued in the Moussaoui case that U.S. national security should override his right of access to the witness.
One reason behind the U.S. position may be that keeping operatives like Binalshibh incommunicado could keep prime suspects guessing, including al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden who's still at large.
``If you're Osama bin Laden you have to be sitting around wondering if they're talking ... but if you produce one of them and he's not cooperating, that sends a clear signal he's not talking,'' said Walter Purdy, director of the Terrorism Research Center outside Washington.
In Indonesia, a problem with witness access also emerged in the Jakarta trial of militant Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected of al-Qaida links and being a leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah extremist group.
Bashir has never been charged with terror activities blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah, such as the October 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people. But he was sentenced to four years in prison for treason, immigration and forgery.
At trial, three key suspects held in Malaysia and Singapore were only allowed to testify by video linkup. Defense attorneys argued they could have been under duress and the court discounted their statements.
The United States also refused to allow a witness in its custody to testify, providing investigators' notes in which the man implicated Bashir. Attorneys argued the evidence was inadmissible, and the judges ignored it.
Bashir's sentence was reduced on appeal to three years after a court annulled the treason conviction. Last Tuesday, the Indonesian Supreme Court halved that sentence as too harsh for the remaining charges and Bashir is now scheduled to be released next month.
The question now is whether Washington will give Indonesian authorities access to another key witness it is holding, suspected Jemaah Islamiyah operations chief Hambali, who is believed to be able to link Bashir to terror attacks, said Sidney Jones, who has followed the case for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
``They can't just work with interrogation reports,'' she said in a telephone interview from Jakarta.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Guantánamo Detainees Deliver Intelligence Gains
March 21, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/americas/21GITM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 19 - Military officials say that prisoners at the detention center here have provided a stream of intelligence to interrogators during the last two years, including detailed information about Al Qaeda's use of charities as false fund-raising fronts and about the recruitment of Muslim men in Europe.
In interviews during an arranged tour, military and intelligence officials asserted that detainees who had been cooperating with interrogators had also provided information about Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts and how the group trains suicide bombers.
"We have been able as a result of information gained here to take operational actions, even military campaigns," said Steve Rodriguez, a veteran intelligence officer who oversees the interrogation teams - which operate 24 hours a day here.
"There are instances of learning about active cells, and we have taken action to see that the cell was broken."
The sweeping set of official assertions about the value of the detention center at Guantánamo is part of an overall effort by the Bush administration to counter increasing criticism both here and abroad about the operation, along with new allegations of mistreatment of prisoners here.
Another American official said that analysts had been able to attain an understanding of a kind of underground network in Europe in which young Muslims are selected and then drawn into Al Qaeda by imams and Islamic cultural centers and eventually were sent to Afghanistan.
Mr. Rodriguez said that despite the fact that some of the detainees had been at Guantánamo for nearly two years, their information was still useful. "I thought that when I first came here there would be little to gain," he said. "But when they talk about what happens in certain operational theaters, the locations of certain pathways, that information doesn't perish."
The first military tribunals for some prisoners at Guantánamo may occur as early as this summer, an event that is expected to engender a new wave of criticism. In addition to the many challenges to the legal basis the United States has cited to justify the detentions, several recently released prisoners have provided accounts to journalists of mistreatment ranging from enforced privation and petty cruelty to beatings and planned humiliations.
In an apparent effort to counter that criticism, officials offered to talk in far greater detail than they had previously about their interrogation techniques and what they say are important intelligence harvests from the detainees. The officials also denied the specific allegations of mistreatment made by prisoners recently returned to Britain whose accounts appeared in British newspapers and from Afghans who spoke to The New York Times in Kabul.
There is, however, no way to verify independently the situation as described by the American officials, just as the recent accounts by the former prisoners of mistreatment cannot be confirmed independently.
Mr. Rodriguez said a large number of the 610 detainees had not been cooperative with their interrogators. He said at least 50 of them were "ardent jihadists and have no qualms about telling you that if they got out they would go and kill more Americans."
Mr. Rodriguez's emphasis on the most hard-core detainees raises one of the significant questions about Guantánamo: Does the prison camp also house large numbers of innocent men who were swept up in the chaotic aftermath of the Afghanistan war? Human rights groups and family members of those who have been detained have said that the United States has committed a gross injustice by imprisoning many people who were in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons other than to join the Taliban or fight with Al Qaeda. More than 100 prisoners from Guantánamo have been released so far.
Three former British prisoners who are friends from the city of Tipton said in interviews published last week in The Sunday Observer that they were arrested after they had gone to the region to arrange a marriage for one of the men. One of the other men was to serve as best man. They spoke of beatings and abuse by American soldiers, who they said had stood on the backs of their legs as they knelt and held guns to their heads during questioning at Guantánamo.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the departing commander of the Joint Task Force, which runs the prison camp at Guantánamo, categorically denied the allegations.
He also said he was confident that all the men there had been properly screened and fit the definition of an enemy combatant. "These people have a number of cover stories," he said. "I can say with certainty that the British detainees were here for an appropriate reason."
Mr. Rodriguez said, "If I were to believe the stories they tell me at first, then 90 percent of them are innocent rug merchants."
