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NUCLEAR
Geyser Action Controlled Ancient Natural Nuclear Reactor
Running to help
Hard Weapons for Soft Targets
Uranium pollution in Iraq damaging
Nuclear ties with Iran in 70s
France wants "lasting" halt to Iran's nuclear drive
In major compromise EU softens demand on Iran
Iran offers hope of progress in nuclear talks
Egypt rejects charges IAEA chief helping it with secret nuclear program
Russian Researcher Hands Over Plutonium
Russia spends $600-700m for nuclear reactors upgrade
Putin Eyes Nuclear Terrorism
N. Korea, Iran Respond to Nuclear Agency
U.N. Nuclear Agency Chief Urges Iran to Suspend Activities
Putin Plugs Nuclear Convention
White House takes aim at U.N.'s nuclear chief
Power Increase Is Approved for Indian Pt.
More WIPP Waste Breaks Rules
MILITARY
Abductors Say 3 Hostages in Afghanistan Are Separated
Sudan Denies Surrounding Refugee Camps
China's Advanced Military Missiles Take Centre Stage At Airshow
Suicide theory on female soldier
Lockheed Must Pay for Failed Dump Cleanup
Ethnic Fighting Flares in China
Ethnic strife kills seven in China
Ethnic Clashes Are Confirmed by Beijing; Toll Is Unclear
Germany names 100 army bases to close
Oil Pipeline Blown Up in Iraq; Violence Kills at Least 12
Gunmen kidnap six in Baghdad
Suicide bomber kills three, injures 32
Palestinians Killed by Israelis at 21/2-Year High
Iraqi PM to hold talks with NATO
SEAL says CIA abused prisoner
Marines in Iraq want better gear, exit strategy
National Guard recruit goals fall short
Milosevic Is Allowed To Defend Himself
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Experts denied chance to testify at military trial
Rehnquist's Illness Forces Absence
Hollinger Reveals Details of Suit
Canadian Government Tries Anew to Decriminalize Marijuana
Drugs complicate Colombia's peace plan
America's railways and ports are vulnerable
Immigrants' Protected Status Extended
French Push Limits in Fight On Terrorism
Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S.
Saudi militant says al-Qaeda cell still strong
POLITICS
It Doesn't Matter Who Wins, As Long as He Kicks the Debt Addiction
IRS Disputes Watchdog's Audit Report
Lobbyists Rain Largess on Senate Incumbents
C.I.A. Chief Seeks Change in Inspector's 9/11 Report
National Election Pool:
American Conservative Magazine Endorses Kerry
Early voters out in droves
OTHER
About 65 Families Are Still Evacuated
ACTIVISTS
Eight anti-war protesters arrested downtown
An Open letter to Sec. of Defence Donald Rumsfield
-------- NUCLEAR
Geyser Action Controlled Ancient Natural Nuclear Reactor
sciscoop.com
By rickyjames,
Nov 2nd, 2004
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/11/1/4207/58272
Geology From a Washington Universtiy press release: To operate a nuclear power plant like Three Mile Island, hundreds of highly trained employees must work in concert to generate power from safe fission, all the while containing dangerous nuclear wastes. On the other hand, it's been known for 30 years that Mother Nature once did nuclear chain reactions by her lonesome. Now, Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have analyzed the isotopic structure of noble gases produced in fission in a sample from the only known natural nuclear chain reaction site in the world in Gabon, West Africa, and have found how she does the trick. Picture Old Faithful.
Analyzing a tiny fragment of rock, less than one-eight of an inch, taken from the Gabon site, Alexander Meshik, Ph.D., Washington University senior research scientist in physics, has calculated that the precise isotopic structure of xenon in the sample reveals an operation that worked like a geyser. The reactor, active two billion years ago, worked on a 30-minute reaction cycle, accompanied by a two-and-a-half hour dormant period, or cool down.
In the Oct. 29, 2004 issue of Physical Review Letters, Meshik and his Washington University collaborators write: "This similarity (to a geyser) suggests that a half an hour after the onset of the chain reaction, unbounded water was converted to steam, decreasing the thermal neutron flux and making the reactor sub-critical. It took at least two-and-a-half hours for the reactor to cool down until fission Xe (xenon) began to retain. Then the water returned to the reactor zone, providing neutron moderation and once again establishing a self-sustaining chain."
Prior to this calculation, it was known that the natural nuclear reactor operated two billion years ago for 150 million years at an average power of 100 kilowatts. The Washington University team solved the mystery of how the reactor worked and why it didn't blow up.
Meshik and his collaborators, Charles Hohenberg, Ph.D., Washington University professor of physics, and Olga Pravdivtseva, Ph.D., senior research scientist in physics, used a selective laser combined with sensitive, ion-counting mass spectrometry to concentrate on the sample's moderator, a uranium-free mineral assembly of lanthanum, cerium, strontium and calcium called alumophosphate. The xenon found and analyzed provides the story of this ancient natural nuclear reactor. Meshik and his colleagues inferred from the xenon analysis the mode of operation and also the method of safely storing nuclear wastes, particularly fission xenon and krypton.
"This is very impressive, to think this natural system not only went critical, it also safely stored the waste," said Meshik. "Nature is much smarter than we are. Nature is the first genius. We have all kinds of problems with modern-day nuclear reactors. This reactor is so independent, with no electronics, no models. Just using the fact that water boiled at the reactor site might give contemporary nuclear reactor researchers ideas on how to operate more safely and efficiently."
In 1952, the late Paul Kuroda predicted that if the right conditions existed, a natural nuclear reactor system could go critical. Twenty years later, noticing that uranium ore from the Oklo mine was depleted in 235 Uranium , it was discovered that the site had once been a natural nuclear reaction system.
"The big question we addressed was: When it reached criticality, why didn't it blow up?" Meshik said. "We found the answer in the xenon."
Critical means that a fissionable material has enough mass to sustain a reaction. There were two major theories on how the reactor operated. One held that the system burned up highly neutron-absorbing impurities such as rare earth isotopes or boron, and because of that the system shut down regularly, and different parts of the reactor might have operated at different times. The other involved the role of water acting as a neutron moderator. As the temperature of the reactor went up, water was converted to steam, reducing the neutron thermalisation and shutting down the chain reaction. The chain reaction re-started only when the reactor cooled down and the water increased again.
Analysis of the xenon, the largest concentration of xenon ever found in any natural material, confirmed the water method. It also revealed the role of alumophosphate as the system's waste absorber.
Xenon is extremely rare on earth and very characteristic of the fission process. Chemically inert, the element has nine isotopes and is abundant in many nuclear processes.
"You get a big diagnostic fingerprint with xenon, and it's easy to purify," said Hohenberg, who noted the importance of alumophosphate in the natural nuclear reactor.
"More krypton 85, a major waste from modern nuclear reactors, is getting piped into the atmosphere each year," he said. "Maybe this natural mode can suggest a safer solution."
Can there be a natural nuclear reactor in actual operation today?
"Today even the largest and richest uranium deposit cannot become a reactor because the present concentration of 235 U is too low - only about 0.72 percent," said Meshik. "However, because 235 U decays much faster than 238 U, in the past, 235 U was more abundant. For example, two billion years ago 235 U was five times higher, about three percent, approximately the concentration of enriched uranium used in modern commercial reactors."
Another vital condition for self-sustaining nuclear reaction is the high content of a moderator to slow the neutrons, Meshik said. Water, carbon, most organic compounds, silicon dioxide, calcium oxide and magnesium oxide all are natural neutron moderators. Also, the concentrations of neutron absorbents - iron, potassium, beryllium, and especially gadolinium, samarium, europium, cadmium and boron - should be low.
"Only when all of these requirements are met can a self-sustaining chain reaction occur," Meshik said.
-------- depleted uranium
Running to help
Greeley Tribune
November 2, 2004
Matt Schuman, schuman@greeleytrib.com
http://www.greeleytrib.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041102/SPORTS/111020058
For most of his life, Greeley's Geoff Muntz has been running to help others in their time of need.
Whether as a medic in the first Gulf War helping injured U.S. soldiers in Iraq or as a member of the race committee for the annual Fourth of July Race for the Cure to benefit those with breast cancer, Muntz has always been willing to run to aid others.
Now in his time of need, Muntz is finding out how many people are willing to run to help him in a race to help save his life.
In July, Muntz, 55, was diagnosed with Multiple Myloma, a cancer of the blood where the red and white blood cells in the bone marrow don't reproduce properly.
While he is undergoing treatments now, including IV infusions every four days, he needs a stem cell transfusion in December at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
So on Sunday, 90 of his friends in the Greeley running community participated in a 5K and 1K race/walk at Bells Running called "Run for Geoff" to help raise money for expenses related to his treatment. While 90 people participated in the race, 130 signed up for the event to help contribute to the cause, which has raised
$4,785 so far to help Muntz.
Muntz, a longtime runner who has participated in every Bolder-Boulder since its inception, was overwhelmed by the support of those who showed up Sunday to help him, even though he was too tired himself to attend.
"I can't say how much -- especially my running friends -- have just stepped forward and said anything you need and anything you want, just let us know and we will take care of it,'" Muntz said. "It has just been incredible to see this whole thing unfold."
It has been a difficult year for Muntz, who was hit hard by the news of his diagnosis after a lifetime of doing all he could to take care of his body as an avid runner.
"It just floors you to think that all these years I've tried to live life the right way in terms of eating, exercise and do all the right things and you still get slammed with something like this," Muntz said.
In September, he nearly died from a bout with pneumonia caused by complications from his illness. Still, he believes being a runner helped save his life.
"I truly believe that if I hadn't been a runner -- if I had been a couch potato kind of guy -- my guess is I would not have survived that," Muntz said.
Muntz began seeing the signs of his illness in the fall of 2003 when his times in races began to slip dramatically and he was having trouble keeping up with those he would run with as part of a group with Bells Running.
Even so, Muntz just chalked it up to getting older, never realizing that something may be wrong with his body.
His friends in the running group thought he would be back to normal any time.
"Nobody thinks you are going to end up with the worst," his friend and running mate Jenny Weber said. "I guess we didn't think it was this bad. You always just have encouragement that, oh, he'll be down for awhile but he will be back running with us in a couple weeks or so."
But the weeks turned into months. That's when even his friends began to realize that Muntz was not himself.
"He would just be beat after (running), so we all knew something was up," Weber said. "We knew that something wasn't right."
Then a year ago in September, Muntz began to realize that something was not right after running a race in Fort Collins. He could barely move the next day and was sore from head to toe. Three days later, he ran another race and experienced the same problems, so he went to his doctor to be checked out and found out his blood wasn't normal. In the spring, he finally went to an oncologist who began to figured out what was wrong.
"You always think, oh, you've got cancer, but I really didn't think that's what the problem was," Muntz said. "I thought it was something different."
What puzzled Muntz even more was how he came down with a form of blood cancer that usually shows up in people after age 70 and after being a health nut his entire life.
So Muntz began to suspect that his time in Iraq may have contributed to his illness since radiation exposure or poisoning could be a cause of Multiple Myloma.
Through research, Muntz learned that both Britain and the U.S. used what was called depleted uranium, a low grade form of uranium in the artillery they shot at opposing missiles and tanks.
Muntz, a flight medic on Huey helicopters with the Army National Guard based out of Cheyenne, believes he inhaled the uranium particles that vaporize and float into the air and on the ground after hitting a target.
"I lived for two months right in the center of the Republican Guard stronghold in southeast Iraq and Northern Kuwait," Muntz said. "All missiles and tanks blown up by depleted uranium."
Muntz hopes the Veterans Administration will agree with his findings and help with his medical expenses. No matter what happens, Muntz is confident that he will beat his cancer and be running again soon.
His goal is to participate in next year's Bolder-Boulder, his 27th in a row, one of only 83 runners to do so.
It's his preparation as a runner that Muntz believes will help him overcome his illness.
"You always have to have that carrot out in front of you and that is where the running comes in," Muntz said. "It has given me the mental approach to know I am going to have to push it hard and work hard to overcome cancer, just like you do training for running. No matter what it takes, you have to push it."
And Muntz knows his friends will be right by his side for support.
"He would do anything for anybody, so I think he has kind of been shocked now that the tables are turned," Weber said. "He is surprised by all the people that are coming out to help him and he shouldn't be. He has so many friends."
NAME: Geoff Muntz
RESIDENCE: Greeley
AGE: 55
OCCUPATION: Media Specialist for Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins
FAMILY: His wife Lori and 6-year-old son Olzhas, adopted three years ago from Kazikstan
DIAGNOSIS: Multiple Myloma, a cancer of the blood where the red and white blood cells in the bone marrow don't reproduce properly.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Avid runner who is a member of the Bolder Boulder Boldest, a group of 83 runners who have participated in all 26 Bolder Boulder races. Retired member of the 1022 Medical Company with the Army National Guard in Cheyenne. Served in the Persian Gulf War as a flight medic in support of the Third Army Division led by retired General Tommy Franks. Member of the race committee the last eight years for the Fourth of July Race for the Cure, to raise money to support those with breast cancer.
DONATIONS: Those wishing to donate money to support Muntz in his battle with Multiple Myloma can do so by calling Bells Running at 356-6964 or sending checks payable to Bells Running, 3620 W. 10th St. Greeley, Co., 80634.
-----
Hard Weapons for Soft Targets
islam-online.net
By Joanne Baker
02/11/2004
http://www.islam-online.net/English/Science/2004/11/article01.shtml
"We cannot under any circumstances acquiesce in the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier" - Winston Churchill.
On March 28th 2003, a US A-10 aircraft fired into a convoy of five British vehicles near Basrah in a 'friendly fire' incident. It was reported by the Guardian newspaper that the British troops who retrieved the bodies wore "chemical warfare suits...because of the threat from the depleted uranium used in American weapons".
Two days later, on the morning of March 30th 2003, an Iraqi troop carrier passing through Kibla, a residential suburb of Basrah, broke down and signaled to a second troop carrier to come to its assistance. As the Iraqi soldiers were trying to sort out the mechanical problem, an A-10 fired rounds of depleted uranium ammunition into both vehicles causing instant inferno. At the same time, two young men were entering a nearby house. Thinking they too were soldiers, the pilot targeted the house. The soldiers were incinerated, as were the two boys in the house, Jelaal and Nasir aged 21 and 18. A young cousin sustained severe burns on his leg. The explosive blasts created a plume of uranium oxide dust, some of it so fine that is entered the atmosphere as a gas. The heavier particles landed close to the vehicles and inside the building. Neighbors and family buried the dead; the grieving parents and remaining eight children continued to live in what was left of their home, and dozens of local children played daily in and around the burnt out vehicles. No one warned them of the nature of the bullets that had and would continue to cause so much death and destruction.
Hear No Evil See No Evil
In July 2004, an Iraqi environmental scientist, who was researching DU, happened to be driving through Kibla with his fiancée. They were on the way to church to arrange their wedding. His fiancée mentioned to him that she always got a headache after passing some burnt out vehicles in the area, so a few days later, he went to investigate. His Geiger counter immediately told him that the area was radioactive and later, equipped with full radioactive gear, he cleaned the troop carriers and damaged area of the house to the best of his ability. He then went straight to the British military in Basrah, explained the situation and asked for their help. Apart from some sympathy from an environmental adviser, who has subsequently returned to the UK, the response was very dismissive and no action has been taken. The scientist also notified the World Health Organisation but has had no response at all.
A few weeks after this, photographer Jenny Matthews, Dr Al-Ani and myself happened to be in Basrah and were taken to visit the family in Kibla. We walked around the burnt troop carriers and watched the rising dial of the Geiger counter, as wind whipped up the dust around us. Children were playing all around and were very excited to see us. In the house we spoke to the mother and daughters, two of whom, Ibtehal and Delaal, are suffering from breathing problems and skin rashes, a younger boy, Kemal, who is now thirteen, is losing his night vision, and the burns sustained by their cousin Sa'd are still not healing properly.
Who's Responsible?
Our own enquiries through the British Embassy in Basrah resulted in the following response, "The clean up of DU is the responsibility of the civil administration, with assistance from the international community, after any armed conflict." In this instance the civil administration is the Iraqi Interim Government and, we wonder, which bit of the international community? - Apparently not the US or UK. After the war of 1991, 24 US vehicles caught in DU friendly fire were returned to the United States and it took three years to fully decontaminate them. The clean up of the environment itself is, of course, not possible. Nature excels at recycling. Radioactive particles have already entered Iraq's air, water, soil and vegetation and are working their way through the food chain. Nor do such particles respect 'borders' - the wind, sun and rain will move them endlessly.
DU Is Both Radioactive and Chemically Toxic
DU causes severe disfiguration and genetic damage
During the Gulf War of 1991 the US and Britain used up to 350 tons of DU shells in southern Iraq. They were used mainly on the tanks and trucks returning from Kuwait. Despite the fact that they were used mainly in a desert area, the health problems in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have escalated. In Basrah childhood leukaemia has increased 7 fold, overall cancers 10 fold and birth deformities 20 fold. Many allied troops returning from the Gulf and the Balkans have suffered similarly. A German doctor, Dr Siegfried Horst Guenther who studied the rare health effects in Iraq after 1991 also noted severe immunodeficiencies, AIDS-like syndromes, and kidney and liver dysfunction. Other noted symptoms are reactive airway disease, neurological problems, rashes, vision degradation and night vision losses, gum tissue problems, sexual dysfunction and neuro-psychological disorders.
DU is both radioactive and chemically toxic and many doctors and scientists like Dr Guenther are convinced that the inhalation or ingestion of microscopic DU particles does have an adverse effect at a cellular level. Children, because of their fast cell growth, are particularly vulnerable. Dr Alexandra Miller from the US Armed Forces Radiological Research Institute concludes that "DU compounds can transform cells into a state that appears to be able to induce tumors, based on the changes in the physical appearance of the cell, and based on the chemical changes induced in the cells by it, and other tumor-favoring changes". She also states that the radioactive and toxic properties of DU seem to reinforce each other, thus causing more extensive damage.
Depleted uranium has been found in the urine and tissue of sick veterans and civilians many years after the initial exposure, and chromosome testing by Dr Schott in Germany shows not only chromosomal damage to veterans exposed to DU but the same genetic damage in their children. DU is known to enter the sperm and the ovary and can cross the placenta. This not only accounts for the high rise in congenital deformities but indicates that such deformities could be intergenerational. Young women like Ibtehal and Delaal must not only fear for their own health, but that of any children they may bear.
Environmental Effects of DU
To compound the health problem, some of the DU used in munitions comes from the other end of the nuclear fuel cycle and is contaminated with artificial isotopes such as U-236 and plutonium and neptunium. As depleted uranium isotopes decay they become increasingly radioactive. Moreover, according to Dr Dan Bishop, if Neptunium 235 is present, its short half life will spike the radioactivity and will triple "the alpha radiation over natural uranium and double the total alpha, beta and gamma radiation over natural radiation". The environmental and health effect of DU munitions could be far greater than is generally assumed. Samples taken from civilians in Afghanistan by the Uranium Medical Research Center also showed excessive levels of non depleted uranium and one tissue sample from Basrah has shown the presence of enriched uranium.
The British have admitted to the use of 9 tons of uranium in the 2003 war - nine times more than in 1991, but the US refuse to be specific. The estimates range between 200 to 2000 tons. While the US and UK only admit to the use of DU in anti-tank penetrators, there is growing evidence that it is being used in a variety of other weapons. High levels of radioactivity have been found in large bomb craters such as the Ma'moon telephone exchange in Baghdad which was hit by several bunker busting bombs. The missiles cut through six layers of steel before exploding below ground level. This supports the contention that uranium is being used in some guided missiles to enhance the penetration of hard structures and to incinerate them. These large bombs could release significant amounts of uranium oxide into the atmosphere.
Urban and Residential Areas Targeted
The difference between the war of 2003 and previous conflicts is that the use of uranium has been almost exclusively in urban, residential areas. The UK and US military justify this by saying that there are no known health effects from depleted uranium, yet are they really convinced? In fact, the military and governments have known the health risks of depleted uranium for decades. In 1991, a UKAEA report stated "The DU will be spread around the battlefield and target vehicles in varying sizes and quantities from dust particles to full size penetrators...localised contamination of vehicles and soil may exceed permissible limits and these could be hazardous to both clean up teams and the local population". In 1995 the US Army environmental Policy Institute wrote, "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences. The risks associated with DU in the body are both chemical and radiological". All military personnel working with DU in the UK are classified radiation workers and subject to constant monitoring. Hard target testing, which took place in Eskmeals, Cumbria until 1995, was done under very strict conditions and it still costs the British tax payer £360 000 a year to maintain and protect the site. DU rounds were fired at a hard target in a concrete bunker, known as the VJ Butt and in July 2000, the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC) made the following report, "...a well-defined protocol is in place for workers required to enter the VJ Butt after test firing. Before they can do so, allowance is made for a cooling period during which cooling fans with three levels of air filtration are in operation. Members of the butt entry party are required to wear full protective clothing with pureflow hoods and carry personal air samplers."
All well and good, but how can the use of the same material be justified, if it is targeting houses, buses and people in Iraq? While there is acknowledged military advantage in using uranium against hard targets, it is very difficult to understand why it is also being used so liberally on 'soft' targets. In this last war on Iraq, these have included military personnel, cars, trucks, buses and houses. Even the Iraqi troop carriers hardly merited extreme penetrative force. And where in places like Kibla are the air filters and pureflow hoods to be found? When Abdul Zahra Misbal Shindi buried his dead sons he was not, like the British soldiers, provided with a chemical suit.
