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NUCLEAR
Falluja's defiance of a new empire
The Last Gift Of Terry Riordon
U.S. use of depleted uranium under fire
Talks on Nuke Fusion Plant End Without Decision
India urged not to disrupt arms balance
No freedom for nuclear scientist
EU Digs in Heels on Iran Nuclear Freeze-Diplomats
Iran in Deadlock With Europe on Halting Production of Uranium
Nuclear terrorism is a threat: El Baradei
SURVEY SAYS ... Yucca opposition growing
Davis-Besse lowers rating after failed test
DOE Keeps Mum on Preferred Option for Uranium Tailings
MILITARY
Sudan and Rebels in Short-Term Accord on Darfur
After Accord, Sudan Camp Raided
Anti-French Riots Fade in Ivory Coast but Foreigners Flee Nation
Westerners Are Evacuated From Ivory Coast
U.N. Peacekeepers Join Patrols in Congo
S. Korean pleads guilty in arms deal
Halliburton scandal widens after claims of pressure
Waxman Seeks New Halliburton Inquiry
Halliburton May Have Been Pressured by U.S. Diplomats
Prime minister, president tangle
Voices from Falluja
Falluja facing humanitarian crisis
Iraqi Gov't Warns Media About Coverage
Troops Secure Much of Fallujah
As U.S. Advances in Falluja, New Fighting Erupts in Northern Iraq
A Thousand Fallujahs
Palestinian Leader Arafat Dies in France Burial in West Bank on Saturday
Arafat Will Be Buried in Ramallah
Arafat's Body on Way to Egypt as Palestinians Mourn Loss of Icon
Four Palestinians Killed in Violence After Arafat Dies
Police to raise alert to 'war level'
Top moderate resurfaces after Arafat
Mahmoud Abbas Elected Chairman of PLO
Prisoners say only heir is Barghouti
Arafat in his own words
NATO Says Europe Must Move Closer to U.S. View on Terror
Concern in Russia
Ex-C.I.A. Chief Nets $500,000 on Talk Circuit
Lost in Deployment: How the Army Misplaced 60,000 Soldiers
Retired US general Tommy Franks urges diplomacy for Iran, North Korea
Fed panel presses Gulf War illness aid
Fort Bragg Troops Train For Homeland Security Mission
3 Abu Ghraib Trials Moved to U.S.
For White Men, Military Service Does Not Pay Later in Life
National Guard Investigates School-Strafing Incident
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Dutch anti-terror raids net seven
'Orange' Alert Is Dropped in D.C. and N.Y.
U.S. Officials Lower Terrorist Alert Levels for Financial Sites
TSA Plans More Checks on Cargo Loaders
Bush Is Asked to Break Deadlock on Intelligence Reform
POLITICS
Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether
Bush Picks a Loyalist to Replace a Politician
Bush Nominates His Top Counsel for Justice Post
OTHER
Russian Government Concerned Over Possible Depletion of Mineral Resources
Pesticide Study Using Children as Test Subjects Postponed
ACTIVISTS
Israel Re-Arrests Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu
Israeli police arrest Vanunu
Vanunu arrested by Israeli police
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Falluja's defiance of a new empire
bellaciao.org
11th November 2004
by Sami Ramadani
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4273
It is Bush and Blair, not the Iraqi resistance, who fear free elections
George Bush and Tony Blair have apparently concluded that they can crush the Iraqi people's will to resist occupation and legitimise a puppet regime next January by occupying Falluja. Maybe they imagine they can emulate the British forces that terrorised Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1920s by obliterating recalcitrant villages.
The US generals will no doubt deliver Falluja to Bush and Blair after bombarding its neighbourhoods with artillery and rockets. But they are doomed to deliver neither the Fallujans nor the people of Iraq. Perhaps they are unaware that Fallujans defied Saddam's rule during his last years in power. Falluja - known as the city of a thousand mosques - attracted Saddam's wrath in 1998 when its imams refused to hail the tyrant in their Friday sermons. Many were imprisoned, and the city punished as a result.
But the generals certainly do know how resistance began in Falluja. On April 28 2003 US soldiers opened fire on parents and children demonstrating against the continued military occupation of their primary school - killing 18 of them in cold blood and injuring about 60 others. Until the killing of those demonstrators, not a single bullet had been fired at US soldiers in Falluja or any of the cities north of Baghdad. But, remorselessly, little-known Falluja became a world-renowned centre of defiance, where a poor and poorly armed people has courageously faced the military wing of the new empire.
The way Falluja's 300,000 people reacted to the April 28 massacre has made them a prime target for savage bombardment and conquest. Najaf was bombed into a ceasefire in August. Samarra was conquered in September. Sadr City in Baghdad was bombarded and negotiated into temporary silence in October. Now they want to crush the symbol of Falluja, to teach the rest of Iraq a bloody lesson. Another pyrrhic victory is likely to be added to an already long list.
Blair once again misled parliament this week by branding the resistance in Falluja as Zarqawi-style terrorists out to destroy the prospects for democracy. It was he and Bush who last year rejected the calls for early free and fair elections from those who rejected the occupation, including Ayatollah Sistani, Moqtada al-Sadr, the resistance and the widely supported Iraqi National Foundation Congress. Bush and Blair are terrified of the Iraqi people voting for anti-occupation leaders. They will accept nothing short of the legitimisation, through sham elections supervised by the occupation authorities, of an Allawi-style puppet regime.
More than 100,000 Iraqis are estimated to have been been killed since the US-led invasion; the country's infrastructure has all but been destroyed; people are exposed to the danger of US and British depleted-uranium shells; hospitals have been reduced to impotence in the face of mounting injuries and disease; the centre of Najaf and entire neighbourhoods of several cities have been razed. How much more should the Iraqi people be subjected to for Bush and Blair to have their "democratically" chosen puppets installed in Baghdad?
These are war crimes of Saddamist proportions, and there is evidently more to come. Bush's latest pronouncements and Blair's declaration of a "second war" have made clear that the occupation governments are ready to kill (as "collateral damage", no doubt) even more Iraqis to enforce a pro-US order. Without a shred of evidence, Bush, Blair and Ayad Allawi's quisling regime shamelessly declare that they are only pursuing the Jordanian kidnapper Zarqawi and other "foreign terrorists". The people of Falluja, their leaders, negotiators and resistance fighters have always denounced Zarqawi and argued that such gangs have been encouraged to undermine the resistance.
The occupation forces have now reverted to their initial ploy of attacking cities north of Baghdad, while reaching ceasefires with some Baghdad districts and southern cities. Presumably, they see this as an effective divide-and-rule tactic, but it is likely to prove as futile as the rest of their plans for post-invasion Iraq. It is, in reality, merely a battle postponed. Iraq's history, reaffirmed by events since the US-led occupation, shows that its people's unity is stronger than differences based on religion, sect, ethnicity or national identity. That was demonstrated on Sunday when a senior Kurdish officer with the token US-commanded Iraqi force besieging Falluja deserted within half an hour of being shown the plans to occupy the city.
The US and British governments could do worse than digest the old Chinese proverb: "They lift a stone to drop it on their own feet." For they might have occupied Iraq and succeeded in lifting some of its heavy stones, but the stones will inevitably come crashing down on their feet.
· Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime and is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University
sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk
-----
The Last Gift Of Terry Riordon
axisoflogic.com
By Raymond D. Cohen
Nov 11, 2004
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_13520.shtml
Thousands of military veterans of the Gulf War have reported a whole range of ailments and disabling conditions -- come to be referred to collectively as Gulf War syndrome. The numbers are not immediately clear for Canada, but in the U.S. some 70,000 veterans are dealing with severe health problems.
Symptoms of Gulf War syndrome include depression, chronic fatigue, anxiety, respiratory problems, memory and attention disorders, joint pain, skin rashes, musculoskeletal disorders, shortness of breath, insomnia, hair loss, dizziness, nausea and nerve damage.
Adding to the pain and frustration of those trying to cope with this condition has been the negation by "experts" or that it is more than a result of emotional trauma. Perhaps it's just a giant coincidence that thousands participating in the Persian Gulf conflict all happened to experience similar symptoms at about the same time.
It is odd that when our experts don't understand a condition, they seem more inclined to dismiss it with an "it's-all-in-your-head" attitude over a more constructive position of, "We don't know, we don't understand -- perhaps we can try to find out."
Interestingly, the symptoms those contending with Gulf War syndrome are almost identical to many Canadians with environmental sensitivities. Their problems too were often compounded by experts who dismissed their conditions as being psychosomatic. And although the disability is now more acknowledged by government, there are still other professionals who doubt those with it.
The situation becomes even more confusing when, perhaps inevitably, psychological effects sometimes do set in as a consequence of the lack of intervention of the professionals mandated to treat them, or the inaction of policy makers mandated to look at the circumstances which caused symptoms in the first place.
In the case of our Gulf War veterans, there seems to be some movement at the federal level spurred on by the death last year of Terry Riordon of Nova Scotia. Mr. Riordon's final wish, expressed to his wife, Sue, was that his organ and bone tissue be examined after his death to attest to what he knew to be true all along -- Gulf War syndrome is real. The test results indicated that traces of a radioactive metal, depleted uranium, remained in his body -- nine years after he left the field of conflict.
Depleted uranium was present in the tank armour and missile shells used by the military in the Gulf War. Troops were exposed to it either directly, or through radioactive dust emanating from the weapons and equipment.
Defense Minister Art Eggleton now says the military will look closely at those tests results and the possible widespread exposure to radioactive material in the Gulf War. The federal government is now willing to test any members of the Canadian forces who feel they may have been exposed to depleted uranium while on duty.
While this decision may come too late for the Terry Riordons of the world, it is at least a willingness to assume a stance of, "I don't know, but I'm sure as hell going to find out,"as opposed to, "I don't know, so it must be all in your head."
How often, and how much longer, must Canadians endure official denials of life-stealing problems? Why is it that a sweeping compromise of our health and well-being must occur before some kind of intervention -- usually occurring too late for those whose final sacrifices eventually forced the issue -- is implemented?
Canada's blood scandal is not that far behind us, in which untold thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C. In this issue of ABILITIES, we point to unacceptable (but perfectly legal) exposure to lead threatening our children ("Thumbs Down," p. 7). And genetically altered food, currently common fare in our supermarkets, is anybody's nightmare; our health department assures us that it's safe, but the track record is not so reassuring.
It is time we adopt a philosophy of prevention within our policies -- and within our institutions -- and certainly within our homes and choices of health care practitioners.
And it is time, too, that we accept that disability and pain being expressed by people in search of relief is real -- regardless of whether or not the source is obvious.
Let's each do what we can to turn this situation around. Be a vocal consumer. Find out who is in charge, politically, socially, medically -- and don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. We owe it to ourselves, our families and our communities. And perhaps we owe it to Terry Riordon, whose last gift was a message that it's up to citizens to speak up when we're told, "It's all in your head."
http://www.abilities.ca/health/hlth_articles.html?showhealth=1&page=17&id=1523
-----
U.S. use of depleted uranium under fire
KING 5 News
By LORI MATSUKAWA
November 11, 2004
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_111104WABdepleteduraniumSW.49604608.html
Alvin Clark, of Tacoma, developed aplastic anemia he believes is related to his exposure to depleted uranium dust after he was hit by friendly fire in Saudi Arabia.
Shells and armor used by U.S. tanks, gunships and helicopters are often made of depleted uranium because depleted uranium, or D.U., is a heavy metal, able to pierce armored vehicles or resist being pierced. But it's also radioactive, a waste product of nuclear enrichment plants like Hanford.
A pentagon training film shows how the D.U. ordnance bursts into a fiery powder on contact.
So, what happens when U.S. Troops are forced to march through the D.U. dust that's left on the ground? Or get hit by friendly fire? Some vets say it made them sick. The Pentagon disputes that.
Shinichi Matsuura of Renton fought in the first Gulf War. His Bradley tank was hit not once, but twice, by U.S. forces. He breathed a lot of D.U. smoke.
"Matter of fact I didn't know we were using D.U. until six years ago," said Matsuura.
Alvin Clark of Tacoma says his unit was nearly hit by a friendly fire missile in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. He developed aplastic anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant.
Clark said no one ever warned him there might be some depleted uranium out there, and if he were exposed to it, what he was supposed to do about it. Video Clip
KING 5's Lori Matsukawa reports More ... Custom Video ...
Dennis Kyne of San Jose says his unit marched along the bombed-out "highway of death" to Baghdad. He receives a disability check from the government each month for an "undiagnosed illness."
"My chain of command says I'm big enough and strong enough and soldier enough to walk through this stuff and .. it's just like lead. Just a little bit heavy and might affect the kidneys," he said.
This October, the Pentagon released findings of a five-year study of D.U. dust. Residue was collected from shot-up tanks, and analyzed by computer models. The military's conclusion? Half of the inhaled D.U. - a radioactive heavy metal - would be excreted by the body in 10 to 100 days.
"Even individuals with the highest potential for exposure still have doses that are well below peacetime safety standards. Which would be allowable here in the states so if you put that in the context of other combat risks, I'd have to say the military exposures to depleted uranium are safe," said Lt. Col. Mark Melanson.
It's a slightly different story for veterans with D.U. shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
The V.A. in Baltimore is studying about 70 Gulf War one vets, including Shinishi Matsuura, and has found elevated levels of uranium in the urine of several men more than a decade after the conflict.
But Pentagon officials say this, too, is no cause for alarm.
"It's important to note that this group has been followed for over 10 years and no adverse health effects associated with depleted uranium have been found," officials said.
In the first Gulf War, the Pentagon estimates it used 315 to 350 tones of D.U. In today's conflict, it estimates coalition forces have used three to six times that.
So what about the D.U. remaining in Iraq?
In a video provided by the Uranium Medical Research Centre of Canada, researchers found soil and spent munitions with radiation levels thousands of times higher than Department of Defense guidelines. U.S. soldiers tried to warn-off the researchers.
Congressman Jim McDermott, a medical doctor and Iraq war critic, questions using D.U. at all. During a hospital visit in Baghdad before the war, McDermott was told Iraq now has the highest rate of childhood leukemia in the world.
"I saw what it did to the Iraqis, but now I see that we're marching our own people through that, creating birth defects in children, leukemia in children, illnesses among adults. Then it becomes a question of really a war crime. The Geneva Convention says you cannot do something that has a long term effect on the country," said McDermott.
The Pentagon maintains D.U. is safe and necessary in war.
"You take with you the best weapons systems you can so you can defeat the enemy with overwhelming lethality," said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick.
The Pentagon says for penetrating armor, depleted uranium is the heavy metal that is the best.
"It's not the best, it's the worst," said Kyne. "It inherently becomes the worst possible weapon because it's no longer just attacking the enemy, it's omnicidal, it kills all of us."
The U.S. and U.K. are the only militaries that use D.U. Most exposure to U.S. soldiers has been from fire from its own forces.
In 1996, the United Nations Sub Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights found use of D.U. weapons "incompatible" with existing humanitarian law.
-------- europe
Talks on Nuke Fusion Plant End Without Decision
AUSTRIA:
November 11, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28096/story.htm
VIENNA/BRUSSELS - Talks on where to build the world's first nuclear fusion reactor ended indecisively this week, while the European Union toned down threats to site the plant in France.
"The six-party talks ended without an agreement on the site," a Western diplomat familiar with the discussions told Reuters. He said that both France and Japan remained equal candidates to host the $12 billion reactor project.
Nuclear fusion has been touted as a long-term solution to the world's energy problems, as it would be low in pollution and use limitless sea water as fuel. The idea is to replicate the way the sun generates energy.
The EU was optimistic that a deal could eventually be reached favoring it. Europe wants the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) to be built at Cadarache, near Marseille, rather than at a rival site in Japan.
"There was no agreement but there was no breakdown either. On the contrary, we have done good work and made good progress," European Commission spokesman Fabio Fabbi told Reuters.
"The two countries least enthusiastic about the European option - Japan and the United States - weren't very warm but they were no longer firmly against it," he said.
The EU earlier warned it may go ahead and build the experimental reactor in Cadarache, southern France, with as many partners as are willing to participate if there was no deal with the United States, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea at the two-day Vienna talks.
But it toned down these comments after the Vienna talks ended. Asked if the EU was ready to go it alone, Fabbi said: "We're not there yet. We are still in a multilateral process."
Officials at the Japanese mission in Vienna were not immediately available for comment.
EU research and industry ministers are due to discuss how to move forward at a meeting on Nov. 25-26 and the Commission will recommend a course of action depending on the outcome of the Vienna talks, Fabbi said.
EU "COALITION OF THE WILLING"
The EU's tactics in the fight for the reactor resembled methods for which Europeans often criticize the United States - vowing to go it alone with a "coalition of the willing" if a multilateral forum does not back its course.
An EU source told Reuters on Monday that Cadarache was set to win the contest because Japan had signaled it would drop its bid in return for compensation.
But an official at the Japanese Science and Technology Ministry said Tokyo had not ended its bid to host the project.
The Western diplomat said about the talks: "They're still trying to slug it out ... The Japanese haven't given up yet.
"The Japanese are offering inducements to the French and the French are offering inducements to the Japanese," he said.
The United States initially backed Japan's bid to put the reactor in the remote northern fishing village of Rokkasho in what was seen as a punishment to France for leading opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
It now appears to be neutral. Asked where Washington now stood, a U.S. official in Vienna said: "The United States supports a six-party ITER, but negotations on where that will be located are still progressing today."
Fusion involves sticking atoms together, as opposed to today's nuclear reactors and weapons, which produce energy by blowing atoms apart. However, 50 years of research have failed to produce a commercially viable fusion reactor. (Additional reporting by John Chalmers and Paul Taylor)
-------- india / pakistan
India urged not to disrupt arms balance
11 November 2004
DAWN (Pakistan)
http://www.dawn.com/2004/11/11/top9.htm
ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: Pakistan on Wednesday urged India to avoid disrupting conventional arms balance as it was against the quest for peace and security being pursued by both the countries.
Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan was commenting on news reports of a $230 million arms deal between India and Israel, involving purchase of unmanned aircraft and other intelligence-gathering equipment.
"Induction of new weapons system and military technology only spurs an arms race in South Asia, which we must avoid and avert at all costs," Mr Khan said.
He said Pakistan was against an open-ended arms race which, he added, was "not in harmony with the quest for peace and security in the region and beyond".
He said Pakistan and India will soon again discuss nuclear and conventional confidence-building measures. "We should avoid disrupting balance or accentuating asymmetries, especially in conventional sphere. A strategic and conventional balance guarantees strategic stability in the region," he added.
Mr Khan said: "We must not lose sight of the opportunity costs of such deals for social and economic development."
The FO spokesman was responding to reports that the state-owned Israeli Aircraft Industries will supply military surveillance hardware for unmanned aircraft which will be jointly produced in India.
The offer, according to news reports, includes supply of 50 Eagle-Heron Israeli drones with a range of 1,000 kilometres, which can stay airborne for more than 24 hours and cruise at an altitude of 25,000 feet.-APP
--------
No freedom for nuclear scientist
BBC NEWS
11 Nov 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3999429.stm
- A petition seeking the release from house detention of disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan on health grounds has failed in Pakistan's Supreme Court.
Dr Khan has been confined to his home near Islamabad since early this year when he admitted illegally transferring nuclear secrets overseas.
The court said Dr Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme and still a hero to many, was not seriously ill.
Dr Khan himself opposed the petition, filed by a friend, calling it illegal.
- House visit
In February, Abdul Qadeer Khan publicly admitted involvement in the illegal transfer of nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
However, a number of supporters still refused to believe he could ever be involved in any illegal activity.
They became concerned about recent reports of his deteriorating health.
The concerns became more pronounced last month with the publication of a book about the arrest and detention of Dr Khan which claimed his health was deteriorating rapidly.
The book, written by a newspaper publisher who is a friend of Dr Khan's family, claimed the scientist might even have suffered a stroke.
A friend of Dr Khan, Hussam-ul Haq, approached the Supreme Court to investigate.
His petition said that since the scientist was not being allowed to leave his house or meet visitors, government claims that he was not ill could not be verified.
During Wednesday's hearing the two-member bench instructed the registrar to visit Dr Khan's home and report on his health.
- The petition must be dismissed as illegal and without lawful authority - AQ Khan
After meeting the scientist and his physicians, the registrar informed the court that Dr Khan was not suffering any serious illness.
The registrar said Dr Khan rejected the petition, saying it was not filed with his permission.
Dr Khan submitted a letter to the court saying he was being "looked after very well".
"I am shocked and surprised to read in the newspapers that a petition has been filed on my behalf. The petition must be dismissed as illegal and without lawful authority."
A lawyer for Hussam-ul Haq said he had withdrawn the petition.
The BBC's Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says the mystery surrounding Dr Khan's international proliferation network has yet to unfold.
Though President Pervez Musharraf pardoned Dr Khan on the condition that he would co-operate with the authorities, it is still not clear if the government plans to make its findings public.
-------- iran
EU Digs in Heels on Iran Nuclear Freeze-Diplomats
Thu Nov 11, 2004
(Reuters)
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6784474
VIENNA - Iran has told France, Britain and Germany it wants more than promises of future benefits if it suspends its controversial uranium enrichment program, but the Europeans have refused, Western diplomats said on Thursday.
The European Union's "big three" states reached a tentative deal with Iran in Paris last weekend under which Iran would halt an enrichment program, which could be used to make nuclear weapons, in exchange for political and economic incentives.
However, the Iranians are pushing for something tangible up front, not just promises of future "carrots," diplomats familiar with the negotiations told Reuters.
"Iran wants something up front if it's going to suspend enrichment, not just promises. But the Europeans have refused," a diplomat said.
The Europeans have promised Iran a light-water nuclear reactor, which would be more difficult to use for weapons activity than heavy-water reactors. They have also agreed to open trade talks with the EU and thaw political relations.
The EU-Iran arrangement is similar to a deal the United States worked out with North Korea in the early 1990s, exchanging heavy-water for light-water technology while the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), supervised a freeze of its nuclear program.
But diplomats said French and German companies told their governments they would not be interested in supplying Iran with a reactor in case it harmed business with the United States.
FULL SUSPENSION
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Tehran was still reviewing the agreement reached in Paris.
"Surely we would have given our answer if the (Paris) talks did not have problems," state television quoted him as saying.
An Iranian source close to internal discussions on whether or not to accept the deal said, however, Tehran would probably agree to it.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told Germany's parliament the talks with Iran had been "anything but easy."
"Only the full and lasting suspension of enrichment activities ... by Iran can open the way for results-oriented talks on long-term cooperation," Fischer said.
He said he did not want to call into question Iran's right to use nuclear energy for peaceful means. "But it's also clear that a military nuclearization of Iran would be a dangerous development for what is already one of the most dangerous regions in the world," he added.
Oil-rich Iran denies wanting nuclear technology for anything besides power generation.
Another diplomat said time was running out for Iran to accept the deal, which would enable Iran to escape a referral to the U.N. Security Council when the IAEA board of governors meets on Nov. 25.
If Iran rejects the deal, it will most likely be referred to the Security Council this month, diplomats say.
Washington, which says Iran's nuclear energy program is a front for developing the bomb, wants Iran reported to the Security Council for concealing its uranium enrichment program from the IAEA for nearly two decades.
One of the sticking points in the talks with Iran concerns the preparation of uranium for the enrichment process. The Europeans want all uranium conversion activities halted, while Tehran wants to continue with some conversion work.
(Additional reporting by Paul Hughes in Tehran)
--------
Iran in Deadlock With Europe on Halting Production of Uranium
November 11, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/europe/11iran.html?pagewanted=all
PARIS, Nov. 10 - Iran and European negotiators have become deadlocked in their effort to reach a final agreement for Iran to suspend its production of enriched uranium in exchange for possible economic and political incentives, European officials said Wednesday.