The released detainees said some prisoners were treated brutally by soldiers from the Immediate Reaction Force, a group of seven members called to prison cells when an inmate refused to obey an order. One carries a plexiglass shield and the rest have elbow and knee pads. Such actions, officials said, occur about three times a week on average and are always videotaped.
General Miller acknowledged that there had been a handful of occasions where the handling was judged afterward to have been too rough, although no one had been seriously injured. He said he once had a military policeman court-martialed because the man had overreacted when an inmate threw excrement on him. The soldier was acquitted.
The detention system at Guantánamo is intended to make the prisoners as compliant as possible, both for their jailers and their interrogators. They are quickly schooled in a system of rewards and penalties that may include access to books and puzzles or being deprived of things like towels and a toothbrush. Most are, for example, not allowed to exercise in their cells, which measure 6 feet by 8 feet, but can do so only in the twice-weekly 20-minute periods allotted for that and showers. As they become more cooperative in the eyes of the camp authorities, they are given more time out of their cells.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group that visits the detainees, has not publicly complained about physical mistreatment but has said the prolonged detention without any certainty about their future is inhumane and psychologically debilitating.
The detainees are questioned by teams of about three military intelligence people. They may be summoned at any time of day or night for as many as two daily sessions of up to five hours.
One senior intelligence officer, a reservist who is a homicide detective in civilian life, described using hamburgers from the base's McDonald's and games of chess to gain an intimacy with a detainee he said was Al Qaeda's chief explosives instructor.
General Miller said women had proved to be among the best interrogators despite the notion that the Muslim men would find it offensive to be questioned by them. He said many of the detainees related to the women as they might to their mothers, even though they might be the same age.
--------
Criminal rehab gets budget boost
By Robert Redding Jr.
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 21, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040320-115328-4265r.htm
ANNAPOLIS - The Ehrlich administration plans to spend less money on prisons and more for rehabilitation next fiscal year than during the current fiscal year.
State officials plan to spend $64.9 million on capital improvements for prisons next year, $23.2 million less than this year. They also intend to spend $9.2 million for a new rehabilitation program for nonviolent offenders. No funds were allotted for rehabilitation this year.
Overall, the administration plans to spend $650.9 million on corrections, including capital improvements, next fiscal year, which is $12.1 million less than this year.
Administration officials said the shift in spending affirms the commitment by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to rehabilitate nonviolent criminals instead of warehousing them.
"We must stop the revolving door that keeps inmates coming back into the system [instead of] returning home with the treatment services necessary to become productive members of society," Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said last week.
The proposed $9.2 million in the fiscal 2005 budget is for Project RESTART, a first-year program to expand treatment and rehabilitation services for nonviolent criminals in Maryland correctional facilities.
Mr. Ehrlich is hoping RESTART - or Re-entry, Enforcement and Services Targeting Addiction, Rehabilitation and Treatment - and a combination of traditional law-enforcement efforts will also help reduce the state's 51 percent recidivism rate, which exceeds the national average.
Mr. Ehrlich became governor in 2003, and RESTART is the first time he has proposed dedicated money to rehabilitate nonviolent criminals through a specific program.
Roughly $1.2 million of the RESTART money would go toward hiring 210 staffers to help rehabilitate inmates.
Though the administration is committed to rehabilitating prisoners, officials say the $64.9 million budgeted next year for building or expanding jails and prisons is still needed.
"Unfortunately, we have 3,000 inmates with no real beds," said Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services. "So we are still not meeting our needs."
Among the major projects are $17.5 million for the completion of two 256-bed housing units in Cumberland, $10 million for the expansion of the Baltimore County Detention Center, $9.6 million to build a new maximum-security wing at the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Baltimore and $8.5 million to renovate support facilities at the Brockbridge Correctional Facility in Anne Arundel County.
Mrs. Saar also said an audit of the state's correctional system, then under Democratic Gov. Parris N. Glendening's administration, found at least 218 extra employees. Those employees will be used to staff new facilities or be phased out through attrition over the next three years, she said.
Mrs. Saar said the savings from eliminating those employees and Mr. Ehrlich's money to fund RESTART will pay for 210 teachers, case managers, social workers, substance-abuse counselors and transition coordinators.
"Treatment was scattered in little bits and pieces throughout the department," she said.
Mrs. Saar also said the department will now take a more holistic approach to rehabilitation.
"When we look at the individuals we work with, we look at all their needs," she said.
About 25 states in the past year have replaced mandatory sentencing with treatment, rehabilitation or early-release programs.
The shift away from "get-tough" sentencing has been led mostly by Republican lawmakers who are faced with a state budget crisis and are unwilling to increase taxes to build more prisons.
Kansas legislators, for example, needed to build $15 million worth of prisons, but instead passed a law that sends some nonviolent drug offenders to treatment.
Alabama, Iowa, Missouri, Washington and Wisconsin have passed similar legislation for first-time or nonviolent criminals.
Mr. Ehrlich said he conceived the plan long before the recent trend, when he was serving in Congress several years ago.