Kibla is not alone. The same Iraqi scientist has discovered 26 radioactive sites in just one area of Basrah. In parts of Baghdad radiation has been monitored as 1 000 and 1 900 times greater than normal background level and high recordings have been made in towns such as Samawah and Negev.
Child Victims of War
Our mission to Iraq in August was not to measure radiation, but to assess the needs of Iraqi children for our charity Child Victims of War. Basrah Children's Hospital is crying out for even the most basic equipment to treat its ever growing numbers of young leukaemia and cancer patients. Despairing doctors said that this was not really a cancer ward where children were treated, just a place where they came to die. Basrah is in desperate need of an oncology centre. If even a few of the young children we met are dying from the allied use of radiological weapons, then the lack of medicine and pain relief created by the long years of sanctions and now occupation, compounds a most terrible crime.
Joanne Baker is director of Child Victims of War. She has been a frequent visitor to Iraq since 1999 - initially to campaign against the sanctions and to research into the health effects of depleted uranium. She has been to Baghdad twice since the occupation, in June/July 2003 and from 27th March - 22nd April 2004.
Child Victims of War has been set up as a response to the dire situation of children in Iraq since the war. Their particular concern is with the environmental effects of warfare and the effects on children's health and well being. In Iraq, they are promoting research into the health effects of depleted uranium and aiding the rehabilitation of children injured by cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance. They intend their work to be community based and welcome your support.
You can reach them at: info@childvictimsofwar
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Uranium pollution in Iraq damaging
Depleted uranium in Iraqi soil, air may cause health issues
By Hina Alam
November 2, 2004
Indiana Daily Student
http://www.idsnews.com/story.php?id=25921
If you thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, then consider this: the ongoing conflict in Iraq will leave behind a legacy of depleted uranium, which will affect not just the U.S. troops, but also the Iraqi people, maybe over generations, said Diane Henshel, associate professor of public and environmental affairs.
"Isn't that paradoxical? We went there to 'free' those people and we ended up imprisoning them in a lifetime of ill health. And for generations to come," said sophomore Lauren Lindsay, as she examined the evidence of pollution that Henshel put together.
Iraq's pollution levels are beginning to be examined, and Henshel, who studies environmental pollutants, added her expertise to the study in an article published in September's issue of Nature. Examining the overall pollution damage will be the first step on a long road to cleaning up the contaminated country, the article said.
The damage to the environment, and therefore human beings, began in the 1970s, according to the article. This was when the country underwent rapid industrialization with little attention paid to toxic wastes and fumes.
The conflict in Iraq has only compounded the problem and one of the most pressing issues is that of depleted uranium. It is a dense material used to blow holes in heavily armored vehicles.
And depleted uranium was used in Iraq most extensively by the United States.
"If you go on the Internet and look at depleted uranium and who generates it, we are by far the largest generators of depleted uranium in the world," Henshel said. "Nobody is even close to us. We are close to 90 percent of the depleted uranium that's generated in the world ... United States activity or U.S. companies, I guess. Maybe it is not 90 percent, but we are at, like, 800 tons and the next country down is below a 100. We are ten-fold of the next country down."
Depleted uranium is mainly in two places, she said.
"There are some Abrams tanks which use depleted uranium, and depleted uranium is in the penetrators (the warheads of missiles), which are some of the weapons used out there -- a number of them actually," Henshel explained.
As penetrators, depleted uranium is the lead point. The whole purpose of these weapons, she said, was to be harder and denser than other metals so they penetrate through other metals.
"As they penetrate through the other metals, the description is that they get sharpened," she said.
Think of what happens when sharpening a pencil," she said. "You lose all the fragments that are being pulled away to sharpen it. It's not just that it is being pushed into a sharper point."
The pencil-like shape of the penetrator causes the depleted uranium to scatter, Henshel said.
"When penetrator hits the hard top, a hard surface especially like another metal ... you get some fragmentation and some disintegration at the tip of the penetrator and again some release of depleted uranium into fragments that then essentially becomes the dust in the air," she said.
Heavy metals in general have the potential to interact with and disrupt calcium processes, and calcium helps control signaling in the brain and signaling between the cells and release of hormones and nerve transmitters, she said.
"If you disrupt calcium control signaling, which can happen in a high dose or even moderate dose situations ... tests have shown changes in learning, changes in the ability to remember and changes in reflexes, so there are a host of different things that can happen," Henshel said.
A small cohort from Desert Storm have depleted uranium shrapnel in their bodies, and they've been tracked over time with publications coming out about them every two years or so. The amount of uranium in their bodies has made a difference.
"Behavior in terms of response, based on computer tests, was the first thing to show up," she said.
Within a number of years the amount of depleted uranium was leaking out from shrapnel in their bodies and moving around in their systems. There is depleted uranium showing up, for example, in their urine, Henshel said.
Henshel said she believes that over time, people in Iraq are going to be exposed to increasing concentration in their bodies.
"They will have increased problems with changes in behavior, (and) increasing problems with their kidneys. And at high enough levels you will start to see effects on their sperm count," she said.
Another problem is women who are pregnant or are going to be pregnant in a situation where they are exposed to depleted uranium in the dust on a daily basis. Daily exposure to depleted uranium in the dust means that what is circulating in their blood streams at any given time includes some radioactive uranium, she said, and uranium is a heavy metal that can affect a fetus.
"There are studies that indicate that birth defects are increasing in the areas of high depleted uranium concentration of the Gulf War," Henshel said.
Uranium is part of the environment, but what happens with depleted uranium is that it is being used in such high intensity in one area that there is an increased concentration.
"And that gives rise to a situation where it ends up in dust and can get into people through air and water," she said.
The real concern is that depleted uranium is not intensely radioactive as uranium is used in reactors, Henshel said.
"There is an assumption that A: there is no radioactivity going on which is not true, and B: there is an assumption that this is not the only concern."
The other problem, she said, is that it is not going to be just uranium that is a problem in the war torn area, because it is not just uranium that disintegrates.
"There are other heavy metals that disintegrate -- some of the other heavy metals we have very little toxic information about," she explained.
While a lot is known about titanium and cadmium, there is whole host of heavy metals that are used in weapons in small concentrations, of which not much is know, but they are going to end up in the soil, in the air, in water of the people in any war torn area in Iraq, Henshel said.
As far as the troops are concerned, some of them might have depleted uranium showing up in their bodies -- some show less and some show more. If some of them have high intakes of milk or other sources of calcium, they will be able to eliminate it quickly from their bodies. High calcium levels limit how much uranium replaces calcium in certain parts of the bodies. Other people that, for whatever reasons -- economic or otherwise -- do not consume enough calcium or milk may harbor depleted uranium.
As the knowledge of depleted uranium and its effects on Iraqi people gets out in the world, Lindsay said, it could make the United States look worse.
Political science Professor Michael McGinnis said, "it looks bad in terms of environmental effects, but again, this is nothing new."
World opinion of the U.S. is already at an all-time low, said Dina Spechler, associate professor of political science.
"In the end, people who live in Iraq will manifest the greatest problems. The chemicals accumulate and they stay in people's bodies all the time and increase in concentration over time- and we don't know what we are dealing with," Henshel said.
-- Contact staff writer Hina Alam at halam@indiana.edu.
-------- iran
Nuclear ties with Iran in 70s
IranMania.com
November 02, 2004
http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=26628&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs
Archived Picture - The United States offered uranium enrichment and reprocessing plant facilities to Iran in the mid-1970s if it bought nuclear power plants from US companies, invested in an enrichment plant in United States and shared a plutonium reprocessing plant with Pakistan, recently declassified US documents reveal.
Archived Picture - Two documents in particular, dated April 22, 1975, and April 20, 1976, show that the United States and Iran held negotiations for cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the United States was willing to help Iran by setting up uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing facilities.
LONDON, Nov 2 (IranMania) - The United States offered uranium enrichment and reprocessing plant facilities to Iran in the mid-1970s if it bought nuclear power plants from US companies, invested in an enrichment plant in United States and shared a plutonium reprocessing plant with Pakistan, recently declassified US documents reveal.
The documents were found on the website of the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan, IRNA reported.
Two documents in particular, dated April 22, 1975, and April 20, 1976, show that the United States and Iran held negotiations for cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy and the United States was willing to help Iran by setting up uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing facilities.
Negotiations started in the wake of the nuclear test by India and at a time when Pakistan was holding negotiations with France for setting up a reprocessing plant, which was opposed by the United States.
The memoranda were written to convey guidelines from then President Gerald Ford to the US negotiating team about the proposed agreement.
Under the proposed arrangement, Iran was to invest in a uranium enrichment plant in the United States to supply fuel or nuclear material for US-supplied reactors and spent fuel was to be reprocessed in an Iranian plant.
The first memorandum, titled "US-Iran nuclear cooperation", said the Iranian share in the enriched uranium fuel should be based on the approximate number of reactors planned to be purchased from US suppliers and proposed investment in the enrichment facility.
The second memorandum, dated April 20, 1976, and written on the eve of Iran-US negotiations on nuclear cooperation, said the US president wanted to convey to the Iranians that the proposed facility "should serve mutual US-GOI (Government of Iran) non-proliferation in the region" by offering Pakistan the possibility of participation in a multinational plant as an alternative to a national reprocessing facility.
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France wants "lasting" halt to Iran's nuclear drive
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041102180550.iidvevrm.html
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier called Tuesday for Iran to produce a "lasting" halt to its uranium enrichment activities, as signs emerged of a compromise deal between Iran and the EU.
"We are in an extremely intensive phase of discussions with the Tehran government and we are entering into this final phase of discussions with a certain optimism," Barnier told reporters at a European Union meeting here.
Asked whether the EU could accept an Iranian offer to suspend uranium enrichment only for up to six months, Barnier said the bloc wanted a "lasting" suspension without specifying for how long.
A senior French source said "lasting" meant "for as long as possible".
Officials from EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany are preparing for a new round of talks with Iran in Paris on Friday.
The EU has been pressing Tehran to renounce uranium enrichment entirely, in return for an assistance package for peaceful nuclear energy.
But diplomats at the UN's nuclear watchdog in Vienna said the EU was no longer explicitly calling for an indefinite suspension to the uranium programme, in a possible compromise ahead of Friday's talks.
Iran is prepared to halt uranium enrichment during its negotiations with the EU trio that "could last up to at most six months, not more", Tehran's top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian Mousavian told AFP Tuesday.
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In major compromise EU softens demand on Iran for uranium enrichment suspension
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041102185358.9kijvfu2.html
The European Union is no longer explicitly calling for an indefinite suspension of Iran's uranium enrichment, diplomats said here Tuesday, outlining a compromise proposal ahead of a crucial meeting with the Iranians on their nuclear programme.
The diplomats said ambassadors from Britain, France and Germany were Tuesday to hand over in Tehran the EU's written offer, ahead of a scheduled meeting with Iran in Paris on Friday on Europe's request for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which can be used to make nuclear weapons.
"This paper fudges the uranium enrichment question by saying suspension needs to hold until the conclusion of negotiations over the long-term status of Iran's program," sais a Western diplomat who requested anonymity.
It is "a very polished linguistic version, so to speak, to bypass that problem (indefinite suspension of enrichment)," another diplomat close to the talks said.
The EU, led by Britain, France and Germany, has until now said Iran must indefinitely suspend uranium enrichment, a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle, but Iran insists that its right to enrichment cannot be called into question, which would be the case in an indefinite suspension.
Top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian said in Tehran that Iran could agree to maintain a suspension of uranium enrichment for half a year.
But he added: "Cessation is rejected, indefinite suspension is rejected, suspension shall be a confidence-building measure and a voluntary decision by Iran and in no way a legal obligation, and this has to be clear in our understanding."
In Brussels, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier urged Iran to produce a "lasting" halt to its uranium enrichment activities, carefully avoiding the word "indefinite" as signs emerged of a compromise deal between Iran and the
The United States, which is keeping a low profile on the European initiative, wants the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at a meeting in Vienna on November 25 to take Iran before the UN Security Council for running what it claims is a secret nuclear weapons program.
The Council could then impose punishing sanctions.
The Western diplomat said the United States was "fully in waiting mode, waiting to see how the Iranians react" to the European offer, which is aimed at avoid taking Iran to the Security Council.
Europe's three major powers have vowed to offer nuclear technology, increased trade and help with Iran's regional security concerns if Tehran halts enrichment.
But Iran has said it wants these incentives to be given to it up front, instead of the Islamic Republic having to wait until the end of the negotiating process, diplomats said.
"Iran is willing to consider a suspension but wants to know what it will get in return," a non-aligned diplomat close to the IAEA told AFP Tuesday after a briefing by Iran's IAEA ambassador Pirooz Hosseini.
Mousavian's comments were echoed by President Mohammad Khatami who said: "Our nation must be given the assurance that it will not be stripped of its right (to enrich uranium)."
But of Friday's new round of talks, Khatami told reporters: "I am optimistic... Both sides are showing flexibility."
Moussavian has told the European trio that Iran's national security council is "pretty divided on the issue," a diplomat told AFP in Vienna.
Moussavian said the council has "a small majority in favor of suspension and some opposed to it," the diplomat said.
The diplomat said: "Iran now has the choice -- the Iranians can say yes (to the European offer) and things can move forward or they can say no and they know the consequences."
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Iran offers hope of progress in nuclear talks
Mideast - AFP
Nov 2, 2004
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20041102/wl_mideast_afp/iran_nuclear_041102171753
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran vowed never to give up its "right" to enrich uranium but offered hope of progress in critical nuclear talks with European countries which want the Islamic Republic to permanently halt the activity.
Top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian said Iran could agree to maintain a suspension of uranium enrichment for half a year, going some way towards meeting the key demand laid out by Europe's three main states.
His comments came as Iran prepared for a new round of talks in Paris on Friday with the European states which want Tehran to renounce uranium enrichment entirely, in return for a assistance package for its nuclear energy activities.
Iran was prepared to halt uranium enrichment during negotiations with Britain, France and Germany that "could last up to at most six months, not more," Mousavian told AFP.
"Cessation is rejected, indefinite suspension is rejected, suspension shall be a confidence-building measure and a voluntary decision by Iran and in no way a legal obligation, and this has to be clear in our understanding," he added.
Depending on the level of purification, enriched uranium can be used either as fuel for a civilian reactor or as the explosive core of a nuclear bomb. Iran insists it only wants to generate electricity, rejecting US allegations it is seeking nuclear weapons.
Mousavian's comments were echoed by President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) who said: "Our nation must be given the assurance that it will not be stripped of its right (to enrich uranium)."
But of Friday's new round of talks, Khatami told reporters: "I am optimistic... Both sides are showing flexibility."
"Neither the government nor the nation will allow us to renounce our national right, which is also a matter of national pride. Any suspension that might take place will be voluntary."
Washington charges that Iran is using its nuclear programme as a cover for efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, allegations vehemently denied by Tehran which points out it has the right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.
The European Union (news - web sites), represented by Britain, France and Germany, is trying to work out a deal to keep the UN's atomic agency, which meets in Vienna on November 25, from deciding to take the dossier to the Security Council.
In return for full suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran, the EU is offering peaceful nuclear technology, including nuclear fuel, as well as trade advantages and support on security issues.
Mousavian said the European trio would have to offer more in the package if Tehran was to agree to a deal. "We have explained to them that the package can not be accepted as it is, it is completely unbalanced," he said.
He predicted that chances of a deal in the talks was "50-50".
The conciliatory comments came after Iranian lawmakers in the conservative-dominated parliament passed a bill on Sunday backing the resumption of uranium enrichment, a key phase in the nuclear fuel cycle.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog who has set a November 25 deadline for Iran to meet international demands on its nuclear programme, called Monday for the suspension to remain in place.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers gathered Tuesday in Brussels ahead of an EU leaders' summit this week to tackle aid for Iraq (news - web sites) but also Iran's nuclear drive.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the international community should accept Iran's "legitimate right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes according to the international agreements".
But on the other hand, Iran must "stop the (uranium) fuel cycle", Fischer told reporters. "If we find a way I would be very happy. If not, we are moving forward in a very serious situation."
-------- mideast
Egypt rejects charges IAEA chief helping it with secret nuclear program
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041102140304.zr85qe23.html
Egypt's ambassador to the UN atomic agency blasted as "totally baseless" a French newspaper report Tuesday that the Egyptian head of the agency Mohamed ElBaradei was helping Cairo hide a secret nuclear program.
"There is no clandestine program and therefore there is no dossier," ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy told AFP.
"The issue of a connection between Egypt and Tripoli in the nuclear field is totally baseless," Ramzy said.
He was reacting to a report in the French newspaper Liberation, citing unnamed Western diplomats, that the now dismantled Libyan nuclear program "had Egyptian links."
The United States and Britain struck a deal in December for Libya to abandon its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and Libya followed through on the deal, with the evacuation of nuclear equipment supervised by ElBaradei's Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Libya had in its nuclear program "worked not only for itself but also, secretly, for the Egyptians," Liberation said.
Liberation said the charges "by ricochet now are reaching Mohamed ElBaradei, accused by some diplomatic missions of using his influence as the head of the IAEA to put the brakes on the agency truly plunging into this dossier."
IAEA officials were not immediately available for comment.
Ramzy said the IAEA "is pursuing the clandestine market (that supplied Libya with nuclear technology) and absolutely no link to Egypt has been found."
"All our nuclear activities are subject, according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to the total supervision of the agency (IAEA) and we always come out with a clean bill of health so there is no problem," Ramzy said.
He said he thought the Liberation report was coming out "for reasons of a political agenda," an apparent reference to the United States.
ElBaradei last week reported to the UN Security Council about explosives that have disappeared from Iraq since the US invasion, setting off a scandal that embarrassed US President George W. Bush while he campaigns for re-election, with the United States voting Tuesday.
ElBaradei is seeking to be re-elected as IAEA chief for what would be a third term in office but Washington opposes this, saying international civil servants should only serve two terms.
The Liberation story said there were charges circulating in diplomatic circles that ElBaradei is "a key element in Egyptian strategic policy, with a mission to favor Cairo in getting nuclear technology and information transfers."
Ramzy said that ElBaradei was, as other Egyptians have been, an impartial international civil servant.
He said Egypt was "proud of the impartial way ElBaradei and others have conducted themselves," referring also to Egyptian former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
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Russian Researcher Hands Over Plutonium
November 2, 2004
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RUSSIA_NUCLEAR_SECURITY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
MOSCOW (AP) -- A former Russian nuclear physicist turned over 14 ounces of plutonium he found in a dump and then kept in his garage, a news agency said Tuesday. Now he finds himself facing possible criminal charges.
Leonid Grigorov said he had written several letters to authorities urging them to properly secure the eight containers of dangerous material that he said he found discarded near a mining factory in Zmeinogorsk in southern Siberia, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
When the letters went unanswered, he placed the material in a leaden case in his garage. Each container held 1.75 ounces of plutonium.
"As an expert, I felt obliged to do that to avoid danger," he said, according to ITAR-Tass.
Grigorov turned the plutonium over to police after seeing a police notice inviting people to surrender weapons in exchange for a cash prize. But instead of giving him a prize, police opened a criminal investigation against Grigorov on charges of illegal possession of radioactive materials.
Nikolai Shingaryov, a spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency, said that plutonium-238 is widely used in industries but could not be used to build an atomic bomb.
He would not comment on the ITAR-Tass report but said it appeared unlikely that containers in Grigorov's possession could hold such a large amount of plutonium.
Russia's nuclear chief, Alexander Rumyantsev, has said that authorities have been negligent in disposing of obsolete equipment involving lethal radioactive isotopes during the post-Soviet industrial collapse. Such equipment used for cancer treatment in clinics and in manufacturing industries has been carelessly dumped across Russia.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, concerns have grown that terrorists might be trying to acquire material for a dirty bomb - a device that uses conventional explosives to spread low-level radiation.
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Russia spends $600-700m for nuclear reactors upgrade and construction annually One half of the sum goes for the construction of the new units, another half on the upgrade and lifetime extension of the existing reactors.
2004-11-02
Bellona Foundation
http://193.71.199.52/en/international/russia/npps/35853.html
The first deputy director of the Rosenergoatom concern Alexander Polushkin told ITAR-TASS that despite the fact the Rosenergoatom's investments would reduce in the coming years, the part for the construction and modernisation should remain. "The annual input into construction and modernisation of the Russian nuclear power plants is $600-700m. One half goes for the construction of the new units, another half on the upgrade and lifetime extension of the existing reactors" Polushkin said.
On October 12, the Federal Agency on atomic energy was supposed to determine the place for the new reactor unit construction in Russia. According to Polushkin, it could be unit no.2 at the Rostov NPP or unit no.5 at the Kursk NPP.
"In the recent years the new unit was completed at the Rostov NPP and unit no.3 is about to be put in operation at the Kalinin NPP. At present, 30 reactor units are in operation at the 10 Russian NPPs" Polushkin said to ITAR-TASS.
-------- terrorism
Putin Eyes Nuclear Terrorism
The Moscow Times
02 November 2004
http://putinru.com/news/item/32791.html
President Vladimir Putin on Monday pushed for passing a United Nations convention on combating nuclear terrorism, saying the document should help coordinate global efforts to prevent mass destruction weapons from falling into terrorists' hands.
Putin voiced hope that the current session of the UN General Assembly would consider Russia's draft of the convention.