After marathon negotiations in Paris last Friday and Saturday, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, optimistically announced that his government had reached a "preliminary agreement" with senior negotiators of France, Germany, Britain and the European Union, but he emphasized that any suspension of uranium enrichment would be temporary.
The Europeans were more cautious, saying in public that progress had been made in the talks while acknowledging in private the existence of unresolved issues.
Those issues may mean the unraveling of an agreement intended to stave off a confrontation with Iran at a crucial meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog organization, in Vienna on Nov. 25.
"They came back to the Europeans for more and the Europeans frankly said, 'No, a deal is a deal and that is that,' " a Vienna-based diplomat said.
At the November meeting, the countries that make up the leadership of the agency could decide to let the United States proceed with a still vague but serious proposal to refer Iran to the Security Council for possible sanctions. Iran has consistently denied the Americans' accusations that it has a secret program to build nuclear bombs under the cover of a civilian nuclear energy program.
One outstanding issue is highly technical but considered important by the Europeans. They have demanded that Iran stop its program to convert raw uranium into uranium tetrafluoride. Uranium tetrafluoride is a precursor to the form of uranium that is fed into centrifuges to enrich it for use as fuel that can be used either for peaceful purposes or to develop nuclear weapons, European officials said.
That demand goes beyond what the United Nations' watchdog agency requires, and the Iranians are arguing that they are being asked to do too much.
Another Iranian demand, so far rejected by the Europeans, is the timing of the delivery of some rewards for Iran, including the resumption of talks on a trade agreement between the European Union and Iran, the officials said.
Iran is also seeking precise assurances about a European offer to supply Iran with a light-water research reactor that would produce less fissionable material than could be used for making nuclear weapons, the Vienna-based diplomat added.
Iran wants the rewards up front as a "confidence-building measure," arguing that France, Germany and Britain failed to deliver the rewards it promised after Iran agreed in Tehran in October 2003 to suspend its production of enriched uranium.
A decision for Iran to suspend its enrichment of uranium is an extremely delicate political matter in Iran. The October 2003 agreement was excoriated by hard-line politicians and newspapers as proof that Iran was caving in to the Western demands and forfeiting its sovereign right to develop a peaceful nuclear program.
Iranian presidential elections are scheduled for May, and the nuclear issue is likely to play a large role in what is expected to be a brutal political campaign.
-------- terrorism
Nuclear terrorism is a threat: El Baradei
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT Broadcast:
11/11/2004
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2004/s1240725.htm
Reporter:
TONY JONES: Now to our interview with the man who's job it is to stop nuclear proliferation and oversee the complex nuclear treaty system.
Dr Mohamed El Baradei is a worried man.
In Sydney earlier this week, he warned of the "imminent danger" of nuclear terrorism.
He says that the situation is so grave that military pre-emption must become a real option.
But not unilateral pre-emptive strikes.
Rather he wants to see sweeping changes to the UN Security Council to allow for what he calls "collective pre-emption".
Tonight we explore that idea with Dr El Baradei.
To fill in some background, he's a former Egyptian diplomat who emerged as a key member of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq.
He's currently in his second term as the director-general of the Atomic Energy Agency and I spoke to him in our Sydney studio.
Mohamed El Baradei, thanks for joining us.
MOHAMED EL BARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL, IAEA: Thank you for having me.
TONY JONES: Now, how close are we in reality, do you believe, to terrorists getting their hands on nuclear material and/or nuclear weapons?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI, DIRECTOR GENERAL, IAEA: I think we are not very far.
We're not there, thank God, but we are not very far.
There is a lot of radioactive sources around the world.
We discovered the reality of the terrorists trying to acquire radioactive sources after 9/11.
This was not an issue on the table before.
We never thought terrorists would try to use radioactive sources for that purposes, but here we are, and we need to do as much as we can, as fast as we can, to prevent terrorists acquiring radioactive sources.
There are hundreds of thousands of radioactive sources around the world.
They can get any of that, use conventional explosion and release radioactivity.
It's not a nuclear explosion.
TONY JONES: You're talking about a dirty bomb?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: A dirty bomb, but it would create a lot of anxiety because there would be radioactivity in there.
There would be a major economic and social dislocation and that's exactly what the terrorists would want.
TONY JONES: You've actually written that eventually, inevitably terrorists will get their hands on this material - inevitable.
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: I was courting the head of security in the United Kingdom who is saying it is inevitable, it's a matter of time.
I'm not sure, but what I'm saying is we really need to be vigilant, we need to take that issue with utmost seriousness.
Acquiring nuclear weapons is much more difficult, but again it is not impossible.
We have seen after 9/11 a high degree of sophisticated terrorism.
TONY JONES: Now, you've said the danger of this happening is imminent.
Is that based on intelligent guesswork or hard intelligence?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: It's based on hard intelligence, frankly, because we have a database that records incidence of illicit trafficking of radioactive sources and nuclear material and we have over 600 cases recorded in our database in the last 10 years.
There is a lot of effort, there's a lot of demand, obviously, and we're just crossing our fingers that none of that will go into the wrong hands.
TONY JONES: Are you crossing your fingers that no terrorist group right now has acquired, for example, plutonium or do you know for sure that they have not?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: No.
We're crossing our fingers that no terrorist group right now acquired plutonium.
No, we do not know for sure.
I hope it is not.
Again, tonnes of this material has been floating around the world in the last, you know, particularly before and after the Cold War.
There was some security lapse over the Cold War.
We cross our fingers that none of them have them, and that's why we try very much to have in coordination with all our members of the international community, if you like, to prevent, protect and be ready to respond in case of an emergency.
TONY JONES: Do we know how much plutonium there is in the world or could there be large quantities of it unaccounted for that we simply don't even know about?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: We don't know the exact amount, because there is a lot of that plutonium in the military sector which we do not know, so it is a question mark.
TONY JONES: Given the obvious failures of the treaty system, is it time to change international law as the Americans would like to do, to allow for the option of pre-emptive action in the case of nuclear terrorism?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Well, I think it is quite an important issue which is being discussed right now.
You cannot, in many cases, wait as provided for in the United Nation charter for an armed attack before you respond.
I mean, clearly, if there is a clear and present danger of aggression for using nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, you need to plan.
The question is who will do the pre-emption and what I'm arguing is that it should be a collective pre-emption through the Security Council.
You need to build consensus before you pre-empt.
If you send an invitation to every country to use the right of so called pre-emption, you are really going to see expansion of their support in a variety of situations and it is not in anybody's interests.
So, why we need pre-emption, it has to be based on collective decision by the international community.
I think the Security Council has the right always under the charter if there is a case of threat to international peace and security to use pre-emption.
So, I'm arguing that (a) we need to exercise maximum restraint before we use force.
If we have to use force, we need to use it in a collective manner, again to give the required legitimacy to such a pre-emptive act.
TONY JONES: Kofi Annan has called essentially for a debate and a report on this very issue.
Are you talking to him?
Are you putting forward your ideas to him for what should happen?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: I've been talking to him.
I've been talking to the panel that was established by Kofi Annan to look into ways and means to improve the functioning of the United Nations system and I discussed that very issue with them and I've been lecturing and writing on that issue.
I believe we need to adjust the norms to the current realities, but we need to adjust it in a way to continue to maintain law and order and minimise the use of force and not create a situation of chaos.
TONY JONES: How do you get around the inherent flaw, though, in the Security Council system which is that individual nations have always had a veto and for political reasons may exercise that veto so the pre-emption option may never come to play?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: You clearly need to visit the right of exercising the veto power.
We probably need to have enforced limitation on the use of veto, but I think you need to create a different culture that we are all in it together and we can't afford to have a security system based on a narrow-blinker approach of national interest.
The situation has become as such, particularly with the kind of extremist groups we are facing, with the kind of technology spread, the new technology spread, that we really need to act in concert.
We need to understand that we will, in it together, we will all win or lose.
TONY JONES: You are talking about revolutionising the treaty system.
The effectively does that mean giving it teeth, giving it the option of going to the Security Council and seeking collective action against an offending nation?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Absolutely.
I think if we do not revolutionise the system, as you call it, we will continue to have unilateral actions and unilateral actions have its own inherent problems as we have seen.
Everybody loses if we disagree on matters of war and peace.
We have seen the situation in Iraq.
Everybody is hurting.
The coalition hurts, the United Nations hurts and I think one important lesson that comes out of Iraq, we really need to do as much to forge a consensus before we move on using force, I think, and that's basically what I'm trying or I'm calling on - to revisit our security assumption and understand that doing it alone is not necessarily always the best way to do it.
TONY JONES: How urgent is this, because right now we have a problem, as you are well aware, in Iran?
The accusation is that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons secretly.
Could you imagine this new system coming into play quickly enough to deal with the problem that's happening in Iraq?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Well, I'm not sure in Iran we are reaching the situation where we see a clear and present danger.
We have not seen any concrete proof of a nuclear weapon program.
I think Jack Straw a couple of days ago said it was inconceivable in the present situation to use force against Iran and I subscribe to that.
I haven't really seen, based on our work, any imminent threat going there.
I think there is a dialogue coming between Iran and the European Union and I hope that will continue.
I hope...many of these issues, you need to try to resolve it through diplomacy and verification, diplomacy meaning also maximum pressure.
Use of force should be the last resort, when we have no other option, and when the use of force is the best option, and if we reach that point, as I said, you need to again develop an international consensus to get all the support required for any decision to use force.
TONY JONES: Do you believe that Washington agrees with your assessment and Jack Straw's assessment, for that matter, that there is no imminent danger from Iran?
Because there are persistent rumours in Washington that they have a contingency plan to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Well, they believe this is a weapons program.
I again will be very happy to receive all the information they have.
We act on all the information we receive.
I haven't seen anybody saying that they need to use force.
I think everybody in Washington, from President Bush down, saying diplomacy should be the way to go.
I would like to talk diplomacy.
I think we are still within the realm of diplomacy.
TONY JONES: What do you think would be the effect of a pre-emptive strike, a military strike, an aerial bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Well, I think it will send a terrible message to the entire Middle East.
It will not resolve the issue, in my view, because if you have the technology it will simply force a country to go underground.
So I don't believe that attacking a facility here or there will eliminate the program.
In fact, it could energise the entire nation to go forward with nuclear weapons, so it could be completely counter-productive.
I'm not saying that in every situation there is no way we can use force, but I'm saying in that particular situation, I do not see use of force at this stage to be at all justified or effective.
TONY JONES: How big an issue do you believe it is in the Islamic world that America and much of the world, knowing that it was happening and knowing that it exists, turned a blind eye to Israel developing and maintaining a large nuclear arsenal?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Well, that's one of the reasons I'm saying any attack on Iranian facilities would create chaos and total instability in the Middle East for a variety of reasons, including exactly what you said because there is a perception of security imbalance in the Middle East.
Most of the countries in the Middle East perceive that the situation is not balanced, not fair, because Israel have a nuclear weapon program and all the others are subscribing to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
I have been talking on this issue.
I have been visiting Israel a few months ago.
I had a good talk with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and I have made my point clear that this situation is not sustainable.
Either we are going to see a few countries in the next few years in the Middle East develop nuclear weapons or we could see some of the extremist groups in the region acquiring a nuclear weapon and then whatever deterrence Israel or anybody will have will not work because these people are, by their very nature, are not to be deterred.
The other alternative is to have a security system based on trust, cooperation.
In fact, if there is any need for cooperation, the time is now, because the terrorism threat is a threat to every country in the region and I think that's the way to go.
When we move on the peace process in the Middle East, we need to have a parallel dialogue on security that aims to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.
They have some limitation on conventional armament, have some confidence-building measure.
We have to understand that we have reached a point that relying on nuclear deterrence is obsolete and it is not the way, it was OK.
It prevented us from going maybe to a third world war since the 40s, but things have changed so much with globalisation, with the dissemination of technology, with the emergence of this phenomenon called extremist and terrorism, that we need to re-think a different system of security and it has to be inconclusive, it has to be built on respect for every human life.
I think any security system that continues to be based on borders, based on us versus them, will not work.
TONY JONES: It also has to be based on truth, doesn't it?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Absolutely.
TONY JONES: I'm wondering did Mr Sharon maintain to you that Israel is not nuclear arsenal?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: He did not deny that.
I think they are maintaining a policy of ambiguity, as they call it, but I don't think anybody would question the assumption, the assumption which I operate on and pretty much the rest of the world operates on, that Israel has nuclear weapons or nuclear weapon capability at the very least.
TONY JONES: Do you know whether North Korea now has nuclear weapons?
There is widespread intelligence reporting that they may have six to eight?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: We know for sure that they have the fissile material to plutonium that could enable them to assemble a number of nuclear weapons.
They have said they have already assembled these weapons.
I have no reason to challenge their assumption.
If they haven't developed the weapons, they clearly can do it in a matter of weeks or months because they have the fissile material which is the key to nuclear weapons and they have the industrial infrastructure.
That's why I keep saying that North Korea is really the most important or serious challenge to the non-proliferation regime because this is a country which is beleaguered, this is a country that has the technology, this is a country trying to use nuclear capability for blackmail.
TONY JONES: Well, here is the question - Does North Korea, in your view, present the clear and present danger that you say Iran does not?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: I think it's clearly, in my view, much more of a danger than the Iranian situation, as I see it today.
However, in the case of North Korea also the option has been narrowed a lot since we have not really acted.
We knew that North Korea has been non-compliant for at least a decade or so.
Nothing has been done.
The longer you wait in reaction to a case of incipient proliferation, the less option you have in the future.
Frankly, right now, the only option we have right now is to sit around the table with North Korea and work out a political settlement.
TONY JONES: So there's no collective military option available in the case of North Korea because it already has the nuclear weapons, is that what you are saying?
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Precisely.
I think the damage that might ensue from a military action, particularly in the case of North Korea, not only that they have a deterrence possibly, but they are also 30 kilometres away from Seoul, so the possibility of a military action, I think, is almost not there.
TONY JONES: Mohamed El Baradei, we'll have to leave it there, we thank you very much for coming in to talk with us tonight.
MOHAMED EL BARADEI: Thank you very much for having me.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
SURVEY SAYS ... Yucca opposition growing
SECOND POLL CLAIMS NEVADANS DON'T WANT REPOSITORY SPECIAL TO THE PVT
November 10, 2004
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Pahrump Valley Times
http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2004/11/10/news/ymp.html
CARSON CITY - Results of an annual statewide survey show that nearly 73 percent of all Nevadans believe the state should continue fighting, rather than seek some sort of deal with the federal government, in Nevada's battle against the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
The news comes on the heels of another survey in which less than four percent of voters considered Yucca Mountain an issue in the presidential election.
If given the chance to vote on the project, the survey found that nearly 77 percent of all Nevadans would vote against it, with only 19 percent saying they would vote for it. The poll shows opposition increasing since 2003, when 76 percent said they would vote against storing the nation's high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain - sited in Nye County, where the official government stance has been more favorable to the project - and 22 percent said they would vote for it.
The survey of more than 402 randomly selected Nevadans was conducted between Oct. 7 and 18 by Northwest Survey and Data Services, which is based in Eugene, Ore., and affiliated with the University of Oregon. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8 percent. Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval and the state's Agency For Nuclear Projects released survey results last week.
Sandoval said this survey is more credible and consistent than others on this topic since the same methodology; sample size and core questions have been used since 1989.
He also noted the lack of any biasing preliminary questions or qualifying statements, noting that the question on whether the state should continue its opposition to Yucca Mountain or make a deal for benefits was the second question asked, right after the straightforward question about voting for or against the project. The poll found that Nevadans remain adamantly opposed to a nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain. In 2003, with the same research firm asking the same questions, the survey found that 65 percent of all respondents favored continuing opposition to the project and rejecting any negotiations with the federal government for benefits in exchange for accepting the project. That year, 30 percent of those polled favored making a deal with the government.
In response to the same question this year, 67 percent said the state should keep fighting and turn down any possible benefits, with only 29 percent wanting to deal.
The survey found that only 36 percent of all Nevadans are aware that a federal court decision this summer in Nevada's lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy "will make it very difficult for the federal government to move ahead with the project."
When informed by pollsters that this court decision "found that the federal government did not use proper standards for long-term storage at Yucca Mountain," the number of Nevadans favoring continued opposition increased to 73 percent. Knowing the result of the state's lawsuit, only 25 percent said the state should stop opposing the project and make a deal.
In addition to reaffirming strong opposition to Yucca Mountain and support for continuing to combat the project, the survey found that two of every three Nevadans (or 67 percent) support the state's lawsuits aimed at stopping the project and support the state water engineer's denial of water permits for it.
"These results show that people throughout the state are even more opposed than in past years to this misguided project," Sandoval said. "With a federal court decision that can kill the project, Nevadans understand that the dump is far from a done deal. This is good news for Nevada and more bad news for the Department of Energy and the nuclear industry."
The survey also showed a growing distrust of the DOE in Nevada. Asked if the DOE "can be trusted to live up to any benefits agreement the federal government would make with Nevada," 27 percent agreed and 69 percent disagreed. That's up from 2003, when 64 percent said the DOE could not be trusted.
Robert Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects, said Nevada's opposition to Yucca Mountain has remained close to or above 70 percent since the state began commissioning such surveys in 1989.
He said Nevadans have been just as consistent in opposing any deals that would weaken the state's opposition despite all the time and money the nuclear industry has poured into Nevada.
"When you look at these survey findings and compare them with past survey results, the people of Nevada are sending a clear and consistent message to DOE and the commercial nuclear power industry," Loux said. "They are saying, 'We don't want this and we won't be fooled into cutting any deals.'"
People in Nevada continue to view Yucca Mountain as a risk to public health, safety and the economy. Respondents identified rail and truck shipments to the site as the greatest risk (85 percent rated this as moderate to high risk). The second highest risk is the potential for radioactive contamination from the repository (81 percent), followed by the risk of property value losses to homes and businesses (76 percent), adverse health effects for Nevada residents (76 percent), risk of damaging Nevada's reputation (64 percent), risk of economic damage to major Nevada industries such as gaming and conventions (62 percent), and risk of loss of public revenues due to declines in tourists and visitors (62 percent).
For complete survey results, please visit www.state.nv.us/nucwaste or contact George McCabe at Brown & Partners Public Relations at (702) 967-2222, (702) 325-7358 or gmccabe@brown-partners.com.
-------- ohio
Davis-Besse lowers rating after failed test
Thursday, November 11, 2004
John Funk
Plain Dealer Reporter
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1100169026227680.xml
Managers of the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor have voluntarily lowered the plant's federal performance rating for the failure of emergency sirens during a test earlier this year.
The reduced grade comes about a week after a special team of Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors visited the Toledo-area plant and reached a similar conclusion. The team's written report, which could include its own negative finding, will be issued in about 30 days.
The lower rating mars Davis-Besse's performance record only months after plant owner FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron won NRC approval to restart the reactor in March. The agency kept the reactor shut down for two years for major renovations and a change in its safety culture. The rating cut also appears to validate a charge in August by nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists that the company tried to "game" the NRC's reactor oversight process after the failed test, he said.
"This shows they are still a work in progress . . . and not ready for the NRC to walk away and leave them to their own devices," Lochbaum said.
FirstEnergy denied the charge then and again Wednesday.
The siren problem started May 7 when Ottawa County sheriff deputies were not able to activate 49 emergency sirens in a monthly test. The cause was traced to the company's computer at the Sheriff's Office that had not reset its clock when daylight-saving time began in April, so the sheriff could not have activated the sirens in a real emergency.
In the face of concern from the special NRC panel still overseeing the plant, Davis-Besse began daily silent testing of the sirens in June from the plant to ensure public safety, a company spokesman said at the time.
But the successful daily test helped another way: It changed the failure rate for the quarter from one out of three monthly tests to one out of scores of daily tests. And that kept the NRC's color-coded score card on the facility "green" no problems.
NRC inspectors concluded the daily results could not be included because the company had not changed its official testing procedure with the agency or with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is responsible for public safety.
In a Nov. 4 letter to the NRC, plant Vice President Mark Bezilla agreed. Davis-Besse will seek approval of its new daily testing procedure but not count previous daily tests.
The company is also placing a new computer in the Sheriff's Office, said a spokesman.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138
-------- utah
DOE Keeps Mum on Preferred Option for Uranium Tailings Piled Near Moab, Utah
November 11, 2004
By Patty Henetz,
The Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=353
The long-awaited draft environmental impact study of what to do with 12 million tons of radioactive uranium ore tailings piled next to the Colorado River near Moab contains a mystery: What does the Department of Energy believe is the best solution?
The 1,000-page study, released this week after several months of delay, outlines five possibilities, including capping the debris from the now-defunct Atlas Corp. where it sits, moving it off-site to one of three locations or doing nothing.
But unlike most EIS drafts, there is no express preferred alternative -- and DOE won't say what it is until after the 90-day public comment period ends in mid-February.
Don Metzler, DOE's Moab project manager, said Tuesday that not offering a preference keeps all options open. But others, including Moab residents, environmentalists and members of Utah's congressional delegation, said DOE's dodge subverts good science as well as legislative intent.
Moab resident Sarah Fields said she has read the 7-pound study's executive summary and will spend the next week looking over the full report. So far, she is not convinced the DOE fully studied all the issues identified in a National Academy of Sciences 2002 study, whose recommendations included consideration of the anticipated migration of the Colorado River toward the pile.
"I don't think they address that in this report," Fields said.
Added Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, "Now is the time to read it very carefully and see what analyses 1/8DOE3/8 has offered to help us make the right decision here. Those details will be very important -- and very telling."
No matter which of the alternatives the DOE eventually chooses, it will clean up the groundwater around the site at an estimated cost of $10.75 million for design and construction plus an annual cost of $906,000.
The cheapest alternative for the tailings would be to do nothing, which is unlikely. Capping the tailings in place would cost $166 million and take seven to 10 years to complete. Off-site disposal would cost between $329 million and $464 million, depending on which alternative was chosen.
Moving the tailings would take about eight years.
Money, as always, will be key. The draft EIS presented all alternatives with the assumption that Congress would fund them, but noted that if the funds weren't forthcoming, or were pulled back, "there could be higher human health risks to exposed populations than the EIS estimates because of their more prolonged exposure to radiation from the open Moab pile or the incomplete new disposal cell."
Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, who has been instrumental in getting the more than $6 million spent to date on studies and remediation, continues to support moving the tailings, said his spokeswoman Mary Jane Collipriest.
The DOE study estimates 12 latent cancer fatalities among the public with any of the alternatives except doing nothing, which would cause 26 latent cancer fatalities.
The Energy Department's ultimate decision will affect 25 million people in four states who rely on the Colorado River for drinking water.
The uranium, ammonia and other pollutants also threaten the endangered southwest willow flycatcher, a bird that nests along the river, and four endangered fish.
Alison Heyrend, spokeswoman for 2nd District Rep. Jim Matheson, said Matheson's "unequivocal position is this tailings pile needs to be moved. Gov. Olene Walker in June wrote to the DOE and also urged the agency to remove the tailings.
Bill Sinclair, deputy director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency have hired the U.S. Geological Survey to do a study on how the Colorado River has migrated over time. The study is expected by early January.
"At sometime in the future, if you have the possibility of the river migrating and inundating the pile, that's a problem," Sinclair said. "The river migration is a deal breaker."
Tribune correspondent Lisa Church contributed to this report.
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Sudan and Rebels in Short-Term Accord on Darfur
November 11, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/africa/11darfur.html?pagewanted=all
ABUJA, Nigeria, Nov. 10 - Sudan's government and rebels ended talks on the country's troubled Darfur region on Wednesday, with agreements on security and refugees but no pact on a long-term resolution to the violence.
A later round, expected in mid-December here in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, would work on a political accord, delegates said.