"It is coming down from me because I think that it is the right thing to do," he said late last year. "I know that a lot of different governors have been associated with it, but this is something that my administration has supported since day one."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Carbon Dioxide in Air Rises at Faster Rate, Scientists Say
March 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/science/21CARB.html
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii, March 20 (AP) - Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this two-mile-high station atop a volcano.
The reason for the faster buildup requires more analysis, experts say.
"But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up," said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.
Carbon dioxide, produced mostly by burning coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about one degree Fahrenheit during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide.
The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences - unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.
Before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million, scientists have determined.
Average readings at the Mauna Loa Observatory, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago.
That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is considerably higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million over the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase a half-century ago, when observations were first made here.
Asked to explain the stepped-up rate, climatologists were cautious. But Asia sprang to mind.
"China is taking off economically and burning a lot of fuel. India, too," said Pieter Tans, a prominent carbon-cycle expert at the Boulder lab.
Another leading climatologist, Ralph Keeling, noted that the rate "does fluctuate up and down a bit," and he said it was too early to reach conclusions. But he added: "People are worried about `feedbacks.' We are moving into a warmer world."
--------
C02 seen at record-high levels
March 21, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040321-121959-5762r.htm
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii - Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after increasing at an accelerated pace during the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from atop a Hawaiian volcano.
The reason for the faster buildup of the most important of the greenhouse gases will require further analysis, according to the U.S. government experts.
"But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up," said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.
Carbon dioxide, mostly from the burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was traced to greenhouse gases.
The climatologists forecast continued temperature increases that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences - unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.
Before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at 280 parts per million, scientists have determined.
Average readings at the 11,141-foot Mauna Loa Observatory, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago.
That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is considerably higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million during the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase recorded a half-century ago, when observations were first made here.
Asked to explain the stepped-up rate, climatologists were cautious, saying data needed to be further evaluated. But Asia immediately sprang to mind.
"China is taking off economically and burning a lot of fuel. India, too," said Pieter Tans, a prominent carbon-cycle expert at NOAA's Boulder lab.
Another leading climatologist, Ralph Keeling, whose father, Charles D. Keeling, developed methods for measuring carbon dioxide, noted that the rate "does fluctuate up and down a bit," and said it was too early to reach conclusions.
But he added: "People are worried about 'feedbacks.' We are moving into a warmer world."
He explained that warming itself releases carbon dioxide from the ocean and soil. By raising the gas level in the atmosphere, that in turn could increase warming in a "positive feedback," said Mr. Keeling of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that, if unchecked, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by 2100 will range from 650 to 970 parts per million. As a result, the panel estimates, the average global temperature would probably rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 10.4 degrees F) between 1990 and 2100.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.
The United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support, calling instead for voluntary emission reductions by U.S. industry and more scientific research into climate change.
-------- ACTIVISTS
On Anniversary of a Divisive War, Italians Cry to Withdraw Troops
March 21, 2004
By JASON HOROWITZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/international/europe/21PROT.html
ROME, March, 20 - A sea of Italian antiwar protesters took to the streets of Rome Saturday demanding that their government withdraw its troops from Iraq, while protesters throughout Europe staged demonstrations to mark the first anniversary of the American-led invasion.
Tens of thousands of Italians, many draped in rainbow-colored peace flags, accused President Bush and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy of waging an unjust war that had become increasingly perilous for their own national security.
Many pointed to the March 11 commuter train bombings in Spain, which claimed 202 lives, as evidence that the war had increased the threat of terrorism rather than quelled it.
"We want all of the soldiers back home and an end to this war," said Raffaella Bolini, an official of the Italian group Stop the War, which organized Saturday's demonstration.
"The Madrid attack shows that the peace movement is right, that Bush's policies put us all at risk."
Similar sentiment pervaded antiwar rallies in Spain, Britain, Germany, Greece, and France.
In London, two protesters scaled the Big Ben clock tower and unfurled a banner reading "Time for Truth," an indication that many Europeans in countries aligned with the United States remain suspicious that their governments exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq.
In Spain, suspicion is still rampant that the departing conservative government hurriedly blamed the Basque separatists instead of Islamic terrorists for the Madrid bombings because it hoped to deflect, before the election, criticism of Spain's participation in the Iraq war.
The theme for Saturday's rally in Madrid was, "Millions of voices were right," and the demonstration manifesto read, "One year later, the world is less secure."
At an early demonstration in Seville, an opposition leader, Diego Valderas, referred to the promise by the Spanish prime minister-elect, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to withdraw the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq in the absence of a United Nations mandate by June 30 as "a setback for the Americans but an advance for us."
As in Spain, a majority of Italians opposed the war in Iraq, and since the bombings, political divisions have only gotten deeper.
Italian conservatives suggest that by replacing a leadership committed to fighting terror in Iraq, the Spanish election amounted to an act of appeasement toward terrorists.
A cartoon on the front page of Friday's La Stampa, a Turin-based daily, depicted Mr. Berlusconi overlooking huge crowds from a balcony.
He responded to signs like, "We surrender, we're scared" by saying, "O.K. imbeciles, we'll pull our 2,000 troops sent to help bring life, if" Islamic terrorists "call back the two million that they have sent to bring us death."