"It must create conditions for averting any attempts by terrorists to get hold of nuclear weapons or any other nuclear materials," Putin said in a letter to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, excerpts of which were released by the Kremlin.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, concerns have grown that terrorists might try to acquire material for a dirty bomb -- a device that uses conventional explosives to scatter low-level radioactive material over city blocks. It has no atomic chain reaction and requires no highly enriched uranium or plutonium which are kept under tight security and difficult to obtain. Instead, the radioactive component is of lower-grade isotopes, such as those used in medicine or research. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates as many as 110 countries do not have adequate controls over radioactive devices that could be used to build a dirty bomb.
-------- u.n.
N. Korea, Iran Respond to Nuclear Agency
November 2, 2004
EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_NUCLEAR_AGENCY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Challenged by the U.N. nuclear chief to prove their atomic programs are peaceful, North Korea said it would scrap its "nuclear deterrence" if the United States ended its hostile policy and Iran said negotiations with three European countries may "bring fruit."
But North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador Kim Chang Guk on Monday totally rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency, calling it "a political tool of the superpower." He also accused Japan of allowing U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil and South Korea of nuclear ambitions - allegations both countries vehemently denied.
Iran's deputy U.N. ambassador Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi was less strident, but stressed that Tehran "is determined to pursue its inalienable rights to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." He also criticized the international community for targeting Iran's nuclear program while saying nothing about Israel's.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei challenged both countries in his annual report to the U.N. General Assembly, urging Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program "as a confidence building measure" and North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program or at least allow inspections to ensure it is "exclusively peaceful."
He expressed hope that Iran will decide to suspend enrichment before the IAEA board meets in Vienna, Austria on Nov. 25. Britain, Germany and France have warned that most European countries would back the United States' call to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council - where it could face possible sanctions - if the Iranian government does not abandon all enrichment activities before the board meeting.
Uranium enriched to a low level can be used to produce nuclear fuel for electricity-generating plants, but if enriched further can be used to make atomic weapons. Iran is not prohibited from enriching uranium under its obligations to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but is barred from arms-related work.
Danesh-Yazdi said Iran has a right "to develop, research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." But he told the General Assembly Tehran has voluntarily suspended enrichment activities since last November.
"Iran is also currently engaged in negotiations with France, Germany and Britain to reach mutual objective assurances on nuclear cooperation, transparency and non-diversion" of nuclear material, he said. "These negotiations will bring fruit if mutual understanding, political will and good faith prevail."
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami delivered the same message Tuesday in Tehran, telling reporters it was possible Iran would continue suspension of uranium enrichment and that he was hopeful of a compromise with Europe over its nuclear program.
"Both sides have shown essential flexibility and I am not pessimistic over the continuation of talks and achieving a result," Khatami said after a parliament session.
The talks with the Europeans aim at averting a standoff over Iran's nuclear weapons program at the Nov. 25 meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog. The third round of talks is to be held on Friday. The Europeans have offered Iran a trade deal and peaceful nuclear technology in return for assurances Iran would indefinitely stop enriching uranium.
At the moment, there aren't any negotiations taking place on North Korea's program - and the IAEA hasn't conducted any inspections in the country since December 2002.
ElBaradei said he was frustrated that six-nation talks involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas were not moving faster.
The goal is to negotiate a deal for the communist regime to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic help and security guarantees. But the process is at a standstill because North Korea refused to show up for talks scheduled for September.
"I'm telling the North Koreans again that the international community is ready to look into your security concerns, ready to look into your economic and humanitarian needs," ElBaradei told reporters. "But a prerequisite is for them to commit themselves to full, verifiable, dismantlement of their weapons program - as they say they have a weapons program."
But North Korea's Kim blamed the United States for the nuclear problem on the Korean peninsula, dismissed the IAEA, and said "it is a political military question to be settled" between Pyongyang and Washington.
North Korea has made it clear that if the United States "renounces its hostile policy ... including (its) nuclear threat, (North Korea) is willing to scrap its nuclear deterrence accordingly," Kim said, stressing his country's commitment "to the ultimate goal of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
After about 20 speeches, the General Assembly voted on a resolution supporting the IAEA's "indispensable role" in promoting the peaceful uses of atomic energy "and in nuclear safety, verification and security." The vote was 123-1, with only North Korea opposing the resolution.
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U.N. Nuclear Agency Chief Urges Iran to Suspend Activities
By Colum Lynch and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17060-2004Nov1.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 1 -- The chief of the United Nations' nuclear agency appealed to Iran Monday to suspend its nuclear activities and expressed concern that efforts to halt the spread of atomic weapons have been undercut by North Korea's refusal to allow inspections and by a black market in nuclear materials.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, offered a sobering assessment of nonproliferation efforts in an annual address to the 191-member General Assembly of the United Nations. Speaking one day after Iran's parliament voted to affirm the country's right to enrich uranium, ElBaradei urged Iran "to build confidence" by suspending those activities as part of a "comprehensive settlement" to end a nuclear standoff.
France, Britain and Germany offered Iran a deal last month to end its enrichment work in exchange for political and economic incentives, including a guarantee that Iran would not be referred to the Security Council, where the United States could press for sanctions. U.S. diplomats have said they expect negotiations between Iran and the three European countries to result in a deal. But they expressed concern that any agreement could be written in a way that gives the Islamic state wiggle room to continue nuclear experiments that could enhance its bombmaking capabilities.
ElBaradei made only an indirect reference on Monday to the loss of nuclear-related equipment in Iraq, including the disappearance of 377 tons of high explosives that became a central issue in the final week of the U.S. presidential campaign. He defended the agency's prewar record in Iraq, saying that U.N. inspections had succeeded and that he had "been validated" in concluding that Saddam Hussein had not revived his nuclear weapons program.
"The Iraq experience demonstrated that inspections -- while requiring time and patience -- can be effective when the country under inspection is providing less than active cooperation," ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei's address came in an eventful year in which Libya foreswore its nuclear arms program, a Pakistan-based marketplace in nuclear weapons components was unmasked, and North Korea continued for a second year to pursue its nuclear program beyond the view of international monitors.
The U.N. nuclear chief said he cannot "provide any level of assurance" that Pyongyang is not diverting nuclear material to a weapons program. "North Korea continues to pose a serious challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation regime," he said, noting that IAEA inspectors have been barred from the country since 2002.
ElBaradei cited Libya as a great success story, since Moammar Gaddafi agreed to give up his government's nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei cautioned that further investigation is required to verify how completely Libya disclosed its nuclear activities.
On Iran, ElBaradei provided a mixed review of that country's actions. He described Tehran's "failure over an extended period of time to meet many of its obligations" to the nuclear agency, but noted that its cooperation "has improved appreciably." Still, he said, Iran's response to information requests in some cases "has continued to be slow."
"Perhaps the most disturbing lesson to emerge from our work in Iran and Libya is the existence of an extensive illicit market for the supply of nuclear items, which clearly thrived on demand," he said, referring to trade in nuclear equipment by a network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
There have been heightened tensions in the past year between ElBaradei and the Bush administration, which opposes the former Egyptian diplomat's bid for a third term in June. Administration opposition to ElBaradei has grown steadily since the run-up to the Iraq war, when he pronounced, in defiance of the White House, that Iraq no longer had a nuclear weapons program.
Since the war, the administration has kept the agency from inspecting materials in Iraq, and IAEA officials say the administration has refused to respond to its concerns over missing equipment there.
Months before ElBaradei announced he would seek a third term, the State Department began floating names of possible replacements for him. They included Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, two Japanese diplomats and a South Korean official whose name was dropped from the list after Seoul admitted that scientists had conducted covert nuclear experiments.
ElBaradei announced in September that he will stay on if the IAEA board wants him to. "I was asked by just about everybody to stay because there are a lot of issues that are still open and important: Iraq, Iran, the threat of proliferation," he said in an interview Friday. "I made it clear that I am happy to continue public service, which is a personal sacrifice, but I'm happy to improve my golf handicap."
ElBaradei has encouraged Iran and the three European countries to strike a deal before the IAEA Board of Governors meets on Nov. 27 to consider whether to refer Iran's case to the Security Council.
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Putin Plugs Nuclear Convention
November 2, 2004
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/1017/news/n_14044.htm
MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday pushed for passing a United Nations convention on combating nuclear terrorism, saying the document should help coordinate global efforts to prevent mass destruction weapons from falling into terrorists' hands.
Putin voiced hope that the current session of the UN General Assembly would consider Russia's draft of the convention.
"It must create conditions for averting any attempts by terrorists to get hold of nuclear weapons or any other nuclear materials," Putin said in a letter to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, excerpts of which were released by the Kremlin.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, concerns have grown that terrorists might try to acquire material for a dirty bomb - a device that uses conventional explosives to scatter low-level radioactive material over city blocks.
It has no atomic chain reaction and requires no highly enriched uranium or plutonium which are kept under tight security and difficult to obtain. Instead, the radioactive component is of lower-grade isotopes, such as those used in medicine or research.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN nuclear watchdog - estimates as many as 110 countries do not have adequate controls over radioactive devices that could be used to build a dirty bomb.
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White House takes aim at U.N.'s nuclear chief
Some in Bush camp say ElBaradei trying to help elect Kerry
San Francisco Chronicle
Robert Collier
November 2, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/02/MNGVT9KBTQ1.DTL
While President Bush and Sen. John Kerry were arguing last week over the looting of high explosives in Iraq, a parallel fight was being waged in the shadows, one that could bedevil U.S. foreign policy long after today's election.
The White House was locked in combat with an old adversary -- Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- whose cooperation the United States needs to prevent nations such as Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
Some administration supporters accuse ElBaradei of orchestrating the scandal over 377 tons of missing explosives at the Al Qaqaa military base to help Kerry defeat Bush, and they suggest the case will deepen distrust between Washington and the United Nations.
"ElBaradei would like nothing better than to see President Bush lose ..., " said Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a conservative-leaning Washington think tank.
After the explosives story broke last week, Bush administration officials said they would oppose ElBaradei's bid for a third term as head of the agency when it comes up for renewal next year. Although the United States does not have veto power on the IAEA's 35-member board, opposition from Washington would carry considerable weight, and some analysts say the administration is determined to oust him.
"The people I've talked to in the administration are absolutely convinced that ElBaradei is trying to defeat Bush, and what happened (last) week means they will do anything it takes to make sure that he doesn't get another term," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
ElBaradei, in an Oct. 1 letter to the U.N. Security Council, said that widespread looting of weapons in Iraq had occurred. Responding to ElBaradei's request for more information on the subject, Mohammed Abbas, an official of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology, reported that explosives at Al Qaqaa were lost after the U.S. takeover because of "theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."
The issue caught fire on the campaign trail after the letter was leaked to the New York Times. Kerry accused Bush of "incompetence" for not keeping the caches of explosives under control, and administration defenders suggested that ElBaradei might have coaxed Abbas to complain to the IAEA.
"Did ElBaradei in some way persuade the Iraqi official that this letter was needed at this time because of the election?" asked May. "This fuels the suspicion that ElBaradei is attempting to manipulate an American election by spreading false information."
ElBaradei called the accusations "total junk."
"The timing probably is unfortunate, but there is a world out there other than the American election," he said Friday.
"It's unfortunate that it's taking a political spin," he said in a separate interview. "That's not ours."
The Bush administration's differences with ElBaradei began before the Iraq war, when U.N. arms inspectors led by Hans Blix fanned out across Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction. The administration constantly criticized their efforts as being too weak. Relations became further strained when ElBaradei reported to the Security Council that contrary to U.S. assertions, Iraq did not appear to have an active nuclear weapons program.
At the time, Vice President Dick Cheney called ElBaradei "wrong" and said he "consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. "
After the war, U.S. weapons inspection groups in Iraq determined that ElBaradei's findings had been correct.
The Egyptian soon took the offensive on other sensitive issues, criticizing the Bush administration's plans to develop so-called bunker-buster nuclear weapons.
"The U.S. government demands that other nations not possess nuclear weapons," ElBaradei said in August 2003. "Meanwhile, it is arming itself. If we do not stop applying double standards, we will end up with more nuclear weapons."
The Bush administration, meanwhile, refused to allow U.N. inspectors to return to postwar Iraq to complete their weapons searches, despite pleas from both ElBaradei and Blix. Some analysts see the administration's animus toward ElBaradei as part of a broader distrust of the United Nations.
"There are personal issues with ElBaradei, but it also is more fundamental, with the Bush administration opposed to any fundamental role for the United Nations," said Lee Feinstein, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations who was an official in the Pentagon and State departments under the Clinton administration.
One former Pentagon official in the Bush administration said the distrust extended to much of the information that came from U.N. arms inspectors when formulating strategy before and during the war.
U.N. intelligence "was generally not used," said Marc Garlasco, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who headed the Joint Chiefs of Staff's team directing high-value missile targeting. Instead, he said in an interview, U.S. war planners were focused on killing Saddam Hussein and his top aides. "Arms stashes were just not a priority," he said. "But when you're talking about potential WMD, it boggles the mind why Al Qaqaa wasn't higher on the list," he said.
Administration officials, looking to curtail the influence of the IAEA, note that the agency's 1957 charter tasks it primarily with promoting the nuclear energy industry and ensuring that uranium and plutonium are not taken out of nuclear power plants. The charter does not specifically authorize the IAEA's current role of investigating and enforcing nuclear nonproliferation accords, they say, and the IAEA should defer all weapons-related controversies to the U.N. Security Council.
"This goes to a fairly fundamental question here: whether the IAEA's board recognizes that it is not the responsible agency for the conduct of the affairs involving international peace and security, but that the Security Council is, " said John Bolton, the State Department's chief arms-control official, in a speech in September. The administration has been ratcheting up pressure on Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, and it is expected to make a big push later this month urging the IAEA to pass the issue to the Security Council for possible sanctions against Tehran's Islamic government.
"That's what we think, and that's why we've been pressing for it," Bolton said. "That's why we're going to continue to press for it in November."
E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Power Increase Is Approved for Indian Pt.
November 2, 2004
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/nyregion/02nuclear.html
WHITE PLAINS, Oct. 29 - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted permission to the owners of the Indian Point nuclear power complex to increase output at one of its reactors by 3.3 percent.
The agency, which approved the increase in capacity, or "uprate," on Thursday, based its decision on a determination that the plant could safely increase output primarily by upgrading minor components, a commission spokesman said on Friday.
The agency had published a notice about the uprate application in the Federal Register, inviting opponents of the plant to request a hearing or file a comment challenging an increase, but no one intervened, said the spokesman, Neil Sheehan.
Alex Matthiessen, the executive director of Riverkeeper, an environmental group that has sought to shut down Indian Point's two operational reactors, said he chose not to protest the application. "We didn't have the staff time to devote to it," he said Friday. "You have to pick your battles."
Safety experts have questioned the nuclear industry's use of uprates to increase capacity at existing plants. In the past two decades, total output nationally has been increased by the equivalent of three large reactors without building any new plants.
Mr. Sheehan said that since 1977, the commission had approved 101 power upgrades of between 1 and 20 percent at nuclear power plants in the United States.
They have been granted with almost no opposition, though critics contend that the uprates, on top of extensions of operating licenses, could imperil safety.
The Indian Point 2 reactor, the one that received uprate approval last week, had three unplanned shutdowns in September because of equipment malfunctions, said a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, the plant's owner.
"When you increase capacity to these plants, you are no doubt adding pressure on the existing facility," Mr. Matthiessen said.
But plant owners and regulators contend that they are modernizing in a way that improves safety.
Entergy plans to put the increase into effect after the plant's fall refueling operation, which is currently under way, Mr. Sheehan said.
The last uprate at Indian Point 2, of 1.4 percent, was in 2003; its sister reactor, Indian Point 3, received an uprate of 1.4 percent in 2002. An application to increase the capacity of Indian Point 3 by 4.85 percent is being reviewed. Indian Point 1 closed in the 1970's.
-------- us nuc waste
More WIPP Waste Breaks Rules
Albuquerque Journal
By John Fleck
November 2, 2004
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/251745nm11-02-04.htm
The Department of Energy shipped at least 602 drums of plutonium waste to New Mexico in violation of Environmental Protection Agency rules, according to documents obtained by the Journal.
As a result, federal regulators are considering a shutdown of radioactive waste shipments from Washington state to New Mexico.
The shipments, from the DOE's Hanford nuclear reservation to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, violated an EPA directive issued in August 2003. The directive said the waste should not be shipped because of questions about whether it had been properly tested.
Officials with the EPA, which has legal responsibility for environmental safety at WIPP, refused Monday to answer questions. EPA spokesman Dave Ryan issued a statement saying the agency is conducting "a full technical review" of the waste in question and gathering information to see what further action may be required.
DOE officials also refused to talk about the issue.
An internal EPA document obtained by the Journal says one option under consideration is a complete shutdown of all shipments from Hanford to WIPP.
It is the second such incident this year and the fourth since WIPP opened in 1999, a string of failures that threatens public confidence in WIPP, according to the document, an internal EPA review.
"EPA and DOE need to demonstrate that the violation is being taken seriously, and that changes will be made to ensure that it does not happen again," the EPA review concluded.
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry called the problem "mismanagement at the highest level."
Curry's department is in negotiations with DOE over a fine that could be as high as $2.4 million as a result of the most recent similar incident at WIPP.
In that incident, more than 100 drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were shipped from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory to WIPP earlier this year without proper testing.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is a mine dug 2,150 feet beneath the southeast New Mexico desert for the disposal of plutonium-contaminated nuclear weapons waste.
As the first facility of its kind, WIPP operates under rules intended to ensure that some dangerous materials- such as waste that contains explosives or is more radioactive than WIPP was designed to hold- are not inadvertently buried.
In each of the four cases, the DOE and EPA made an after-the-fact determination that no prohibited waste ended up underground, according to the EPA review.
"Although we do not believe this waste (already placed underground) will adversely affect WIPP's performance or affect protection of public health and the environment, a serious and thorough response to these problems is necessary to maintain public confidence in the WIPP's performance and EPA's oversight process," the EPA internal review concluded.
In the most recent case, Hanford had set up a testing program for the waste, but the EPA had not yet approved it as sufficient, WIPP manager Paul Detwiler wrote in an Oct. 18 letter to the EPA.
While that EPA review was under way, the environmental agency had explicitly directed DOE not to ship any of the questionable waste, according to Detwiler's letter. Detwiler admitted the mistake and promised a number of actions to try to ensure it does not happen again.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
MILITANTS
Abductors Say 3 Hostages in Afghanistan Are Separated
November 2, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/international/asia/02afghan.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 1 - Militants claiming responsibility for the kidnapping of three foreign United Nations election workers said Monday that they had separated the hostages to prevent their rescue by international and Afghan security forces.
In telephone calls to Reuters and The Associated Press, Mullah Es Haq Manzoor, a spokesman who describes himself as the military commander of the group, Jaish-e-Muslimeen, repeated his threat that the hostages would be killed if a rescue attempt was made.
"We have separated the three hostages and are keeping them far from each other so that in case one is discovered by the authorities, we have the chance to kill the other two," Reuters quoted Mr. Manzoor as saying.
An American soldier was also killed and two were wounded Monday in an attack in southeastern Afghanistan, where the United States has a base close to the Pakistani border, The A.P. reported, quoting an American military spokesman, Maj. Mark McCann.
The three hostages were abducted in Kabul on Thursday. Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, claimed responsibility very quickly and has made repeated calls to news agencies in the days since to lay out conditions.
On Sunday, the leader of the group, Akbar Agha, said the three would be killed if his demands - that United Nations and foreign military forces withdraw from Afghanistan, and that the hostages' home countries denounce the presence of the foreign troops - were not met by Wednesday.
The three hostages - a British-Irish woman, Annetta Flanigan; a Kosovo Albanian woman, Shqipe Habibi; and a Filipino diplomat working for the United Nations, Angelito Nayan - were shown on a video released to the Arab network Al Jazeera on Sunday. The three were sitting together on the floor against a wall, watched by a guard whose head and face were hidden by a checkered scarf.
Mr. Manzoor also said his group was in contact with the Afghan government and the United Nations through a businessman acting as a mediator, Reuters reported.
A government official said the first tentative leads to make contact with the hostage takers were coming together. Officials are hoping to use tribal, religious and factional contacts to try to reach the kidnappers, who are thought to be a local gang with connections inside Kabul, and who may be separate from the men making the phone calls.
-------- africa
Sudan Denies Surrounding Refugee Camps
Associated Press
By MOHAMED OSMAN
November 2, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4590617,00.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - The Sudanese army and police have surrounded several refugee camps in the war-torn region of Darfur and denied access to humanitarian groups, the United Nations said Tuesday. The Sudanese government denied its security forces closed off the camps but said angry Arab tribesmen have gathered in the area.
The U.N. World Food Program said three camps were surrounded - apparently in retaliation for the abduction of 18 Arabs by Darfur rebels - and that it was forced to pull 88 relief workers from those areas.
The WFP fears the government may start forcing people from the camps back to their home villages, where there is less protection from government-backed militias known as Janjaweed that have been attacking towns, said spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume.
The camps were cut off ``at 3 a.m. without any warning,'' she said. ``Agencies have been denied access to these camps since this morning.''
At least 160,000 refugees in western Darfur cannot be reached by road ``because of insecurity,'' Berthiaume said.
The aid workers - most working for independent aid groups - were pulled from the Golu, Zaleinge and Nertetie camps. The agency still has three employees in Zaleinge and Nertetie but may evacuate them as well, Berthiaume said.