Twenty-one months of violence in Darfur have left tens of thousands dead and driven 1.8 million refugees from their homes, international officials say. Sudan's Arab-dominated government and tribal fighters who support it are accused of beginning a series of coordinated attacks on non-Arab farmers after two rebel groups rose up in February 2003. Sudan denies singling out civilians or allying with the Arab militias known as the janjaweed. The talks that ended Wednesday were the first of three rounds to reach even partial deals.
Sudan and the two main rebel groups signed two accords on Tuesday, one promising aid organizations unfettered access to Darfur's displaced and the other banning "hostile" military flights over Darfur. The accords follow a widely flouted cease-fire accord reached in April. The government and rebels agreed on a broad set of principles on Wednesday, including "the inalienable right of refugees and internally displaced people to return to their places of origins," said the chief mediator, Allam Mi Ahmad. Both sides also agreed in principle to eventual devolution of powers to Darfur's three states and "effective representation" for its people in the national government. No political accord was signed because of disagreement over rebel demands, including a call by the Sudan Liberation Army for a secular state, one delegate said.
The Sudanese police raided a camp in southern Darfur early Wednesday for the second time this month, destroying makeshift homes, firing into the air and shouting at terrified villagers, Reuters reported, citing a United Nations spokesman, Fred Eckhard.
Jan Pronk, the special United Nations envoy for Darfur, and Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, are expected to visit the camp soon, Mr. Eckhard said. The World Health Organization says more than 70,000 of the displaced people have died from disease, malnutrition and other hardships caused by being uprooted.
--------
After Accord, Sudan Camp Raided
Shelters Reportedly Destroyed and Residents Beaten
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41010-2004Nov10?language=printer
OLD AL-JEER SUREAF, Sudan, Nov. 10 -- Just hours after the government agreed to a peace deal Tuesday aimed at ending violence in Darfur, Sudanese police arrived at this battered camp in the middle of the night, beating residents with wooden poles, bulldozing and burning shelters and firing tear gas into a health clinic, residents and aid workers reported.
The assault capped a series of often violent government raids over the past week, aimed at relocating residents to new camps. It also came despite international condemnation of the raids and requests from the United Nations and the Bush administration that displaced families not be forcibly moved to new locations.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday in Washington that he had spoken with Sudan's vice president over the weekend and "specifically said that this kind of behavior was unacceptable, we couldn't understand it and it was not helping us reach a solution."
The U.N. Security Council is due to hold a meeting in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, next week to discuss the crisis in Sudan, where tens of thousands have died and about 1.5 million people have been displaced during 20 months of fighting between African rebels and government troops and their Arab militia allies.
The panel could impose sanctions on the Khartoum government if it finds that serious abuses of civilians have taken place. A U.N. report last week said there was evidence of war crimes and mass abuses by all parties to the conflict.
By midmorning Wednesday, the charred, tattered remains of burned huts at Old al-Jeer Sureaf dotted the once-crammed tent city of about 5,000 people. Fifteen people had been seriously injured, 10 community leaders were under arrest and several mothers said they had lost their children in the chaos.
One local sheik, Taher Hasaballeh, was beaten by 10 police officers and taken to jail, witnesses said. He had refused to leave the camp on Saturday and led a community sit-in at a straw-roofed mosque.
Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, visited the half-destroyed camp Wednesday afternoon, wading through a jumble of singed blankets, jerrycans, bowls and plastic sandals. Sudan's foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, and other officials from Khartoum accompanied him. Pronk made no public comment during his visit.
The group toured the health clinic, speaking to women who said they had been raped during the raids and inspecting burn marks on the building from tear gas canisters. One Sudanese official expressed frank skepticism about the accounts of rape, calling the women "very good actresses."
Afterward, Pronk and the officials attended a tense meeting with humanitarian workers in the area. Government representatives said that the land was private property and that residents were being moved to a better location. Last week, officials said the camp was being cleared because people were posing as refugees so they could collect food and blankets.
"They have been taken to a better place," said Ahmed Ali Abdallah, a government employee who runs a new camp 17 miles south of the old camp. "The conditions of life were not suitable for them."
The violence began Nov. 1 when camp residents were told to move to the new al-Jeer Sureaf location but refused to go. Government police and soldiers swept through the old camp twice last week, on Tuesday and Saturday, burning huts and swinging sticks, residents said.
Several hundred families were forcibly relocated, and some aid workers and U.N. officials said they believed the government was moving camp occupants in an effort to root out rebel forces.
At the new camp, large white tents donated by the Saudi Red Crescent Society have been set up in neat rows. But the camp is isolated in an area surrounded by sorghum fields where pro-government militiamen known as the Janjaweed reportedly have set up a base.
"We were so afraid of being moved there. I have been beaten twice for refusing to leave," Zenab Abdulla Rahaman, 26, said as she sat staring numbly at the floor inside the clinic run by the International Medical Corps, an American aid group.
Rahaman said that she was beaten by police during the two previous raids and that early Wednesday she was sleeping in the camp mosque with nearly a hundred other people when she was dragged away by a police officer and raped in a nearby field. A nurse at the clinic taped bandages over cuts around her thighs. A stream of other patients arrived to seek treatment for spinal injuries, cuts and bruises from beatings. Several mothers said their children had become lost in the violence and confusion. One woman, Khadija Dahiwa Tagal, said two of her six children had run away to hide and had not returned.
Witnesses said the police arrived about midnight but caused little trouble until dawn, when they started moving aggressively through the camp. Some residents said the police were accompanied by Janjaweed militiamen, but it was not clear what role, if any, the fighters played in the events.
On Wednesday morning, aid workers entered the camp in U.N. trucks and kept vigil all day, saying they were there to ensure that more residents would not be attacked. One nurse said she would sleep in the clinic overnight.
All day, groups of police roamed the fields and gathered inside the mosque. They also kept guard over the water supply in case residents tried to rebuild their shelters. Some gestured angrily with their sticks at stragglers who tried to salvage belongings from their crushed shelters.
The residents of al-Jeer Sureaf are among about 1.5 million Africans who live in squalid tent cities across Darfur after being driven from their farms by the fighting, which broke out in February 2003 when African tribes rebelled against the Arab-led government.
In retaliation, the United Nations has said, the government has bombed villages and armed the Janjaweed militias, while tens of thousands of people have died from hunger, disease and violence; the Bush administration has described the crisis as genocide.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
Anti-French Riots Fade in Ivory Coast but Foreigners Flee Nation
November 11, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/africa/11ivory.html?pagewanted=all
DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 10 - Though relative calm set in after four days of anti-French rioting in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, France and the United Nations began flying French and other European citizens out of the country on Wednesday.
Three Air France planes chartered by the French government left Abidjan for Paris on Wednesday with about 1,000 passengers, according to the French military spokesman in Abidjan, Col. Henri Aussavy. Another 1,000 are to leave Thursday.
All day, French troops continued to use boats, armored cars and helicopters to pick up French citizens and other foreigners. United Nations troops escorted at least 200 Canadians, Spaniards and Moroccans to the airport for evacuation, the United Nations spokesman, Jean-Victor Nkolo, said by telephone. American citizens boarded a Canadian government flight to Accra, a United States Embassy spokeswoman said.
Anger against France has convulsed Ivory Coast since Saturday, when Ivoirian warplanes bombed a French base in the northern part of the country, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American civilian. The government said the strike was aimed at rebels, but France, insisting the attack was deliberate, retaliated by destroying much of the country's military aircraft.
Government loyalists rioted on the streets for four days, attacking French homes and businesses. State-run radio and television broadcast fiery speeches that United Nations officials warned were fanning anti-French fury.
On the streets, the violence abated Wednesday, but it was unclear if this would last. "Today is a real contrast from yesterday," Colonel Aussavy said. "It is quiet, but we are very, very concerned. Is it a real change in the situation or is the stage before new demonstrations?"
Joint patrols by French, Ivoirian and United Nations troops were suspended after only one night's work, apparently at the request of Ivory Coast's government, according to the United Nations.
In Paris, French officials insisted that the rescue of French and other European citizens was not a wholesale evacuation but an emergency measure for those who felt it necessary to leave. Ivory Coast, independent from France since 1960, is home to 15,000 French citizens. About 10,000 French and United Nations peacekeepers are monitoring a 2003 cease-fire between the northern-based rebels and government forces.
On Wednesday, United Nations peacekeepers were dispatched to investigate new clashes in Gagnoa, a site of conflict since the civil war broke out in September 2002 The move could test the United Nations forces' ability to carry out their newly fortified mandate. On Saturday, the Security Council authorized the troops to use force to prevent hostilities, not just in self-defense.
In New York on Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council put off a vote on a resolution imposing an arms embargo on Ivory Coast after South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, asked for more time to pursue an African Union initiative to curb the violence.
The resolution, offered by France and seven co-sponsors, would impose the embargo and other sanctions on Dec. 10 if the government and rebels in the Ivory Coast do not carry out their commitments under the 2003 peace deal. John C. Danforth, the American ambassador, said a vote would be held on Monday.
Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations for this article.
--------
Westerners Are Evacuated From Ivory Coast
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38922-2004Nov10.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Nov. 11 -- The French government began airlifting hundreds of its citizens to Paris on Wednesday as violent mobs continued roaming the streets of this city, long regarded as among the most peaceful and prosperous in Africa.
About 700 French nationals left on three jetliners, with more scheduled to depart Thursday, officials said. An estimated 1,500 others, meanwhile, turned a French military base on the outskirts of the airport into a sort of squatter camp.
The U.S. Embassy and other missions sent escorts into the city to retrieve Americans, Canadians, Spaniards and others, the Associated Press reported, calling the evacuation one of the largest of Africa's post-independence era. Spain, Belgium and Italy sent military cargo planes to aid in the evacuations.
At the French military base, men, women and children sprawled on mattresses or stretched out precariously across rows of chairs. Their luggage and countless empty water bottles were strewn about.
Some of the French gave up on sleeping, choosing to chat and smoke away their final hours in Africa in the warm, humid Ivory Coast night. The subject often turned to the sudden upheaval of the last week, as a battle between President Laurent Gbagbo and a rebel group from the north shifted into a struggle between Gbagbo and Ivory Coast's former colonial rulers, the French.
"The president, Mr. Gbagbo, wants to kill all French, all white people," Jean-Luc Vacher, 50, a welding company manager, said as he sat outside with his wife, Christine, and their dog. "We are very, very afraid."
They recalled the gunfire of Saturday, the day that Ivory Coast forces bombed a position of French peacekeepers, killing nine of them as well as an American aid worker, after breaking a cease-fire that had lasted more than a year. Ivorian officials, who had ordered attacks on rebels, called the strike an accident, but the French military retaliated by destroying the tiny Ivory Coast air force and seizing the main airport.
Mobs took to the streets soon after, accusing the French of siding with the rebels from the country's mostly Muslim north and seeking to unseat Gbagbo. Calls for calm by Gbagbo and others have not quelled the unrest, nor has a growing French military presence here.
Vacher and his wife said they did not sleep at all Saturday night as they listened to gunfire. It continued Sunday as they huddled, terrified to leave their home. Their decision Tuesday to leave was especially difficult, they said, because both were born in Africa and have lived much of their lives there.
As the convoys rounded up foreigners from their homes for evacuation, Ivory Coast's state television alternately appealed for calm and for a mass uprising against the French, the Associated Press reported. French citizens darted out to the banks of lagoons, which surround the capital, and were plucked to safety by French soldiers in boats.
Only a few hundred Americans remain in Ivory Coast, many of them missionaries and aid workers.
--------
U.N. Peacekeepers Join Patrols in Congo
November 11, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/africa/11congo.html?pagewanted=all
KINSHASA, Congo, Nov. 10 - United Nations peacekeepers have joined thousands of government soldiers on joint patrols in eastern Congo to protect civilians and pressure Rwandan rebels to lay down their arms, United Nations officials said Wednesday.
The first joint patrols are seen as a dress rehearsal for larger operations aimed at restoring order in the east, where thousands of Hutu fighters from neighboring Rwanda have ignored calls for them to disarm and return home.
An estimated 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels remain in eastern Congo, where they have been based since fleeing Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, in which Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The rebels have warned that they will defend themselves and fellow Hutu refugees against any attack or attempt by the Congolese Army or United Nations peacekeepers to repatriate them by force.
Congo is struggling to restore peace after a five-year war that sucked in six neighboring countries and killed three million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
-------- arms
S. Korean pleads guilty in arms deal
November 11, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041111-125944-1245r.htm
A South Korean national pleaded guilty yesterday to violating the Arms Export Control Act and conspiracy charges in connection with his effort to obtain military engines for Black Hawk helicopters, as well as other military items, and divert them to China.
Kwonhwan Park, also known as Howard Park, entered the plea before U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz in New Haven, Conn., as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors, said U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O'Connor.
Park was the target of a two-year undercover investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS). He and his Malaysian company, SGS, attempted to purchase Black Hawk military helicopter engines from Helicopter Support International, a company affiliated with Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn., authorities said.
ICE spokesman Dean Boyd said throughout 2001, Park and others provided documents to the State Department asserting that the engines, worth more than $1 million each, were bound for the Malaysian army or the South Korean army. He said Park and SGS submitted sworn end-user certificates, with signatures from purported Malaysian and South Korean military officials, stating the engines were for use by the Malaysian military and South Korean army.
Mr. Boyd said ICE agents in New Haven and overseas later confirmed that the signatures were fraudulent and that two engines shipped on April 8, 2002, to Malaysia were later diverted to China.
He said as the investigation continued, Park and his associates attempted to obtain four additional engines for the S70 Sikorsky military helicopter.
Mr. Boyd said that earlier this year, ICE agents were alerted on short notice that Park intended to enter the United States through San Francisco on March 27. They tracked his movements and intercepted him April 1 at Washington Dulles International Airport attempting to depart the United States on a plane bound for Beijing.
He said an inspection of Park's luggage confirmed he had in his possession a sophisticated night-vision goggle system manufactured by a San Francisco corporation. The system is a military item controlled for export.
Sentencing in the case has been set for Jan. 28. Park faces 10 years in prison on the illegal-export charge and five years on the conspiracy charge. He also faces $2.5 million in fines.
"This type of prosecution requires the tremendous skill of our federal investigative partners, and great cooperation from the many defense contractors here in Connecticut," Mr. O'Connor said. "We will continue to work diligently in order to prevent the illegal export of sensitive military technology."
Mr. O'Connor also said the U.S. government worked closely with South Korean officials in the investigation and that Yung Jean Sohn, a former South Korean military official and an officer with SGS - who with Park signed some of the documentation submitted to the State Department - was prosecuted in South Korea.
Yung pleaded guilty to forgery of official documents and received an eight-month prison sentence.
-------- business
Halliburton scandal widens after claims of pressure to award lucrative contracts
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
November 11 2004
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ec9ddf06-3386-11d9-b6c3-00000e2511c8.html
The scandal surrounding Halliburton's oil contracts in Iraq widened yesterday following allegations that the former US ambassador to Kuwait pressed the oil services company to direct lucrative fuel contracts to a Kuwaiti company.
Henry Waxman, top Democrat on the House government reform committee, yesterday released an e-mail revealing that Richard Jones, the former US ambassador, pressed KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, to give a fuel contract to Altanmia, a Kuwait subcontractor.
In a letter calling for more congressional hearings into Halliburton, Mr Waxman also provided details of allegations made to the State Department that Halliburton officials involved in Iraq contracts "solicit bribes openly" and were "on the take".
Halliburton, formerly run by vice-president Dick Cheney, has been a magnet for criticism of the Bush administration since it won a $7bn no-bid contract to repair Iraqi oilfields in March 2003.
In December 2003, Pentagon auditors found that KBR and Altanmia had overcharged the US government by $61m for fuel imports. But Mr Jones, who was also the deputy administrator for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, appears to have instructed KBR to give the contract to Altanmia.
"[Tell] KBR to get off their butts and conclude deals with Kuwait NOW!" Mr Jones wrote in a December 2 2003 e-mail. "Tell them we want a deal done with Altanmia within 24 hours and don't take any excuses."
The Army Corps of Engineers later concluded KBR had not overcharged the government. But last month Bunnatine Greenhouse, the agency's top contracting official, said the agency took "improper and illegal" action in concluding that KBR charged the government reasonable prices. The FBI is investigating her allegations.
Halliburton denied any wrongdoing, saying: "KBR delivered fuel to Iraq at the best value, the best price, and the best terms and in ways completely consistent with government procurement policies".
Halliburton has argued it is being targeted because of its former ties to Mr Cheney. But at recent meeting of government inspector-generals, a Pentagon auditor raised red flags about KBR.
According to an administration official, the auditor said other than KBR "everyone else is toeing the line".
After Mr Jones's e-mail, an army official wrote to KBR resisting efforts to give the contract to Altanmia. "I will not succumb to the political pressures from the [Kuwait government] or the US embassy to direct KBR to go against my integrity and pay a higher price for fuel than necessary", she wrote.
--------
Waxman Seeks New Halliburton Inquiry
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41318-2004Nov10.html
Citing newly disclosed State Department documents, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) called yesterday for further congressional hearings on Halliburton Co.'s contracts in Kuwait and Iraq.
Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a harsh Halliburton critic, said the documents include complaints from executives of a Kuwaiti subcontractor last year that employees of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. repeatedly tried to extract bribes in exchange for fuel contracts.
Waleed Al-Humaidhi, an official with a Kuwaiti company used to import fuel to Iraq at a time of shortages, told State Department officials that "it is 'common knowledge' " that Halliburton officials "solicit bribes openly," one document said. He later scaled back his claims, saying "no one from KBR ever requested any extra-contractual considerations," one of the State Department memos said.
Another document described how a KBR official demanded in August 2003 that a Kuwaiti hotel, which it was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, buy his wife a "diamond encrusted" watch to replace one she had apparently lost.
Halliburton said in a recent regulatory filing that it told the Pentagon inspector general last month that two of its former employees in Kuwait "may have solicited and/or accepted payments" from subcontractors. Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said in an e-mail yesterday that that disclosure was unrelated to the allegations cited in Waxman's release.
In a letter to committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), Waxman said, "The implications of these new disclosures should be thoroughly investigated."
Waxman's request for new hearings was greeted as a partisan ploy by Davis spokesman David Marin, who said Davis and other committee Republicans already are reviewing the same material closely. Marin said Waxman takes "snippets out of hundreds of pages of documents and rushes to judgment on them."
"We don't jump as easily to unsubstantiated claims of corruption or improper influence as the minority does," Marin said in a written statement.
Halliburton's Hall dismissed Waxman's letter as "nothing more than a retrospective look at all the congressman's letters and news releases during the presidential campaign."
Hall said KBR got fuel to Iraq "at the best value, the best price, and the best terms and in ways completely consistent with government procurement policies."
Hall acknowledged that a hotel in Kuwait bought a watch for the wife of a KBR executive. "In regards to the watch, it was stolen while staying at the hotel and the hotel simply replaced it," she said.
In his letter to Davis, Waxman cited "extraordinarily high prices" -- about $2.64 per gallon, or twice the going price in the region at the time -- that Halliburton and KBR charged for importing gasoline from Kuwait into Iraq. Waxman said State Department officials appeared unconcerned about the cost.
Instead, Waxman wrote, documents show that State Department officials "intervened to pressure U.S. contracting officials to drop" efforts to find cheaper fuel and work exclusively with a subcontractor in Kuwait called Altanmia.
Tell "KBR to get off their butts and conclude deals with Kuwait NOW!" U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait Richard H. Jones wrote in an e-mail note in December, citing long lines at gas stations in Baghdad. Later that month Defense Department auditors announced that KBR may have overcharged the government by $61 million.
-------
THE COSTS
Halliburton May Have Been Pressured by U.S. Diplomats to Disregard High Fuel Prices
November 11, 2004
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/politics/11halliburton.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all&position=
American diplomats pressured the Halliburton Company in late 2003 to keep using a Kuwaiti subcontractor to truck fuel into Iraq, despite evidence that the company was charging exorbitant prices, newly released State Department documents show.
The documents - a handful of e-mail messages and memorandums to and from American diplomats - raise yet more questions about the post-invasion fuel imports to Iraq, which are already the subject of federal inquiries into possible overbilling and fraud.
They indicate that the Kuwait government secretly demanded that only one company - a Kuwaiti company, Altanmia - be selected to handle fuel sales to Iraq. And they show behind-the-scenes efforts by the American-run Coalition Provisional Authority and the American Embassy in Kuwait to ensure that demand was met, both to speed delivery and foster Kuwaiti support in Iraq.
The documents, however, do not clarify the central questions about the imports: why the Americans went along with such high costs and which parties to the transactions may have benefited most. The documents were released Wednesday by Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat and ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, as he asked for new Congressional hearings on the matter. The committee has gathered hundreds of documents related to the issue.
Soon after the American invasion in March 2003, with gasoline lines lengthening in Iraq and public order crumbling, the Pentagon asked the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root to import consumer fuels on an urgent basis.
KBR hired a Kuwaiti conglomerate, Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, to secure the fuels from the Kuwait government and arrange for their delivery.
Critics in Congress and elsewhere soon questioned the prices KBR was paying and passing along - with a markup for itself - to the Army. On Dec. 11, 2003, Pentagon auditors concluded that the KBR-Altanmia fuel prices, including gasoline delivered at $2.64 per gallon, were more than double the cost of available alternatives. They said that through September of that year the Army had been overbilled by $61 million.
Executives of Halliburton and KBR have defended the fuel charges, saying they were reasonable under the demanding conditions of the time. The Pentagon is still debating whether to demand a refund from KBR, and the F.B.I. is examining the fuel transactions.
In December, as a new round of contracts were to be issued, the debate over whether to continue using Altanmia grew stronger. Some documents suggest Kuwaiti pressure. A letter sent to KBR by the contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers in Kuwait, Mary C. Robinson, on Dec. 6, 2003, states, "I will not succumb to the political pressures from the GoK or the US Embassy to go against my integrity and pay a higher price for fuel than necessary." GoK is the government of Kuwait.
Ms. Robinson was overruled, and just 13 days later, the Army Corps of Engineers headquarters in Washington issued an unusual waiver declaring that the KBR fuel prices had been "fair and reasonable," and that the company would not be required to provide detailed cost data to justify the expenditures.
The senior contracting official of the Corps, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said in a recent letter that the waiver was improperly adopted by Corps officers who went behind her back.
Another document, an e-mail message from the United States ambassador to Kuwait, shows the urgency American diplomats felt. On Dec. 2, 2003 - shortly before Pentagon auditors questioned the fuel prices but well after the issue had been raised in Washington - the ambassador, Richard H. Jones, who also served as deputy administrator of the coalition authority in Iraq, wrote to a colleague: "Please, tell KBR to get off their butts and conclude deals with Kuwait NOW! Tell them we want a deal done with Altanmia within 24 hours and don't take any excuses."
Other documents suggest that American diplomats were so eager to bolster fuel supplies and to cultivate Kuwait's wider cooperation in the Iraq struggle that they rejected questions being raised about the propriety of the KBR-Altanmia arrangements. "The Government of Kuwait is ready to do whatever is necessary to get fuel to Iraq," a Dec. 3 memo addressed to Mr. Jones reads. But KBR's reticence to sign further contracts at that time, it said, not only threatens the fuel supply but "is undermining our ability to get other very high priority items from the Government of Kuwait."
Greg Sullivan, a State Department spokesman, said Wednesday: "The role of the embassy was restricted to facilitating dialogue so that badly-needed fuel supplies would be available in Iraq. Neither Embassy Kuwait nor Ambassador Jones played a role in the selection of the Kuwaiti supplier Altanmia, which was the exclusive purview of the Corps of Engineers and the U.S. contractor."
But Representative Waxman said, "The mystery around these fuel imports continues."