Mr. Berlusconi, a steadfast ally of Mr. Bush's, has expressed disappointment with Mr. Zapatero's pledge to recall Spanish troops if a United Nations mandate is not introduced.
"It's certainly not by bringing home the soldiers from Iraq that you solve something," Mr. Berlusconi said Thursday. "On the contrary, I believe exactly the opposite will occur."
But opposition politicians, heartened by the sea change in Spanish policy, hoped to gain strength from Saturday's demonstration.
"What counts today is that we are all untied against the war in Iraq," the Italian opposition leader, Francesco Rutelli, said before the demonstration.
He added that the quicker the United Nations took over, the faster there would be "a turning point that can more efficiently aide the fight against terrorism."
For all the demonstration's seriousness, some pockets of the crowd were infused with a circuslike atmosphere. Clowns on stilts juggled bowling pins. Some people leafed through Socialist newspapers with the headline, "Kick out the warmongering governments." Other parts of the throng proceeded under a red canopy of Communist flags.
But despite the different political stripes, all the protesters were united in one belief.
"This war is a mistake," said Nicola Fortunato, 21. "Madrid showed us what the results of a preventative war are."
Dale Fuchs reported from Madrid for this article.
--------
Worldwide protests mark first anniversary of US-led invasion of Iraq
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP)
Mar 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040321005446.wdqwmdl7.html
Hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters around the world took to the streets Saturday to denounce the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the war.
But the number of demonstrators in many major cities was nowhere near the massive turnout seen at pre-war rallies.
Still, thousands marched, from Los Angeles to Madrid, which is still reeling from the March 11 train bombings that claimed 202 lives.
Protesters halted traffic in San Francisco.
Crowd estimates ranged from around 20,000 to a claim by organisers that 50,000 people took part in the protest, also attend by Hollywood star Woody Harrelson.
But the demonstration, while spirited and outspoken, appeared much smaller than those held here in the run-up to the war when more than 50,000 attended one of the protests.
Around 2,500 placard-waving and chanting demonstrators joined a rowdy protest in Hollywood.
In Chicago, 53-year-old Connie Cominsky said she had lost faith in President George W. Bush.
"When they first went over there, I really believed Saddam was a bad guy, and they had weapons of mass destruction," she recalls, adding ruefully: "Shame on me for being so stupid, so naive, for believing my president."
As many as 50,000 marchers in New York, the largest of the US demonstrations, demanded an end to the occupation of Iraq.
Sue Niederer, from New Jersey, carried a sign with photos of her son, Seth, in military uniform and the words "Bush, You Killed My Son."
"We have to get the goddamn troops out of there. They should never have gone to Iraq in the first place," said Niederer, whose son was killed while trying to defuse a bomb in Iraq.
In Canada, which opposed the war, thousands protested in Montreal.
Large crowds opposing the occupation gathered across Spain and Italy, whose governments backed US President George W. Bush's call to war to oust Saddam Hussein despite massive public opposition.
In Spain, where 11.6 million converged in several cities the day after the March 11 attacks, hundreds of thousands of people joined anti-war marches.
"Solidarity with the victims of Madrid, Iraq and Palestine," read one banner.
Some 200,000 people marched in the northeastern port city of Barcelona, and while a similar demonstration in Madrid was barely half that size it was no less vociferous.
Italian anti-war organizers were the most successful, claiming up to a million people had crammed into the streets of Rome, but police put the figure at about 250,000.
A sea of people of all ages, waving red balloons and rainbow flags with the message "Peace," stretched between Rome's Republic Square to the ancient Coliseum.
Elsewhere in the world organizers attracted more modest turnouts.
In central London, 25,000 anti-war activists, according to police, marched from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, carrying banners reading "No more lies," and shouting "Anti-Bush," "Anti Blair," and "Anti-war everywhere," a reference to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Police arrested two Greenpeace activists who Saturday scaled London's landmark Big Ben clock tower and unfurled a banner proclaiming "Time for the Truth."
Hundreds of thousands had turned out in London before the war.
In the Irish capital Dublin police said about 2,000 protesters marched behind a large black banner calling for "the end to the occupation of Iraq and Palestine."
"Bertie Bertie Bush, blood blood on your hands," shouted the demonstrators, aiming their wrath at Bush and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.
Tens of thousands turned out in cities across France and Germany, with a group of about 2,500 gathering outside the central police headquarters in Paris and 500 in Berlin, where 70,000 had turned out before the war.
Thousands more protested across Europe, from Portugal to Poland, whose government deployed 2,500 troops to Iraq.
In Warsaw, about 500 peace activists protested in front of the US embassy. Marchers waved banners proclaiming "No to war," "Pull troops out of Iraq," and "No blood for oil."
Thousands of protestors also took to the streets across Turkey to denounce the occupation and a planned visit by US President George W. Bush to the country for a NATO summit in June.
Around 100 Syrians marched in central Damascus to denounce the conflict and the continued US-led occupation of Iraq.
Carrying Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian flags, they chanted nationalist and anti-US slogans and burned US and Israeli flags.
"Down With the United States," and "No to Capitalist Globalisation," they chanted.