Sudan, however, denied any army or police forces were surrounding the camps. ``There is no siege,'' Humanitarian Affairs minister Ibrahim Hamid told The Associated Press in Khartoum. ``It is not true that the government was telling organizations to pull out of the area, and the areas are not besieged.''
Hamid said that angry Arab tribesmen gathered in the area after the kidnapping of 18 of their men by Darfur rebels. ``The African Union has been alerted and they said they would bring those abducted out of the mountainous areas of Zaleinge,'' he said.
Sudan's government is accused of backing the Janjaweed in a campaign of violence - including rapes, killings and the burning of villages - to help put down a 19-month rebellion by non-Arab African groups. The government denies backing the Janjaweed.
Attacks have uprooted 1.5 million of Darfur's people, and at least 70,000 have died, mostly through disease and hunger, according to the U.N. The United Nations and aid groups have called Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The United Nations has suspended all field missions by international organizations because of the kidnapping and violence in Darfur, Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said.
``Along with other international organizations, we have had to cancel missions to the field planned for this week,'' he said.
Hamid said that rebels near Zaleinge stopped buses and lorries Thursday and Friday, forcing people of Arab origin to dismount, then took a group into the mountains. Most of those abducted were students, he said, and three managed to escape and get word to their tribes.
The Sudanese government has accused the rebel Sudan Liberation Army of the kidnappings, while rebels claimed Janjaweed ordered 30 ethnic Africans from a bus on Sunday and shot them to death.
An African Union spokesman in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, told AP in Kenya that his organization had not received any information that Sudanese army and police have surrounded the camps.
``I don't have that information from our military observers, so I can't comment on that,'' said Assane Ba.
The 53-member AU has about 80 military observers monitoring a shaky cease-fire in Darfur. It currently is beefing up its mission in Darfur, with Rwandan and Nigerian peacekeepers being flown in.
-------- arms
China's Advanced Military Missiles Take Centre Stage At Airshow
(AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04zzy.html
Zhuhai, China - Chinese military missiles took centre stage at the Zhuhai airshow Tuesday with the debut showing of some 100 weapons and aerospace products, showcasing the country's economic and military might.
It marked the first time China has openly sold missiles at the China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, the only airshow in the country and now in its fifth year, military commentators said.
"This is the first time the Chinese are displaying surface-to-surface missiles. Surface-to-surface missile technology is very sensitive in the international market," said Andrei Pinkov, who writes for Jane's Defense Weekly.
"China sold that kind of technology to Pakistan at the end of 1980s and the US opposed this," he told AFP.
"For a long time, China didn't display this kind of missile system but now they want to show the international society that they want to return to the missile market."
Pinkov said the exhibition showed China had the economic power to develop highly-advanced weapon systems.
"Russia has built a lot of things but they never complete them and when you ask them why, they always say they don't have the money to finish it. But you would never get that answer from China," he said.
"The exhibition shows they have the economic power."
The highlight of the exhibition held in Zhuhai city in southern China's Guangdong province was the B611, a short-range surface-to-surface missile weapon system with a range of 150 kilometers (about 95 miles).
Its showing would rattle leaders in Taiwan, he said.
Tensions between Taiwan and China have been growing since the re-election of President Chen Shui-bian from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party earlier this year.
China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to invade the island should it formally declare independence.
"Missiles pose a big threat to Taiwan because there are 600 missiles aiming at them and the range of this missile system means that it can cover part of the outside islands of Taiwan and so I think Taiwan is more and more sensitive on this system," he said.
Another highlight of the exhibition was a new FLG-1S missile-gun integrated weapon system, for use in modern air combat.
The missile, developed by China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, was primarily made for field air defence and can be used against low-flying helicopters, ground-attack aircraft, unmanned aircraft and sub-sonic cruise missiles.
The Chinese government-owned aerospace company was also displaying a range of short-range air defence missiles and surface-to-air missiles, as well as small civilian communications satellites.
-------- britain
Suicide theory on female soldier
The Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday November 2, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1341469,00.html
A senior military policewoman found dead in Basra and named last night by the Ministry of Defence is understood to have killed herself.
Staff Sergeant Denise Rose of the Royal Military Police's special investigation branch was found dead from a gunshot wound at the army base in the Shatt-al-Arab hotel on Sunday, the MoD said.
It added that the death was being investigated but was "not thought to have been the result of hostile action".
Staff Sgt Rose, who had been in Iraq for barely a month, was 34 and came from Liverpool. She is the first British female soldier to die in Iraq since the invasion last year.
The military police in Basra have been investigating a series of incidents involving British soldiers and Iraqi civilians, including a number which have led to fatalities.
Her death brings to 70 the number of British service personnel who have died in the Iraq conflict since the start of hostilities in March 2003. Fewer than half were the result of hostile fire. Six military policemen were killed by Iraqis near Basra last year in an incident yet to be fully explained.
Denise Rose joined the military police in 1989, and trained as an special investigator in 1995, the MoD said.
It added that she was deployed as a volunteer to Iraq on September 27, as part of a small team of specialist investigators "to provide security for the people of Iraq and assist in the rebuilding of the country through the provision of a well-trained police force".
Lt Col Robert Silk , commanding officer of her parent unit, based in Germany, described her death as a "terrible shock". He said she had "a multitude of friends, being universally popular, intelligent and ever cheerful".
-------- business
Lockheed Must Pay for Failed Dump Cleanup
Firm to Take $110 Million Charge
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17091-2004Nov1.html
Lockheed Martin Corp. said yesterday it will take a $110 million charge in the fourth quarter after losing a six-year court battle over a failed contract with the Energy Department for cleanup of a radioactive-waste dump in Idaho.
A U.S. District Court in Idaho ruled Bethesda-based Lockheed owes the government $110 million after its contract to clean up Pit 9, a one-acre site in Idaho Falls, fell years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget. The field contained 55-gallon drums filled with radioactive waste, including rags, gloves and sludge used in making nuclear weapons.
The ruling was a stinging defeat for Lockheed, which claimed it spent nearly $300 million on the cleanup, though it was paid only $54 million. Lockheed had planned to use the project as a catapult to capture billions of work in nuclear waste cleanup, according to the court decision.
Chief Judge B. Lynn Winmill said in a 100-page decision that Lockheed "had failed to progress with the work, failed to give adequate assurances that it would perform in the future, and failed to adequately explain its failure to progress, justifying the termination for default."
Lockheed said the $110 million charge includes 12 percent interest on the $54 million the company was paid and $11 million to dispose of a facility the company built to do the work. "We are extremely disappointed with the court's decision," company spokesman Thomas Jurkowsky said.
Asked if the company would appeal, spokesman Jeff Adams said, "We're still reviewing the documents."
The decision ends a nearly 10-year saga that began with a $179 million fixed-price contract in 1994 that the Energy Department expected to use as a model for hiring private companies to clean up nuclear waste dumps. The waste consisted primarily of plutonium and americium, which "posed a serious heath threat," according to the court decision. Some of it was dumped into the pit between 1967 and 1969 and came from the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado.
Lockheed fell behind schedule, claiming the field included larger pieces of nuclear waste and waste of different compositions than originally expected. In 1997, Lockheed slowed down work on the project while it attempted to negotiate a higher price. The next year the department canceled the contract as the estimated cost of completing the work tripled to $600 million and the General Accounting Office, now the Government Accountability Office, called the program "clearly a failure."
"We are pleased with the ruling," said Thomas Welch, a spokesman for the Energy Department.
-------- china
Ethnic Fighting Flares in China
Authorities Declare Martial Law in Rural Henan Province
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15032-2004Nov1.html
BEIJING, Nov. 1 -- Government authorities declared martial law in a rural section of central China's Henan province last week after four days of ethnic clashes there involving thousands of villagers left as many as a dozen people dead and many more injured, witnesses said Monday.
The fighting occurred between farmers of the country's ethnic Han majority and the Muslim Hui minority living in neighboring villages, and between members from both groups and thousands of military police sent in to restore order. The incidents appeared to be among the worst ethnic violence known to have taken place in China in recent years.
The unrest was the latest reminder of the varied tensions tearing at this vast nation as it undergoes a difficult transition from socialism to capitalism while maintaining the ruling Communist Party's rigid political system. Hundreds of police fired rubber bullets at peasants protesting land seizures in a nearby village this summer, and thousands angry about corruption participated in riots in the western city of Chongqing two weeks ago.
In another incident, police in western Sichuan province clashed with demonstrators at the site of a proposed dam Friday, beating one man to death and injuring several others, residents said. More than 50,000 villagers participated in the protests, disbanding over the weekend only after officials promised to suspend construction and discuss compensation for farmland to be flooded.
In Henan, an official at a local mosque, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ethnic violence began Wednesday after a traffic dispute involving Hui truck drivers and Han villagers in Weitan, a corn- and wheat-growing hamlet located about 400 miles southwest of Beijing outside Kaifeng, the ancient Song Dynasty capital of China.
The fighting soon spread to several nearby villages, where witnesses reached by phone described mobs looting, burning down homes and beating people in alternating raids by members of the two ethnic groups. As many as 10,000 anti-riot and military police began pouring into the area beginning Friday, but villagers clashed with them, too, swinging iron bars and throwing bricks and stones, witnesses said.
State-run media reported nothing about the unrest for their domestic audience, complying with a news blackout ordered by propaganda authorities to avoid further inflaming ethnic tensions, reporters said. But the world service of the official New China News Agency carried a brief report saying seven people were killed and 42 injured in "fighting" between Wednesday and Sunday. The report said 18 people had been arrested.
The clashes appeared to have been exacerbated by the arrival of hundreds of Muslim Hui from other parts of the country who rushed to the region to support their ethnic brethren. Military police set up checkpoints and, with the help of local imams, persuaded many of the outsiders to go home, the official at the mosque said. But residents said some eluded police and joined the clashes.
China formally recognizes 56 ethnic groups, with the Han making up over 90 percent of the country's population of 1.3 billion. Numbering about 10 million, the Hui are one of the largest minorities and consider themselves descendants of Han who converted to Islam and of intermarriages between Han and Arabs who migrated to China centuries ago.
Hui warlords were among the last rulers to put up strong resistance to the Communists before Mao Zedong took power in 1949. The government remains nervous about relations with the Hui, and outbreaks of unrest sometimes erupt after minor provocations.
The initial clash in Henan involved seven Hui truck drivers and a small group of Han villagers blocking a road, the mosque official said. He said other Han came to the defense of the villagers, beat the drivers and set fire to their trucks. The next day, the villagers stopped two buses, forced the mostly Hui passengers to disembark and set fire to the buses, he said.
Rumors spread quickly, and Han and Hui soon began launching attacks on each other's communities, residents said. Provincial officials arrived Friday with more than 2,000 military police but were unable to contain the clashes until Sunday, after thousands of reinforcements arrived.
One local journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a government source told him nearly 150 people were killed in the rampages, including several police officers, but he was unwilling to provide details and local officials denied the account. Several residents, including village doctors who treated the wounded, said they knew of only about a dozen fatalities.
The party chief of one of the Hui villages involved in the violence, who gave only his surname, Ma, said about 10 people died in the clashes. "Under the concern of upper-level officials, people in our village are calm now," he added.
But both Hui and Han residents said the atmosphere remained tense. Residents reported being ordered to cook round the clock to feed the large numbers of troops deployed to the region.
Du Pingfang, 40, a Hui doctor in Nanren village, said his neighbors remained frightened because the Han had threatened kill all Hui over the age of 3. "More than 5,000 soldiers have surrounded our village to protect us, but we're still worried that the Han will launch a surprise attack," he said.
Han residents also expressed fear, alleging that Hui were continuing to arrive in the region from across China. "Many police have been sent here to control the situation," said an elderly schoolteacher in Xilang village who fled and hid in the fields during much of the violence, "but they can't stop the Hui from coming."
--------
Ethnic strife kills seven in China
November 02, 2004
By Audra Ang
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041101-104314-9950r.htm
LANGCHENGGANG, China - Police by the thousands patrolled this central Chinese town yesterday and residents hunkered down in their homes after deadly street fights between members of the country's main ethnic group and a Muslim minority left at least seven persons dead.
Yesterday, minivans with loudspeakers strapped to their roofs drove through the dirt roads of Langchenggang and neighboring villages in Henan province, broadcasting appeals for calm.
As many as 5,000 people fought with sticks and burned several houses over the weekend in violence between Hui Muslims and members of the Han ethnic majority, according to Langchenggang residents interviewed by phone.
The fighting killed seven persons and injured 42, according to residents and the government. Langchenggang residents could not confirm a New York Times report that 148 persons, including 18 police officers, were killed.
Authorities imposed martial law on the area in Zhongmou County, near the city of Zhengzhou, residents said.
Eighteen persons were arrested, the government said late yesterday in its first official word on the fighting. The statement, carried by the Xinhua news agency, didn't mention the ethnicities of the rioters.
The government said the violence began after members of two families from separate villages fought over a traffic dispute. A spokesman for the county government said the dispute involved a collision between two farm vehicles, one driven by a Han and the other by a Hui.
Yesterday, police officers lined the roads into Langchenggang beginning 6 miles from town. They stopped cars at checkpoints and turned some away. At least four foreign reporters who visited the area were detained.
Residents sat outside shabby brick homes beside piles of drying corn and watched silently as trucks and tour buses full of police officers roared through the main road that runs through the villages.
Today's Hui are descended from ethnic Chinese who converted to Islam generations ago. Han Chinese make up more than 90 percent of China's 1.3 billion people. China has 55 officially recognized ethnic groups.
--------
Ethnic Clashes Are Confirmed by Beijing; Toll Is Unclear
November 2, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/international/asia/02china.html?pagewanted=all
BEIJING, Nov. 1 - Riots in the central Chinese province of Henan resulted in 7 deaths and 42 injuries and were quelled after authorities imposed martial law, the New China News Agency said Monday, offering the first official bulletin on unrest that began late last week.
The brief dispatch did not describe the reasons for the riots, which local residents said involved sustained clashes between Hui Muslims and Han Chinese after a traffic accident. It gave a much lower death toll than some residents reported.
One person told about an internal account of the riots, prepared for higher authorities in Beijing, that said the police had counted 148 deaths, including 18 police officers. Western news agencies reported varying death tolls, quoting local residents as saying that as many as 30 people were killed.
The police prevented access to the county of Zhengmou, situated between Kaifeng and Zhengzhou in Henan Province, where much of the violence occurred. Reporters and photographers entering the area were detained and expelled. It was difficult to reach residents because phone connections appeared to have been blocked.
The incident is the latest challenge for the authorities in a society that has become markedly prone to social unrest. A growing wealth gap and persistent corruption and backwardness in rural areas have fueled riots in the countryside and in secondary cities. Large-scale demonstrations, some violent, are no longer rare.
Ethnic violence is less common. Hui Muslims, one of the country's 56 official ethnic groups, trace their origins to Central Asia. But they resemble Han Chinese, who make up about 90 percent of the population, and are considered well integrated into Chinese society.
The details of the Henan incident remain sketchy and the number of casualties is in dispute. But it appears to have been one of the largest and most sustained ethnic clashes in many years.
The violence erupted Friday after a traffic dispute pitted mostly Han residents of one village against Hui Muslims from a neighboring village. Local residents said tempers first flared after a Hui taxi driver ran over and killed a young Han girl.
Relatives and fellow villagers of the girl descended on the Hui village to demand compensation. Fighting erupted, and scores of local peasants took up farm implements to battle one another.
As word of the confrontation spread, Han and Hui in adjoining areas joined the fray. Several reports said as many as 500 people were involved in fighting over the weekend.
Officers from the paramilitary People's Armed Police were deployed in the region and put it under martial law. Residents estimated that thousands of police officers had been deployed. The New China News Agency did not specify the number of police officers involved.
A related incident may have occurred in neighboring Qi County when the police intercepted a convoy of vehicles carrying other Hui Muslims to the area. Estimates by local residents of the number of outsiders trying to join the fray were as high as several hundred. Residents described to Western news agencies a violent standoff between the Hui outsiders and police officers who stopped the convoy, with some additional deaths.
An imam at a mosque inside the barricaded zone, who spoke by mobile phone, said that order had been restored but that Hui residents feared that local Han planned to continue fighting.
"The battles were intense and broke out in several places," the man said. "I know of several people who died in my village and of about 10 people in another village."
The most recent clash between Hui and other Chinese occurred in 2002, when a struggle broke out between Hui and Tibetans in western Qinghai Province. A large number of injuries were reported, but like many such incidents the matter was ignored or played down by the state-controlled media.
-------- europe
Germany names 100 army bases to close
BERLIN (AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041102130942.1rq0qnl9.html
German Defence Minister Peter Struck on Tuesday named more than one hundred military bases that are to close across the country in a wide-ranging overhaul of the armed forces.
Nine bases with more than 1,000 personnel and 28 bases with between 500 and 1,000 staff would be axed, Struck said. More than half of the total 105 bases to close are smaller, with up to 100 personnel.
The overwhelming majority of the bases are in the western states of the country.
"The plan for the changes in bases will begin immediately and be completed by 2010 at the latest," Struck told the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
The closures are designed to save 26 billion euros (33 billion dollars) by 2010 and will see the army's strength reduced from its current level of 285,000 soldiers to 250,000 over the same period.
Struck said that in the post-Cold War era, the German army's deployment in overseas missions required different organisational structures.
-------- iraq
Oil Pipeline Blown Up in Iraq; Violence Kills at Least 12
November 2, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/international/middleeast/02cnd-iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 2 - Insurgents blew up a northern oil export pipeline today, dealing a severe blow to the national economy, even as car bombs and gun battles across the country left at least 12 Iraqis dead, Iraqi officials said.
The sabotage of the northern oil pipeline forced a shutdown of crude oil exports to a port in Turkey, Iraqi officials said. The pipeline pumps out 400,000 barrels a day of crude oil and is the frequent target of sabotage. Hours after the explosion, firefighters were still battling a pipeline blaze near the city of Kirkuk, where pipelines run from oil fields west to the country's largest refinery in Bayji and north to Turkey.
The attacks on oil pipelines, both near Kirkuk and around Basra in the south, where the oil fields are much more extensive, have had a devastating effect on the national economy. An Iraqi oil official in Baghdad told The Associated Press that the amount of crude oil in storage at the port of Ceyhan in Turkey was down to four million barrels, half of the port's eight-million-barrel storage capacity. American and Iraqi officials are relying on steady oil exports to help revive the stagnant economy in a country where the unemployment rate hovers at 60 percent.
In the morning, insurgents drove a car bomb up to the Ministry of Education headquarters in northwestern Baghdad, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more, said Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman, an Interior Ministry spokesman. The blast took place in the neighborhood of Adhamiya, a Sunni-dominated area generally hostile to the Americans.
People at the scene said two ministry guards in the parking lot, a father and his son, died immediately in the blast. Iraqi police and National Guardsmen began blocking off the area as crowds gathered. Ambulances rushed the wounded over to nearby Numan Hospital.
There, a policeman stood outside the emergency room, his light-blue uniform drenched in blood. He gave his name as Ahmed and said he had brought three of his friends here. Two had died already, he said, and the third was in intensive care.
In the volatile northern city of Mosul, a car bomb aimed at a military convoy near the police academy killed one person and injured at least seven security officers, hospital officials said. The target appeared to be Maj. Gen. Rashid Flayeh, the commander of a special Iraqi security force who had just arrived in the city days ago to assist the local police. He emerged unscathed from the blast, police officials said.
At 1 p.m., another car bomb exploded by a convoy of Iraqi National Guardsmen, killing two civilians and injuring seven others, hospital officials said. Armed clashes in the Al Widha neighborhood between insurgents and Iraqi guardsmen left three civilians dead, the officials said.
The latest attacks came about halfway through the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, a popular time for suicide attacks by insurgents. The number of attacks a day has spiked by 30 percent, and suicide car bombs appear to be an increasingly common weapon, American military officials say. Even before Ramadan began, insurgents had already stepped up the use of such bombs; at least 40 exploded across Iraq in September alone, the highest of any month until then.
Since last April, when a two-front uprising convulsed the country, American-led forces have been unable to dampen what appears to be a growing insurgency, much of it led by disenfranchised Sunni Arabs ousted from power with the toppling of Saddam Hussein. In recent weeks, American military officials have been gathering their troops for a planned invasion of the insurgent stronghold of Falluja, 35 miles west of the capital, in the hopes that crushing that sanctuary will break the back of the guerillas. Thousands of insurgents are believed to have dug into positions in Falluja, and a battle for control of the city could turn out to be the bloodiest since the invasion of Iraq itself.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has said he is ready to call for a sweeping offensive in order to bring Falluja under control before elections scheduled for January. President Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, a leader of one of the largest Sunni tribes in the country, said in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper on Monday that he absolutely opposed any military action. The break between the two strong-willed men suggests there could be enormous political fallout in the country if an invasion led by the American marines were to go forward.
Marines are now engaged in some of the most intense urban combat in the country in the provincial capital of Ramadi, just 30 miles west of Falluja. There, insurgents have been ambushing marine convoys that race daily through the downtown area. On Monday, a freelance cameraman working for Reuters, Dhia Najim, was shot in the head while covering fighting and killed.
The American military released a statement on Tuesday saying Mr. Najim was killed during a battle between marines and insurgents.
"Marines from the 1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force engaged several insurgents in a brief small arms firefight that killed an individual who was carrying a video camera earlier Monday morning," the military said.