"How did Altanmia get this contract, and why did they charge so much?" he asked. "Why did the State Department weigh in on their behalf in such an aggressive way?"
Mr. Waxman has asked for new Congressional inquiries into the fuel imports and the roles played by KBR, the State Department and the Army Corps of Engineers, which managed the fuel contracts.
Other State Department documents released Wednesday indicate that KBR and Altanmia argued bitterly over performance and payments under the fuel contracts. Altanmia's general manager, Waleed Al-Humaidhi, told American diplomats in Kuwait that his company was being shut out of one new deal with KBR because "he and his employees were pressured to provide unnamed KBR executives with 'kickbacks' on the humanitarian fuel contract," according to an embassy memorandum dated June 29, 2003.
But Mr. Humaidhi never provided details of the corruption charges and later told American diplomats that if asked in public, he would deny making them, another embassy memorandum said.
Wendy Hall, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said the company had never heard of those allegations and added, "It is important to the company that clients, suppliers and host countries know Halliburton's Code of Business Conduct is expected to be followed in every country in which the company operates."
Earlier this year, the Pentagon began buying fuel for Iraq directly from refiners, without using KBR as a middleman and at lower final prices.
-------- europe
DISUNION
Prime minister, president tangle in what is certain to be a long row over approving EU constitution
By Frantisek Bouc Staff Writer,
The Prague Post
November 11th, 2004
http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/1111/news1.php
President Vaclav Klaus and Prime Minister Stanislav Gross have got a problem, and the ratification of the European constitution is at the root of it. Hours after Gross and Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda signed a historic European constitution treaty in Rome, Klaus voiced concern about the government's approach toward the European constitution and its ratification. Klaus -- who as one of the constitution's fiercest critics refused to travel to the signing ceremony in Rome -- criticized the Cabinet for only approving the treaty one day prior to the signing in Rome and also for not enabling adequate public debate on the issue in this country. "It seems as if the government wanted to downplay the event, and this is bad," Klaus told reporters.
Gross rejected Klaus' criticism, noting that the constitution has been more than a year in the making and everyone could take part in the debate. "Everyone knows there was almost one year of work on the constitutional agreement. All relevant political forces had a chance to debate it, including the opposition. We said in advance that we wanted the whole nation to speak about it," Gross said.
Gross insists signing the constitution Oct. 29 was the right step, and his government prefers to ratify the document via a public referendum. Although the country lacks a specific law on holding referenda and the country's only referendum thus far -- the spring 2003 vote on EU accession -- was based on ad-hoc law, Gross said he feels people should be given a chance to express their opinion via a referendum.
Gross said the government would prefer to hold the vote simultaneous with the next general elections, in the spring of 2006. The prime minister admitted that the timing of the referendum will continue to provoke debate but added that combining it with the general elections has two advantages. First, it would save some 300 million-400 million Kc ($12 million-16 million), according to Gross. Secondly, it will help better demonstrate the standpoints of particular political parties on the EU. WHAT IS THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION?
The treaty provides a complex definition of the operation principles of the enlarged European Union
• How was it created? The convention of EU member states crafted the constitution's initial text from February 2002 to July 2003. That draft brought about heated discussions, and a compromise version was approved this past June. EU member leaders signed the document Oct. 29 in Rome
• How can it come into effect? All 25 EU member states must ratify the document, either via public referendum or in parliament. Thirteen countries plan to hold referenda. If any of the 25 members fails to ratify the constitution, it will not become valid
"Political parties should play fair before the public," Gross argued. "I don't consider it possible for a political party to pursue one policy in the European Union and another on the domestic scene."
In citing the notion of a party holding a "double policy" vis-à-vis the EU, Gross was pointing a finger at the senior opposition Civic Democrats (ODS), who reportedly have promised their political allies in Brussels they will not create obstacles to the constitution if the ratification process goes well in other EU member states, despite the party's anti-EU rhetoric here at home.
The European constitution will go into effect only if all 25 EU member states ratify the treaty within the next two years.
ODS Deputy Miroslav Ouzky, who also is the vice-chairman of the European Parliament, said that European politicians will work toward ensuring the ratification process will be successful. "I myself participated in several debates where European politicians talked about how to influence referenda so they ended successfully," Ouzky said.
In fact, Gross demonstrated the government's will to ensure approval for the constitution Nov. 5, when despite his previous statements about the inevitability of a referendum he said that if another ratification procedure proves to be more effective, he would be ready to consider it.
Danger of a misled public
President Klaus has clearly stated that a referendum should be held separately from the 2006 general elections because pre-election propaganda could confuse voters. He said he is afraid that politicians, in their emotional and simplified campaign discussions, would not be able to explain the essence of the referendum.
"If the referendum on the European constitution is conceived as a general referendum on whether the EU is a good thing or a bad thing ... then I think a majority of people in the Czech Republic will say yes in the referendum," Klaus said. "If the referendum were really about the European constitution, about whether we all really need to take this further step toward Europe, then I can well imagine that reasonable people could say no."
Former President Vaclav Havel has weighed in, agreeing that voter understanding of the constitution is low and therefore he opposes holding a referendum. "I expected a short, simple text such as the U.S. Constitution," Havel told Respekt. "Why should people vote for or against? Because they do not like one article, one chapter or the preamble?"
Vladimira Dvorakova, a political scientist with the Prague-based University of Economics, said a separate referendum on the European constitution could lower chances of the treaty's approval here. "First of all, [separate] voting would stress the significance of the treaty," Dvorakova explained. "Also, more EU skeptics would be likely to turn out."
By pushing for a delay in the referendum, the ruling coalition of the Social Democrats (CSSD), the Christian Democrats and the Freedom Union is following recommendations from Brussels that referenda should be held at times when they are likely to end successfully.
Jan Zahradil, an ODS deputy in the European Parliament, noted that the CSSD would also be able to virtually finance their 2006 election campaign from EU funds if the constitution referendum coincides with the general elections.
Brussels intends to subsidize campaigns targeted to spread information about the constitution, and the Czech state will also contribute some money. Zahradil said it will be hard to separate promotional messages for the constitution and parties' election campaigns.
Frantisek Bouc can be reached at fbouc@praguepost.com
-------- iraq
Voices from Falluja
bbc.co.uk
11 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4003877.stm
US forces are locked in fierce battle against insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja. People from the city have been giving the BBC their account of what's been going on.
Hamid Flewa, lawyer and Falluja resident:
We heard a lot overnight [on Wednesday] and the bombing intensified at dawn. [Wednesday's] onslaught affected most districts in the city.
Falluja resident leaving the city Iraqis are asking why their city has been singled out
There are bodies strewn in the streets and most families were forced to bury the dead in their gardens. I can see lines of bodies alongside the pavement.
I'm talking to you from the centre of the city. I am with my family. But we have no water or electricity.
We are going through our food supplies very quickly. No more food can reach the city.
Falluja is closed off. There is no escape. We are all surrounded. I hope my appeal will reach our British and American brothers, that this city has not just landed from another planet.
We are human beings. This is an Iraqi city. Why should we have to go through this? I am just lost for words.
Yunis Daoud, Falluja resident:
The situation in Falluja is very bad. It's been bombed extremely hard, destroying the streets and mosques.
They hit a second hospital [on Tuesday], killing everyone. There are dead bodies in the streets. People have been burying their dead in the gardens of their homes.
Everywhere you go there is great fear. My family left the house before the bombing but my friends and I stayed.
We didn't think the air strikes would be this strong. We were so scared this morning, we escaped across the Euphrates in small vessels and along country roads that the Americans have not yet discovered.
It was a very dangerous thing to do. We were at risk of getting killed at any moment.
Fadhil Badrani, journalist:
There are more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is getting stronger.
A house some doors from mine was hit during the bombardment last night. A 13-year-old boy was killed.
It is very dangerous to try to leave the city at the moment.
We are completely cut off from the outside world - no electricity, no water.
People are dying from their injuries because there is nowhere to go for treatment.
A clinic that was serving as the last hospital in the city was bombed two nights ago.
Some families have begun burying their dead in gardens and backyards.
-----
Falluja facing humanitarian crisis
Aljazeera.Net
11 November 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CC347D0D-663E-4BE6-A2C9-BB128D2997D9.htm
The Red Crescent says there is a humanitarian crisis in Falluja
Fighting in Falluja has created a humanitarian disaster in which innocent people are dying because medical help cannot reach them, aid workers in Iraq have said.
In one case, a pregnant woman and her child died in a refugee camp west of the city after the mother unexpectedly aborted and no doctors were on hand, Firdus al-Ubadi, an official from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, told Reuters on Wednesday.
In another case, a young boy died from a snake bite that would normally have been easily treatable, she said.
"From a humanitarian point of view it's a disaster, there's no other way to describe it. And if we don't do something about it soon, it's going to spread to other cities," she said.
About 10,000 US soldiers and 2000 Iraqi troops are fighting to wrest control of Falluja, 50km west of Baghdad.
Families fleeing Falluja
At least 2200 families have fled Falluja in recent days and are struggling to survive without enough water, food or medicine in nearby towns and villages, she said.
"This is not a joke, it is a full-scale battle. The battleground is horrific even for us soldiers, so imagine how civilians feel"
Major General Abd al-Qadir Mohan, Iraqi military spokesperson
Some families have fled as far as Tikrit, about 150km north of Falluja.
But the biggest concern is people in and around Falluja itself - they can't be reached because US and Iraqi forces have set up a wide cordon around the city to prevent anyone from entering and exiting the city
It is unclear how many civilians are left in Falluja, but the Association of Muslim Scholars estimates about 60000 people are still there while the US military says 150,000 (half the entire population) had fled since October.
Due to the chaos, however, no official numbers are available.
Trapped at home
Between a nightly curfew and the danger of venturing onto the streets, many Iraqis are effectively trapped at home.
"We've asked for permission from the Americans to go into the city and help the people there but we haven't heard anything back from them," Ubadi said. "There's no medicine, no water, no electricity. They need our help."
Red Crescent officials say women and children need most assistance
"Our first mission is to obtain permission from the multinational forces to enter the city and start evacuating the wounded, the elderly, the children and women," she explained.
The Red Crescent Society has teams of doctors and relief experts ready to go in to each of Falluja's districts with essential aid, but needs US approval first.
The US military was not immediately available to comment on the aid agency's request, but has said its first priority is to defeat the fighters in Falluja.
'Horrific scenes'
Iraq's military spokesman for the assault, called Operation Dawn, admitted that conditions inside the city for the few residents still living there were grim.
"This is not a joke, it is a full-scale battle," Major General Abd al-Qadir Mohan told reporters at Camp Falluja, outside the city.
"The battleground is horrific even for US soldiers, so imagine how civilians feel," he said.
An attack was launched late on Monday which has since turned into furious street-to-street fighting.
Young boy killed
On Tuesday, a 9-year-old boy died after being hit in the stomach by shrapnel. His parents were unable to get him to hospital because of the fighting and so resorted to wrapping a sheet around him to stem the blood flow.
"From a humanitarian point of view it's a disaster, there's no other way to describe it. And if we don't do something about it soon, it's going to spread to other cities"
He died hours later of blood loss and was buried in the garden of the family home.
"We buried him in the garden because it was too dangerous to go out," said his father, teacher Muhammad Abbud. "We did not know how long the fighting would last."
The International Committee for the Red Cross says there are thousands of elderly and women and children who have had no food or water for days. At least 20,000 have gathered in the town of Saqlawiya, south of Falluja.
Desperate plea
"The Red Cross is very worried. We urge all combatants to guarantee passage to those who need medical care, regardless of whether they are friends or enemies," spokesman Ahmad al-Raoui said. "They must be allowed to return home as soon as possible."
Aid workers say there are still hundreds of families left in the city, which has been pummelled by sustained aerial bombardment and artillery fire in recent days.
"We know of at least 157 families inside Falluja who need our help," said Ubadi.
For some it is already too late.
One mother and her three daughters had intended to flee but their home was hit by a bombardment earlier this week and all died, neighbours who escaped told aid workers.
-----
Iraqi Gov't Warns Media About Coverage
(AP)
November 11, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4610349,00.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi government warned news organizations Thursday to distinguish between insurgents and ordinary civilians in coverage of the fighting in Fallujah and to promote the leadership's position or face unspecified action.
The warning came in a statement sent to news organizations by Iraq's Media High Commission, which cited the 60-day state of emergency declared Sunday on the eve of the offensive in Fallujah.
``You must be precise and objective in handling news and information,'' the statement said.
It stressed the necessity of differentiating between ``innocent citizens of Fallujah who are not targeted by the military operations and between the terrorist groups who infiltrated the city and took its people hostage under the pretext of resistance and jihad.''
It also told news organizations to tell their correspondents ``to be credible and precise'' and not to ``add patriotic descriptions to groups of killers and criminals.''
Finally, the commission told news organizations to provide space to explain ``the government position, expressing the ambition of most of the Iraqi people'' and underscore that ``these military operations did not come about until all peaceful means were attempted'' to avoid violence.
It said that failure to follow the instructions will require authorities to ``take all necessary measures to safeguard the supreme interest of the homeland.'' The statement did not provide further details.
-----
Troops Secure Much of Fallujah
Violence Breaks Out Elsewhere in Iraq as Insurgents Seek New Fronts
By Jackie Spinner and Omar Fekeiki
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38793-2004Nov10.html
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 10 -- U.S. and Iraqi forces established control over more than 70 percent of Fallujah on Wednesday, U.S. commanders said, and troops described encountering only small pockets of resistance as they pushed through a city that they likened to a ghost town.
"It's a lot lighter than we expected," said Staff Sgt. Jimmy Amyett, 24, of the 1st Infantry Division's Fox Troop, 4th Cavalry. When his unit first moved into Fallujah, he said, "we thought the city would explode on us."
Elsewhere in Iraq, fierce fighting broke out in several cities, as insurgents strove to open fronts away from Fallujah. In Baghdad, gunmen kidnapped relatives of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi from their home on Tuesday, a spokesman for Allawi said Wednesday. An Islamic militant group said it would execute Allawi's relatives unless U.S. and Iraqi forces withdrew from Fallujah.
An Iraqi general, meanwhile, said troops discovered abandoned houses in the northern part of Fallujah where kidnappers had "slaughtered" foreign hostages. "We found the insurgents' black clothes," said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Qadir Muhammed Jasim, the Iraqi army's chief of operations for the region. "We've found hundreds of CDs, documents with their names."
As the joint push to drive insurgents out of Fallujah moved through its third day, U.S. military officials announced that 11 American troops and two Iraqi soldiers had been killed since the start of the operation, the largest in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. U.S. and Iraqi officials say Fallujah has been a base for the insurgency that has gripped the country for months and threatens to disrupt national elections scheduled for the end of January.
Insurgents claimed to have captured 20 Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah. A videotape aired on al-Jazeera television and obtained by the Reuters news agency showed a group of men wearing Iraqi National Guard uniforms with their backs to the camera. According to news service reports, a masked militant shown on the tape read a statement promising not to harm the prisoners but warning that Iraqi soldiers captured in the future would be killed.
The kidnappings could not be independently verified.
American and Iraqi troops had cleared most of Fallujah's northern neighborhoods Wednesday and were starting to move into the southern part of the city, where commanders said they still might find the bands of Iraqi and foreign insurgents that they had expected to encounter earlier.
As dusk settled on the city, tracer bullets zipped through the sky, and the sound of gunfire crackled through neighborhoods where Marine and Army units were engaging bands of insurgents. Loud explosions were followed by giant plumes of orange fire. After one particularly large blast that sent a fireball skyward, soldiers eating lasagna at an Army staging area shouted, "Happy birthday, Marines!"
Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the Marine commander in Fallujah, said the insurgents were fighting in small, uncoordinated groups.
"We are comfortable that they are not able to communicate, to work," Sattler said at a news conference. "They are now in small pockets, blind, moving throughout the city. We will continue to hunt them down and destroy them."
The industrial district in the southwest corner of the city, a target of intense airstrikes in recent weeks, was virtually empty, and soldiers who patrolled the area on foot Wednesday said the only signs of life they found were stray dogs running through the streets.
"Everything is rubble," said Sgt. Cory Johnson, 22, of Sardis, Ohio. "You turn your ankle every five feet. The city is pretty much empty."
Johnson said insurgents rigged the city before they left. "Roadblocks, concertina wire, booby traps -- anything they could possibly think of to hinder our movement, they did," he said.
Before launching the offense Monday night, U.S. and Iraqi forces encircled Fallujah in a bid to cut off insurgents trying to escape. "When they attempted to flee from one zone to another, they were killed or captured as they moved back and forth," Sattler said. "So as we swept through, we feel very comfortable none of them moved back toward the north or escaped out."
Intelligence officers have said they believe a large number of foreigners were among the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 insurgents in the city and that many were connected to the Jordanian guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. Zarqawi and his loyalists have asserted responsibility for numerous car bombings, assassinations and kidnappings of foreigners in recent months.
Asked Wednesday if security forces had found any sign of Zarqawi in Fallujah, Jasim, the Iraqi commander, said Iraqi forces didn't come to Fallujah to chase Zarqawi. "We came here to get rid of a crisis," he said.
Jasim also took issue with the U.S. military's estimate that control had been established over 70 percent of the city. "This percentage is not accurate," he said. "It is exaggerated. Fighting in cities cannot be counted like this.
"We fully control the northern half of Fallujah now, and it has been cleared," Jasim said. "But if you ask is it fully cleared, I say no, we still have some resistance pockets. At first, the forces attack and clear the resisting groups, and then other forces go to search and, after that, clear the place. After we do this, we can say the area is fully cleared. We still have activities in the southern half of the city engaging direct and indirect fire. We are firing back."
Throughout the day, U.S. warplanes and helicopters continued to fire on areas where insurgents were believed to be hiding. Ground observers and air surveillance tracked bands of fighters as they clustered in safe houses and mosques and carried weapons to each other.
On Wednesday night, a warplane dropped a bomb on a house where insurgents reportedly had been spotted gathering weapons. After the blast, men ran from the rubble toward a smaller house across the street. A few minutes later, the house was hit by a missile and destroyed.
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As U.S. Advances in Falluja, New Fighting Erupts in Northern Iraq
November 11, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ and MARIA NEWMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1100235600&en=b76e3d2520471f73&ei=5094&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 - Insurgents opened a new front against American-led forces today, attacking several police stations in the northern city of Mosul and pushing that city to the brink of chaos, while an enormous car bomb in the heart of Baghdad just before noon killed at least 13 people.
The violence in the north came as American marines and soldiers renewed their three-day-old push through Falluja. The invasion began at the northern boundary of the city early Monday but had slowed considerably along a line marked by the main thoroughfare through town. This morning, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said coalition forces now controlled well more than half of Falluja.
"Things are going, I think, as planned," he said on the CBS "Early Show." "We've got about 70 percent of the city under control."
Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said today that 18 American troops and 5 Iraqi government soldiers had been killed in action since the start of the Falluja offensive, The Associated Press reported, and that 69 American and 34 Iraqi troops had been wounded. "Today our forces are conducting deliberate clearing operations within the city, going house to house, building to building looking for arms caches," he said.
Various military officials have estimated the number of dead guerrillas in the hundreds, out of as many as 3,000 who were thought to have gathered in Falluja before the American-led attack. American forces have also taken an undetermined number of suspects prisoner.
In Mosul, insurgents attacked the police academy and the Zuhoor police station with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades beginning about 10 a.m., then looted the buildings, which had apparently been abandoned by the police. Similar scenes played out at half a dozen police stations all together, news reports from the region said.
Two Iraqi military vehicles were burned near Mosul University after being chased down by insurgents. The fate of their occupants was unknown. American military forces appeared to witnesses to be doing little to stop the mayhem, taking up positions in the suburbs and on the airport road, at least during the early fighting.
Smoke rose from several areas as American warplanes streaked overhead, The Associated Press reported. The authorities in Mosul warned residents to stay away from the five major bridges across the Tigris River because of fighting, the news agency said, and militants brandishing rocket-propelled grenades were seen in front of the Ibn Al-Atheer hospital in the city's Jammia district.
A spokeswoman for the American military, Capt. Angela Bowman, said that some of the attacks on the police stations had overwhelmed "the capabilities of the existing police force" and that five police stations had been "ransacked.''
"The insurgents continue to fire at the Iraqi National Guard and the multinational forces," she told an A.P. reporter. "The operations are still ongoing and probably will for some time until we fully secure the city."
The news agency said Captain Bowman rejected claims by some residents that parts of Mosul had fallen under insurgent control, saying that guerrillas "have not taken any parts of the city."
Insurgents also attacked the headquarters of pro-American Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Party, forcing those inside to leave after guards were overpowered, The A.P. said. Residents saw masked gunmen roaming the streets, setting police cars on fire. The local television station in Mosul went off the air.
In Baghdad, the car bomb exploded around 11:30 a.m. in Nasir Square, near a bridge leading toward the fortified, American-controlled Green Zone. Charred bodies littered the street after the explosion, including the headless body of a civilian. A witness, Ali Safi, 25, said that he thought the bomber had been chasing a convoy of GMC sport utility vehicles, a choice target of suicide bombers here because they are commonly used by American contractors.
As the newly intensified battles raged in Iraq, General Myers said in several televised interviews that he was optimistic about the outcome, but acknowledged that the campaign against terrorism would be a long one.
"The fighting, I think, has looked easy, but it's only easy because we've got very professional armed forces members conducting that operation, both marines and United States Army and others,'' he said on the "Early Show."
"There have been hundreds and hundreds of insurgents who have been either killed or captured,'' he said. "We hope that in, you know, the next few days we'll be able to return Falluja to the citizens there without the intimidation that the insurgents brought and that as we go to elections in Iraq here in January that the citizens of Falluja can participate in that event as well.''
The general said that he did not consider Mosul a "no man's land,'' but acknowledged that much work needed to be done to stabilize that northern city. He also said that it would take more than just military action to bring order to Iraq if elections were to be held in January. He said that United States military and the Iraqi forces were working to bolster three prongs of Iraq's society: security system, a democratic government and the economy.
"But there are some tough challenges ahead,'' he said. "As you mentioned, all the car bombs going off. These are the extremists killing their fellow Muslims, killing Iraqis. There are a lot more Iraqis that have been killed by these extremists than coalition forces over this fight.''
On the NBC "Today" program, General Myers said: "I think this war on terrorism is going to be a long war. I don't know that it's always going to have the military on the front lines every year. We certainly hope not.''
James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article and Maria Newman reported from New York.
--------
A Thousand Fallujahs
Asia Times
By Pepe Escobar
11 November 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111204X.shtml
"The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives, depleted uranium or anything harmful - they contain laughing gas - that would, of course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced optimism about not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green Zone, or wipe their floors - you're an innocent civilian. Just about everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'."
- Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl, author of the blog Baghdad Burning
Once again the US has been caught in a giant spider's web. Fallujah now is a network: it's Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul. Streets on fire, everywhere: Hundreds, thousands of Fallujahs - the Mesopotamian echo of a thousand Vietnams. The Iraqi resistance has even regained control of a few Baghdad neighborhoods.
Baghdad residents say there are practically no US troops around, even as regular explosions can be heard all over the city. Baghdad sources confirm to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah, Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods.
Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami, al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) - the movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The message is clear: the resistance is united.
The Mobile Mujahideen
Fallujah civilians have told families and friends in Baghdad that the US bombing has been worse than Baghdad suffered in March 2003.
The Fallujah resistance for its part seems to have made the crucial tactical decision of clearing two main roads - called Nisan 7 and Tharthar Street - thus drawing the Americans to a battle in the center of town. Baghdad sources close to the resistance say that now the Americans seem to be positioned exactly where the mujahideen want them. This is leading the resistance to insist they - and not the Americans, according to the current Pentagon spin - now control 70% of the city.