About 2,000 protestors in Egypt carried banners mocking the failure of the US-led coalition to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD), whose alleged existence Washington and London used to justify the war.
"No WMD, but 20,000 Iraqi civilians killed ... this is Bush's democracy," read a banner in English.
In Honduras, hundreds converged on the US embassy to demand the return of 370 Honduran troops from Iraq.
President Ricardo Maduro sent Honduran troops to Iraq where they are under Spanish command. The troops are scheduled to return to Central America in July.
Anti-riot police oversaw the protest as demonstrators called Bush a "fascist" and shouted: "You're the terrorists."
--------
Soldier's kin find an outlet in anti-war rally
CHICAGO (AFP)
Mar 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320235004.gi708jjz.html
Connie Cominsky hasn't taken part in a protest march since the 1960s when she turned out for the ones against the Vietnam War, but she got back in the saddle Saturday.
The 53-year-old joined several thousand protesters in Chicago for a march and rally to protest the presence of US troops in Iraq, and to call for their prompt return.
"I want them out, but I don't know how we can do it now," said Cominsky, bemoaning the US government's apparent lack of an exit strategy.
With a brother in the Marines and a nephew in the Army, both of them serving in Iraq, the safety of US forces is uppermost on her mind, but it's not the only issue on her mind.
The other is her loss of faith in their commander-in-chief and her president, George W. Bush.
"When they first went over there, I really belived Saddam was a bad guy, and they had weapons of mass destruction," she recalls, adding ruefully: "Shame on me for being so stupid, so naive, for believing my president."
The intervening months, and the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction, have convinced her otherwise, and turned this Republican-voting, suburban businesswoman into an electoral liability for President Bush.
"I'm going to do everything I can to get regime change at home," she promised in a reference to November's US general elections, when President Bush is up for re-election.
Standing next to Cominsky in a knot of women was Fran Johns, an elegant advertising executive, carring a sign that said "Marine Mom Against the War."
Johns' son recently returned from active duty in Iraq, and while she is relieved her Marine is home in one piece, it hasn't diminshed her fury at the administration.
"It's small comfort when all those other troops are still over there," she said, adding that she would work to get the Republicans voted out of office.
"It's about November now. We have to channel this political action ... we have to get this nut out of the White House."
A long-time Democrat, Fran said she has become something of a political activist over the past two years, volunteering in two Democratic political campaigns, and making speeches against the war.
"I always voted, but I never demonstrated or spoke out publicly," she explained. Her rising anger at the policies of the Bush administration, particularly "the way the White House co-opted the American flag," in the run-up to the war last March, prodded her into action.
"I will be an activist until this administration is gone, and possibly beyond," she concluded.
Stacey Paeth is not accustomed to public speaking, but gladly addressed a crowd of about 1,000 at a packed Methodist church in downtown Chicago at a pep rally prior to Saturday's march.
The 40-year-old medical records administrator stepped up to the podium to plead for US troops to be brought home, and to share her memories of her son's last trip home.
"'Mum, I wasn't prepared for this. I don't even know who the enemy is,'" her son Justin told her during a 10-day visit in November.
The army specialist was ambushed three times in Iraq, and is currently waiting to be shipped out to Germany where he will be treated for a leg wound.
"I feel like we have created a mess and we have an obligation to help the Iraqi people out," said Paeth.
"But our soldeirs are not trained to handle the situation they're in. They're getting knocked off left and right. They are not peacekeepers. They are boys out of highschool."
"We are going to be there forever. We will probably have an anniversary next year."
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Thousands in Manhattan Protest War
Peaceful March, Rally on Madison Avenue Urges U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq
By Michelle Garcia
The Washington Post
Sunday, March 21, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11596-2004Mar20.html
NEW YORK, March 20 -- Marking the one-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion in Iraq, tens of thousands of people converged in Manhattan to protest the military occupation and called for the U.S. government to withdraw its troops.
Under clear, blue skies, demonstrators filled 20 blocks on Madison Avenue waving flags, placards and banners that read: "Bush Lies, Who Dies" and "Bring the Troops Home."
An oversize pink dress draped from the window of a nearby building bore a clear message, "Women Say: Fire Bush."
The protest began at noon with speeches from local officials, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich and military families demanding an end to bloodshed and a return of their enlisted relatives.
"Bush lied, and who died? My son, Jesus," yelled Fernando Suarez del Solar of Military Families Speak Out. "Please, America. Please stop the war in Iraq."
An estimated 250 demonstrations took place around the country in sizes varying from thousands in California's Bay Area to several hundreds in New Mexico and Maine. Police in riot gear marched down the streets of Chicago, where Jesse L. Jackson addressed a crowd.
A park in Crawford, Tex., was the site of a small rally, but it was out of sight from President Bush's ranch. Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg, one of the largest U.S. military bases, drew protesters and counter-demonstrators.
In perhaps the largest assembly, a demonstration in Rome drew about 1 million people. Two antiwar activists in London scaled the Big Ben clock tower and unfurled a banner saying "Time for Truth." Australian demonstrators carried an effigy of a caged Prime Minister John Howard. And thousands of Japanese flooded the streets of Tokyo to denounce their government's military presence in Iraq.