Military officials said in interviews that the cameraman was killed by the marines as they took fire from the insurgents. One official said marines had inspected Mr. Najim's camera after the battle and found footage that showed insurgents attacking convoys. By Tuesday night, the Marines Corps had opened an investigation, the official said.
"We did kill him," he said. "He was out with the bad guys. He was there with them, they attacked and we fired back and hit him."
Reuters reported that its global managing editor, David Schlesinger, was strongly urging the American military to conduct a proper investigation and was dissatisfied with the statement put out by the Marines.
"We reject the clear implication in the Marines' statement that Dhia was part of an insurgent group," Mr. Schlesinger said.
Mr. Najim's death brought to 36 the number of journalists who have been killed in this war, at least eight by American fire, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York. Nineteen have died from insurgent actions. The rate of death for reporters here is the highest of any conflict in recent memory.
Late Tuesday, a spokesman for Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite network, told The Associated Press that the network had received a videotape of Margaret Hassan, the British-Iraqi aid worker who was kidnapped at gunpoint last month. The network was not showing the tape because it was too intense, the spokesman said. The Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, told the Irish parliament that he had read a text of the video and that it appeared "distressing."
As in two previous videos, Ms. Hassan, 59, was shown pleading for her life before fainting, he said, according to the Press Association, a British news agency. A bucket of water is then thrown over her head, and she gets up and begins crying. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction of Ms. Hassan, who is a long-time resident of Iraq and directs the Baghdad office of CARE International.
News agencies reported Tuesday that two Iraqi guards kidnapped from an office on Monday in the affluent Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour were released. Still missing are an unidentified American, a Nepalese and two other Iraqi guards, said Col. Abdul-Rahman, the Interior Ministry spokesman. The two Iraqi guards who were released were from the Falluja area, The Associated Press reported.
The foreigners work for the Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Company, a food supply company that has been operating in Iraq for about a year. More than 160 foreigners have been kidnapped this year in Iraq, most by bandits seeking ransom. More than 30 have been killed, some in grisly videotaped beheadings posted on the Internet.
The militant group led by Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted such a video on Tuesday showing the decapitation of Shosei Koda, a 24-year-old Japanese backpacker whose body was discovered in Baghdad on Saturday. Mr. Koda's body was wrapped in an American flag, and the video showed insurgents shoving him down on that flag and slicing off his head. In a separate Internet statement, the group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, said the Japanese government had offered a ransom of "millions of dollars" but had refused to withdraw its 550 troops in Iraq, prompting the group to kill Mr. Koda.
Also on Tuesday, a supervisor in the Iraqi electoral commission, Adel al-Lami, said voter registration lists had been distributed on Monday in parts of several cities, including Baghdad, Amara and Basra. Though Monday was the first day that Iraqis collecting their food rations could receive their voter registration lists, the distribution of such lists apparently did not take place at all 540 or so food centers around the country, Mr. Lami said. The commission still has until the end of November to complete its voter registration rolls.
Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Ramadi, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Mosul.
--------
Gunmen kidnap six in Baghdad
November 02, 2004
By Mariam Fam
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041101-104308-1926r.htm
BAGHDAD - Gunmen stormed the compound of a Saudi company in a fashionable Baghdad neighborhood yesterday, seizing an American, a Nepalese and four Iraqis after a gunbattle in which a guard and one of the assailants were killed, police said.
The American, who was not identified, was the 12th U.S. citizen reported kidnapped or missing in Iraq. He was grabbed about 500 yards from the house where two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped last month. All three were beheaded.
The dramatic abduction occurred two days after the decapitated body of Japanese backpacker Shosei Koda was found in western Baghdad. The al Qaeda-affiliated movement of Abu Musab Zarqawi claimed responsibility for his kidnapping.
Elsewhere, gunmen assassinated the deputy governor of Baghdad, while to the west of the capital U.S. troops clashed with Sunni insurgents in Ramadi, killing an Iraqi freelance television camera operator. American artillery pounded suspected insurgent positions in Fallujah, and residents reported fresh air and artillery attacks there late yesterday.
A few Iraqis showed up for the first day of voter registration in central Baghdad. They refused to allow TV cameras to videotape them, for fear of retaliation.
Police Lt. Col. Maan Khalaf said the heavily armed kidnappers arrived in three cars around iftar, the traditional sunset meal that Muslims eat to break their daily fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
The kidnappers stormed the two-story house, which is surrounded by an outer wall with iron bars, in a hail of gunfire, and forced the victims to leave with them. There were conflicting reports on the number taken, but Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said they were one American, a Nepalese and four Iraqis.
More than 160 foreigners have been abducted this year by militants with political demands or by criminals seeking ransom. At least 33 captives have been killed - several of them by Zarqawi's group, which is believed to have headquarters in Fallujah.
Early yesterday, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying Baghdad province's deputy governor, Hatim Kamil, killing him and wounding his two bodyguards, officials said. A militant group, the Ansar al-Sunnah army, claimed responsibility for the attack in southeastern Baghdad.
Heavy clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents continued in Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold 70 miles west of Baghdad. A bomb Sunday killed one Marine and wounded four there, the military said.
Yesterday, a woman was killed and her two children injured, hospital officials in Ramadi said. Also killed was an Iraqi freelance television cameraman, Diaa Najm, who provided material to Associated Press Television News - believed to be the 24th journalist killed in Iraq this year.
The latest violence occurred as American troops gear up for a major offensive against Fallujah, located about 40 miles west of the capital. It is the strongest bastion of Sunni insurgents.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Shi'ite Muslim, faces strong opposition to such an attack within the Sunni minority. In an interview to the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas, interim President Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, a Sunni, said he disagreed "with those who believe a military attack is necessary."
"The way the coalition is managing the crisis is wrong," Mr. al-Yawer said. "It is as if someone shot his horse in the head to kill a fly that landed on it. The fly flies away and the horse dies."
Mr. Allawi has given no deadline for an attack on Fallujah but has insisted that the city hand over foreign fighters and permit government forces to assume responsibility for law and order.
-------- israel / palestine
Suicide bomber kills three, injures 32
November 02, 2004
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041101-104315-9337r.htm
TEL AVIV - An explosion triggered by a Palestinian suicide bomber struck a bustling outdoor market in central Tel Aviv yesterday morning, leaving four dead - three Israelis and the bomber - and 32 injured.
The attack worsened fears of instability and increased violence that have followed news of the mysterious illness of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who condemned the bombing from his hospital bed in Paris.
The explosion occurred at about 11:15 a.m. at the entrance to Shamai Cheeses, a popular shop in the Carmel Market, an open-air strip of fruit and vegetable stalls, butchers and discount apparel retailers.
The blast overturned produce counters, splattered blood on storefronts across the narrow walkway and shattered the glass sign of a nearby stall selling fresh Middle Eastern salads.
"I was cutting a schnitzel, and then lifted my head and saw the explosion," said Avi Chayo, a 28 year-old butcher who described seeing a fireball. "Everything was filled with smoke. And there was one person with a leg nearly severed."
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack, the first suicide bombing in central Tel Aviv in nearly a year and a half. The bomber was identified as 16-year-old Amar al Faer, from a refugee camp near Nablus.
Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said he had received a cell-phone call from Paris in which Mr. Arafat's wife, Suha, relayed a statement from Mr. Arafat appealing to all Palestinian factions "to commit to avoid harming all Israeli civilians," the Associated Press reported.
Mr. Arafat took the phone from his wife and asked Mr. Abu Rdeneh to make sure the statement was circulated, the spokesman said. Mr. Arafat also urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "to take similar initiatives to avoid harming Palestinian civilians," he said.
Mr. Sharon, however, said Israel would not ease up in its war on terrorists.
"The attack proves that nothing has changed in the Palestinian Authority," he said. "Until serious steps are taken to wipe out terror ... Israel will continue with its policy."
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia also condemned the bombing, expressing confidence that Israel would not rescind a promise to allow Mr. Arafat to return to Ramallah.
Mr. Arafat's hospitalization last week spurred speculation about the fallout of his absence on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Just Sunday, the chief of Israel's military intelligence suggested his departure could bring an end to four years of daily violence.
Analysts doubted yesterday that militants could have timed the attack to coincide with Mr. Arafat's absence, saying such bombings take weeks to plan and carry out.
Over the last decade, Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehuda open-air market has been attacked several times, but the Tel Aviv counterpart has remained untouched.
The Tel Aviv market is a melting pot of Israeli society, drawing shoppers from Israel's blue-collar and upper-middle classes, as well as migrant workers. Israeli Arabs own produce stands, while dozens of Palestinians without Israeli work permits earn money there covertly.
"There's nothing like this market. The people who work here are genuine," said Ronen Gil, a 37-year old butcher. "I saw an Arab evacuating the wounded. You can't tell who's Arab and who's Jewish here."
--------
Palestinians Killed by Israelis at 21/2-Year High
November 2, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/international/middleeast/02toll.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Nov. 1 - The Israeli Army killed more Palestinians in October than in any month since the height of open warfare in April 2002, when Israelis moved through the West Bank and fought Palestinian security forces and militants.
The army killed 165 Palestinians in October, 159 of them in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. In Gaza, Israeli forces were trying to stop the shelling of Israeli towns in what was the largest Israeli military operation there in four years. There was heavy fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the narrow, crowded alleys of the Jabaliya refugee camp, and a number of the dead were senior members of militant groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
According to an inquiry by Haaretz, 50 of the 165 dead, or just over 30 percent, were civilians, including women, children, the elderly and males under 16.
Other calculations of the total number of Palestinian dead are slightly different, but all reflect the largest death toll since April 2002. The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group says that 148 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in October and that 5 died from Palestinian retribution. The Palestinian Red Crescent says 142 Palestinians died.
In the Gaza operation itself, at least 115 Palestinians were killed, and 39 percent (45 people) were civilians, according to Haaretz's calculations. More than 90 homes, said by the army to have been used to launch rockets or harbor militants, were destroyed.
In a second part of that operation last week, around the Khan Yunis refugee camp, 17 more Palestinians were killed and 50 were injured. Three of the Khan Yunis dead were girls under age 12.
Near Rafah, a schoolgirl, 13, was shot numerous times as she approached an Israeli military outpost and refused to stop. The soldiers said they feared that her schoolbag contained a bomb. The commander of the unit is expected to face court-martial.
-------- nato
Iraqi PM to hold talks with NATO
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Nov 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041102134254.c3waormp.html
Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is to visit NATO headquarters during a trip to Brussels later this week, when he is already scheduled to have lunch with EU leaders, an Alliance source said Tuesday.
Allawi will hold talks Friday with leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is helping the interim Iraqi government to train its security forces.
Allawi will address the North Atlantic Council (NAC), the 26-member Alliance's top decision-making body, said the official, who gave no more details about the expected agenda.
The meeting will occur Friday morning, shortly before Allawi is due to lunch with European Union (EU) chiefs holding a summit.
NATO agreed to send a military training mission to Iraq in principle in June, but struggled for several months to agree the details. It is now rushing to deploy up to 400 instructors in the country ahead of January elections.
-------- us
SEAL says CIA abused prisoner
November 02, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041101-110104-6952r.htm
SAN DIEGO - The CIA interrogated and roughed up Iraqi prisoners in a "romper room" where a handcuffed and hooded terror suspect was kicked, slapped and punched shortly before he died last year at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, a Navy SEAL testified yesterday.
Blood was visible on the hood worn by the prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, as he was led into the interrogation room at Baghdad International Airport last November, the Navy commando said at a military pretrial hearing for another SEAL accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners.
Testifying under a grant of immunity, the witness, identified only by his rank as a hospital corpsman, said he kicked al-Jamadi several times, slapped him in the back of the head and punched him. Five or six other CIA personnel in the room laid hands on the prisoner, he said, but he did not provide details.
Sometime later, al-Jamadi was found dead in a shower room at Abu Ghraib less than an hour after two CIA personnel brought him there as a "ghost detainee," according to Army Maj. Gen. George R. Fay's report on the notorious prison. Such detainees were not listed in the normal roster of military prisoners.
The testimony about the CIA's role came during a hearing for an aviation boatswain's mate who is accused of punching al-Jamadi, posing in humiliating photos with the prisoner, and abusing other prisoners.
An Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a civilian grand jury, was held to determine whether the boatswain's mate should be court-martialed.
The hearing concluded yesterday. An investigating officer will recommend what charges, if any, the boatswain's mate should face.
--------
Marines in Iraq want better gear, exit strategy
The Associated Press
November 2, 2004
http://www.amarillo.com/stories/110204/usn_501117.shtml
NEAR FALLUJAH, IRAQ - As Americans head to the polls, U.S. Marines squaring off against Iraqi insurgents say they expect trouble in Iraq for years no matter who wins the White House. What they want is better equipment, more pay and a clear exit strategy from their next commander in chief.
Many Marines fighting in Iraq's Sunni Triangle don't talk much about the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry. For them, the focus is on staying alive and following orders that they don't expect to change: Defeat the insurgency and help rebuild Iraq.
But what really concerns them is the prospect of an open-ended mission lacking a final benchmark for victory.
"We obviously can't just leave Iraq now and waste all of the good work the Marines have done here," said Hospital Corpsman Quinton Brown, a 24-year-old Chicagoan attached to the 1st Marine Division.
"Regardless, I want to see the next president give us an idea how we're going to end the occupation," he added. "What are we doing while we're here? What's next? Bush has done that to some degree. But we need more."
Marines based in the dangerous areas west and north of Baghdad are preparing for a possible big offensive against insurgent strongholds if they get the go-ahead from interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who has warned he is losing patience with negotiations.
But Marine officers caution that even if U.S. forces overrun the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, they don't expect the insurgency to evaporate. And troops on the ground say they've heard nothing from either Bush or Kerry indicating Marines will soon leave Iraq.
"It doesn't matter who the president is. Our role should be less and less here - the Iraqis want to do it themselves. But we'll be here for at least the next four years," said Lance Cpl. Charles Revord, 24, of National City, Mich.
With violence expected to intensify ahead of Iraqi elections planned for January as a crucial step in the effort to stabilize the country and entrench democracy, Marines say they need better equipment, particularly well-armored Humvees.
"I hope the Marine Corps gets more funding, for better weapons, better gear and better Humvees," said Lance Cpl. Jonathan Sandoval.
-----
National Guard recruit goals fall short
Associated Press
By James Hannah
November 2, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/11/02/national_guard_recruit_goals_fall_short/
DAYTON, Ohio -- Free hunting and fishing licenses. More chances to get signing bonuses. Pink T-shirts for women.
The Army National Guard, which has fallen short of recruiting goals during the prolonged fighting in Iraq, is trying new marketing beyond the traditional enticement of college tuition aid. "There are fewer people who are voluntarily expressing an interest -- calling or returning postcards," said Lt. Col. Dan Kenkel, spokesman for the Guard in Nebraska.
Nationally, the Army Guard reached 88 percent of its goal of 56,000 recruits by the end of September, signing up 49,210.
"Recruiting is tougher than it's been in awhile," said James Sims, spokesman for the Ohio Guard, which is about 500 off its target of 2,100 recruits.
Guard officials around the country blame concerns about the Iraq war, Pentagon orders that keep some soldiers from leaving active duty and going into the Guard, and turnover among recruiters, some of whom have been sent overseas.
Of the 100,000 Army Guard members sent to Iraq, about 110 have died.
In the past, young people saw enlisting as a way to get college tuition with little risk to themselves, said Lt. Col. Greg Hapgood, spokesman for the Iowa National Guard. "Today, that risk has changed," he said.
The pink T-shirt bearing the words "Soldier Girl" was designed by Sgt. Stacey Weston, a recruiter in Indiana, to get the attention of potential recruits. She said the Guard quickly ran out of the first order of 800 shirts.
"A lot of young ladies are under the impression they can't be feminine if they join the military," Weston said. "I wanted to dispel that myth."
The Nebraska Guard was 87 soldiers short of its goal of 519 recruits. It is plastering several Dodge Stratuses with its decals and logos in hopes of catching the eye of potential recruits.
Ohio has used Hummers -- with oversized tires, televisions and booming sound systems -- for the past few years to draw a crowd. The Guard also plans to increase the number of recruiters from 81 to 106.
The number of job-skill categories that pay signing bonuses of $3,000 to $8,000 -- such as driving heavy equipment -- will be upped from 19 to 30 in the Kansas Army Guard. And thanks to the Legislature, its members will be eligible for free fishing and hunting licenses and passes to state parks beginning in January.
Recruiter Lt. Col. Jane Harris said there is no way to tell how many recruits have been influenced by the new marketing.
Some potential recruits said they were still drawn mainly to the promise of college aid. The benefit ranges from full tuition reimbursement to aid of up to $4,500 a year to loan repayments.
Ted Trautman, 20, of Minneapolis, considered joining for the tuition benefits, but decided against it because he didn't want to fight in a war that might not be justified. Now a sophomore at Wittenberg University, he said none of the new incentives would have changed his mind.
Paul Meyers, 21, of Hilliard, noticed television ads that showed Guard members having fun and serving their country at the same time. An appeal to his patriotic duty was a factor in his decision to join the Guard, but tuition assistance was the main reason.
"Hopefully, I won't get deployed, but if I do, it happens," Meyers said.
The Air Guard was slightly more successful in recruiting, signing up 93 percent of its goal of 8,842.
Scott Woodham, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, said the Air Guard is smaller and may have benefited from not having to recruit as many new members. It deploys overseas for three months at a time as opposed to one-year stints for the Army Guard.
In Iowa, where this year's 1,073 Army Guard recruits fell short of the usual 1,200, recruiters are shifting their focus to a slightly older target group -- age 19 to 21 -- because it seems a little more responsive to a patriotic appeal.
The Guard is handing out pens, key chains and posters bearing the American flag or with red, white and blue themes.
Guard Bureau spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Jones said that while such trinkets may not seem like much of an incentive to join, they can make potential recruits feel appreciated.
The Guard is also promoting local soldiers as role models, and members are appearing at more festivals and parades.
"That's marketing," Hapgood said. "That about people saying, 'There's my neighbor, and I didn't know he wore a uniform.'"
-------- war crimes
Milosevic Is Allowed To Defend Himself
By Toby Sterling
Associated Press
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17068-2004Nov1.html
THE HAGUE, Nov. 1 -- Appeals judges at the U.N. war crimes tribunal ruled Monday that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic will regain the right to defend himself, but said he must accept a standby attorney in case he becomes ill.
The written ruling by the five-judge panel reversed a decision by trial judges to impose a court-appointed attorney on Milosevic. "When he is physically capable of doing so, Milosevic will take the lead in his case," the appeals panel said.
But the ruling said an appointed attorney must remain on standby if Milosevic's "health problems resurface with sufficient gravity."
Milosevic is charged with war crimes and genocide in connection with the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and the Serbian province of Kosovo during the 1990s.
He defended himself during the first 2 1/2 years of his trial. But persistent health problems -- he was often ill with the flu or suffered symptoms of high blood pressure -- caused frequent postponements of courtroom sessions. In September, the trial judges, citing Milosevic's deteriorating health, appointed British lawyer Steven Kay to defend him, a move that Milosevic protested. But the system proved all but unworkable when Milosevic refused to speak to Kay or participate in the proceedings.
Kay could only find four defense witnesses willing to testify. Almost all of Milosevic's other scheduled witnesses refused to come to The Hague unless the former president was allowed to defend himself.
In October, Kay asked to quit, saying it was impossible to defend a hostile client. People were "kidding themselves, making believe that what is happening here is a proper defense," Kay told appeals judges.
Prosecutors had argued that Milosevic's politicized statements showed he was unfit to act as his own counsel and that his reappointment would lead to more delays because of his ill health.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts / tribunals
Experts denied chance to testify at military trial
November 02, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041101-110112-7151r.htm
U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - The three-member panel of military officers overseeing the tribunal of Australian terror suspect David M. Hicks yesterday denied a defense-team motion to allow six experts on military and international law to testify.
Army Col. Peter E. Brownback, the officer in charge of the panel, left open the possibility that legal experts may be called to testify, but only after being allowed on an individual and issue-by-issue basis as the case proceeds.
The ruling came as the panel opened hearings on dozens of pretrial motions filed in the case of Mr. Hicks, a suspected al Qaeda member detained in Afghanistan in November 2001 and charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes. His trial is scheduled to open next month.
Mr. Hicks is one of four terror suspects to be charged in the tribunals - called military "commissions" by the Bush administration - which have not been used by the United States since the end of World War II to try and execute a group of Nazi saboteurs arrested in New York.
Civilian and Pentagon-appointed lawyers for Mr. Hicks had sought permission to use testimony from several law professors and a former judge in the international trials of Yugoslavian war-crimes suspects to clear up confusion over which laws will be applicable in the Hicks trial.
"There's no book out there on military commissions because there just haven't been any in such a long time," argued Marine Maj. Michael Mori, one of Mr. Hicks' lawyers.
With the motion denied, military prosecutors argued in favor of going a step further by excluding all legal specialists from testifying on grounds that allowing them would delay the trial and "create a legal sideshow" over the meaning of law.
The panel presiding over the case denied the claim, saying the issue of whether to allow any experts will be decided on an individual basis.
Mr. Hicks, 29, whom military officials have said has spent extended periods of time in solitary confinement during his detention, appeared calm in court yesterday. He wore a blue-gray suit.
Officials said he was allowed a brief visit with his half-sister, Stephanie, who traveled here to watch yesterday's proceeding.