There are at least 120 mosques in Fallujah. A consensus is emerging that almost half of them have been smashed by air strikes and shelling by US tanks - something that will haunt the United States for ages. The mosques stopped broadcasting the five daily calls for prayer, but Fadhil Badrani, an Iraqi reporter for BBC World Service in Arabic and one of the very few media witnesses in Fallujah, writes that "every time a big bomb lands nearby, the cry rises from the minarets: 'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great]".
Badrani also disputes the Pentagon spin: "It is misleading to say the US controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move. They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later. They say they are fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq." The mujahideen tactics are a rotating web - Ho Chi Minh's and Che Guevara's tactics applied to urban warfare by the desert: snipers on rooftops, snipers escaping on bicycles, mortar fire from behind abandoned houses, rocket-propelled-grenade attacks on tanks, Bradleys being ambushed, barrages of as many as 200 rockets, instant dispersal, "invisible" regrouping.
Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan, all highways except a secondary road leading to the borders, plus Baghdad's airport, all remain closed. Baghdad in theory has become an island sealed off from the Sunni triangle - but not for the resistance, which keeps slipping inside. Hundreds of Iraqis are stuck on the Syrian border trying to go back home.
Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger quoted above, writes of "rumors that there are currently 100 cars ready to detonate in Mosul, being driven by suicide bombers looking for American convoys. So what happens when Mosul turns into another Fallujah? Will they also bomb it to the ground? I heard a report where they mentioned that Zarqawi 'had probably escaped from Fallujah' ... so where is he now? Mosul?"
He could well be in Ramadi, where hundreds of heavily armed mujahideen now control the city center - with no US troops in sight.
Tough Tactics
The Pentagon is pulling out all stops to "liberate" the people of Fallujah. According to residents, the city is now littered with thousands of cluster bombs. In an explosive accusation - and not substantiated - an Iraqi doctor who requested anonymity has told al-Quds Press that "the US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons". The Washington Post has confirmed that US troops are firing white-phosphorus rounds that create a screen of fire impervious to water.
Dr Muhammad Ismail, a member of the governing board of Fallujah's general hospital "captured" by the Americans at the outset of Operation Phantom Fury, has called all Iraqi doctors for urgent help. Ismail told Iraqi and Arab press that the number of wounded civilians is growing exponentially - and medical supplies are almost non-existent. He confirmed that US troops had arrested many members of the hospital's medical staff and had sealed the storage of medical supplies.
The wounded in Fallujah are in essence left to die. There is not a single surgeon in town. And practically no doctors as well, as the Pentagon decided to bomb both the al-Hadar Hospital and the Zayid Mobile Hospital. So far, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reacted with thunderous apathy.
The Sunni Revolution
When a few snipers are capable of holding scores of marines for a day in Fallujah - an eerie replay of the second part of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - and when eight of 10 US divisions are bogged down by a few thousand Iraqis with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, the fact is the US does not control anything in Sunni Iraq. It does not control towns, cities, roads, and it barely controls the Green Zone, the American fortress in Baghdad that is the ultimate symbol of the occupation.
In 1999, the Russians bombed and destroyed Grozny, the Chechen capital, a city of originally 400,000 people. Five years later, Chechen guerrillas are still trapping Russian troops in a living hell there. The same scenario will be replayed in Fallujah - a city of originally 300,000 people. All this destruction - which any self-respecting international lawyer can argue is a war crime - for the Bush administration to send a brutal message: either you're with us or we'll smash you to pieces.
The Iraqi resistance does not care if thousands of mujahideen are smashed to pieces: it is actually gearing up for a major strategic victory. The strategy is twofold: half of the Fallujah resistance stayed behind, ready to die like martyrs, increasing the already boiling-point hatred of Americans in Iraq and the Middle East and boosting their urban support. The other half left before Phantom Fury and is already setting fires in Baghdad, Tikrit, Ramadi, Baquba, Balad, Kirkuk, Mosul and even Shi'ite Karbala.
They may be decimated little by little. But the fact is Sunni Iraqis are more than ever aware they are excluded from the Bush administration's "democratic" plans for Iraq. The only Sunni political party in interim premier Iyad Allawi's "government" is now out. And the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) - the foremost Sunni religious body - is now officially boycotting the January elections. There are unconfirmed reports that Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the head of the mujahideen shura (council) in Fallujah and a very prominent AMS member, died when his mosque, Saad ibn Abi Wakkas, was bombed.
The Sunni Iraqi resistance is now configuring itself as a full-fledged revolution. According to sources in Baghdad, the leaders of the resistance believe there's no other way for them to expel the American invaders and subsequently be restored to power - especially because if elections are held in January, the Shi'ites are certain to win. Contemplating the dogs of civil war barking in the distance, no wonder Baghdad's al-Zaman newspaper is so somber: "Iraq will remain a sleeping volcano, even if the state of emergency is extended
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinian Leader Arafat Dies in France Burial in West Bank on Saturday
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41474-2004Nov10.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 11 -- Yasser Arafat, the man who embodied the cause of the Palestinian people for four decades, died at 3:30 a.m. Thursday at a hospital outside Paris, according to Palestinian and hospital officials. He was 75.
Arafat was flown to France nearly two weeks ago with what was said to be an intestinal disorder, but he lapsed into a coma and suffered a brain hemorrhage and liver and kidney failure. The doctors treating him in France never said publicly what caused the illness that led to his death.
Arafat died having never realized his lifelong dream of achieving an independent Palestinian state. Even so, he was beloved and revered by Palestinians as the symbol of their struggle for a homeland, which he nearly single-handedly kept alive for 40 years.
At the same time, the man who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Israeli leaders for forging the Oslo peace accords in 1993 was condemned by Israelis as a terrorist responsible for launching the Palestinian uprising and its campaign of suicide bombings more than four years ago.
According to Palestinian officials, Arafat's body will be flown to Cairo for a state funeral Friday and then will be buried Saturday at his battered headquarters compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he had been confined by Israeli troops for the past 2 1/2 years.
Arafat's duties heading the Palestinian Authority will be assumed by Prime Minsiter Ahmed Qureia. The Palestine Liberation Organization will be run by its deputy, former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas. The speaker of the Palestinian legislature, Rawhi Fattouh, will take over the ceremonial role of president until elections within the next 60 days, Palestinian officials said. Officials had used the last two weeks of Arafat's failing health to try to ensure a smooth transition from a leader who had not groomed a successor.
Many leaders worldwide see Arafat's death as a possible catalyst for renewed peace efforts between Palestinians and Israelis. The current conflict has claimed more than 3,000 Palestinian lives and just over 1,000 Israelis. There have been no negotiations involving the two parties in more than a year.
President Bush said in a statement, "The death of Yasser Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history. We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors. During the period of transition that is ahead, we urge all in the region and throughout the world to join in helping make progress toward these goals and toward the ultimate goal of peace."
Arafat was flown to France on Oct. 29 after suffering from digestive problems and a blood disorder. He was hospitalized at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris, and slipped into a coma on Nov. 3. On Tuesday, he developed a brain hemorrhage.
The announcement of Arafat's death Thursday morning ended two weeks of international drama that included dozens of false reports of his death, days of secrecy over his condition and a farcical power struggle between his lieutenants and his wife, Suha, over the control of information about his health.
"Mr. Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, has died at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart on Nov. 11, 2004, at 3:30," hospital spokesman Christian Estripeau told reporters in a brief statement outside the hospital. He said that because of French privacy laws, no details on the cause of death would be provided by the hospital.
Under Islamic tradition, a person should be buried as soon as possible after dying, preferably within 24 hours. Taissir Dayut Tamimi, a senior Islamic cleric who heads the religious courts in the Palestinian territories, arrived at Arafat's bedside Wednesday to recite verses from the Koran and prepare his body according to Islamic custom, said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat.
The announcements Wednesday that Arafat would be buried in Ramallah ended days of tense speculation that Israel might prohibit a burial in the West Bank and instead force interment in a small family plot in a cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip, which Palestinian leaders said was unacceptable.
Erekat said Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance during the current uprising over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, would be turned into "a major Palestinian shrine" after Arafat's body is laid to rest there.
According to his aides, Arafat longed to be buried in Jerusalem, which Palestinians and Israelis both claim as their capital. But Israel has controlled the city since annexing its eastern half after the 1967 Middle East war, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- who often refers to Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, undivided capital -- ruled out any burial for Arafat in "greater Jerusalem," which includes neighborhoods surrounding the city.
The choice of a burial site in Ramallah, which is about five miles north of Jerusalem, resolved an issue that Israelis and Palestinians could have argued about for days. On Wednesday, bulldozers and dump trucks were clearing Arafat's compound, known as the Mukata, of old cars, barrels filled with cement and other objects strewn around as a defense against Israeli incursions.
The decision to hold a formal state funeral in the Egyptian capital -- where Arafat was born, although he often claimed Jerusalem as his birthplace -- also resolved several potentially thorny issues, particularly whether leaders of countries that do not recognize Israel would visit an area under Israeli occupation and, if they did, whether Palestinian security forces could guarantee their security.
An Israeli official, who declined to be quoted by name because of a government prohibition against speaking about funeral arrangements before Arafat died, said Cairo was chosen because the Palestinians "wanted a place where all Arab leaders could come without hindrance, and we said we can accommodate all the people who want to come, but no doubt the security situation is a deterrence for Arab leaders who don't want to go over Israeli roads and pass through Israeli checkpoints or whatever."
Foreign dignitaries would still be allowed to attend any service in Ramallah, he said, but Palestinian officials doubted many would.
Erekat noted that many mourners at Arafat's funeral would be from countries that do not have relations with Israel, and so Cairo was a good alternative "to make sure there's no friction or problems." It was possible that the funeral would be held at Cairo International Airport, he said.
"President Arafat will lie in state in Cairo for some hours, and then he will be flown from Cairo to Ramallah, directly I think in Egyptian choppers, and this will be the temporary burial place, because the day will come when we will have an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, and President Arafat's body will be moved to the al-Aqsa mosque," he said.
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Arafat Will Be Buried in Ramallah
Decision Resolves Israeli-Palestinian Dispute; Cairo to Host State Funeral
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38873-2004Nov10.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 10 -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who remained in a deep coma Wednesday at a hospital outside of Paris, will be buried at his battered headquarters compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem, following a state funeral in Cairo, according to Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian officials.
The announcements ended days of tense speculation that Israel might prohibit Arafat, 75, from being buried in the West Bank and force him to be interred instead in a small family plot in a cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip, which Palestinian leaders said was unacceptable.
A Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance during the current uprising over Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, would be turned into "a major Palestinian shrine" after Arafat's body is buried there. Until he flew to France for medical treatment on Oct. 29, Arafat had not left the compound in more than 2 1/2 years.
Arafat slipped into a coma after his arrival at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris, and on Tuesday he developed a brain hemorrhage. Leila Shahid, a Palestinian envoy, told France-Info radio Wednesday that Arafat was in the "final phase" of his life.
Taissir Dayut Tamimi, a senior Islamic cleric who heads the religious courts in the Palestinian territories, arrived at the hospital Wednesday to recite verses from the Koran at Arafat's bedside and was ready, if the Palestinian leader died, to prepare his body according to Islamic custom, Erekat said.
Before visiting Arafat, Tamimi told reporters at the hospital, "As long as there is a manifestation of life present, from movement to temperature in the body, then he is alive." Removing Arafat from life-support machines, he said, would be "forbidden under Islamic law."
When he emerged from the hospital, the cleric said: "I spent more than one hour next to the president and he is alive and well. . . . Yes, he is sick, and the situation is critical, but he is alive."
Under Islamic tradition, a person should be buried as soon as possible after dying, preferably within 24 hours.
According to his aides, Arafat longs to be buried in Jerusalem, which Palestinians and Israelis both claim as their capital. But Israel has controlled the city since annexing its eastern half after the 1967 Middle East war, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- who often refers to Jerusalem as Israel's eternal, undivided capital -- ruled out any burial for Arafat in "greater Jerusalem," which includes neighborhoods surrounding the city.
The choice of a burial site in Ramallah, which is about five miles north of Jerusalem, resolves a contentious issue between Israelis and Palestinians. On Wednesday, bulldozers and dump trucks were clearing and cleaning Arafat's compound, known as the Mukata, of old cars, barrels filled with cement and other objects strewn around as a defense against Israeli incursions.
The decision to hold a formal state funeral in the Egyptian capital -- where Arafat was born, although he often claimed Jerusalem as his birthplace -- also resolves several potentially thorny issues, particularly whether leaders of countries that do not recognize Israel would visit an area under Israeli occupation, and if they did, whether Palestinian security forces could guarantee their security.
An Israeli official, who declined to be quoted by name because of a government prohibition against speaking about funeral arrangements before Arafat dies, said Cairo was chosen for the funeral because the Palestinians "wanted a place where all Arab leaders could come without hindrance, and we said we can accommodate all the people who want to come, but no doubt the security situation is a deterrence for Arab leaders who don't want to go over Israeli roads and pass through Israeli checkpoints or whatever."
Foreign dignitaries would still be allowed to attend any service in Ramallah, he said, but Palestinian officials doubted many would.
Erekat said a delegation of Palestinians was scheduled to fly to Egypt on Wednesday night to discuss details of a funeral but that the general outline had been decided.
Special correspondent Maria Gabriella Bonetti in Clamart, France, contributed to this report.
--------
Arafat's Body on Way to Egypt as Palestinians Mourn Loss of Icon
November 11, 2004
By JAMES BENNET and STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/11cnd-araf.html?hp&ex=1100235600&en=31f84d4b34f31f63&ei=5094&partner=homepage
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov. 11 - Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, died early this morning in a Paris hospital, a French military spokesman announced.
Mr. Arafat, who was the symbol of the Palestinian revolution and aspiration for an independent state for some 40 years, died at about 3:30 a.m. Paris time of complications from an unknown disease after lingering in a coma for days, as his wife and closest aides struggled over his political and financial legacy.
Within hours of his death. Mahmoud Abbas, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was elected chairman of the group, succeeding Mr. Arafat. Mr. Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, is also expected to take over its largest movement, Fatah,
Under the rules of the Palestinian Authority, the speaker of the Parliament, Rawhi Fattouh, will serve as acting president until new elections are held for the post within the next 60 days.
In towns and refugee camps across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip today, thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets, wailing in grief and shooting off volleys of gunfire.
Israel moved quickly to seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the Jewish state, fearing an explosion of violent Palestinian protest.
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac of France stood alone beside Mr. Arafat's body for about 10 minutes today in a last show of respect for a leader he hailed as a man of courage, Mr. Chirac's spokesman said, according to Reuters.
At the end of a visit to the French hospital where Arafat died, Mr. Chirac embraced Mr. Arafat's widow, Suha, who was dressed in black and was ashen-faced but dry-eyed, the agency said.
Mr. Arafat will be buried in Ramallah, on the West Bank, in the Muqata, an old British fortress he used as his headquarters and where he spent the last three years confined to his compound by the Israelis.
His body will first be flown to Cairo for a memorial service on Friday, a ceremony most Arab and world leaders are expected to attend so that they do not have to pass through Israeli border controls. Then, Palestinian officials said, Mr. Arafat will be buried here on Friday, near his headquarters, from which he was airlifted to a French hospital on Oct. 29.
This afternoon in Paris, Mr. Arafat's body - in a coffin draped with the Palestninian flag - was transported by helicopter to a French airfield and moved by honor guard onto a plane, which took off shortly afterward for the flight to Cairo.
In Washington on Wednesday, President Bush said he hoped Mr. Arafat's death would clear the way for successful Middle East peace negotiations with new Palestinian leaders.
"The death of Yasir Arafat is a significant moment in Palestinian history," Mr. Bush said.
"We express our condolences to the Palestinian people. For the Palestinian people, we hope that the future will bring peace and the fulfillment of their aspirations for an independent, democratic Palestine that is at peace with its neighbors."
Palestinian officials quickly confirmed the death of their leader as small groups gathered outside the Muqata in a reddish dawn to mourn his passing. Early today, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, the secretary general of the presidency, confirmed the death and said that Mr. Arafat "planted the seeds of hope for his people."
"The Palestinian leadership mourns Yasir Arafat," he said.
"We mourn with our people, with the Arab nation, with the whole of humanity," he said, the loss of "the tutor, the leader, the son of Palestine, its symbol, the builder of its modern nationalism and the hero of its battle for freedom and independence."
As he finished, saying, "Glory to you, our leader," Mr. Rahim broke into tears.
Mr. Arafat died with the Palestinians still in a limbo of semi-statehood, a final peace with the Israelis unachieved and a lingering intifada against Israel that has seen the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians over the last four years.
The Israelis regarded him as a terrorist and an obstacle to peace, but Mr. Arafat held all the power of the Palestinians in his hands - the presidency, the leadership of the P.L.O. and Fatah. But he groomed no successor, and he kept many secrets to himself, including the full range of the billions of dollars in Palestinian assets held in many joint accounts under his name.
Jibril Rajoub, the national security adviser, said: "The Arafat era is over. But the loyalty and commitment to his march, connected to building the state and ending the occupation, are the responsibility of every Palestinian."
Mr. Rajoub, speaking on Al Jazeera television, then sent a further message to Palestinians, asking for stability. "The coming phase should be one of institutions and laws, working through existing institutions, whether strong or not," he said.
Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian minister, urged the United States to work with the Palestinians and with Israel to ensure that "free and fair elections" could take place.
Mr. Arafat's lingering death allowed his putative successors, most prominently Mr. Abbas, and Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, to organize themselves. They are working in tandem, and are trying to reach out to other, younger Palestinians with more power and street credibility.
Mr. Qurei, known as Abu Ala, will continue as prime minister but with more authority over the day-to-day running of government.
--------
Four Palestinians Killed in Violence After Arafat Dies
Reuters
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Nov 11, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=4&u=/nm/20041111/wl_nm/mideast_violence_dc
GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians in violent confrontations that erupted following the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) in a French hospital on Thursday, Palestinians medics said.
Three Palestinians were killed, at least two of them gunmen, in fighting that erupted when militants from an armed group in Arafat's Fatah (news - web sites) faction attacked a Jewish settlement in central Gaza after learning of the Palestinian leader's death.
Another Palestinian was killed in stonethrowing clashes in the West Bank, Palestinian medics said.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said the attack against the heavily fortified Netzarim settlement signaled a new round of clashes against Israel to avenge the death of the 75-year-old Palestinian leader who came to symbolize his people's cause.
Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the al-Aqsa brigades, said it held Israel responsible for Arafat's death, adding:
"Our groups together with brothers from other factions took to the battlefield with the enemy to make it pay the price ... The next days will witness violent clashes with the Zionists everywhere."
Gunmen set off bombs and mortar rounds and fired rocket propelled grenade and automatic gunfire at troops guarding Netzarim after news reached Gaza that Arafat had died in France of an undisclosed illness after being in a coma for over a week.
Three Palestinians were killed, two of them confirmed to be gunmen, in a gun battle. It was not immediately known whether a third person killed in the exchange, a 19-year-old, was a militant or a civilian.
In the West Bank, Israeli forces killed a 20-year-old youth who the army said had been among 400 Palestinian protesters throwing cement bricks at Jewish settlers cars and soldiers near the city of Hebron.
Israeli security forces are on high alert for violence from Palestinian militants who have been staging an armed uprising for the past four years.
Dozens of Palestinian youths threw stones at soldiers at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Arafat will be buried following a funeral in Cairo on Friday.
Sporadic stone-throwing clashes were taking place in other parts of the West Bank, including at a shrine at the entrance to the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the army said.
Qusai said Israel was to blame for Arafat's death, by forcing him to live in primitive conditions in his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he was effectively confined by the Israeli army for 2-1/2 years.
Israel says Arafat -- who suffered for years from tremors symptomatic of Parkinson's disease (news - web sites) -- had access to doctors, food, running water and electricity in the compound.
The former guerrilla leader had spent years on the run and sometimes living in bunkers in Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya and other countries before returning to the Palestinian territories in 1994 under an interim peace accord with Israel.
-----
Police to raise alert to 'war level'
JPost.com
By YAAKOV KATZ
Nov. 11, 2004
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1100147298276
Israel Police prepared to hit the highest level of alert- essentially signifying a state of war - Thursday night, as preparations for Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's funeral continued in Cairo and Ramallah.
Police said that at 6 a.m. Friday the force will go on Operation Alert Level D - the last time used two years ago prior to America's invasion of Iraq and following threats made by Saddam Hussein that he will launch missiles against Israel.
Under the new alert level, all members of the Israel Police will be called up for active duty, including cadets and policemen currently on vacation.
Police said that their biggest concern is that the tens of thousands of Palestinians who flock to mosques for prayers on the last Friday of Ramadan will begin to riot and may attempt to breach military checkpoints and enter Israel.
Arafat's funeral is scheduled to take place at around the same time that Palestinian worshippers flock to the Temple Mount and other mosques for prayers.
On Thursday police raised the level of alert to level C. One scenario police have discussed is the possibility that thousands of Palestinians will grab Arafat's body and begin to march towards Jerusalem for burial on the Temple Mount.
Senior police officers said they have given orders to officers in the field to "give Palestinians room and to try to avoid confronting with them when it is not necessary."
Police chief Insp.-Gen. Moshe Karadi ordered district commanders to step up security operations and to increase police presence in heavily-populated areas with an emphasis on Jerusalem and its surroundings.
The Prisons Service also went on high alert and special elite units were deployed to different security detention centers to prepare for possible riots among the some 4,000 Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli jails. Guards were ordered to avoid contact with the prisoners and to give them room to mourn their leader.
Internal Security Ministry Gideon Ezra cut short a trip in Europe to return to Israel to oversee police preparations for Arafat's funeral.
Meanwhile Thursday, a group of settlers from northern Samaria were detained for questioning after they allegedly punctured the tires of Palestinian vehicles near the village of Silat A-Dahar. No one was injured in the incident.
------
Top moderate resurfaces after Arafat
(Reuters)
By Diala Saadeh
11 November, 2004
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=619441
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Sidelined a year ago after losing a power struggle with Yasser Arafat, veteran deputy Mahmoud Abbas has bounced back to take over the Palestine Liberation Organisation after the president's death.
Abbas, who co-authored interim peace deals with Israel and has long served as No. 2 in the top Palestinian decision-making body, has emerged in what is, at least on paper, the senior position in a new collective leadership succeeding Arafat.
His reputation as a conciliator could help keep in check for now the factional strife feared in the void left by Arafat.
A pragmatist who has criticised as counterproductive Palestinians' resort to arms after abortive statehood talks with Israel, Abbas favours a ceasefire to help kick-start negotiations based on a U.S.-sponsored "road map" to peace.
Abbas's rise could upset Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to pull out of occupied Gaza and keep much of the West Bank, since the man who Israelis said made dialogue impossible -- Arafat -- is now gone.
But Abbas lacks Arafat's popular power base, suggesting he would not dare soften the late leader's terms for peace, which enjoy a broad Palestinian consensus but are rejected by Israel.
He will be challenged by a younger militant generation in the mainstream Fatah movement who believe occupied lands can be better regained by war, and by grassroots Islamists bent on eradicating Israel itself and demanding a share of power.
Abbas will share leadership duties with Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, who runs the governing Palestinian Authority, as well as with caretaker President Rawhi Fattouh -- who is to organise elections within 60 days -- and new Fatah head Farrouk Kaddoumi.
Qurie and Fattouh are moderates, but Kaddoumi is a hardliner who opposed past peacemaking with Israel, suggesting Abbas will have his work cut out to head off political turmoil.
Abbas, 69, dropped from sight a year ago after resigning as prime minister in frustration at the refusal of Arafat to cede powers and permit reforms to rein in militants and purge corruption.
But Abbas retained his position as secretary general of the PLO, which decides matters of war and peace with Israel, and re-emerged after Arafat was taken critically ill in October.