Leslie Cagan, coordinator of the New York demonstration for the group United for Peace and Justice, said they want to keep pressuring the Bush administration to ensure that Iraqis quickly gain sovereignty and achieve self-rule. She added that peace activists have expanded the scope of their mission to "challenge the policies in Washington that lead us into war again and again."
"We want to stop future Iraqs from happening," she said.
The crowd along Madison Avenue represented an array of professions, ages and backgrounds from the East Coast. They arrived by bus, caravan and subway.
Activists in Connecticut rented a four-car commuter train dubbed the Peace Train, which picked up rally-goers along the way, including retired union man Hal Lgongquist, 63, and Ralph Ferrucci, 32, a Green Party congressional candidate.
The men shared a cigarette and their reasons for an enduring opposition to the war.
"We believe the money Bush spends for the war is ill-spent; it could be better used to rebuild schools here," said Lgongquist, a former pipe fitter.
Ferrucci added, "The whole war is about money. The first thing they did at the end of the war was open it up to foreign investors."
The antiwar movement has maintained a drumbeat of opposition in the last year. In the run-up to the invasion, protesters braved the frigid weather to pressure the government to give U.N. weapons inspectors more time. Once the bombs started falling, protesters flooded the streets again in March. The crowds in New York exceeded 100,000, and ended in clashes between protesters and police, resulting in nearly two dozen arrests.
This year, the protest drew an estimated 60,000 people in a relaxed and festive atmosphere, organizers said. The demonstrators marched down several blocks before gathering for a closing rally.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (R) and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly briefly walked with the crowd. Police reported four arrests for disorderly conduct but no altercations. Police helicopters hovered above the site, and officers videotaped the demonstration from nearby rooftops.
Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said specially equipped officers were outfitted with monitors to detect chemical and biological agents as precautions against possible terrorist attacks and because of heightened concerns after the subway bombing in Madrid last week.
As the crowd flowed by supporters lining the sidewalks, Julie Russell, 35, of Brooklyn, said she became a peace activist in the last year after the United States deployed troops to Iraq. She carried a sign that read "End the Occupation in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti and Everywhere."
"We need to stop occupying other people's land," she said.
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From Midtown to Madrid, Tens of Thousands Peacefully Protest War
March 21, 2004
By ALAN FEUER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/national/21protest.html?hp
Parking the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, crowds of sign-waving, slogan-chanting demonstrators marched through Midtown Manhattan and scores of cities from Alaska to Australia yesterday in a largely peaceful global rebuke to the war.
Coming 13 months after millions took to the streets in the weeks before the war last year, yesterday's demonstrations were markedly tamer and smaller as they sought to send a message that the troops fighting in Iraq should be recalled.
On a springlike day in New York, throngs of marchers, restricted by metal barricades, stepped off from Madison Square Park on East 23rd Street under the watchful gaze of thousands of police officers, surveillance cameras and at least one police helicopter.
The protesters were middle-aged mothers, tongue-pierced students, veterans and bearded professional dissenters, who all came together in what organizers described as a broad-based protest of the Bush administration's foreign policy not just in Iraq, but in Haiti and Israel.
"The World Still Says No to War," announced a sprawling banner hung above the stage at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, where the speakers included Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is running for president, and Tony Benn, a former member of the British Parliament. The stage also served as an outdoor arena for a host of singers, poets and rappers, who gave the masses lines like: "Bush! Bin-Laden! They been plottin'!"
It is virtually impossible to guess the size of crowds without wading into a swamp of politics. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said there were about 3,000 demonstrators on each city block. Since Madison Avenue from roughly 23rd to 34th Street was filled before the march, that would mean some 33,000 people. The march's organizers, on the other hand, said there were more than 100,000.
Across the country, there were similar marches in San Francisco, Fayetteville, N.C., and 250 other cities, organizers said. Groups also took to the streets in many capitals in South America and Europe and in places as far-flung as Quetta, Pakistan, and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
In San Francisco, a group of several hundred protestors broke away from the main rally in the Civic Center Plaza and headed toward Fifth and Market Streets, a busy intersection. After they tried to block traffic, the police surrounded them and arrested some 60 people. Skirmishes broke out, and some officers were assaulted, the police said. Part of the group broke through the police lines and marched to the Tenderloin section. In all, 81 people were arrested.
At a park in Fayetteville, about five miles from Fort Bragg, where the Army's 82nd Airborne Division is based, some 700 demonstrators dotted a grassy slope under the pines.
"You can feel very isolated and alone," opposing the war in a military town, said Beth Pratt, whose husband drives a truck for the military in Iraq. "Ending this war and bringing them all home safely would be the best form of support that I can see."
In London, two protesters scaled Big Ben and unfurled a banner reading "Time for Truth," in a reference to the suspicions some Europeans have that the United States and Britain exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. In Madrid, thousands marched in memory of the 202 killed on March 11 in a series of coordinated bombings along commuter train lines.