Like the majority of the approximately 550 terrorism suspects held here, the four men charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes were arrested during the 2001 campaign to topple the al Qaeda-supporting Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
In addition to Mr. Hicks, the three others charged here are Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 34, of Yemen; Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, 33, also of Yemen; and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, 44, of Sudan.
The tribunals for the four first opened in August, when defense lawyers challenged the qualifications and impartiality of a six-member, Pentagon-appointed panel chosen to rule on the cases.
In the Hicks and the Hamdan cases, the Pentagon responded by dumping three of the officers, Air Force Lt. Col. Timothy Toomey, Marine Col. R. Thomas Bright, and Army Lt. Col. Curt Cooper, from the panel.
Col. Bright previously oversaw the transfer of prisoners such as Mr. Hicks and Mr. Hamdan from Afghanistan to Guantanamo, and Col. Toomey had served as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan. Col. Cooper was dropped for having called the prisoners "terrorists."
Mr. Hicks' defense team argued yesterday that it would be unfair if his case is allowed to proceed with only three members left on the panel and no alternate. Col. Brownback and the other remaining panel members, Air Force Col. Christopher Bogdan and Marine Col. Jack Sparks Jr., did not rule on the matter yesterday.
--------
Rehnquist's Illness Forces Absence
Chief Justice's Treatment Suggests Thyroid Cancer at Its Most Serious
By Shankar Vedantam and Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15459-2004Nov1?language=printer
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist did not appear as planned at Supreme Court oral arguments yesterday, announcing that his pledge to do so after receiving a cancer-related tracheotomy 10 days ago was "too optimistic," and that he would remain at home while receiving radiation and chemotherapy treatment.
Rehnquist's first public comment since the court announced Oct. 25 that he had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer offered circumstantial evidence that he has the most serious form of the disease, several experts said yesterday.
"This adds up to something very bleak," said David Cooper, director of the Thyroid Clinic at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "That's very, very bad news."
The news about Rehnquist's condition came on the eve of a close election between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). If Rehnquist were to leave the court for any reason before Jan. 20, Bush could nominate a replacement no matter who wins today's election.
Meanwhile, the court faces a full caseload, and Rehnquist's absence from oral arguments was the first public confirmation that his illness had affected the functioning of the court.
Justice John Paul Stevens presided in the chief justice's absence, announcing that Rehnquist "reserved the right" to vote in the cases he missed based on the briefs and transcripts of the arguments.
Rehnquist, 80, said in his statement that he is working on court business at home, including some opinions in cases that have already been argued.
But Leonard Wartofsky, chairman of the department of medicine at the Washington Hospital Center, was skeptical that Rehnquist will be able to read, write and make decisions normally. "With those therapies, he is going to feel lousy," Wartofsky said. "His ability to eat, drink, speak and breathe are all in that area of the neck."
Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg declined to comment.
A diagnosis of anaplastic thyroid cancer, the most serious of four forms of the disease, would account for Rehnquist's situation, several experts on thyroid cancer said yesterday. And no other diagnosis would adequately explain his doctors' treatment decisions, the experts said.
Rehnquist's doctors' approach, in sharp contrast to techniques usually used for milder cancers, suggested the physicians were throwing everything they had at the illness, the experts said.
"The growth rate of anaplastic leaves you a short window of time to operate, so you have to kill as many cancer cells [as possible] in a short time," said James Fagin, director of the division of endocrinology at the University of Cincinnati. "That's why you use combination treatment." Removing the thyroid -- a common treatment for patients with the other forms of thyroid cancer -- is not normally done in patients with this form because it spreads so rapidly.
"For anaplastic cancer, almost nothing works," Wartofsky said. "Radiation and chemotherapy are tried sometimes to slow the cancer and buy some time. . . . All thyroid cancers are a little more common in women than men, but men do worse."
None of the experts interviewed yesterday is part of Rehnquist's medical team. None has information beyond the facts that have been made available by the Supreme Court.
But Wartofsky, Cooper and Fagin said no other diagnosis could account for the known facts of Rehnquist's case. Steven I. Sherman, chair of the department of endocrine neoplasia at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said anaplastic cancer is "likely" but other explanations could not yet be conclusively ruled out.
Anaplastic thyroid cancer kills patients on average within six months. Looked at another way, 90 percent of patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer die within a year, Sherman said. Wartofsky said that in 35 years of treating thyroid cancer he had seen only two patients survive the anaplastic form.
"I have had patients where you can mark on the skin with a pen the edge of the tumor and watch it grow day by day -- it is that fast," Sherman said.
Wartofsky, Cooper and Fagin said the evidence pointed toward anaplastic thyroid cancer because of the clear differences between types of thyroid cancer and the differences in treating them.
Thyroid cancer comes in four forms, Wartofsky said. Papillary cancer accounts for about 80 percent of all thyroid cancers, but it is more common among younger people and is easily curable. Follicular thyroid cancer affects 10 to 12 percent of thyroid cancer patients and strikes patients in their twenties to their sixties. It is also highly curable. For both these cancers, doctors remove the thyroid gland and administer patients with radioactive iodine -- any remaining thyroid cells selectively absorb iodine, making the treatment highly effective.
Medullary thyroid cancer, the third form, has a strong genetic basis, Wartofsky said. Although it can affect patients of all ages, it accounts for only 3 to 4 percent of cases. The survival rate is around 50 percent, Wartofsky said. Surgical removal of the thyroid is often the first line of treatment. While doctors might use radiation for this cancer, the combination of radiation and chemotherapy pointed to anaplastic thyroid cancer, Fagin said.
Anaplastic thyroid cancer primarily strikes the elderly, Wartofsky said, and rapidly affects other tissues. Patients often come into treatment complaining of hoarseness -- as Rehnquist did -- after the cancer attacks nerves that control the vocal cords. It also can affect the windpipe, making it necessary for doctors to open a new airway. The cancer's rapid spread to other tissues renders both surgery and radioactive iodine less effective.
The fact that Rehnquist has had a tracheotomy, without any official confirmation that doctors removed any of his thyroid, is strongly suggestive that he has anaplastic cancer, outside medical experts said.
"To suddenly go to a tracheotomy without a thyroidectomy would most likely be anaplastic cancer," said Cooper, who also directs the division of endocrinology at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.
Even if doctors had removed Rehnquist's thyroid without announcing it, they would be unlikely to start radiation treatment so soon, Cooper said. Besides, Rehnquist had initially announced he would be back at work yesterday, and Cooper said a thyroidectomy would have ruled out such a quick return.
One other rare cancer that usually affects the lymph nodes could theoretically explain Rehnquist's symptoms, Cooper said. But although it would explain why doctors did not remove Rehnquist's thyroid, Fagin said, "thyroid lymphoma does not fit the bill because radiation therapy would not be part of the picture."
--------
Hollinger Reveals Details of Suit
Washington Post
By David S. Hilzenrath
November 2, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17088-2004Nov1?language=printer
Hollinger International Inc., publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers, is seeking damages of as much as $17.2 million plus recovery of $5.4 million of compensation from director and former Pentagon official Richard N. Perle.
The company announced late Friday that it was adding Perle as a defendant in a lawsuit that alleges former chief executive Conrad M. Black and chief operating officer F. David Radler looted Hollinger of hundreds of millions of dollars. A copy of the lawsuit, including the details of the claims against Perle, became available yesterday when Hollinger included it in a regulatory filing. It accuses Perle of failing to protect the company's shareholders while he was a member, with Black and Radler, of the board's executive committee.
"It's ludicrous," Perle said in an interview last night, adding that it was awkward for him to respond to the lawsuit because he had not yet seen it.
Perle, an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, was chairman of a Pentagon advisory board from 2001 to 2003. He has served on the boards of several corporations and has advised others.
At Hollinger, Perle had multiple roles. He joined the board in 1994, was paid $250,000 plus a $50,000 annual bonus to head a subsidiary that invested in Internet companies, and received an additional $3.1 million in incentive payments from the subsidiary, the suit said.
"Because he was receiving millions of dollars in compensation from Hollinger at Black's and Radler's discretion, Perle had a motive to rubber-stamp transactions Black and Radler proposed, and Perle did so, despite his duty to Hollinger's shareholders," the suit alleged.
Black and Radler have denounced the allegations made by a special committee of Hollinger's board of directors, and Black recently won dismissal of claims the company had brought under racketeering law. Black last month sued members of the special committee for defamation.
In addition to recovering Perle's compensation, Hollinger is seeking to hold Perle jointly liable, with Black and Radler, for damages it said it suffered as a result of actions of the executive committee. The suit accuses Perle of improperly approving a loan to Black's holding company as well as a reduction in the interest rate on a loan to the holding company. It also accuses him of signing consent forms for transactions through which Black and Radler allegedly enriched themselves.
"I didn't benefit from any of the transactions that they're talking about," Perle said.
In a statement, a holding company for Black and Radler said Hollinger "continues to attack transactions that were explicitly approved by its Board of Directors."
-------- drug war
Canadian Government Tries Anew to Decriminalize Marijuana
Reuters
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17069-2004Nov1.html
OTTAWA, Nov. 1 -- Canada's Liberal Party government reintroduced legislation Monday to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana, drawing criticism that this could prompt a clampdown at the U.S. border.
The bill would replace criminal sanctions with fines for small amounts, up to 15 grams or about half an ounce, with youths subject to smaller fines than adults.
Vic Toews, a member of Parliament from the opposition Conservative Party, voiced fears that the legislation could end up jeopardizing the world's richest trading relationship, valued at more than $1 billion a day.
"We know that the Americans are very opposed to this bill," he told reporters in the lobby outside the House of Commons. "How does this government guarantee us that there won't be retaliatory action by the Americans?" U.S. drug enforcement officials have warned that the relaxed laws could mean a surge in smuggling of potent Canadian marijuana -- a business already worth about $4 billion in the Pacific province of British Columbia.
Opponents in both countries have also warned that such a change could lead to longer lines at the border if the United States tightens security further.
Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said he did not want young users to have criminal records, which could hurt their job prospects and block entry into the United States.
Similar legislation was scuttled by the June federal election, which automatically killed all outstanding bills.
Canadian police had also warned that before decriminalizing the drug, authorities needed to develop reliable tests for marijuana-impaired driving.
To that end, Cotler reintroduced a separate bill Monday on drug-impaired driving, a measure that would grant police the authority to force suspects to submit to tests.
Government officials said there was no reliable machine that police can use at the roadside to determine drug impairment, but they can look for involuntary jerking of the eyes and make drivers try to stand on one leg.
If they suspect drug use, they can take the driver to a police station to conduct further physical tests and possibly to obtain blood, saliva or urine samples.
Officials also said police did not have enough training yet to administer these tests across the country, but Cotler pledged about $5.3 million for new training.
--------
Drugs complicate Colombia's peace plan
The Christian Science Monitor
By Rachel Van Dongen
November 02, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/1102/p06s02-woam.html
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA - Francisco Javier Zuluago, otherwise known as "Gordolindo," is one of Colombia's most notorious drug traffickers, having served as a trusted aide in one of the country's powerful drug cartels.
But "Gordolindo" suddenly has a new calling card: political chief of the Pacific Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country's feared right-wing death squad. Gordolindo and other renowned Colombian drug dealers, including Diego Montoya Sanchez, who is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List alongside Osama bin Laden, have suddenly undergone a political makeover. They have donned paramilitary fatigues and begun calling themselves "comandante."
For 22 months, the government of President Alvaro Uribe has been trying to get the country's 20,000 irregular soldiers, who have fought a decades-long battle with leftist insurgents, to lay down their weapons. The first breakthrough could come this week: the AUC has pledged to demobilize 3,000 men in what would be the biggest such move in Colombian history. Many of them could be granted a full pardon. But under Colombian law, that immunity would not extend to narcotraffickers. So some of the country's biggest drug dealers are now joining - and even buying their way into - these militias, trying to garner the benefits of a potential peace deal. This "narcoization" of the paramilitaries is threatening to undermine an already fragile peace process.
"There's a dynamic in which the drug traffickers are desperately wanting to peg their cause, their purpose, [to] that of the AUC, which is not something that the governments of the US or Colombia have bought into," says one US counternarcotics official. "There's an increased desire by these terrorists to find a way out other than a prison sentence or death."
The problem of infamous drug lords morphing into paramilitaries may have gotten worse since the creation in July of a government safe zone in Santa Fe de Ralito, where AUC warlords are allowed to live free of prosecution while negotiating peace. El Tiempo, the national newspaper, first brought the issue to light when it spied Gordolindo and another trafficker in the safe zone shortly before it opened. Also, Semana magazine reported that Mr. Montoya of the Norte de Valle cartel was suddenly sporting a green uniform and had purchased the AUC's "Heroes of Rionegro Bloc," composed of 150 men, for a whopping $5 million from a disgruntled mid-level commander.
Paramilitaries involved in drug trafficking isn't a new phenomenon - several renowned AUC chiefs have been indicted or are wanted for extradition by the US on drug-related charges. But some say the AUC is now primarily a drug cartel, a far cry from its founding as an opposition force to the heavily armed Marxist guerrillas, who began their war against the government in 1964.
"All of the paramilitary leaders are narcotraffickers," says Daniel Garcia-Peña, a former peace commissioner and critic of Mr. Uribe. Mr. Garcia-Peña says that there is no legal framework for dealing with demobilized paramilitaries who have committed bigger crimes - massacres, kidnapping, and drug trafficking. The more drug traffickers in the paramilitaries, he says, the more difficult peace negotiations become. "It affects the process in a profound manner," he says.
Renowned drug lord Gabriel Puerta Parra, wanted by the US and captured on Oct. 7, was found with a letter to the AUC leadership asking for asylum in the Ralito safe zone and a place at the negotiating table as a paramilitary commander. In the letter, Mr. Puerta pointed to his 18-year relationship as a loyal ally of the AUC and said he had the support of four AUC commanders. He was captured before he got an answer.
As well, three of the 14 members of the AUC's negotiating team sequestered in Ralito are wanted by the US. An extradition order has been issued for AUC military head Salvatore Mancuso, while indictments have been unsealed for Diego Murillo Bejarano, who ran a gang of assassins in Medellín opposed to drug lord Pablo Escobar, and Vicente Castaño, brother of AUC founder Carlos Castaño, who was probably murdered in April by other warlords angry about his criticism of the role of drugs in the group. Several more may be under US investigation.
Making matters even more complicated, Mr. Mancuso and Mr. Murillo have made it clear they don't plan to lay down weapons voluntarily in order to serve time in US jails.
Yet the Colombian government says that extradition is nonnegotiable. The US government has been equally forceful, saying it doesn't plan to drop drug charges against demobilized drug lords but has suggested it will refrain from enforcing extradition requests while they are in the safe zone.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
America's railways and ports are vulnerable
Chicago Maroon
By Joshua Steinman
November 2, 2004
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/viewpoints/articles/2004/11/02/americas_railways_an.php
I take the train when I travel home from Chicago. A romantic at heart, I love the slow pace, coupled with the colorful countryside, and the relative freedom a train offers compared to a car or a plane.
I also enjoy the ease with which I can travel by train. Chicago's Union Station is only one block away from the Sears Tower, and easily accessible by bus. If I'm late, a cab can get me there within 15 minutes, given good traffic. Speaking of lateness, it is almost never a problem; I can show up only twenty minutes before my train leaves the station, pick up my ticket, and simply walk to the track.
In Detroit, the station is the size of a common room in Pierce. Boarding takes five minutes, and the station is only a quarter-mile from the city's center, making it even easier to reach.
This is, of course, absurd.
It has been more than three years since 9/11 when al Qaeda demonstrated the ease with which armed insurgents could infiltrate our transportation networks and turn them against us. It has been more than six months since the March 11 attacks on the rail system in Madrid, Spain, exploited characteristics of a rail system dangerously similar to our own. With little more than good timing and explosives they killed more than 200 Spaniards.
Rail systems aren't the only networks that have gone unprotected since 9/11. Cargo containers-the method by which the majority of goods are transported into the United States-are strikingly vulnerable. Only 2 percent are inspected when they reach U.S. shores.
Here are two sample nightmare scenarios.
Scenario one: An al Qaeda cell from Dearborn, Michigan vacuum-packs four large suitcases with weapons-grade C-4, easily manufactured with a few pounds of the 320 tons of HMX that have gone missing from Iraq over the past two years. They smuggle it across the porous border between Canada and Michigan. Two operatives take the suitcases on board the train, and place their luggage in a front train car. At an intermediate stop, the operatives slip off the train, leaving the suitcases on board. Three hours later the bombs, on a timer, explode less than 500 yards away from the Sears Tower. Union Station is crippled, with half of the incoming tracks decimated. Over 500 travelers are killed, 1000 wounded. Rail traffic across the United States grinds to a halt for three weeks (Union Station being one of the major U.S. rail hubs), as does traffic on the Chicago River.
Scenario two: North Korea sells a nuclear device (without plutonium) to an al Qaeda cell based in Indonesia, that has a flat in a port city in Southern China. The plutonium is smuggled in from an unguarded nuclear site in eastern Russia across the Chinese steppe. The bomb is assembled, and placed in a cargo container full of smoke detectors (which contain trace amounts of radioactive Americum) bound for Seattle. A cellular phone is modified to not only notify a laptop in Jakarta of its position, but also to receive the detonation signal. Upon arrival at its destination, the container (un-inspected, like 98 percent of all cargo) is off-loaded into the dock area, where it explodes at 11 a.m. the next morning, destroying the harbor, sending an electromagnetic pulse throughout the city blowing out the electrical infrastructure in Seattle (including the headquarters for Microsoft), and spreading nuclear fallout across Puget Sound and the greater Pacific Northwest.
Setting aside partisan politics and looking at the facts it is clear that we simply aren't safe. Our port and rail systems aren't secure, and what's worse is that their major hubs lie dangerously close to, or right in the middle of, major U.S. cities.
George W. Bush refuses to acknowledge that we are just as, if not more, vulnerable now than we were four years ago. He claims that the bureaucracy of the Homeland Security Department affords us protection. He claims that Iraq has made us safer. We aren't. My ability board a train to Chicago without so much as a quick glance through my bags is proof of that.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigrants' Protected Status Extended
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17131-2004Nov1.html
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday announced an 18-month extension for Hondurans and Nicaraguans who were granted temporary U.S. residence after a devastating hurricane in their homelands. The department also said it was "favorably disposed" to extend a similar program for Salvadorans.
The U.S. government originally gave temporary protected status to the Central American immigrants because they would face difficulties returning home after the damage caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and by earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001.
The protected status has allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were in this country illegally at the time to get work permits. The program announced after Hurricane Mitch has been renewed four times and covers nearly 82,000 Hondurans and 4,300 Nicaraguans. It had been slated to expire in January. But the Homeland Security statement said those countries "remain unable . . . to handle adequately the return" of their citizens.
Nearly 300,000 Salvadorans also have the protected status. Their permits expire in March 2005, and many Salvadorans have been campaigning for an extension.
The announcement from Homeland Security said that it was "favorably disposed to considering an extension for El Salvador if the country conditions there warrant." It added that the earthquake damage there was similar to the devastation suffered by Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1998 hurricane.
An area activist reacted jubilantly to the statement, saying it indicated that Homeland Security would grant the continuation.
"It is good to know the Central Americans will be protected," said Saul Solorzano, executive director of CARECEN, an agency in Columbia Heights that helps Latin American immigrants.
Salvadorans are the largest immigrant group in the Washington area, with about 105,000 counted in the 2000 Census. The Salvadoran Embassy believes the total is far larger. The Census numbers reflect smaller communities of Hondurans and Nicaraguans -- about 14,000 and 8,400 people, respectively.
Some immigrants had worried that their protected status would be terminated after the U.S. government recently ended a similar program for about 300 people from the island of Montserrat.
"We're so happy. The phones have not stopped ringing," said Jose Lagos, the Florida-based leader of Unidad Hondureña, a national Honduran group. His group is pressing for a law that would provide permanent legal status for those in the temporary program.
Hondurans and Nicaraguans can re-register for the program during a 60-day period that began yesterday. More information is available at the hotline for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 800-375-583.
-------- police
French Push Limits in Fight On Terrorism
Wide Prosecutorial Powers Draw Scant Public Dissent
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17082-2004Nov1?language=printer
PARIS -- In many countries of Europe, former inmates of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been relishing their freedom. In Spain, Denmark and Britain, recently released detainees have railed in public about their treatment at Guantanamo, winning sympathy from local politicians and newspapers. In Sweden, the government has agreed to help one Guantanamo veteran sue his American captors for damages.
Not so in France, where four prisoners from the U.S. naval base were arrested as soon as they arrived home in July, and haven't been heard from since. Under French law, they could remain locked up for as long as three years while authorities decide whether to put them on trial -- a legal limbo that their attorneys charge is not much different than what they faced at Guantanamo.
Armed with some of the strictest anti-terrorism laws and policies in Europe, the French government has aggressively targeted Islamic radicals and other people deemed a potential terrorist threat. While other Western countries debate the proper balance between security and individual rights, France has experienced scant public dissent over tactics that would be controversial, if not illegal, in the United States and some other countries.
French authorities have expelled a dozen Islamic clerics for allegedly promoting hatred or religious extremism, including a Turkish-born imam who officials said denied that Muslims were involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Since the start of the school year, the government has been enforcing a ban on wearing religious garb in school, a policy aimed largely at preventing Muslim girls from wearing veils.
French counterterrorism officials say their preemptive approach has paid off, enabling them to disrupt plots before they are carried out and to prevent radical cells from forming in the first place. They said tips from informants and close cooperation with other intelligence services led them to thwart planned attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, French tourist sites on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and other targets.