ABBAS SEEKS STABILITY
Better known by his nom de guerre Abu Mazen, Abbas swiftly took a central role in reaching out to nationalist and Islamist factions for a show of stability as Arafat slid toward death.
Abbas was at the core of the Palestinian struggle for an independent state, at Arafat's side for decades. But the methodical, sphinx-like Abbas preferred to work out of the public eye just as former guerrilla leader Arafat revelled in it. Abbas dressed in sober business suits while Arafat stuck to his military-style uniform.
A decade ago, Abbas and Qurie conducted secret negotiations in Norway that spawned interim peace accords with Israel and gave Palestinians some self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.
In April 2003, Arafat named Abbas the first Palestinian premier under foreign pressure for reforms, seen as crucial to reining in militants and opening "road map" negotiations.
Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush warmed to Abbas as someone they could do business with at a Red Sea summit in June 2003 to unfurl the "road map" which raised hopes of peace.
But that embrace eroded Abbas's credibility at home as Israel kept up air strikes and incursions that killed militants and civilian bystanders alike. Militants also maintained their campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.
To marshal authority in the post-Arafat era, Abbas will have to avoid any impression that Palestinians are losing more ground to Israel on his watch, or submitting to Israeli terms.
That may be difficult given Sharon's U.S.-endorsed "Disengagement Plan", which his top adviser openly acknowledged was devised to override negotiations and scuttle any Palestinian state indefinitely.
Abbas is likely to stick closely to long-time PLO peace terms rejected by most Israelis -- total withdrawal from occupied lands, what Palestinians see as a right of return to Israel for refugees and East Jerusalem to become capital of a future state.
Abbas's family was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of homes after the 1948 creation of Israel. His clan left the Galilee town of Safed.
-----
Mahmoud Abbas Elected Chairman of PLO
Associated Press
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH,
Nov 11, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041111/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_succession
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Mahmoud Abbas, a former prime minister and a veteran peace negotiator, was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (news - web sites) on Thursday within hours of Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s death, putting him on a track to become the next overall leader of the Palestinians.
The 69-year-old Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen and who long worked in Arafat's shadow as the PLO's No. 2 official, takes the most powerful of the three titles Arafat held - president of the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites), leader of the Fatah (news - web sites) movement and head of the PLO.
The PLO executive committee vote was unanimous, said Palestinian Cabinet minister Ibrahim Abu Najah. "That means no one will compete with him in the election for president."
Palestinian officials moved quickly Thursday to fill the leadership gap left by the death of Arafat, who held the unruly Palestinian political factions together during the four decades of his rule.
Rauhi Fattouh, a virtual unknown, was to be sworn in Thursday as temporary president of the Palestinian Authority, inheriting the title but not the power held by Arafat.
Under law, Fattouh will serve as caretaker president until elections are held within 60 days.
Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister, heads day-to-day government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites). He is a key figure in what some Palestinians said would be a collective leadership.
Marwan Barghouti, a powerful figure in Fatah who has the popularity to inherit Arafat's mantle, is in an Israeli jail, sentenced to multiple life terms after being convicted of sponsoring terrorism.
In moving within hours of Arafat's death to fill the void, Palestinian leaders signaled their determination to ensure a smooth transition and allay concerns that the lack of a single strong leader could touch off factional fighting.
"We can be certain transition will be smooth, and the Palestinian people deserve to have free and fair elections," Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat told The Associated Press.
Abbas was one of the first top PLO officials to recognize Israel and distanced himself from terror activities. He led Palestinian negotiators in peace talks in the 1990s and has met with Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), Israel's prime minister.
Abbas has also been a critic of the armed conflict that emerged from the Palestinian uprising that began in September 2000. He said what happened "is a complete destruction of everything we built."
Abbas was born in 1935 in the hilltop town of Safed, now in northern Israel. He is married and has two sons, both businessmen. Abbas and his family fled to Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to Israel's creation.
After helping found Arafat's Fatah party in 1965, Abbas managed finances for the movement and distanced himself from terror activities.
In a meeting with Fatah officials last year, Abbas said the outbreak of the uprising in September 2000 was understandable but should not have been allowed to deteriorate into an armed conflict.
Fattouh, 55, grew up in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. He left Gaza for studies abroad in the 1960s, joined Fatah in 1968 and returned from exile in 1994, along with Arafat and other Palestinian officials.
In the first Palestinian general elections in 1996, he was elected to the parliament on a Fatah slate. In 2003, he was appointed agriculture minister, and a year later was chosen speaker, replacing Qureia who became prime minister.
Fattouh is a mid-level Fatah activist, and was chosen as speaker after being offered as a compromise candidate during a power struggle between Arafat and his parliament.
Arafat managed to depose the previous speaker, Rafik Natche, who wanted to investigate corruption allegations in the Palestinian leadership, and hand-picked the loyalist Fattouh.
------
Prisoners say only heir is Barghouti
haaretz
By Amira Hass
November 11, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/500058.html
Palestinian security detainees are waiting to hear what prisoner Marwan Barghouti has to say: What is his position on the emerging leadership? Does he intend to contend in the planned elections? According to a lawyer who met with prisoners at Nafha prison this week, the security detainees, particularly those belonging to Fatah, speak of Barghouti as the Palestinian people's new leader. They await his pronouncements as they waver between wanting to give the collective leadership now taking shape a chance and mistrusting it. In any case, as one lawyer overheard the security detainees say, any leadership that arises will not be deemed legitimate nor receive their support if it does not work on behalf of their release.
Barghouti associates said he receives constant updates through the media on Arafat's condition. He has refrained till now from making declarations through his confidants, including one who expects Barghouti to find a way to convey a political message today. In any event, the confidant said, Barghouti is known to support elections, deepening political pluralism, and rule of law.
Security detainees and Barghouti associates hope that Israel will scrutinize the public opinion surveys, which they feel prove that the Barghouti alone can compete with Hamas representatives planning to run for election. Barghouti himself has held back from announcing whether he intends to participate in elections either for president or for the Palestinian Legislative Council, although it is thought he will run.
Prisoners and confidants expressed hope yesterday that Barghouti will be released, perhaps through understandings with Egypt, because only his return to the political arena can thwart the strengthening of Hamas. They believe that Barghouti is the only person who can provide Mahmoud Abbas with the legitimacy of grass-roots support.
Meanwhile, three Fatah representatives at Ashkelon prison already have voiced support for the emerging leadership. Relatives who visited the prison yesterday said the prisoner representatives sent a letter yesterday (through the prison service commissioner) to Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra requesting a 48-hour furlough to participate in mourning ceremonies to be held for PA Chairman Yasser Arafat. They reportedly asked for permission to stay at Abbas' home in Ramallah and in the Muqata, "to encourage and strengthen the moderate Palestinian leadership headed by Abu Mazen in the immediate future." The letter also expressed the hope that shortly "a new leaf will be turned in relations between the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships."
A flyer put out by "the prisoner's club" on behalf of detainees at all prisons strikes a less conciliatory note. The flyer places responsibility for Arafat's condition on the government of Israel due to the lengthy siege it imposed on him at the Muqata. But responding to fears of anarchy, the flyer calls for bolstering the legitimacy of PLO institutions in the foreseeable future and not abandoning the Palestinian political arena to power centers and personal interest. The flyer calls for national unity, expressing the people's sovereignty through the ballot box, and expressing confidence in the Palestinians' ability to show responsibility and not fall into internal struggles.
Beyond taking an interest in developments at the top, the prisoners are asking themselves how changes will affect them in the post- Arafat era. Some prisoners claim they have heard from the Israel Prisons Service that prisoner releases are planned after the PA leader's death.
Differing reports have been coming in from various prisons regarding attitudes toward Arafat's condition. Some report prisoners are profoundly sad, others report apathy.
-----
Arafat in his own words
The Australian
November 11, 2004
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11356229%255E401,00.html
YASSER Arafat, who died early today at the age of 75, came to symbolise the struggle for a Palestinian state over the course of the last four decades. Here are some of his most famous quotes.
Background "I am a refugee for I have nothing, for I was banished and dispossessed of my homeland." - 1969 interview with Beirut's Al-Sayyad paper after becoming head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Palestinian strategy "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand" - November 1974 speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
View of United States "What I ask you plainly is the crime of the people of Palestine against the American people? Why do you fight us so?" - UN speech.
Palestinian aspirations "We are not asking for the moon" - February 1982 newspaper interview.
Siege of Beirut "We were defending an Arab capital, defending Arab honour, standing up before the world for the whole Arab nation" - August 1982 comments on departure from Beirut after Israeli siege of Lebanese capital.
Renounces use of violence against Israel Arafat acknowledged "the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to live in peace and security, including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbours" - December 1988 special session of UN in Geneva.
First war in Iraq "Iraq and Palestine represent a common will. We will be together side by side and after the great battle, God willing, we will pray together in Jerusalem" - January 1990 address to a rally in Baghdad in build-up to war.
Life and Death "I knew I will survive this crash. I will live to redeem the sacrifices of all our martyrs" - April 1992 comments after surviving plane crash in Libya which killed three other passengers.
Oslo Peace Accords "My people are hoping that this agreement which we are signing today will usher in an age of peace, co-existence and equal rights" - September 1993 White House speech after signing accords with Israeli premier Yitzak Rabin.
Return to Gaza "I'm returning to the first free part of Palestine. You have to imagine how this is moving my head and my heart" - July 1994 comments to reporters on his entry to the territory.
Second intifada "It was a dangerous step which caused harm to the Islamic holy places. The Arab and Islamic world must mobilise against such actions" - September 2000 interview, commenting on the then Israeli opposition Ariel Sharon's visit to Jerusalem's mosque compound which triggered uprising.
September 11 attacks in New York and Washington "What has happened is not only a crime against the American people or government but against humanity. It is a monstrous crime" - September 2001 comments to reporters.
US-led war on Iraq "It (the war) wouldn't just be against Iraq but would constitute a coup against the Middle East" - March 2003 television interview.
Defiant to the end "No-one can kick me out. They can kill me kill me with bombs but I will not leave" - September 2003 comments to reporters after Israeli security cabinet votes to "remove" him from West Bank headquarters.
-------- nato
NATO Says Europe Must Move Closer to U.S. View on Terror
November 11, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/europe/11cnd-nato.html?pagewanted=all
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 11 - The head of NATO said today that there was a critical "perception gap" between Europe and the United States on the subject of global terror and that Europeans must move closer to the American view of the seriousness of the threat.
"Your country focused very much on the fight against terror while in Europe we focused to a lesser extent on the consequences for the world," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, said in an interview. "We looked at it from different angles, and that for me is one of the reasons you saw such frictions in the trans-Atlantic relationship."
As a result, he said, Europe was lagging behind the United States in merging external and internal security to combat terrorism, and Europe had to catch up.
"If the gap is to be bridged, it has to be done from the European side and not from the United States," he said, adding that the conflict in Iraq, the issue that helped divide the alliance, now provided an opportunity for uniting it.
"Where allies very much agree and must agree is the fact that whatever ways they have looked at the war in Iraq and the run-up to it and the split we saw, we cannot afford to see Iraq go up in flames," he said. "It is everyone's obligation that we get Iraq right."
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer is a former Dutch foreign minister who backed the Bush administration on the war in Iraq without alienating other European leaders and became NATO's head on Jan. 1. He said that a meeting he had with President Bush in Washington Wednesday should be taken as a sign that trans-Atlantic frictions had eased.
"It's not as if I came here with doubt and my meeting with the President washed it all away,'' he said. "I have never doubted that commitment, but whatever way you look at it, the fact that the secretary general of NATO is the first foreign visitor that President Bush has met since the election is a clear sign sign of the full commitment of this administration and of this president to the trans-Atlantic alliance."
NATO has been asked by the Iraqi government to train its security forces, and Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said that 10 of the 19 member states were contributing to that training, both within Iraq and in places outside Iraq, the preference of France, Germany and Spain - like Jordan and European military schools. He said he hoped to have the program fully operational by the end of the year.
The experience of Iraq had taught him two lessons as a European and an Atlanticist, he said.
"The first is that if Europe sees its integration process as one directed against the United States, it will not work because the result will be a split in Europe, and that is an ambition that no European should have,'' he said.
"The second is that if you want to have a trans-Atlantic dialogue between grownups, I know that any president and any American administration is willing to listen to the European voice as long as it is one European voice. If it is five different voices, they will not take the trouble to listen and they will wonder what is Europe."
NATO has 9,000 troops and a broadening reconstruction campaign under way in Afghanistan, but Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said his greatest concern there now - one he planned to raise in a meeting with Secretary General Kofi Annan today - was the explosion in the heroin trade and its threat to the country's political future and to NATO's work there.
"Poppy fields are growing in large parts of the country, certain warlords are financed from the revenues of the crop and the economy of Afghanistan is dominated by the illegal profits of this growth," he said.
While the mission was one for the international community and not for NATO, he said, it could end up undermining his organization's effort to secure and stabilize the country.
"My point,'' he said, "is that if the international community doesn't take this problem head on, then what are we doing there?"
-------- russia / chechnya
Concern in Russia
November 11, 2004
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041111-011020-3262r.htm
The U.S. ambassador in Moscow is worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin is concentrating too much power by weakening the authority of regional governors.
Ambassador Alexander Vershbow told Moscow Echo radio this week that even President Bush has "expressed concern over the recent proposed reforms and also over the erosion of a system of checks and balances."
Without checks on central authority, "we think a democratic society cannot exist," Mr. Vershbow said.
The Russian parliament has given initial approval to Mr. Putin's plan to replace the direct election of governors with candidates selected by Moscow and approved by regional parliaments. The plan must pass two more procedural votes.
Mr. Putin says the reform is necessary to combat terrorism. He is also pressing for a change in the system for election of members of parliament. Currently half of the members are elected by party lists and the other as individual candidates. Mr. Putin proposes a system of proportional representation only.
In his interview, Mr. Vershbow also said the United States is worried about instability in the Caucasus, including Russia's rebellious Chechnya region and separatist violence in neighboring Georgia.
The conflicts could "breed instability in surrounding countries, including Russia, itself," the ambassador said.
Russia blamed Chechen terrorists for a murderous attack on a school in September.
•Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
-------- spies
Ex-C.I.A. Chief Nets $500,000 on Talk Circuit
November 11, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/politics/11tenet.html?ei=5094&en=b3de927e88827076&hp=&ex=1100235600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - George J. Tenet has kept a low public profile since he stepped down as the country's intelligence chief in July. But it turns out that he has had a lot to say.
In the past few months, Mr. Tenet has earned well over $500,000 in speaking fees from about 20 appearances, associates said. He is negotiating for a lucrative book contract. But when he speaks to large groups, he does so only under ground rules intended to keep his remarks off the record.
In doing so, Mr. Tenet has tried to tread a delicate line, defending beleaguered intelligence agencies and his own performance while steering clear of a more overt debate. In particular, Mr. Tenet has repeatedly sidestepped questions about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, people who have attended the closed sessions said.
"I did not walk in and tell the president that it was wrong to do," Mr. Tenet said of the decision to invade Iraq, according to The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph-Benton Harbor, Mich., whose reporter Anna Clark covered an Oct. 20 speech. "I won't say at the end of the game, when things are looking bad, that I was against it all along."
Still, Mr. Tenet has stopped well short of endorsing the war, his associates say. "We made a decision," he said in the Oct. 20 speech. "Politically you can decide if it was right. Either way, we need to honor the commitment we made."
A close associate of Mr. Tenet who confirmed the thrust of those remarks said that as the former director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet "doesn't believe it is his role to make public pronouncements about those kinds of issues at this time." A tape recording of another of his speeches, on Sept. 8 in Macon, Ga., was obtained by The New York Times.
Mr. Tenet has said virtually nothing in public since his resignation, a four-month period in which the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 9/11 commission and the top American weapons inspector in Iraq have all delivered reports critical of the Central Intelligence Agency's performance on Iraq and terrorism, and in which Congress has been considering a drastic overhaul of American intelligence.
In that period, Mr. Tenet has declined all requests for interviews and has limited his public comments to a single written statement, issued in August, at the height of the debate over intelligence reform, that was sharply critical of a proposal that would have dismantled the C.I.A.
Mr. Tenet has spent some of his time in an office at the headquarters of the intelligence agency reviewing classified documents in preparation for writing a book on his seven years at the helm of American intelligence. Publishers are vying for the rights, with an auction now under way expected to net an advance of several million dollars.
His associates have said that one reason for his public silence was to distance himself from politics during the presidential campaign. But the tape recording and notes taken by people who have attended Mr. Tenet's private appearances show that he has been relatively forthcoming even while insisting that his remarks be treated as off the record.
The only reporters permitted to attend these appearances have been from small newspapers and trade magazines, and even these reporters say they were instructed by Mr. Tenet or his associates to turn off their tape recorders. By preventing Mr. Tenet's remarks from circulating widely, his associates say, they have sought to maintain demand for his appearances, which usually include a speech that surveys the threats facing the United States. He collects fees of about $35,000 an appearance.
Among other things, Mr. Tenet has disclosed that he warned Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, in a secret face-to-face meeting several days after a major bombing in Riyadh in May 2003, "that unless he acted quickly, Al Qaeda was going to kill him, kill his family and launch the next stage of attacks against the United States from the Saudi homeland."
"I gave him a plan of action," Mr. Tenet said of Prince Abdullah at the speech in Macon, according to a tape recording made by someone who attended and provided the tape to The Times. "This good man - and I believe he's a good man - took me up on the challenge."
"Terrorism is the issue that will consume the next generation of Americans the way that the cold war consumed the generation after the Second World War," Mr. Tenet said in the same appearance. A reporter for The Macon Telegraph, Gray Beverley, wrote an article about the event, which the newspaper published, though he said in an interview that Mr. Tenet had declared the event to be off the record. Mr. Beverley said he had turned off his tape recorder at Mr. Tenet's insistence.
In that speech, Mr. Tenet also described meeting in a Middle Eastern country a foreigner who worked as an American agent and played an instrumental role in 2003 in leading the C.I.A. in Pakistan to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who is now being held in a secret location abroad.
"He bought his first suit and tie to meet me," Mr. Tenet said of the agent. He said he had asked the man "why he helped us, and put his life on the line," and was told, "I want my children free of these madmen who destroy our religion and kill innocent people."
Mr. Tenet also spoke disparagingly in the same speech about the intelligence restructuring efforts under way in Congress, which could overhaul the C.I.A. and other agencies. He said that watching the process made him feel like "a patient on an operating table, about to have an appendectomy," who discovers that of the "12 people looking down at me, none have gone to medical school."
It is not unusual for government officials to earn large amounts of money for books and speeches after leaving office. Other former intelligence chiefs, including Robert M. Gates and R. James Woolsey, have gone on speaking tours, and Mr. Gates wrote a memoir, but for fees generally understood to be considerably less than those being paid to Mr. Tenet. As a former C.I.A. employee, Mr. Tenet is subject to regulations prohibiting the disclosure of classified information, but he is not required to submit his speeches to the agency for advance clearance.
The contrast between Mr. Tenet's public silence and the frequency of his private, for-profit remarks has been unusually sharp. Most of the speeches have been at events arranged by business groups. Among other things, the speeches have provided Mr. Tenet's most extensive comments to date about the intelligence agencies' mistakes in asserting before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 that Saddam Hussein's government possessed illicit arms.
"So what went wrong?" Mr. Tenet asked in the Sept. 8 speech in Macon.
"In a post-9/11 environment, when our analysts were bitterly accused of not connecting dots, we probably connected too many," Mr. Tenet said. "We didn't have the access that we should have had, and some of the tradecraft was damn sloppy, quite frankly."
Even so, Mr. Tenet added, a Bush administration that knew there was no direct evidence of illicit Iraqi weapons stockpiles would still have had to contend with the prospect that Iraq could have quickly produced chemical and biological weapons.
"Our policy makers would have been left with the same difficult dilemma of what you do in a post-9/11 environment in facing that kind of risk," Mr. Tenet said, "and I don't know what they would have done."
Mr. Tenet has signed on for three years as a distinguished professor at Georgetown University, his alma mater. He is scheduled to begin teaching courses in security studies next fall.
"He is an electrifying speaker," said Robert Gallucci, the dean of the school. "He stimulates people to think; he argues his case; he's a very powerful force. It's not just war stories; it's someone who can reflect with a little depth, and George has that capacity."
-------- us
Lost in Deployment: How the Army Misplaced 60,000 Soldiers
Common Dreams
November 11, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/1111-06.htm
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- -- I am a defense policy analyst working for an independent think tank in Cambridge, MA. A few weeks ago I was preparing for a briefing we organized in Washington called "Stretched too thin? The Effect of Recent Military Operations on America's Armed Forces" <http://www.comw.org/pda/041022milops.html >. I was putting together some numbers on Army operational deployments overseas during the past decade.My task appeared to be simple, but it would prove difficult. And it would end up revealing a substantial error in Army personnel accounting.
One of the places I was looking for data was a quarterly personnel statistics report < http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/military/miltop.htm > produced by the DoD Directorate for Information Operations and Reports.This report gives a snapshot in time of where troops are located, listing numbers of active component personnel (down to the single digits) stationed or deployed to 140 countries. However, it contained enough accounting anomalies (1) to make it impossible to use this report to arrive at an accurate number of active component personnel deployed to OIF or OEF, currently the two most important operational deployments.It was likewise impossible to determine from its tables the total number of personnel stationed or deployed overseas.
I was also looking for information on the U.S. Army's Operations Webpage < http://www.army.mil/operations/ >. I noted that it stated that: "There are approx. 333,000 Soldiers deployed overseas in 120 countries."Similar statements appear in the annual Army Posture Statement, in Army PowerPoint briefings, and frequently end up in press articles.(2)
While the accompanying flash graphic illustrates six overseas deployments totaling 172,500 Army personnel and 3000 in "other operations/exercises around the globe," it also includes 17,000 soldiers deployed to Operation Noble Eagle (homeland defense) in the United States, and unspecified numbers of soldiers engaged at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA, and the Combat Maneuver Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany.
If we add up the specified troops in this graphic it totals 192,500. Adding 15,000 as a very generous estimate of the troops deployed to unit training at the three training facilities it totals 207,500, still 125,500 short of the total mentioned in the caption.
Even adding in troops in units permanently based in Europe (less those deployed to the Iraqi theatre) and elsewhere, the total reaches only about 250,000 ---- 83,000 short of 333,000.
I decided to request clarification of the apparent discrepancies from Army HQ. On 18 October I received a call back from my public affairs contact at Army HQ who informed me that "the latest number of soldier deployed to 120 countries is 269,000." She also said that the Army Operations Webpage < http://www.army.mil/operations/ > would be updated to reflect this latest number. She said she was still awaiting the requested break out of the components of the total. I also received an email from the Army Website content coordinator who wrote: "I will be working closely with the soldiers in the Pentagon's operations center for the remainder of this month to get a more accurate snapshot of forces deployed. Since there are soldiers serving in 120 countries, and since we list just the major operations, the numbers will never add up. Add to that the matter of security in which some numbers are not reported. The listing will be updated on a monthly basis, so intermediate changes will not be reflected."
As of 08 November 2004 the deployment graphic on the Army Operations Webpage has been updated. Rather than referring to "deployed overseas," the caption now reads: "Areas of Operations: 272,000 Soldiers are serving in 120 countries." The accompanying flash graphic illustrates six overseas deployments totaling 170,600 Army personnel. It also includes 17,000 soldiers deployed to Operation Noble Eagle (homeland defense) in the United States, and the unspecified numbers of soldiers engaged at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA, and the Combat Maneuver Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany.