In New York, the police reported four arrests, for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and organizers said the march had been remarkably peaceful. There were a few tense moments at one point at Madison and 38th Street, where a small core of counterdemonstrators chanted, "Hey hey! Ho ho! Terrorist appeasement has got to go!" The demonstrations came during the opening phase of a presidential campaign in which the war, weapons of mass destruction and America's role as a global superpower have already played an issue.
All of these issues were touched upon yesterday as the speakers in New York railed against the war and demonstrators hoisted signs saying "World: Don't Fight!" and, in one case, held a toilet seat with Mr. Bush's photo strategically placed.
There were sober moments, too. Fred D'Amato walked through the crowd holding a photo of his son, Christopher, 24, who was sent to Iraq last April with the Army Reserves. Mr. D'Amato, himself a Vietnam veteran, was showing everyone he met another photo - of a sign he had placed on his front lawn in Mount Pocono, Pa. The sign read: "Support Our Troops - Impeach Bush."
At one point, Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly walked several blocks along the route of the march, which went west from Madison and 23rd Street to the Avenue of the Americas, then north to 40th Street, and then back south on Madison to where the march had started.
The speeches ended around 5 p.m., and the crowd, which stretched up Madison to at least 34th Street, dispersed quickly and peacefully. One group of about 120 participants continued to bang drums, chant and dance, and began marching downtown around 6 p.m., initially causing a tense standoff with the police. Officers confronted the group and distributed plastic handcuffs, but then accompanied them downtown, with many officers videotaping and photographing demonstrators.
The group marched to the World Trade Center PATH station and broke up.
Even with the rallies planned well in advance, at least one protester got a little lost.
In Washington, one person found out too late that there would be no protest in that city. A woman in a baseball cap and sunglasses stood in front of the White House with a sign reading, "U.S. Out. U.N. In."
"It's always nice to do a protest with other people," said the woman, Linda Wilscam, 43, of Vernon, Conn. "It feels lonely today, to be honest."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Howard O. Stier and Colin Moynihan in New York, Ariel Hart in Fayetteville, N.C., Carolyn Marshall in San Francisco, and Jennifer 8. Lee in Washington.
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Taiwan Protesters Vow to Stay Until Vote Recount
March 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-taiwan-election.html
TAIPEI (Reuters) - About 1,000 Taiwan protesters contesting President Chen Shui-bian's election victory after a mysterious assassination bid and the discovery of many spoiled ballots vowed on Monday to stay at his palace until a recount.
The protesters, facing ranks of helmeted police in full riot gear lined up in front of the presidential palace, showed no signs of dispersing, ignoring a police deadline that expired late on Sunday as well as government appeals for them to leave.
The high court sealed presidential election ballot boxes on Sunday after defeated Nationalist Party contender Lien Chan demanded a recount in Chen's razor-thin victory by just 29,000 votes out of nearly 13 million cast.
``We're not going until we get an answer. We'll stay for as long as it takes,'' said a 40-year-old housewife, who only gave her surname as Chang, her voice hoarse from shouting.
``If you didn't cheat on the ballot, then why don't you dare to have a recount?'' one organizer shouted in the direction of Chen's official residence.
Chief prosecutor Lu Ren-fa said the case calling for a vote recount would be handled in accordance with the law.
The high court on Monday appointed three judges to study the case and a decision must come within six months although an immediate ruling on a recount was unlikely, a spokesman said.
``We have assigned three judges to handle the case. They will review the case carefully and any decision will be taken by the judges but that cannot be done immediately,'' he told reporters.
``Please have faith in the judicial system,'' he appealed. ``The case will be handled with fairness, openness, transparency and independently.''
A decision on a recount after Taiwan's most narrowly won presidential election could cause political turmoil and would be a severe test for the young democracy that lies within range of missiles deployed by arch-foe China, which claims the island as a breakaway province.
China on Saturday ordered its army on combat alert, ready to strike Taiwan if the island's election dispute intensifies, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said on Monday.
INTERNATIONAL CONGRATULATIONS?
The opposition vented its fury again on Monday and questioned the absence of international messages of congratulation to Chen.
``Why didn't we see other countries congratulate the winner of Taiwan's presidential election?'' James Soong, the opposition vice presidential candidate, told the hundreds of protesters in an early morning speech.
``Because this is an election that is unfair and unjust,'' he said, speaking through a loudspeaker to the crowd waving Taiwan flags and the sky-blue banner of the Nationalist Party.
Taiwan's stock market tumbled 6.67 percent at the open as investors fled political uncertainty and the central bank intervened in currency markets, selling large quantities of U.S. dollars to stem a fall in the local dollar, dealers said.
Streets around the presidential office were barricaded and people were allowed to leave but not to enter, creating traffic chaos in Taipei, the island's political and financial capital.
Lien Chan has demanded a recount and a special inquiry into the mysterious shooting of Chen on the eve of Saturday's poll that swung the vote after most media surveys had forecast a win for the opposition by several hundred thousand votes.
``How did that bullet end up behind Chen? Let me ask you, can bullets turn corners?'' the organizer shouted to the crowd.
``No, No!'' the protesters, sitting out in a chilly drizzle for a second day, shouted back.