"There is a reality today: Under the cover of religion there are individuals in our country preaching extremism and calling for violence," Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said at a recent meeting of Islamic leaders in Paris. "It is essential to be opposed to it together and by all means."
Thomas M. Sanderson, a terrorism expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said France has combined its tough law enforcement strategy with a softer diplomatic campaign in the Middle East designed to bolster ties with Islamic countries.
"You do see France making an effort to cast itself as the friendly Western power," as distinct from the United States, he said. "When it comes to counterterrorism operations, France is hard-core. . . . But they are also very cognizant of what public diplomacy is all about."
France has embraced a law enforcement strategy that relies heavily on preemptive arrests, ethnic profiling and an efficient domestic intelligence-gathering network. French anti-terrorism prosecutors and investigators are among the most powerful in Europe, backed by laws that allow them to interrogate suspects for days without interference from defense attorneys.
The nation pursues such policies at a time when France has become well known in the world for criticizing the United States for holding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo without normal judicial protections. French politicians have also loudly protested the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, arguing that it has exacerbated tensions with the Islamic world and has increased the threat of terrorism.
Despite the political discord over Iraq, France's intelligence and counterterrorism officials say they work closely with their American counterparts on terrorism investigations.
With the largest Muslim population in Europe, France is being closely watched in neighboring countries, many of which are tightening their own anti-terror and immigration laws. But even following the Sept. 11 attacks and the March 11 bombings of commuter trains in Madrid, other European countries have been reluctant to fully embrace the French model, part of a legal tradition from the Napoleonic era that has always given prosecutors strong powers.
Britain, for instance, typically takes years to extradite terrorism suspects to other countries and has respected the free-speech rights of imams who praise Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, and endorse holy war. Until three years ago, Germany did not ban membership in a foreign terrorist organization such as al Qaeda as long as it didn't operate inside the country.
Many of the anti-terror laws and policies in France date to 1986, when the country was grappling with Palestinian and European extremist groups. Since then, the government has modified and expanded those laws several times, gradually giving authorities expanded powers to deport and detain people.
'High Pressure Zones'
Terrorism is "a very new and unprecedented belligerence, a new form of war and we should be flexible in how we fight it," said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a senior French anti-terrorism judge. "When you have your enemy in your own territory, whether in Europe or in North America, you can't use military forces because it would be inappropriate and contrary to the law. So you have to use new forces, new weapons."
At times, French authorities have pursued terrorism cases outside their borders, taking over investigations from countries unwilling or unable to arrest suspects on their own.
Last year, Christian Ganczarski, a German national and alleged al Qaeda operative, arrived in Saudi Arabia for a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. A Muslim convert who became a personal acquaintance of bin Laden, Ganczarski was suspected by French authorities of helping to organize the April 2002 bombing of a synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, which killed 21 people.
Saudi officials prepared to deport Ganczarski back to Germany, but when German officials indicated they lacked the evidence to arrest him, Saudi authorities arranged a detour, putting him on a flight with a connection through Paris. When Ganczarski arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport on June 2, 2003, he was detained for questioning by French police.
Seventeen months later Ganczarski remains in a French jail, under investigation for alleged conspiracy in the Tunisian attack. French investigators have claimed jurisdiction in the case because French nationals were among the casualties in the Tunisia attack.
Also last year, French counterterrorism officials tipped off the Australian government that a visiting French tourist, Willie Brigitte, was allegedly part of a terrorist cell in Sydney that was planning attacks during rugby World Cup events there. Lacking direct evidence of their own, Australian officials deported Brigitte to France in October 2003, where he was arrested. He also remains in jail, where he is subject to regular interrogations.
The French anti-terrorism judge overseeing both cases is Bruguiere, an investigating magistrate who under French law is granted great prosecutorial powers, including the ability to sign search warrants, order wiretaps and interrogate suspects.
Over the past decade, Bruguiere has ordered the arrests of more than 500 people on suspicion of "conspiracy in relation to terrorism," a broad charge that gives him leeway to lock up suspects while he carries out investigations.
"There is no equivalent anywhere else in Europe. This provision is very, very efficient for judicial rule in tackling terrorist support networks," Bruguiere said in an interview. "Fighting terrorism is like the weather. You have high pressure zones and low pressure zones. Countries that have low pressure zones" attract terrorism.
'Erosion of Civil Liberties'
Bruguiere estimated that 90 percent of the defendants he has indicted and brought to trial have been convicted. Critics assert, however, that most people arrested on orders of anti-terrorism judges in France never face terror-related charges and eventually are freed. Official statistics on French terrorism prosecutions are not readily available, so it is difficult to assess the outcome of such cases.
William Bourdon, a Paris attorney representing Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, two of the four French nationals released from Guantanamo Bay in July, said his clients were rearrested not because they were suspected of any crimes in France, but merely because they had gone to Afghanistan before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Under French law, his clients could remain jailed for up to three years until authorities complete their investigation. "What has been done here is absolutely unfair," he said. "There's a high level of inhumanity in the decision."
Michel Tubiana, a lawyer and president of the Human Rights League in France, told the story of a chicken vendor he once represented to illustrate how easy it is for suspects to be arrested under French anti-terror laws.
He said the vendor, Hakim Mokhfi, was detained in June 2002 after authorities learned he had gone to a camp in Pakistan before Sept. 11, 2001, and knew a person who was an acquaintance of Richard C. Reid, the Briton who pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of trying to blow up an American Airlines flight with explosives concealed in his shoes in December 2001.
On three occasions over the past five months, Tubiana said, outside judges assigned to review the vendor's case have set deadlines for investigating magistrates to either indict or release him. The deadlines have passed, but his client remains locked up, court documents show. "There is in fact no control" over these magistrates, he said. "They are all-powerful."
Tubiana cited a new law enacted last year that drops a requirement for French anti-terror police to have an eyewitness when carrying out a search warrant. The requirement had been intended to prevent the planting of fake evidence.
"There has been a definite erosion of civil liberties in France, and not just with terrorism," Tubiana said. "We're seeing things that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago."
At the same time, Tubiana and other defense attorneys acknowledged that French counterterrorism investigators generally make efficient use of the tools at their disposal.
The Directorate of Surveillance of the Territory, the domestic intelligence agency, employs a large number of Arabic speakers and Muslims to infiltrate radical groups, according to anti-terrorism experts here. Police are also quick to use the threat of preemptive arrest to persuade suspects to work as street informants.
Targeting Clerics
The French government has also stepped up efforts to crack down on radical Islamic clerics. While authorities have long had the right to expel foreigners if they are judged a threat to public safety, lawmakers passed a bill this year that makes it possible to deport noncitizens for inciting "discrimination, hatred or violence" against any group.
The target of the new law: an Algerian-born imam named Abdelkader Bouziane, a cleric living in Lyon who was originally expelled from the country in April after he publicly urged Muslims to attack U.S. targets in France and later told an interviewer that it was permissible for men to engage in polygamy and beat their wives. Bouziane was allowed to return after an appellate court ruled in his favor, but under the modified law was deported last month to Algeria.
Bruno Le Maire, a senior adviser to the interior minister, said authorities have placed about 40 mosques under close surveillance and move quickly whenever they find a cleric preaching radicalism.
"There's not a direct link between what these imams say and terrorism, but there are indirect links that can be dangerous to democracy and the security of our country," he said. "So we have to be very careful with these people."
Other countries, including the United States, have long-standing policies that restrict law enforcement agents from infiltrating places of worship. So far, however, France's aggressive approach has not led to widespread criticism.
Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, said many Muslims support the expulsions and are just as concerned about preventing terrorist attacks as other French citizens. "We find the public arrogance of these extremists completely intolerable," he said. "Fundamentalism is on the rise. . . . This is a real danger. The state should take measures against these types of people that disrupt society, not only when there is a terrorist attack, but before."
Special correspondent Maria Gabriella Bonetti contributed to this report.
-------- terrorism
Bin Laden Lauds Costs Of War to U.S.
Recent Videotape Boasts of Inflicting Economic Damage
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16971-2004Nov1.html
Osama bin Laden boasted that the invasion of Iraq has bogged down the United States in a hopeless war that advances al Qaeda's recruitment goals and bin Laden's aim of bankrupting the U.S. economy, according to a translation of the full text of the terrorist leader's remarks on a videotape that surfaced last week.
"The thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war" about the dangers of invading Iraq, bin Laden said on the tape, according to a U.S. government transcript released yesterday. "But the darkness of the black gold [oil] blurred his vision. . . . The war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threatened his future." The tape, bin Laden's first videotaped appearance since September 2003, was given to the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, which released a seven-minute version Friday. It showed bin Laden saying, among other things, that Americans would be held responsible for electing any president who persecutes Muslims.
Yesterday the network released the entire 18-minute tape, and U.S. officials issued a translation of bin Laden's entire message.
On the tape, the Saudi millionaire brags that he is succeeding beyond his dreams in destabilizing the U.S. economy and bankrupting the U.S. government, asserting that President Bush is easily manipulated into taking military and security steps that harm American interests.
The results of the U.S. war in Iraq, he said, "have been by the grace of Allah positive and enormous, and have by all standards exceeded all expectations."
"The policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results," bin Laden said. "And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and we are playing as one team toward the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ."
Bin Laden added, "Bush's hands are stained with the blood of all of those killed from both sides, all for the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business," referring at one point to the Halliburton energy services company, which Vice President Cheney led before his election.
Bin Laden also suggested that the huge sums of money Washington spends on homeland security and the military serve his agenda of weakening the U.S. economy. "All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration," bin Laden said. "All that we have to do is to send two mujaheddin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses, without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
He added: "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." He noted remarks by counterterrorism experts that al Qaeda's expenses in attacking America are a tiny fraction of the cost of Washington's counterterrorism efforts. "Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million [U.S.] dollars . . . besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.
"As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. Even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujaheddin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan."
In the address, bin Laden also imagined the nearly 3,000 victims of the attack on the World Trade Center reflecting during their last moments on their guilty feelings about U.S. foreign policy. "They say, 'How mistaken we were to have allowed the White House to implement its aggressive foreign policies against the weak,' " bin Laden said.
Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
--------
Saudi militant says al-Qaeda cell still strong
The News International
November 02, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/02-11-2004/world/w6.htm
DUBAI: A-Qaeda's wing in Saudi Arabia is still strong despite government statements that it had been crushed in a widespread security clampdown, a top wanted militant said.
Abdulrahman Mohammed al-Yazji also told the group's Web magazine, Saut al-Jihad, that killing security force members was "a bridge to heaven" in the campaign to rid the cradle of Islam of "infidels" and topple the Saudi royal family. Security forces have cracked down on militants waging a 17-month campaign of violence in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and a regional US ally. Authorities say they have broken the back of al-Qaeda in the kingdom by capturing or killing 17 people on a list of 26 most wanted militants, including the group's leader Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, who was killed in June.
"His (Muqrin's) death only increases our determination and drive to continue our holy war and to avenge our brothers. There are hundreds like him who have made a vow to expel the crusaders," Yazji said.
"As for the soldiers of the tyrants, if you stand in the way of the mujahideen (holy fighters) then your fate will be death and hell," the 29-year-old fugitive said, adding that killing a member of the security forces was "a bridge to heaven".
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
It Doesn't Matter Who Wins, As Long as He Kicks the Debt Addiction
By Allan Sloan
Washington Post
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17319-2004Nov1.html
The endless months of spinning and rhetoric are finally over. No more appealing to your fears about how your finances and prospects will suffer if the other guy's elected. No more tortured "explanations" about why stocks or bonds went up or down on any given day because Sen. John F. Kerry or President Bush came out ahead or behind in some poll.
Now that we'll no longer be looking at everything through the prism of presidential politics, let me share a secret with you. Financial markets don't know from blue and red; they know only from green. As in the color of money. Markets don't care who's president. What they do care about, ultimately, is how we handle or don't handle serious long-term problems that we've been pushing into the future for so many years that they're becoming short-term problems. We're not talking about starting to save to send your newborn to college, folks. The kid's already in high school.
The winner will have to confront the government's addiction to borrowed money. Even as the baby boomers' retirement draws perilously near, our interest payments are mounting, restricting our freedom of action. We've gotten lucky because foreign investors and Social Security tax receipts have helped pay the bills. But we won't stay lucky forever.
What matters now is whether we own up to the problem right away, or whether we wait for some horrible shock -- such as foreigners' closing the lending spigot -- to make us act.
But wait a minute, you say. Aren't you being alarmist? Isn't our national debt money that we owe ourselves? Not anymore. Treasury statistics show that since Bush took office, foreigners have put up more than 90 percent of the cash it's taken to keep Uncle Sam's checks from bouncing. From January 2001 through this past August, the amount of "privately held" Treasury securities (as opposed to those held by federal trust funds) rose by $910 billion. During this period, foreigners' privately held Treasury securities rose by $830 billion -- 91 percent of the increase. Foreigners now own 43 percent of our privately held national debt, up from 30 percent in 2001.
Now, I'm not a xenophobe. Foreigners have done us a huge favor by keeping Uncle Sam's interest costs down. But someday, for reasons of their own, the foreign central banks that are major purchasers of Treasury debt may cut way back or stop entirely -- for strategic, not malicious, reasons. They might want to protect their own currencies, for instance, or diversify into euros. We'll be vulnerable as long as we need so much foreign money so badly.
Social Security has been one of the few budget bright spots because we haven't cut Social Security taxes. Social Security took in $65 billion more cash than it spent in fiscal 2004. The Treasury gave Social Security its I.O.U. and took the cash, which reduced our need to borrow. Social Security projects that its cash surplus will peak at about $107 billion in 2008, then start falling. So by the time our new president leaves office, Social Security's cash cushion to the rest of the budget will be deflating.
During their campaigns, Kerry and Bush both talked about cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of their terms. But even if that's enough, which I doubt, their budget numbers never added up -- especially Bush's. Bush proposed to fix Social Security through the magic of private accounts -- but provided no details. Anyway, given the stock market's past four years and dim prospects, private accounts don't look too magical. Kerry said he wouldn't cut benefits -- but raised the prospect of a commission someday. Maybe it would summon the courage to cut future benefits and raise taxes to bring the system into balance.
Uncle Sam's interest tab is rising: $160 billion in fiscal 2004, according to the Congressional Budget Office; $178 billion this year; $255 billion in fiscal 2007. These added interest costs are money that won't be available for social programs -- or, if you're inclined that way, for tax cuts.
Interest rates and federal fiscal responsibility are linked. Interest rates, in turn, help drive the economy and the stock market. Unless you expect the rest of the world to lend us cheap money forever, which I don't, we'd better clamp down on our borrowing addiction. Social Security's problems draw ever closer, Medicare's a horror I don't even want to think about. Let's hope our new president deals with finance, not fantasy. If not, it's going to be an awfully long and painful next four years.
Sloan is Newsweek's Wall Street editor. His e-mail address is sloan@panix.com.
-------- corruption
IRS Disputes Watchdog's Audit Report
By Albert B. Crenshaw
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17083-2004Nov1.html
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark W. Everson has been saying that the long slide in tax enforcement is at an end and the agency is turning up the heat on businesses and high-income taxpayers. A watchdog group said yesterday that the latest IRS numbers don't support Everson's contention.
For the first half of fiscal 2004, audits of corporations continued to decline, as did the amount of additional tax IRS agents recommended collecting from them, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
There were about 21,000 corporate audits in fiscal 2003; the new IRS numbers show 7,794 businesses were audited in the first six months of fiscal 2004. TRAC compared the latest figures with half of last year's totals and concluded the number was down 26 percent. It calculated the amount of additional tax recommended was down 36 percent -- to $4.3 billion.
Audits of larger businesses, those with assets over $100 million, were down only slightly in number, but the number of hours IRS agents spent on those audits dropped sharply, the group said.
The IRS countered that it is not meaningful to compare six months of data with a full year because of seasonal shifts and other changes.
"You can't simply take the numbers and double them," said IRS spokesman Terry Lemons. "We have a lot of audits that closed in the third and fourth quarter" that wouldn't appear in the first half-year's data, he said. In fact, Lemons added, the agency is expecting a record year in enforcement collections, $40 billion.
TRAC co-director Susan B. Long countered that when Everson spoke of the improvements last April, he "said they had turned the corner" and the numbers don't really show that.
--------
Lobbyists Rain Largess on Senate Incumbents
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 2, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17084-2004Nov1.html
Federal lobbyists have a clear preference who they want to win election to the Senate: the people who are already there.
A new study by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity shows that registered lobbyists overwhelmingly favor incumbents with their campaign contributions. In most Senate races this year, in fact, lobbyists have forked over not a single penny to challengers.
"When registered lobbyists dig into their wallets," the research group said, "incumbent senators almost always benefit."
The pattern is far from new. "This is the oldest story in American politics," said John Kenneth White, a political scientist at Catholic University of America. "Incumbents in congressional elections are increasingly like members of the Soviet Politburo -- they are almost impossible to dislodge. That's why lobbyists donate to them. It's a relatively safe bet."
The tendency to back the status quo is particularly pronounced in this election. Every senator who sought reelection this year -- 26 in all -- got money from lobbyists, the study reported. But only six of their challengers got any funds at all from registered lobbyists.
Of the $2.917 million that federally registered lobbyists gave to Senate incumbents and their challengers in the current election cycle, a mere 5.4 percent, or $157,000, went to challengers, the study found.
The average amount given by lobbyists to senators running for reelection was $95,000. The average amount lobbyists gave to the handful of challengers who received any donations from them was $26,000, data from the study showed.
The study examined the personal campaign contributions of more than 1,000 federally registered lobbyists from 1999 through September 2004.
The lobbyists gave to incumbents regardless of their party affiliation. In fact, Democrats running for reelection got the largest individual donations. Sens. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) received about $190,000 each. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) collected $151,000 from lobbyists.
The recipient of the largest amount of lobbyists' largess was Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who collected $259,000, the study said.
Republicans also got their share. The Republican incumbent who received the most lobbyist money was Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) -- $225,000, according to the study. Specter has been in a tight race with Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel (D-Pa.).
Other major recipients of lobbyists' funds include Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) with $147,000, Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) with $137,000 each, and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) with $132,000.
-------- investigations / reports
C.I.A. Chief Seeks Change in Inspector's 9/11 Report
November 2, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/02/politics/02intel.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 - The director of central intelligence has asked the C.I.A.'s inspector general to modify a draft report on the Sept. 11 attacks to avoid drawing conclusions about whether individual C.I.A. officers should be held accountable for any failures, Congressional and intelligence officials said Monday.
The request by Porter J. Goss, the intelligence chief, would affect an 800-page report that is the result of nearly two years of work. Congressional officials said they were reviewing Mr. Goss's request, spelled out in an Oct. 27 memorandum to the inspector general, John Helgerson, to determine whether it was consistent with a request by the joint Congressional committee that looked into the Sept. 11 attacks.
That panel asked in December 2002 that the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general determine "whether and to what extent personnel at all levels should be held accountable" for any mistakes that contributed to the failure to disrupt the attacks. Mr. Helgerson's draft report is widely understood to identify officers and officials who should be considered for discipline because of breakdowns in the collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence before the attacks.
The draft report was completed in July, but it has not yet been shared with the individuals named in the document. That step has been delayed for the last 90 days to allow time for Mr. Goss, who took office in September, and his predecessor, John E. McLaughlin, to review the document. In recent weeks, members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have complained to Mr. Goss about the delay. The disclosure of the request from Mr. Goss represents the first indication of how he intends to approach the issue.
As the C.I.A.'s inspector general, Mr. Helgerson is an independent internal investigator, subject to presidential appointment and Senate confirmation. According to Congressional and intelligence officials, Mr. Goss wants to limit the report to findings of fact, deferring judgments about who should be held accountable to a separate inquiry by an internal C.I.A. panel known as an Accountability Review Board, which is typically composed of senior agency managers.
An intelligence official said that Mr. Goss had requested only that Mr. Helgerson "consider" making changes in the "formatting and presentation" of the draft report as he believed appropriate. "Ultimately, it is the call of I.G. to decide how to proceed,'' the intelligence official said.
But any recommendation from Mr. Goss would carry significant weight, Congressional and intelligence officials said, because Mr. Helgerson, as an independent internal investigator, reports both to the intelligence chief and to Congress.
Congressional officials critical of Mr. Goss's request said they saw it as inconsistent with Congress's intent that the inspector general, not an internal board, determine who, if anyone, should be held responsible for errors related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the actions highlighted in previous inquiries by Congress and an independent commission have been the failure of C.I.A. and F.B.I. personnel to share information in summer 2001 that should have put some of the hijackers on a government watch list.
Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who was co-chairman of the joint Congressional panel on the Sept. 11 attacks, said in an interview that he regarded Mr. Goss's request as "reasonable" to protect "the due process rights of the individuals involved." As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until this summer, Mr. Goss was the other co-chairman of the joint committee.
Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was also a member of the joint panel. In response to a question about Mr. Goss's new request, Ms. Harman did not comment directly, but issued a statement saying that "it's past time for Congress to receive this report.''
The convening of an internal board to consider possible disciplinary action represents standard practice for the agency in matters of possible wrongdoing, intelligence officials said. They said such a board was usually convened by the C.I.A.'s executive director, the No. 3 official, customarily after the completion of an inspector general's report.
Mr. Helgerson's report is to be made final after he shares his findings with people named in the draft, who will be asked to submit comments, an intelligence official said. But Mr. Helgerson must now decide whether he or the panel of senior C.I.A. officials should draw conclusions about individual responsibility.