It is noteworthy that the Army has come down from 333,000 to 272,000 deployed ("serving.") Certainly 61,000 troops have not re-deployed from overseas (or otherwise to home bases in Germany or Italy) in the last month -- any net re-deployments would be on the order of a few thousands. I still don't know from the Army what the component parts of the old or new sum are; for instance, how many are deployed in the U.S.,how many are on training deployments, and how many are on war fighting deployments.
How do I explain this Army counting error of 18%? It seems likely to me that Army HQ copywriters fell victim to the confusing presentation and lack of precision in the reporting of personnel numbers by the Directorate for Information Operations and Reports (as discussed above and in FN #1.) In short they double-counted.
The fact that official sources are producing mistaken information is disturbing. It is more so that this misinformation is quickly picked up and repeated in the press. Already this year we have witnessed the Department of State embarrassed when their annual incidence of terror report was shown to have significant inaccuracies.(3)
This sloppiness in the bureaucracy may be the result of a "cascade effect" from the attitudes of the highest government leaders who seem to have few qualms about playing fast and loose with the facts they present to the American public. Hopefully the press will henceforth demand higher standards from DoD in the reporting of basic facts about the Armed Forces of the United States.
Footnotes
1. Problematic accounts include: Afghanistan has 0 troops associated with it and a parenthetical saying"(not available.)" There is no listing for Uzbekistan, a country which has hosted U.S. SOFs engaged in OEF. It was last listed in this report on 30 September 2002. Iraq and Kuwait have 0 troops and a parenthetical saying "(See OIF Table.)" The OIF Table has a line labeled "Total (In/around Iraq as of March 31, 2004)" with a parenthetical saying "(OIF data subject to change.)" The OIF total number includes Army Reserve and Army National Guard troops deployed to the Iraqi theatre. In one quarterly report from 2003 the AC and RC personnel in the OIF table were broken out, but not since. This introduces an inconsistency into the report --- the main table covers only active component personnel (the Total Worldwide is equal to Army active component endstrength.) There is a line item at the end of the main table labeled "Undistributed (Includes some OIF.)" This serves as a reconciliation line (bringing the sum of personnel distributed to countries in the main table into alignment with endstrength.) It also appears to be made up of mostly personnel deployed to either OIF or OEF, but also includes unspecified others. For the Army in March 2004 the undistributed number was fairly small (2553), but the total for all services of 33,421 is quite large. The numbers aggregated in the OIF table are double-counted in the CONUS, Germany, and Italy counts (as noted in the table), but the precise number so double-counted is not provided.
2. See, for example, Jim Miklaszewski, "Is the Army Stretched Too Thin?," NBC News, 9 March 2004, Mark Thompson and Michael Duffy, "Is The Army Stretched Too Thin?," Time Magazine, 1 September 2003; Joseph Galloway, "It's Time to Rethink the Size of U.S. Army," KRT Syndicate, August 2003; and Ann Scott Tyson, "Troop morale in Iraq hits 'rock bottom'", Christian Science Monitor, 07 July 2003.
3. "Correction to Global Patterns of Terrorism Will be Issued," Press Statement, Richard Boucher, Department of State Spokesman, Washington, DC, June 10, 2004
"After learning of possible discrepancies in the first week of May, the Department of State and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center initiated a review of the data published in the 2003 edition of "Patterns of Global Terrorism." A May 17th letter from Congressman Waxman added impetus to our efforts.
"The data in the report was compiled by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which was established in January 2003 and includes elements from the CIA, FBI and Departments of Homeland Security and Defense. Based on our review, we have determined that the data in the report is incomplete and in some cases incorrect. Here at the Department of State, we did not check and verify the data sufficiently.
"At our request, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center is revising the statistics for calendar year 2003. While we are still checking data for accuracy and completeness, we can say that our preliminary results indicate that the figures for the number of attacks and casualties will be up sharply from what was published. As soon as we are in a position to, we will issue corrected numbers, a revised analysis, and revisions to the report."
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Retired US general Tommy Franks urges diplomacy for Iran, North Korea
LISBON (AFP)
Nov 11, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041111195648.7gjyfi6g.html
Retired US general Tommy Franks, who oversaw the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, said Thursday that diplomacy was the best way for Washington to deal with concerns over Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs.
"I don't think it would be helpful for us to say 'Well, they better do this or else, or they better do that or else'. That's not our way," he told reporters here on the sidelines of a conference.
"What we want to do is solve this issue in Iran through diplomacy and I think that is what people are working really hard on now."
"I believe that the answer in North Korea is likely to be found in diplomacy and by continuing to have discussions with the North Koreans," he added.
US President George W. Bush in 2002 dubbed Iran and North Korea alongside pre-war Iraq as members of a global "axis of evil".
US-led forces invaded Iraq one year later amidst claims about Baghdad's alleged nuclear, biological and chemical weapons program, which turned out to be unfounded.
Franks retired as head of US Central Command in August 2003, several months after Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad.
Washington also accuses North Korea and Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons programs and has adopted a hardline stance against both two nations, although it has not threatened military action.
After his re-election earlier this month, Bush said he intends to continue six-party talks with North Korea and would continue to support European efforts to get Iran to back away from developing nuclear weapons before bringing the matter to the UN Security Council.
Washington asserts that North Korea may already have as many as eight nuclear bombs while it accuses Iran of covertly seeking ways to produce the weapon.
Iran says its atomic ambitions are limited to producing electricity from nuclear power reactors.
The United States, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have held three rounds of talks with North Korea but Pyongyang declined to attend a previously agreed follow-up meeting in September.
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Fed panel presses Gulf War illness aid
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Thursday, November 11, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1155&slug=Gulf%20War%20Illness
WASHINGTON -- A federal panel that has spent two years reviewing studies of Gulf War illnesses recommends focusing future research on the effects of the toxic substances that veterans encountered during the 1991 conflict.
That conclusion differs from the findings of a Clinton administration panel that determined that stress was the cause of the mysterious ailments afflicting thousands of Gulf War veterans.
The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illness said scientists are closing in on a treatment but need more government help. The committee suggested spending $60 million over the next four years to monitor and research the health of veterans and their children.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report Thursday, in advance of its expected release Friday by Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi.
The review committee that Principi formed concluded that "the goal of understanding and treating Gulf War veterans' illnesses is within reach" because of recent research breakthroughs.
But federal research is falling short in large part because studies have not asked important questions and continue to focus on stress to explain the veterans' problems.
"Additional progress in addressing Gulf War veterans' illnesses is not likely to come from a haphazard mix of studies," the panel said.
Department officials declined comment before the review was made public.
Hundreds of thousands of veterans of the 1991 Gulf War have experienced undiagnosed illnesses they believe are linked to the war, according to Congress' auditing arm. These ailments include chronic fatigue, loss of muscle control, diarrhea, migraines, dizziness, memory problems and loss of balance.
Principi's panel found that more recent studies suggest the veterans' illnesses are neurological and apparently are linked to exposure to neurotoxins such as the nerve gas sarin, the anti-nerve gas drug pyridostigmine bromide and pesticides that affect the nervous system.
"Research studies conducted since the war have consistently indicated that psychiatric illness, combat experience or other deployment-related stressors do not explain Gulf War veterans illnesses in the large majority of ill veterans," the review committee said.
The Pentagon has estimated that about 100,000 soldiers were exposed to nerve gas when Iraqi weapons caches were destroyed, although congressional auditors have questioned the Defense Department's estimates. The Pentagon also has said some soldiers may have been overexposed to pesticides.
The committee said the VA should allocate $15 million in each of the next four years for a Gulf War illness research program.
Principi had announced in 2002 that $20 million would be available for research this year. But during the summer, the panel found that little of that had been spent and some of what was went to studies investigating stress-related causes.
Recent research "makes it a very reasonable possibility that this Gulf War illness is not attributable simply to stress of troops that were deployed," said Paul Greengard, who won the Nobel Prize for work discovering the brain mechanisms involved in Parkinson's disease, a nerve disorder.
Greengard is the founder of Intracellular Therapies, which looks for treatments for central nervous system disorders. He said the company recently began investigating how nerve agents damage the brain.
Greengard has done preliminary work funded by the Army that would apply the research methods he used to investigate Parkinson's to study Gulf War illnesses.
"I think any reasonable person can no longer exclude the possibility that our military personnel deployed in Gulf War I were exposed to toxic chemicals that have produced this very high incidence of illnesses," Greengard said.
On the Net:
Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses: http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/
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Fort Bragg Troops Train For Homeland Security Mission
November 11, 2004
WRAL.com
http://www.wral.com/news/3911970/detail.html
NEW YORK -- The traditional image of the military is troops going overseas.
But, now more than ever, troops train to go anywhere -- even inside the United States.
Just this week, Fort Bragg soldiers ran a rare training exercise in New York.
The group of soldiers flew to New York to train for a fictional scenario in which terrorists plan to strike the West Point Military Academy, the place where future Army leaders train.
Once the Fort Bragg troops landed, the commanders were briefed. They predicted what fictional enemies might do, and how they might do it.
"With the whole 9/11, anything's possible after that," said Spc. David Millburn. "That's where things are happening now. It's here on the homeland."
fort bragg troopsA group of Fort Bragg soldiers flew to New York to train for a fictional scenario in which terrorists plan to strike the West Point Military Academy./2004/1111/3912060.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_40X30.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_60X45.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_80X60.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_120X90.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_200X150.jpg/2004/1111/3912060_320X240.jpg
Within hours, soldiers set up communications and began patrolling the mountain campus.
One group of four soldiers make up what's called a fire-team. During the drill, they walked around for hours looking for anything suspicious along the perimeter.
"We're here to do a job, complete a mission, go home," said Sgt. Christian Brajas.
The paratroopers stuck to their training details for 12 straight hours. The group can be ready to go anywhere within four hours.
Most units around the country are scheduling more domestic "training ops" like this one. The soldiers at Fort Bragg have done three.
Reporter: Jason Stoogenke Photographer: Michael Joyner OnLine Producer: Rod Overton
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3 Abu Ghraib Trials Moved to U.S.
Associated Press
Thursday, November 11, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41014-2004Nov10.html
BAGHDAD, Nov. 11 -- The U.S. military announced Thursday that the courts-martial of three Army reservists charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison would be transferred from Baghdad to Fort Hood, Tex.
The trials of Sgt. Javal S. Davis, Spec. Sabrina Harman and Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. had been set to begin next year in Baghdad.
No reason was given for the decision to move the trials. Defense attorneys had pressed for months for a change of venue, in part because of problems bringing witnesses and legal staff to one of the world's most dangerous cities.
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ECONOMIC SCENE
For White Men, Military Service Does Not Pay Later in Life
November 11, 2004
By ALAN B. KRUEGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/business/11scene.html?pagewanted=all&position=
THE risk of serious injury or death to members of the armed forces is clear enough, but their economic risks are less apparent. Veterans Day is a fitting occasion to recognize the economic sacrifices of veterans.
For a long time, it was believed that veterans of popular wars benefited from their service when they rejoined the civilian labor market, while veterans of unpopular wars lost out. A growing body of research, however, shows that most veterans - whether inductees during a draft or enlistees in the voluntary forces - suffer an earnings penalty in the civilian economy. Military experience appears to be worth little to most private-sector employers.
Figuring out how military service affects veterans' civilian earnings is not straightforward. On the one hand, the military rejects individuals who are physically unfit, uneducated or have a low aptitude. On the other hand, during the Vietnam War, many men with good connections, occupational deferments or a college education were able to avoid service. As a result, veterans are not a representative sample of the population, and a simple comparison of veterans to nonveterans can be misleading.
In a celebrated 1990 study, Joshua Angrist of M.I.T. solved this problem by ingeniously exploiting the Vietnam-era draft lottery. Priority for the draft was determined by random selection on birthdays. Professor Angrist compared the earnings of those whose birthdays made them eligible for the draft with those whose birthdays made them ineligible. Because birthdays were randomly selected, there is no reason to suspect that the two groups would have had different earnings absent the draft. With this setup, he found that veterans who joined the military because of their unlucky draft number earned about 10 percent less than otherwise similar nonveterans in the first decade after leaving the service.
The nature of selection into the military was different during World War II, but the impact of service was similar. Three-quarters of men born from 1919 to 1926 served in World War II. Those who did not were often disqualified because of a physical or mental handicap. These handicaps limited job opportunities for nonveterans. While World War II veterans earned about 10 percent more than nonveterans over the course of their civilian careers, that advantage was a result of the low earning power of nonveterans.
The draft lottery again offers a way to estimate how much veterans would have earned if they had not served. By comparing birth cohorts with greatly different call-up rates as the draft built up and then wound down, Professor Angrist and I found that World War II veterans earned 5 to 10 percent less than comparable nonveterans, similar to the penalty that Vietnam-era veterans suffered.
In recent work, Professor Angrist tackles the effect of serving in the post-Vietnam all-volunteer force. He uses two methods to determine how much veterans would have earned in the absence of their service. First, he matches applicants to the military who served to other applicants who did not serve but had the same education and aptitude score.
Second, he takes advantage of a mistake in the way the armed forces qualifying test was graded.
From 1976 to 1980, more than 250,000 applicants were accidentally let into the military because of this mistake. The military fixed the mistake in October 1980. Applicants who were rejected after the fix-up but who would have been accepted previously provide a natural comparison group for those mistakenly accepted.
Both techniques yield similar results. When they entered the civilian labor market, white veterans earned around 5 percent less than their nonveteran counterparts. It took about 10 years for this earnings disadvantage to dissipate.
Nonwhite veterans, by contrast, earned almost 10 percent more than otherwise comparable nonveterans upon leaving the military, and this advantage persisted for at least a decade.
A possible explanation for this racial disparity is that a record of military service may be a positive signal that helps minority workers to (at least partially) overcome the discrimination they face in the labor market. For white veterans, however, military service mainly amounts to a loss of civilian work experience.
Several studies find that while in the armed forces, military personnel earn higher salaries than their civilian counterparts. The pay of military personnel also increased sharply relative to that of civilians since 2000, according to a new study by John T. Warner and Curtis Simon of Clemson University.
But all is not so rosy. Wives of men in the armed forces earn 30 percent less than other married women their age with the same education, according to a study by Col. Casey Wardynski of the United States Military Academy.
In part, the spouses fare poorly because military bases are overwhelmingly in low-wage, rural areas. In addition, because military wives are often forced to relocate, they have little opportunity to advance within the same company, and little bargaining power because they cannot easily move to another location in search of better pay.
The limited labor market opportunities for wives of military personnel was of little consequence in the 1960's, when fewer than a third of them worked. But now, with two-thirds of wives of soldiers in the labor force, the earnings gap significantly lowers family incomes.
To reduce the economic burden on military families, Colonel Wardynski recommends considering giving preferences to spouses of military personnel for civilian jobs on military bases.
Despite the economic sacrifices - and the increased risk to life and limb from the war in Iraq - enlistments rose noticeably in all branches of the armed forces except the Navy from 1999 to 2003. The weak job market, intensified military recruitment efforts and patriotic zeal have undoubtedly increased recruitment, Mr. Warner said.
"Without regarding the danger," Adam Smith once remarked, "young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war."
As the war in Iraq persists and the job market continues to strengthen, the costs of reaching the Pentagon's growing target for enlistments are expected to rise as well - for the Treasury and for veterans.
Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. E-mail: akrueger@princeton.edu.
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National Guard Investigates School-Strafing Incident
November 11, 2004
By IVER PETERSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/nyregion/11strafe.html
LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J., Nov. 10 - The National Guard told worried parents and teachers in schools near the Warren Grove bombing range on Wednesday night that changes would be made to prevent a repeat of last week's accidental strafing of the elementary school here by an F-16 fighter jet.
Gen. Maria Falca-Dodson, deputy adjutant general of the New Jersey Department of Veterans and Military Affairs, said that an investigation of the incident would take a month to five weeks, but that there could be an interim report in as little as three weeks.
She did not elaborate on the planned changes during the meeting, and in an interview before the meeting, she said, "We are drilling down through the process to see what we can do, but I won't speculate on what those changes will be until we have completed that process."
Col. Brian Webster, commander of the 177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard, described the event as an accidental discharge of the plane's machine gun, apparently rejecting a theory of pilot error. "The pilot was looking over his shoulder - he had no idea where those bullets went," said Colonel Webster, adding later, "As soon as the gun fired, the pilot immediately called the range tower and said the gun had gone off."
After the jet fired at least eight rounds from its 20-millimeter machine gun into the roof and parking lot of Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School on Nov. 3, it returned to its home at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Only a few janitors were in the school during the 9 p.m. incident, and there were no injuries.The 9,400-acre government-owned bombing range, in the coastal New Jersey pinelands, has handled 3,700 sorties so far this year. It has been closed pending the outcome of the investigation.
At the meeting, held at the township's municipal building, the general sought to quell calls from residents to close the range, by invoking the memory of Sept. 11, 2001.
"We all remember the days after 9/11, when all civilian aircraft were grounded and the only aircraft in the air were planes like the F-16's," General Falca-Dodson said, "and many of my friends told me they were comforted by the sight and sound of those planes guarding our skies in the aftermath of 9/11. Imagine how comforted you would feel if the United States government did not train as consistently as they do."
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, has called for closing the range, which is used by National Guard units along the East Coast. He said heavy population growth in the area since the range was opened in 1942 has made it dangerous to continue bombing and strafing runs there.
Before the meeting, one resident, Denise Miller, said the accidental strafing was only the most recent of several accidents involving planes over the range. "We live near Exit 58 on the Garden State Parkway, and a couple of years ago an F-16 crashed behind our house," she recalled. "And a year or two before that, there was a fire from a bomb, and a second one, too. So this is the fourth incident in the last three or four years."
Nathan Miller, her husband, teaches basic skills at the Little Egg Harbor Elementary School, which has about 1,000 children in the third through sixth grades.
"It's unfortunate, and we need better safeguards," he said, "but until I hear some more information, I think it's too early to talk about closing the range."
Gina Kolb, a resident of Little Egg Harbor, shared Mrs. Miller's concerns, but said she also did not want to hurt the military.
"They have to make it safer, but the way the world is today, the country needs the military."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Dutch anti-terror raids net seven
bbc.co.uk
11 November, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3998347.stm
Dutch police arrested two people after a violent 14-hour stand-off at a house in The Hague, in which four officers were wounded by a hand grenade.
The two are suspected of "terrorist conspiracy with the aim of murder".
Anti-bomb experts were searching the apartment at the centre of the siege on Wednesday night for explosives.
Police said four people were detained in Amsterdam and one in Amersfoort as part of the same investigation into a network of radical Muslims.
Tensions have been high since filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who made a film critical of Islam, was shot dead in the street in a week ago.
A Muslim school in Uden was burned down earlier on Wednesday, and attacks have targeted Christian and Muslim buildings across the Netherlands.
Sealed off
The area where The Hague raid took place - near the Holland Spoor train station - was sealed off and airspace immediately over it was closed.
The building was surrounded by police in riot gear, fire engines, ambulances and special forces.
Dutch views on Van Gogh's death
In pictures Police evacuated neighbours and they were bussed to local shelters.
"Around 1630 (1530 GMT), after special units fired teargas into the apartment, two men were arrested," The Hague prosecutor Han Moraal told a press conference.
Police chief Gerard Bouwman said there had been an exchange of gunfire, and a hand grenade was thrown at the arresting officers, which exploded injuring several.
Two of the injured officers were reported to be in a serious condition.
One of the suspects was shot in the shoulder after he failed to obey police instructions, officials said.
The area remained sealed off on Wednesday night as police searched the apartment for explosives, the BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague said.
Warning to EU
Police would not comment on whether the arrests were linked to the murder of the filmmaker in Amsterdam a week ago.
Mr van Gogh had received death threats after the release of his latest film controversially portraying domestic violence in Muslim societies. It showed images of a semi-naked woman with Koranic script daubed on her body.
Fire at Muslim school in Uden, southern Netherlands - suspected arson "Theo, rest in peace" was scrawled on the Uden school walls Six suspects, believed to be members of an Islamic militant group, remain in custody, including the alleged killer, 26-year-old Mohammed Bouyeri, who holds dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told parliament that extremism was undermining democracy.
"It is the joint task of Muslims and non-Muslims to warn young people against radicalisation," he said, according to the Associated Press news agency.
The Dutch Immigration Minister, Rita Verdonk, has warned that EU countries are at risk, because of an increasing radicalism among young Muslims.
She said member states must act urgently to improve the integration of foreigners.
The minister, whose nation holds the EU presidency, said countries must ensure that immigrants learn the local language and accept Western values, but she said the EU also needed to develop, in her words, a common vision of integration.
Last week EU leaders agreed to create a common asylum system by 2010 to try to prevent illegal immigration into the EU.
-------- homeland security / national intelligence
'Orange' Alert Is Dropped in D.C. and N.Y.
By John Mintz and Sari Horwitz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40226-2004Nov10?language=printer
The Department of Homeland Security lowered the terrorist threat level yesterday for five financial institution headquarters in Washington, New York and New Jersey, and U.S. Capitol Police began removing 14 vehicle checkpoints around the Capitol that had frustrated motorists and neighborhood residents since August.
The government dropped the threat index for the financial buildings from orange, or "high risk," to yellow, or "elevated risk," because security measures taken there in the past three months and tightened security in the financial sector nationwide eliminated the need for the higher alert designation, said James M. Loy, deputy secretary of homeland security.
The government does not mean to signal, however, that the terrorist threat to the nation has passed, because officials believe the danger continues to be very high, Loy said.
U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said yesterday that he decided to remove the controversial barriers, erected Aug. 1 at the same time security was stepped up at the financial sites, because "there was a preelection threat, and we all said we would be re-examining the state of play after the election."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge lowered the alert level for Washington's World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings, the Prudential Financial headquarters in Newark, and Manhattan's New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup building "with President Bush's blessing." But the move was made because of improved security and not because the Nov. 2 election passed without incident, Loy said.
He said that since the summertime alarms were raised, U.S. financial regulators and financial institutions have tightened the security of their data linkups to one another "to ensure there are redundant systems to continue the financial solvency of the country" in any attack. They also conducted numerous exercises and drills to prepare for emergencies, he said.
Although U.S. intelligence officials had warned that al Qaeda wanted to disrupt the U.S. electoral process, they remain fearful of a terrorist strike through the presidential inauguration Jan. 20 and beyond, Loy said.
"I don't like the idea of a beginning and an end" to the heightened alert posture, Loy said. "We're as concerned today as we were a month ago. The whole notion of taking a deep breath and saying 'Wow, we made it through that' is a dangerous train of thought," he added.
The heightened threat level was imposed after intelligence officials seized computer disks in Pakistan showing that al Qaeda members had conducted detailed surveillance of the five sites, noting security guards' shift changes, the angles of security cameras and the like.
The buildings were cased in 2000 and 2001, but the computer files -- taken from the computer of an alleged al Qaeda operative -- appeared to have been updated in the past two years. Although officials saw no evidence that al Qaeda had "operationalized" the attack scenarios, the decision to raise the buildings' threat status was made "to err on the side of conservatism," Loy said.
D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams said he was "extremely pleased" by Gainer's decision to remove the 14 checkpoints because it recognizes "the disruption that these checkpoints caused to average citizens trying to carry on the business of living and working."
Capitol Police said they will continue to block First Street between Constitution Avenue and D Street NE, which Gainer closed at the same time he erected the checkpoints. He said yesterday that he might resurrect the checkpoints depending on perceived security threats there.
Gainer said that he announced his decisions at a morning meeting yesterday before he was notified of the change in threat level and that the two actions were coincidental.
Michael A. Mason, assistant FBI director in charge of the Washington Field Office, said the capital remains under an intense level of security because it tops al Qaeda's target list, along with New York.
"On days when the water is rough, lifeguards are vigilant," he said. "On days when the water is calm, lifeguards are vigilant."
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said the lowered alert level has prompted him to scale back the overtime detail he had posted at the IMF and World Bank since August.