The United States congratulated Taiwan on Saturday for conducting a democratic election campaign, but stopped short of congratulating Chen as it did when he triumphed in 2000 and ousted the Nationalists from more than five decades in power.
``The United States congratulates the people of Taiwan for having conducted a democratic election campaign and for having exercised their democratic voting rights in such large numbers,'' a State Department deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli, said.
``We are confident that both sides and their supporters will remain calm, and that they will use the established legal mechanisms to resolve any questions about the election results,'' Ereli said in a statement.
In 2000, the White House issued a note of congratulation to the victor.
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Thousands rally across Japan on first anniversary of Iraq war
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Japan Today
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=292221
TOKYO - Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday across Japan to protest against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the start of the war, which divided the nation and the international community.
A Kyodo News tally of participants, summing up organizers' estimates for major rallies, amounted to 130,000, including two rallies in Tokyo that drew 30,000 people each and two in Osaka with 10,000 each.
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Thousands Protest on Iraq War Anniversary
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
Mar 21, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_PROTESTS_WORLD?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ROME (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome on Saturday demanding that Italy pull its 2,600 troops out of Iraq, one of many protests around the world on the anniversary of the war's opening salvos.
Rome's rally was by far the largest, drawing at least 250,000 people, according to police estimates. Organizers claimed as many as 2 million people - many of them draped in rainbow peace flags - joined the festive procession through Rome's center that emptied into the historic Circus Maximus park.
Even though most Italians opposed the war, the conservative government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi strongly supported the U.S.-led invasion and deployed peacekeeping troops.
While Saturday's protests were smaller than those on the eve of the war a year ago, they were no less heartfelt.
In Budapest, demonstrators formed a human peace sign and called for the Hungarian government to withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. In Belgium, about 1,000 people braved rain and blustery wind to carry coffins labeled with oil company logos through central Brussels.
"George Bush did not wage a war against terror," veteran peace activist Franz Alt told about 2,000 protesters gathered in heavy rain near the entrance of the U.S. military's Ramstein Air Base in western Germany. "He has ensured that with his wars, terrorism is now stronger."
Madrid's protest seemed equally to denounce the Iraq war as well as the March 11 rail bombings, which killed 202 people and injured more than 1,800.
Many Spaniards have accused Spain's conservative government of provoking the attacks by supporting the Iraq war. Three days after the bombings, the ruling Popular Party fell in a surprise loss to the Socialists in general elections.
Thousands of people marched in an evening rally that featured a large banner with a black sash - Spain's symbol of mourning for the attack, which has been blamed on Moroccan extremists said to be linked to al-Qaida.
The banner read: "End the occupation. Bring the troops home" - a reference to the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq, who Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq.
Demonstrators in Italy, Ukraine and Poland also demanded their governments withdraw troops.
"The occupation of Iraq is stupid - it's meddling in another nation's affairs," said Polish demonstrator Edyta Raczka, 17, one of about 700 people who marched through Warsaw's old town to the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy.
Poland contributed combat troops to the war and now commands a 9,500-strong international peacekeeping force in south-central Iraq. It has deployed about 2,400 troops of its own in the peacekeeping effort.
The start of the day saw demonstrations in Japan, Australia, India and the Philippines, where protesters clashed with riot police, although no injuries were reported.
Anti-American feelings ran high in Cairo, Egypt, where demonstrators - vastly outnumbered by riot police - burned the American flag. Hundreds of people gathered in other Middle Eastern capitals to denounce the war.
"Down, down USA! America, out! Out!" shouted more than 100 Syrians and Palestinians who marched in the main streets of Damascus.
Protester Randa Baathi said, "Today we are here with the global campaign against the war on Iraq to express our rejection of this war and its consequences on Iraq and the entire region."
Europeans also took to the streets - in France, Germany, and capitals across the continent.
Tens of thousands marched through central London, some of them waving placards that called President Bush the "World's No. 1 Terrorist." London's Metropolitan Police estimated that some 25,000 people participated. Organizers put the figure at 100,000.
On Saturday morning, two anti-war demonstrators in climbing gear scaled the Big Ben clocktower at the Houses of Parliament and held up a small banner reading, "Time for Truth," before coming down several hours later. Police said they would review security at Parliament following the incident.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the United States' staunchest ally in the war. But many Britons opposed the invasion and questions about the conflict's legality have dogged the government as coalition forces have failed to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Some Americans joined about 2,500 protesters in Paris, where demonstrators blared a rendition of the John Lennon song "Give Peace a Chance" through loudspeakers.
In New York, several thousand people demonstrated, and rallies also were held in Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Seattle.
Rallies also occurred in Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, India, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand and South Africa.
But on the whole, the numbers were far lower than during protests on the eve of the war.
During a Feb. 15, 2003, protest, millions of people thronged through capitals around the globe. Rome also had the highest tally that day, with police estimating 1 million people and organizers three times that many.
"I'm optimistic that this great peace movement will expand across the world so that Iraq will be the last war possible," said Gambaracci Nazareno, 70, a retired architect who took a chartered bus into Rome from the Umbrian city of Perugia for the protest.
He said the Iraq war had only served to create new terrorist organizations.
"It's becoming a true and proper war between Islam and the West," he said.
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