Mr. Goss informed the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees about his request in an Oct. 27 letter, according to the Congressional and intelligence officials. He also gave the committees copies of his Oct. 27 memorandum to Mr. Helgerson, the officials said.
The officials described both letters as unclassified, but neither the C.I.A. nor the Intelligence Committee leaders would make them public, saying that would violate the panel's rules. The intelligence and Congressional officials who described the documents had all read the letter, and they included both supporters and critics of Mr. Goss's request.
In a Sept. 23 letter to Mr. McLaughlin, Ms. Harman and the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said they were "concerned that the C.I.A. is unwilling to hold its officers accountable for failures to meet the professional standards we know the C.I.A. stands for.'' Last week, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, wrote separately to Mr. Goss, expressing concern "about the appearance that the inspector general's independence is being infringed.''
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, did not sign Mr. Rockefeller's letter. But a spokeswoman for Mr. Roberts said last week that "Senator Roberts has already made it clear to the agency that he expects to see the report upon its completion.''
-------- us politics
National Election Pool:
How the Networks Are Calling the 2004 Election
democracynow.org
November 2nd, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1523240
In the 2000 election four years ago, the major news networks helped trigger chaos when they called the pivotal state of Florida a little too early. To avoid repeating the mistakes of 2000, the networks have replaced the Voter News Service - a consortium of media outlets that conducted the exit polling and vote counting - with a new system called the National Election Pool. [includes rush transcript] As the nation votes today in one of the closest presidential races in U.S. history, millions across the country and the world will tune in to their televisions tonight to find out who will be the country's next president.
In the 2000 election four years ago, the major news networks helped trigger chaos when they called the pivotal state of Florida a little too early.
Montage of major newscasts calling the election in 2000.
Some of the sights and sounds of the major news networks four years ago. To avoid the mistakes of 2000, the networks have replaced the Voter News Service - a consortium of media outlets that conducted the exit polling and vote counting - with a new system called the National Election Pool. And this time around the networks say they are placing certainty over speed. This is NBC news VP Bill Wheatley. Today we take a look at how the networks are going to call the election.
Jonathan Storm, reporter and television critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: Millions across the country will tune into their TV's tonight to find out who will be the country's next president. In the 2000 election four years ago, the major news networks helped trigger chaos when they called the pivotal state of Florida a little too early.
2000 ELECTION MONTAGE: It appears it will be a long and exciting evening ... What the electoral vote count looks like so far. Mr. Gore taking a spurt there with that win in Florida ... The State of Florida is back in play ... Governor of Texas will become the 43rd President ... We've seen this happen before ... Her husband was ... For the second time tonight, pull back Florida, and the odds ... He is covering ... As I indicated earlier, we don't just have egg on our face, we have omelet all over our suits.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the sights and sounds of the major news networks four years ago. To avoid the mistakes of 2000, the networks have replaced the Voter News Service a consortium of media outlets that conducted the exit polling and vote counting, with a new system called the National Election Poll -- the National Election Pool. This time around the networks are placing certainty over speed, they say. Jonathan Storm is with us, reporter and TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Okay. What is this new election -- National Election Pool, and how is it different from the Voter News Service?
JONATHAN STORM: Well, it has a lot of the same qualities, because the polling world is not a very large world; but the main way it's different, primarily, is that all the numbers that are coming in to the various networks will be available for all to see. In 2000, they came in in big blobs, and they were accumulated before they got to the final network people, and they - they would have a situation where, suddenly, Bush had 20,000 votes in Volusia County, Florida and then, all of a sudden, he only had 16,000, and nobody knew where the votes went. So, now they're going to be able to see where those votes come in. They also -- most of the networks have hired separate individuals, statisticians, Ph.D. egghead-types to look at - be there tonight to be looking at the numbers as they come in.
AMY GOODMAN: You mean, it won't be Jonathan Ellis Bush, the cousin of the Bushes who called it when working at the FOX news desk?
JONATHAN STORM: Well, it might be on the FOX news channel. They might actually have George Bush calling it. Who knows? That's a different can of worms. But for the major news networks that actually are reporting news, you'll have college professors and people like that. There's also going to be a central location where this National Election Pool has hired consultants, polling consultants. They're going to have 12 men in a room -- 12 men and women -- in a room, looking at all these numbers as they come in, especially at the exit polling. People blame the exit polling in 2000 for causing the problems. The exit polling was not as deficient as the actual reporting of the votes. It's very hard to report so many individual actions, and even if people are of good will and good brain, they're not going to get it right when the margin becomes too fine. The system they had in 2000 was simply not up to recording those kinds of margins. I'm not sure the system they have this time around is, either. It might just be impossible; and if that's the case, they all swear up and down the flagpole that they are not going to call things unless they have a much greater degree of certainty than they had in 2000.
AMY GOODMAN: Jonathan Storm, reporter and TV critic for Philadelphia Inquirer. Thank you for being with us. Who knows? It may not be as close as they all say. So many people are excluded from mainstream coverage, also excluded from those polls in general, asking who they plan to vote for. A lot of new voters. They don't get polled because they're not the likely voters, the ones who voted in the last election.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-----
American Conservative Magazine Endorses Kerry
Democracy Now
November 2nd, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1522253
John Kerry received an endorsement from what many thought was an unlikely source: The American Conservative magazine. We speak with the author of the magazine's editorial, Scott McConnell. [includes rush transcript] More than 220 newspapers across the country are endorsing John Kerry for president, far more than President Bush. But last week, Kerry received an endorsement from what many would call the most unlikely of sources: "The American Conservative." The magazine is edited by three-time presidential candidate and conservative pundit Pat Buchanan.
In the article endorsing Kerry, the American Conservative writes: "The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected. If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward."
Scott McConnell, executive editor of The American Conservative. He is the author of the article in the Nov. 8th issue titled "Kerry's the one."
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined right now by Scott McConnell, who is executive editor of The American Conservative, author of the article on the November 8 issue, endorsing Kerry. The headline: "Kerry is the One." Why are you so critical of George Bush?
SCOTT McCONNELL: Well, he has made very, very bad decisions as president, and the invasion of Iraq is, I think, the worst decision any American president has made, certainly since World War II, and perhaps longer. And it's made -- if democracy means anything, somebody who makes a decision like that has to be thrown out of office.
AMY GOODMAN: Go through the key issues that you feel that President Bush has betrayed you on.
SCOTT McCONNELL: Well, first, adopting a kind of wildly ambitious, reckless neoconservative foreign policy, which is quite the antithesis of his father's foreign policy, which was always prudent and sensible, and multilateral. And that led to the Iraq invasion, which is, I think, made the whole problem dealing with Islamic terrorism much, much more difficult. But secondly, he has very un-conservative ideas about immigration. He floated earlier this year an idea of giving work visas to anybody in the world who was offered a job in which there wasn't an American taker, which is essentially an invitation for all American employees who want to pay people $5 an hour to say, you know -- to Bangladesh or wherever, to try to essentially really change the whole labor market in America to the detriment of the American workers. And the tax cuts without any spending cut has led to a really bad deficit problem. But I have to say --
AMY GOODMAN: I'm just going to interrupt for a second. Are you listening on your radio as well?
SCOTT McCONNELL: I'm not, but I'm getting a very fuzzy connection here.
AMY GOODMAN: We're speaking to Scott McConnell. We're just going to switch lines on you for one moment. As we do that, Scott McConnell is the executive editor of The American Conservative magazine. And the magazine came out supporting John Kerry, not George Bush, although Patrick Buchanan, whose birthday it is today, one of the founders of this magazine, has endorsed George Bush. If you could continue with your rationale for why you are not supporting the republican president?
SCOTT McCONNELL: Well, a third reason is I think a Bush second term would be as bad as the first, and it would be -- it has a way of -- I mean, I think of conservatism as kind of an ideology of prudence in government and, you know, lack -- sort of respect for -- in the human nature and like -- and if Bush, a second Bush term, I think, is likely to discredit conservatism for a long, long time to come. But I have to say that for all of us, and there's a number of anti-war conservatives, the Iraq war is pretty much the defining issue. I mean, if Bush is -- you know, you want more ability to overlook his, you know, type of deficits, I don't think many conservatives would want to put in a democrat just because they disapproved of Bush's fiscal policy or a skepticism about, you know, No Child Left Behind or something like that.
AMY GOODMAN: So what about the Iraq war? From the beginning, have you opposed it, and when you talk about anti-war conservatives, how large a bloc are you?
SCOTT McCONNELL: I don't think it's a really large electoral bloc, but think it's a fairly large number of academics and people who write articles and people who pay a lot of attention to foreign policy. That is to say, maybe 10% or 15% or 20% of - I mean, if you look, like The New York Times a couple of days ago ran an ad calling for withdrawal from Iraq and was signed mostly by academics. Almost all of them had supported President Bush, his election and all of - and who had supported, you know, Ronald Reagan's election. And so, you know, this is like enough to make a big ad in The New York Times. That's, you know, it's not a huge number of voters. I mean, I have to say that President Bush has a lock on the Republican Party right now in voting sense. But we started this magazine in September of 2002, and it was clear then that the neoconservatives wanted to take the - you know, they had a plan for American military domination of the Middle East. They were thinking, you know, Iraq, perhaps Syria, Iran. There's like a large list of governments that they - these regimes they wanted to change. Regime change is a nice soft sounding word for it. And we were skeptical from the beginning, that we knew that this wasn't going to work out, and that they were -- we were very sure they were wildly optimistic about Americans being welcomed by open arms in Iraq, and you know, there was a fair number of reporting in our magazine and others about how the intelligence claiming that Saddam had these stockpiles, was close to a nuclear weapon and stuff, was kind of being distorted by the civilian officials in the Pentagon, and it was not what mainstream intelligence officials in the State Department and the C.I.A. thought.
AMY GOODMAN: You write, "If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from inauguration day forward."
SCOTT McCONNELL: Yes. Well, we're not liberals, and John Kerry is. I mean, I wish John Kerry well, if he's elected, in extricating the United States from Iraq. That would probably involve getting some help from Europeans and other allies. I'm not sure if it's too late for that or not, but we're not going to be wildly enthusiastic. On immigration, Kerry is just as bad as Bush. On -- I mean, we're not -- we're not -- probably some of us may go on to become democrats, but we're not there yet.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Scott McConnell, I want to thank you for being with us, executive editor of The American Conservative. He wrote the piece in The American Conservative endorsing Kerry, called "Kerry is the One." This is Democracy Now!
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-------- voting
Early voters out in droves
November 02, 2004
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041102-123659-3217r.htm
A record number of early voters already have cast their ballots in today's election, taking advantage of election reforms aimed at boosting voter participation, political analysts say.
Early voting was especially strong in Florida, scene of the 2000 electoral debacle that delayed final presidential results for weeks and where some Miami voters yesterday endured up to three-hour waits at polling sites.
In Leon County, where the 2000 recount battle was particularly intense, nearly 31,000 Floridians had cast absentee ballots by last week, more than three times the number of absentee ballots cast in 2000.
"We don't have complete [early voter] numbers, so we don't know how they voted. But what you do have is really long lines at voting places, which means we are going to have a high turnout this time," said Curt Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
Mr. Gans is predicting that at least 58 percent of the electorate will vote this year, a significant increase from the 51 percent turnout in 2000.
Whatever the total early vote is, "it will be a very modest proportion of Tuesday night's count," Mr. Gans said.
Traditionally, absentee or early voting has tended to favor Republicans, and exit polling of this year's early voters lining up at courthouses, registrar offices and other early voting places seemed to confirm this.
An ABC News poll found last week that among those who had voted, 51 percent supported President Bush versus 47 percent for Sen. John Kerry.
Thirty-two states offer some form of early voting, and an Associated Press-Ipsos poll reported last week that 11 percent of voters across the country already had cast their ballots and another 11 percent had said they also planned to vote before Election Day. The poll found that early voting was especially prevalent in the Western states, with more than half of the ballots cast in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Washington.
In Washington state, officials said an estimated 60 percent to 65 percent of the entire vote was expected to be in early balloting. Oklahoma election officials said they had received 25,000 more requests for absentee ballots than they did in 2000.
There were several different ways to vote under early voting procedures, although not all of them are counted immediately or even on election night. Under absentee-with-cause voting, voters can go into a registrar's office and cast a machine vote that tabulates it into the running total today.
Early voting at various satellite locations in a state, such as in Florida, are counted but not reported until later. Election officials begin to count mail-in absentee ballots on election night and for several days thereafter.
Both parties have devoted a considerable part of their campaign resources to encouraging early voting and were closely tracking these voters yesterday.
"The Democrats put a lot of effort into getting blocs of people to go in and vote early and people have taken advantage of it to some degree, but Republicans also have had an aggressive effort and absentee voting in the past has leaned Republican," said Terry Holt, spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
But Democrats disputed that assertion yesterday.
In a memo to Mr. Kerry's campaign staff, Karen Hicks, the Democratic National Committee's national field director, said, "More than five million Americans in the battleground states have successfully voted already in the 2004 election through early vote and vote by mail.
"Of these, we have matched 3.1 million of these early voters from the battleground states back to our voter files, so we could know who has voted in these states. Of these 3.1 million, Democrats are outperforming Republican registrants by 6.25 percent," she said.
In North Carolina, more than 20 percent cast early votes in some precincts. Officials said 8,700 people voted last Tuesday in Mecklenburg County alone. All told, nearly 57,000 people, or 11 percent of all registered voters, had voted.
In Iowa last week, early voting was up by 10,000 more votes than the 277,000 recorded four years ago. Among those who voted in the state's largest county, Polk, close to 34,000 of them were Democrats, 18,000 were Republicans and 14,000 were independents.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
About 65 Families Are Still Evacuated Because of Last Week's Chemical Spill in West Virginia
By Associated Press
November 02, 2004
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=287
HUNTINGTON, West Virginia - About 65 families remained out of their homes Monday as crews worked to clean up the remnants of 22,000 gallons of hazardous chemicals that spilled last week from a railroad tanker.
Two schools also remained closed Monday.
Thirty-four families have been out of their homes since Thursday's spill of flammable coal tar distillates, Fire Department Deputy Chief Jerry Beckett said.
They were among some 2,000 people who had to leave their homes immediately after the spill. Occupants of about 30 houses who had been able to return home had to leave again Sunday evening because rising temperature and humidity raised the level of the chemicals in the air.
"We will not let them back in until we are positive they are safe," Beckett.
The spill happened at TechSol Chemical Co. as workers were about to transfer the oily mixture of toluene, benzene, xylene, and styrene to a tank truck for shipment to a refinery in nearby Kentucky. One of the tanker's valves was apparently defective, TechSol said.
The chemicals leaked into a creek and a sewer system, initially prompting fears of an explosion. State environmental officials also were concerned about air quality.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Eight anti-war protesters arrested downtown
Grand Valley Lanthorn
Rich McGowan
November 02, 2004
http://www.lanthorn.com/news.asp?type=NS&aid=4485
"Paul Bremer you can't hide, we charge you with genocide," "Peace is patriotic" and "No blood for oil" were chanted by a group of approximately 50 anti-war/anti-Bush protesters Monday night.
The protesters marched from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum to the Amway Grand Plaza in downtown Grand Rapids where former Director of Iraq L. Paul Bremer was speaking at a private fundraising dinner.
Outside the hotel, eight protesters were arrested for attempting to enter the hotel to interrupt Bremer's speech, which was closed to the public and press. Four were charged with trespassing while four others were charged with trespassing and failure to stop. Bond was set between $500 and $1,000.
One of those arrested was GVSU freshman Scott Watson. Watson and three other protesters entered the Amway Grand through the sky walk.
"We went in there and pretty much continued to protest the war and we were arrested," Watson said.
The protest, organized by the Grand Rapids Republicrat (un)Welcoming Committee, focused on the United States' occupation of Iraq, saying it was wrong for the United States to attack Iraq.
"We just wanted to show Paul Bremer that there was public protest against the things he'd been accomplishing in Iraq," Watson said. "There are several things in the Iraqi constitution dictated directly by Paul Bremer. During the occupation he had sole control of the country."
Watson also said Bremer and American forces did not differentiate between civilians and militant insurgents and cited the recent accidental bombing of a wedding party in Iraq.
He also said Bremer should have made his speech open to the public.
"We think Paul Bremer having a private talk about something so public, was really a shady meeting, with no press allowed and things like that," Watson said.
Opposing the protesters was a small group of Bush supporters.
Tomas Ojeda, the most vocal of the Pro-Bush supporters, said entering Iraq disarmed Saddam Hussein and made America safer.
"If I'm Jack the Ripper, and you know I'm Jack the Ripper, and you know I killed women, how are you going to stop me from carrying these weapons?" Ojeda said. "Are you going to ask around for a global test and then come up to and ask to inspect me? Sure, wait a minute, let me move this knife, now look in that pocket.
"The only way you're going to stop Jack the Ripper is if you put the handcuffs on him and take him to jail. That's what we did."
Watson said he was never convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"They never showed that Saddam had planned to make any weapons or had any weapons to sell," Watson said. "They proved there were no weapons of mass destruction. The president's come out and said that himself."
A witness to the demonstration said she agreed with the protesters' views, but the arrests were appropriate.
"If they had been asked not to come on to the premises then they knew the consequences," onlooker Pam Kelly said. "[It's fine] as long as they stay within the public sidewalk and not try to come onto private property."
Kelly said she supported the invasion after Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations, but facts revealed since then have changed her mind.
"I think that's where you feel duped," Kelly said. "But finding out that none of that was true, I think we made a mistake."
Kelly's son, Brandon Spencer, 8, also had strong opinions about the war in Iraq.
"It's killing so many people and its killing those in Iraq too," Spencer said. "We're not trying to, but it is. War will always kill."
Though heated politics filled the air, Ojeda said he respected the protesters and hopes political views don't create long-standing tensions in the country.
"I want [Sen. John] Kerry and [President] Bush, on Nov. 1, to get together and establish a tradition telling the American people, 'No matter what our differences are, we're still Americans,'" Ojeda said.
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An Open letter to Sec. of Defence Donald Rumsfield
infoshop.org
November 02 2004
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/11/02/9294536
Anti-War Activism Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld U.S. Department of Defense Washington, DC 20520
Bastille Day 2004
Dear Secretary Rumsfeld,
I served in the U.S. Army from 1987-1989. I received Basic Training at Ft. Knox, KY; Advanced Training at Ft. Lee, Virginia; and I was stationed for permanent duty at Ft. Benning, Georgia, at D company, 4 Battalion, 30 Infantry (D-4/30). My service number was 371-96-7170. My end of time in service was November 3, 1989. I received an Honorable Discharge under honorable conditions. I would very much like to renounce my discharge;
I would like to renounce any and all benefits due to me as a veteran; if possible, I would like to renounce even my act of military service so that any connection between myself and the U.S. military is wiped clean, as if the U.S. military and I never met. I realize that such a request, such an act of renunciation, however symbolic, will not wash from my hands the blood of the poor, oppressed, and subjugated that have been used as fodder for the death machine of the U.S. empire. I know that my sins of particpation in the military conquest of the new McWorld, a military conquest ordered ultimately by capitialist corporations, the enemies of all humankind, are not purged simply by my renunciation of your reactionary, endless war for oil and market expansion.
My renunciation will not bring back innocent nuns raped and butchered in El Salvador by U.S. School of Americas graduates, trained with U.S. tax dollars to torture and kill enemies of dictators and despots. It will not raise to life Colombian union organizers struck down by American bullets for their desire to earn a fair wage and feed their children without participating in the cocaine trade. My renunication will not erase the graves of more than half a million children under the age of 6 purposely murdered by U.S. sanctions imposed by U.S. forces, or the civilians intentionaly murdered when U.S. forces purposely targeted water treatment facilities and engaged in other unprosecuted crimes against humanity in the bombing of Iraq in 1991. This renunciation will not restore to health my fellow friends and soldiers, some of whom I trained, some of whom I armed, who returned from the Gulf War with an undiagnosed disorder, a disorder directly linked to this deceitful government?s use of depleted uranium in conventional armaments. My renunciation will not compensate them for their suffering while the U.S. government lied and buried medical evidence, denying justice and compinsation to thousands of suffering Gulf War veterans who were used, damaged, and absently tossed onto the trash heap of U.S. history.
No, my renunciation will never serve to right any of those grievous wrongs, no matter how much I wish it did. I can only hope and pray that my renunciation will find its way into the hands of starry-eyed recruits who otherwise would have blindly stepped into the meat grinder, who would have killed for corporate profits, who would have carried out orders and defended the flag and the freedom that your market-rulers secretly mock. And maybe one, just one, will see the truth and will refuse to serve cowards, profiteers and traitors. Maybe one, just one, will make a beginning of withstanding tyranny on behalf of the poor the exploited and the oppressed upon whose backs you intend to build this new McWorld. Maybe one, just one will pass this letter on, and before you know it, troops might point their rifles in the right direction for a change, pointing them at their true enemy - the enemy of all humankind, and all the wars for power and greed will come to an end, and the enemies of the people will have nowhere to run. If that day ever comes, wont it suck to be you?
In Solidarity with the Poor of the World That your War Machine Crushes, Sean Swain #A243-205, Toledo Correctional Institution P.O. Box 80033 Toledo, OH 43608
This article originaly appeared in The Books 4 Prisoners Crew fall newsletter "The Unnamed Codefendent". see www.freewebs.com/books4prisoners for more info.
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