During the orange alert, the federal government funded police overtime there.
Under the contract with the city's police union, returning to yellow also means Ramsey again must give two-weeks' notice before he alters police shifts.
The high alert had allowed him to immediately order officers onto 12-hour shifts.
In August, several Washington law enforcement officials privately expressed skepticism about raising the alert for the five sites, and some repeated those sentiments yesterday.
"There was never a concrete reason why it was raised to orange in the first place," said one law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution. "I don't think there is a concrete reason why it is now being lowered, except maybe that time passed and nothing had happened."
Asked whether the August orange designation was timed to the election season, Loy, a retired Coast Guard admiral, said: "We don't do politics at this department. . . . It never crosses my mind."
--------
U.S. Officials Lower Terrorist Alert Levels for Financial Sites
November 11, 2004
By ERIC LIPTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/politics/11threat.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - Federal officials lowered the terrorist alert level on Wednesday for the financial services industry in Washington, New York and northern New Jersey, saying that financial institutions in those regions had taken significant steps to improve defenses against possible attacks.
The action was taken nearly three and a half months after the Department of Homeland Security imposed a heightened state of alert based on computer records found in Pakistan.
The authorities said the records showed that Qaeda operatives, starting before the 2001 attacks, had meticulously monitored financial buildings in these areas, including the World Bank in Washington, the Citigroup building in Manhattan and the Prudential Financial building in Newark. Federal officials also said the approaching presidential election was a cause for heightened concern.
James Loy, deputy secretary at the Homeland Security Department, said the announcement on Wednesday should not be interpreted as a sign that the nation was any less likely to be a terrorist target.
"We are as concerned today as we were a month ago," Mr. Loy said. "The whole notion of taking a deep breath and saying, 'Wow, we got past this, and now we are O.K. for a while,' is, in my mind, a very dangerous train of thought."
Instead, Mr. Loy said, the recovered surveillance reports identified the need for security improvements.
At Prudential, for example, which has 4,000 employees at its Newark headquarters, double rows of concrete barriers were installed around the main offices. Cars parked below the complex are now searched, and visitors must pass their bags through X-ray machines.
At the Citigroup Center, a tower in Midtown Manhattan considered particularly vulnerable because it is largely supported by four giant stilt-like structures, the company now requires visitors to have escorts.
Spokesmen at both companies said the tighter security procedures would remain in place, even with the lowered threat level.
One immediate change here in Washington was around the Capitol, where the police ended a 24-hour-a-day check of all passing vehicles, a reduction of security welcomed by Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
"It is a recognition we are a safe society, but we also have to be an open society, which means we have to work our way to as normal a state as possible," he said.
In New York, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the city was scaling back unspecified security measures, but added that the city "continues to be considered a terrorist target and remains at a higher threat level."
The Homeland Security Department's pattern of raising the alert level, discussing the possibility of a major attack on the United States and then, with considerably less fanfare, lowering the alert level has caused a certain fatigue among some residents of the affected cities. Several on Wednesday asked whether the announcement's timing had more to do with politics than terrorism.
"This is something that could have probably been said two or three weeks prior to the election,'' Warren MacQueen of Washington said. "But it was the notion of Bush protecting America that was a central part of his platform.''
Mr. Loy said although his department t had no evidence that the surveillance of the buildings was ever part of an active bombing plot, such statements were unjustified.
"We don't do politics here at this department," he said.
Sewell Chan contributed reporting from New York for this article.
--------
TSA Plans More Checks on Cargo Loaders
Associated Press
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41109-2004Nov10.html
The federal government unveiled a plan yesterday to tighten air cargo security by checking the backgrounds of workers who handle freight and by restricting access to sections of airports used for loading and unloading cargo.
The long-awaited plan from the Transportation Security Administration also requires cargo airlines to screen people who board their planes. Freight forwarders -- agents who accept packages and arrange shipment -- must make sure cargo does not include bombs, guns or stowaways.
However, the plan contains few details about how the TSA expects the freight industry to accomplish those goals.
"These proposals would fill gaps in existing air cargo security regulations to mitigate the threat of terrorism to this vital industry," said the proposal, which was signed by TSA chief David M. Stone and listed in the Federal Register.
Critics say it is foolish to carefully screen people and luggage but not the cargo that is carried on passenger planes.
Currently, air cargo loaded onto passenger aircraft must be shipped by a company that has registered with the government. Cargo airlines have security plans, and some cargo is randomly inspected.
Late last year, Homeland Security officials said intelligence indicated al Qaeda might hijack cargo planes and attack nuclear plants, bridges or dams.
The plan does specifically call for companies to submit personal information about freight workers so their names can be checked against terrorist watch lists. The checks would include officers, directors or anyone who owns at least 25 percent of a freight forwarding company.
--------
Bush Is Asked to Break Deadlock on Intelligence Reform
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41011-2004Nov10.html
Key lawmakers, family members of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and members of the commission that studied the attacks called on President Bush yesterday to break a deadlock in Congress that threatens to block passage of an intelligence reform package.
Lawmakers had hoped to complete work on legislation to reorganize the U.S. intelligence system in time for final action by Congress when it returns next week for a post-election session. But a dispute between the Senate and House Republican leaders over the budgetary powers of a new national intelligence director threatens to torpedo action this year. House Republican leaders and Pentagon officials are opposed to shifting control over the majority of intelligence spending from the secretary of defense to the new intelligence director, as the Senate version of the legislation would do.
"We believe that the president has the power to move this legislation forward and to override the Pentagon's influence in producing this stalemate," Carol Ashley, a member of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, told reporters.
Her view was echoed by former congressman Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the Sept. 11 commission, who said he was "hopeful that the president of the United States will weigh in in a personal way with personal calls to the conferees and the leadership in the House and Senate and get this completed."
In a post-election news conference last week, Bush called on Congress "to pass an effective intelligence reform bill that I can sign into law." White House staff members have taken part in House-Senate negotiations over the two competing 500-page bills, but Bush has yet to get personally involved in the talks.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chief Senate negotiator, said she had spoken to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and may appeal directly to the president if there is no progress by the time Congress returns Tuesday.
The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and family members of victims strongly support the Senate version of the intelligence reforms. Bush's hesitancy to press the Senate measure may stem from intelligence reform actions already underway as a result of executive orders he signed in August that in effect authorized two of the main recommendations of the 9/11 commission and the House and Senate bills, according to congressional aides involved in the process.
The president at that time established a National Counterterrorism Center and gave increased budgetary and management authority over the 15 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community to the director of central intelligence (DCI). He also has said he would support legislation to turn the DCI into the national intelligence director with powers somewhat similar to those the 9/11 commission proposed
The revised DCI and the counterterrorism center set up by the president's orders more closely resemble the House legislation than the Senate measure.
For example, the DCI under the president's order can "determine" the budgets of Pentagon-based intelligence collection agencies. At the same time, the DCI can only "monitor" the spending of the money as it passes through the Defense Department to the Pentagon's intelligence agencies. One of the remaining disagreements on Capitol Hill is the House GOP rejection of the Senate proposal that gives the national intelligence director control over spending of funds passing through the Pentagon.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether
By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41106-2004Nov10.html
MIAMI, Nov. 10 -- The e-mail subject lines couldn't be any bigger and bolder: "Another Stolen Election," "Presidential election was hacked," "Ohio Fraud."
Even as Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign is steadfastly refusing to challenge the results of the presidential election, the bloggers and the mortally wounded party loyalists and the spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists are filling the Internet with head-turning allegations. There is the one about more ballots cast than registered voters in the big Ohio county anchored by Cleveland. There are claims that a suspicious number of Florida counties ended up with Bush vote totals that were far larger than the number of registered Republican voters. And then there is the one that might be the most popular of all: the exit polls that showed Kerry winning big weren't wrong -- they were right.
Each of the claims is buoyed by enough statistics and analysis to sound plausible. In some instances, the theories are coming from respected sources -- college engineering professors fascinated by voting technology, Internet journalists, election reform activists. Ultimately, none of the most popular theories holds up to close scrutiny. And the people who most stand to benefit from the conspiracy theories -- the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee -- are not biting.
"At this point the number of irregularities brought to our attention is not going to change the outcome of the election," said DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera. "The simple fact of the matter is that Republicans received more votes than Democrats, and we're not contesting this election."
The Ohio vote-fraud theory appears to stem from the curious ways of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. During even-numbered years the county's canvassing board posts vote totals that include the results from outside the county from congressional districts that spill over Cuyahoga's borders. The quirk made it look as if the county had 90,000 more votes than voters.
The disparities were spotted, and urgent mass mailings began: "Ohio precincts report up to 1,586% turnout . . . 30 Precincts in Ohio's Cuyahoga County report 'over' 100% turnout!" Later, the county added a disclaimer to its Web site in an attempt to explain the numbers.
"It takes me about three times to explain" why the fraud allegation is untrue, said Kimberly Bartlett, community outreach specialist for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. "You have to ask them why no top Democrat is making these charges."
There also have been reports of more votes counted than voters in some counties in Florida and North Carolina. Steve Ansolabehere of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project said the preliminary results do not add up. "We'll see if there's anything dramatic or widespread once we see the full certifications come in," he said.
The Florida case is more nuanced than the Ohio voting battle. Numerous bloggers have noted that President Bush's vote totals in 47 Florida counties were larger -- in some cases much larger -- than the number of registered Republican voters in the same counties. A widely distributed piece on Consortiumnews.com said the results "are so statistically stunning that they border on the unbelievable."
The article's main numbers are correct. But the central premise -- that there is something suspicious about Bush getting more votes than the number of registered Republicans in rural counties, which use paper ballots -- may not be suspicious at all.
It is does not account for thousands of independents or for voters who do not list party affiliation. It is also common for Florida Democrats, particularly the "Dixiecrats" in the northern reaches of the state and the Panhandle, to vote for Republicans, a pattern that is repeated in much of the Deep South.
"Florida has always been the land of the Dixiecrats," said Walter R. Mebane Jr., a professor of government at Cornell University who specializes in voting issues. "In Florida, as you go north, you go south."
Despite its apparent flaws, the Florida theory raises some interesting questions. For instance, a further look at Florida voting patterns shows that the number of counties with more Bush votes than registered Republicans jumped from 32 in 2000 to 47 in 2004. Bush's improved performance might be explained by Al Gore, a southern moderate, having had more appeal to Dixiecrats four years ago than Kerry, who is from Massachusetts, did in this election.
The theories on exit polls are even more slippery. Because the early exit polls that were leaked and caused so much excitement among Democrats are not publicly distributed, the criticisms have not been based on statistics. Instead there are comments such as those from Zvi Drezner, a professor at the California State University at Fullerton business and economics school, who wrote that "the exit polls did not 'lie' " and described "a gut feeling that the machines did not report the correct count."
Many voting experts say the theory that the exit polls were correct is deeply flawed because the polls oversampled women. MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III also has said focusing solely on the early polls favoring Kerry in Ohio and Florida is the wrong approach because exit polls in some Democratic-leaning states tilted toward Bush, evening out the national picture.
The U.S. Justice Department, which handles complaints fielded by a bipartisan commission formed after the 2000 election chaos, said the allegations of vote buying and voter-registration fraud were no different than the pattern of previous elections. But other sources are documenting huge numbers of complaints. Verified Voting, a group formed by a Stanford University professor to assess electronic voting, has collected 31,000 reports of election fraud and other problems, but nothing that would overturn the Nov. 2 outcome.
Still, messages posted on the aptly named Quixotegroup discussion cluster -- which takes its name from the literary figure Don Quixote who used his lance to tilt against windmills -- urged members to send fraud evidence to the law firm of Kerry's brother, Cameron Kerry, to persuade the Democratic candidate to "unconcede."
A high-ranking Democrat, mindful of balancing respect for the complainers and a desire to move on, summed up the conspiracy theorists with a line from Alexander Pope: "Hope springs eternal in the human breast."
Keating reported from Washington. Staff writers Paul Farhi and Susan Schmidt in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- us politics
Bush Picks a Loyalist to Replace a Politician
Counsel Gonzales Often Clashed With Ashcroft
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41007-2004Nov10.html
In background and temperament, Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's choice to be attorney general, could hardly be more different from John D. Ashcroft.
The current officeholder, from Missouri, is the son and grandson of Assemblies of God ministers; Gonzales, 49, was reared in a Roman Catholic Mexican American family in Texas by parents who had been migrant farmworkers.
Ashcroft is hard-charging and the ideological darling of religious conservatives; Gonzales, called "mi abogado" ("my lawyer") by Bush, is soft-spoken, nondogmatic and viewed with suspicion by conservatives.
Ashcroft was a Missouri governor and senator and even attempted a run for the presidency in his three decades in politics; Gonzales was a Houston business lawyer with no political career before he was recruited in 1994 by Bush's gubernatorial campaign.
As White House counsel in Bush's first term, Gonzales was known less for ideology than for loyalty to Bush. Indeed, he could be politically tone-deaf in his zeal to protect the authority of his boss in squabbles with Congress. "The Judge," as colleagues called him because of his brief tenure on the Texas Supreme Court, often sparred with Ashcroft and the other movement conservatives at the Justice Department and played the role of arbiter during the first term, listening to arguments of more dogmatic lawyers in the White House and the Justice Department and seeking consensus.
Gonzales was born in San Antonio and grew up in Houston. He lived with seven siblings in a home without running water and other modern amenities for much of his youth. After his parents met as migrant workers, his father, who was an alcoholic, worked in construction while his mother stayed home with the children.
Gonzales was a football and baseball player and honor student in high school but enlisted in the Air Force. He eventually attended the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, then transferred to Rice University and later went to Harvard Law School. He was the only one in his family to go to college, and the only one to leave Houston.
He told The Washington Post in 2001 that his success, contrasted with that of his siblings, "makes you painfully aware of the inequities in life" and "makes you wonder why a person who has grown up in exactly the same environment is able to succeed."
Conservatives have long been wary of Gonzales. The journal Human Events accused him of sounding "like Mario Cuomo." The National Review said a joke among GOP aides in the Senate was "Gonzales is Spanish for Souter," a reference to David H. Souter, the Supreme Court justice nominated by President George H.W. Bush who joined the court's liberal wing.
The distrust dates from Gonzales's days on the Texas Supreme Court in 2000, when he joined a majority of the judges in upholding a pregnant teenager's right to seek an abortion without notifying her parents. Taking aim at two conservative dissenters in the case, Gonzales wrote that they were engaged in "unconscionable judicial activism."
Those words came back to haunt Bush when he appointed one of the two dissenters, Priscilla R. Owen, to a federal appeals court -- and Senate Democrats threw Gonzales's words back in the White House's face. The Owen nomination failed.
Gonzales also has squabbled with conservatives in the administration over affirmative action. When the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan came before the Supreme Court in 2003, Gonzales argued fiercely that the administration should not take a hard-line position in favor of the white students who were claiming that the school had made them victims of "reverse discrimination."
This put him at odds with administration conservatives led by Ashcroft and then-Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, but Gonzales ultimately prevailed in the sense that the administration ended up pressing a narrow argument that objected only to the way in which Michigan had pursued diversity, not to the diversity rationale for affirmative action itself. The court sided with the Michigan law school in a 5 to 4 ruling.
Behind the scenes, Gonzales clashed frequently with Ashcroft's Justice Department. He felt blindsided when Ashcroft, early in the administration, announced that the department would embrace, for the first time ever, a view of the Second Amendment that regards gun possession as an individual right on a par with freedom of speech or religion.
Gonzales and Ashcroft were in an ongoing wrangle over control of the pivotal Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department's in-house adviser on constitutional matters. The OLC became particularly important after Sept. 11, 2001, when the administration was pushing for new legal authority to pursue the war on terrorism. Gonzales's most public controversy was his role in administration memos regarding the treatment of prisoners taken in the war on terrorism.
But many of the controversies on his watch were less his doing than those of underlings and other young conservative lawyers in the administration.
"I don't think he's ever really had a chance to express his views on major policy issues," said Edwin Meese III, the Reagan administration attorney general now with the Heritage Foundation. "The job of the White House counsel is to be an attorney." If he goes from being the president's abogado to the country's, all signs are that Gonzales would remain faithful -- not necessarily to conservative ideology, but to Bush.
Staff writer Charles Lane contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Nominates His Top Counsel for Justice Post
November 11, 2004
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/politics/11justice.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 - President Bush on Wednesday nominated Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel and a longtime political loyalist, to be his next attorney general.
The speed with which Mr. Bush acted, only a day after making public the resignation of John Ashcroft, indicated that the president wants to get his new appointees in place before the start of his second term, 10 weeks from now. The nomination of Mr. Gonzales would also put one of his most trusted aides in a post where past presidents have wanted to have a confidant, as well as someone who can help defend the White House, much as John F. Kennedy chose his brother Robert, or Ronald Reagan chose Edwin Meese III.
Mr. Bush said of Mr. Gonzales in a brief announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House: "His sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies on the war on terror, policies designed to protect the security of all Americans while protecting the rights of all Americans. He is a calm and steady voice at times of crisis."
If confirmed, Mr. Gonzales will be the first Hispanic ever to serve as the nation's most senior law enforcement officer.
The choice was immediately embraced by Senate Republicans, who promised speedy action on the nominee. But Senate Democrats appear eager to question Mr. Gonzales, who is considered more conservative than several other leading candidates for the attorney general's job. Issues almost certain to come up in his confirmation hearings include his stances on terrorism and civil liberties; the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay; the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, passed in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks; abortion; the death penalty; and other potentially contentious issues.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a leading Democrat on law enforcement and judicial issues, said he was "concerned about aspects of his record as White House counsel that raise doubts about his commitment to the rule of law."
Even before the announcement, civil liberties and human rights groups began recirculating copies of drafts of memorandums Mr. Gonzales or his aides wrote, including one from January 2002, advising Mr. Bush that the "nature of the new war" on terror "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
Many civil rights groups on Wednesday were quick to attack Mr. Gonzales for what they saw as legal policies and opinions that opened the door to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Critics of Mr. Gonzales argue that such logic put military and intelligence officials on the path to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, even though the White House had previously insisted that the Geneva conventions applied to detainees. Mr. Gonzales has denied a link between those memorandums and the abuses. Yet the issue seems bound to be explored, and Anthony Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the 2002 memorandum "will be the single toughest issue for him, because there's actually a paper trail."
Mr. Bush spoke emotionally of Mr. Gonzales's background as the son of migrant workers, and of his confidence in an old friend who has been at his side since 1995, when Mr. Gonzales came to the Texas state house to help the newly elected governor as his top legal counselor. At the White House, the nominee is known as "Judge Gonzales" in the White House because of his post on the Texas Supreme Court before coming to Washington with Mr. Bush four years ago.
While the selection of Mr. Gonzales as attorney general may create a public fight, some Senate Democrats said they might want to save their heavy ammunition for what is expected to be a battle over possible Supreme Court nominees rather than expending it on what is likely to be a losing cause for attorney general.
For months, there has been speculation in Washington that Mr. Gonzales would be selected to fill any vacancy on the Supreme Court. White House officials said he preferred the attorney general's job, and Republicans close to the White House said there was no reason he might not be nominated to the court later in Mr. Bush's term.
A court appointment, senior Republicans said, could have prompted a more intense confirmation fight, especially because some conservatives regard Mr. Gonzales as too moderate on the question of abortion and not sufficiently hardline in opposing affirmative action.
Then again, Mr. Bush's nomination of Mr. Ashcroft for attorney general in 2000 was also expected to gain confirmation relatively smoothly, but the 58-to-42 vote was the closest for the position in decades.
Some reaction to the nomination suggested that the shadow of Mr. Ashcroft, whose resignation was announced Tuesday after a four-year term that won him admirers as well as enemies, could work to the advantage of Mr. Gonzales.
"I think he's a pretty solid guy," Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, said of Mr. Gonzales. "If you had said to me six months ago I can have Gonzales or Ashcroft, it wouldn't have been a hard choice."
Republicans and Democrats said there was little reason to think that Mr. Gonzales, as a longtime insider at the White House, would take the Justice Department on a path dramatically different from that of Mr. Ashcroft on issues like terrorism, white-collar crime, gun enforcement, judicial nominees or civil rights.
"There's a feeling that Gonzales is less confrontational that John Ashcroft and he at least tries to reach out," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in an interview. "His style is not to throw down the gauntlet. So the White House has taken a step back from the red-hot confrontation that Ashcroft embodied, but we don't know how big a step back."
Mr. Ashcroft had a sometimes tense and distant relationship with the White House, in contrast to Mr. Gonzales's place as a close confidant to the president.
As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales took on much broader powers than many of his predecessors in formulating legal policy and tactics, a role that supporters said should position him well to act as the nation's top law enforcement official.
Some legal analysts said Mr. Gonzales's relationship with Mr. Bush reminded them of the Justice Department reigns of Robert Kennedy, who served as attorney general under his brother, John F. Kennedy, and of Mr. Meese, who was a White House counselor and close adviser to Ronald Reagan.
Every attorney general ultimately answers to the president, but historically, some have seen themselves largely as extensions of the White House, while others were more willing to try and insulate themselves from political pressures. Most famously, Elliot Richardson resigned in 1973 after refusing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox.
"A quasi-independence is something that historically has been valued at the Justice Department," said Elliott Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, a liberal group that raised concerns about Mr. Gonzales's nomination. "With Gonzales at the Justice Department, it raises the question of his willingness and ability to be independent and to shift to a very different role than he had at the White House."
Republican leaders described Mr. Gonzales as an able steward for the administration's legal policies. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, said he had "lived the American Dream - from humble roots as the son of migrant workers who never finished elementary school to be nominated by the president of the United States as the first Hispanic American attorney general."
Mr. Bush also met Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is rumored to be looking to leave the administration, though perhaps not for several months. The president ducked a question about Mr. Powell's future, telling reporters in the Oval Office today, "I'm proud of my secretary of state - he's done a heck of a good job."
But he said nothing about Mr. Powell's future, just as he has been studiously silent about what may happen to another of his closest advisers, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. Ms. Rice and John Danforth, the ambassador to the United Nations, are considered two of the leading candidates to replace Mr. Powell if he departs, but in the past Ms. Rice has suggested that she would be impatient with the diplomatic formalities and constant travel of the job.
Asked on Wednesday about the speculation about Mr. Powell's future, Richard Boucher, the state department spokesman, said, "The only voices that matter are the president and the secretary, and they don't have anything to say or speculate right now."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Russian Government Concerned Over Possible Depletion of Mineral Resources
rednova.com
11 November 2004
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=102213
The sustainable development of the Russian mineral resources sector requires its demonopolization, Natural Resources Minister Yuriy Trutnev said today, according to ITAR-TASS news agency. He was addressing a government meeting which later endorsed a long-term state programme for the study of subsurface resources and the recovery of mineral resources.
The agency quoted Trutnev as saying that at present the extraction of many mineral resources, including strategic ones, is concentrated in the hands of one or two companies. "Thus, nine companies extract in aggregate 82 per cent of Russian oil, and two companies account for almost 100 per cent of diamond extraction." He added: "It is obvious that in this situation a company that has a monopoly in the sector is not interested in further geological exploration and development of competition."
The agency went on to quote head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemyev as labelling the situation in the sector, where just a handful of big companies operate, as "economic poaching". He added that these companies "take under their wing" the most profitable deposits, thus increasing their plough-back, whilst paying little attention to geological exploration.
The agency said he urged the government and the Ministry of Natural Resources to pay "special attention to the level of monopolization in the sphere of subsurface use", and quoted him as saying he believes the monopolies "hinder the development of civic law relations in the sphere and the arrival of new companies that will create competition and lead to development of the industry". Artemyev sees the use of state-private partnership as the "main line" of policy in this field, the agency said.
The report went on to quote Aleksandr Belyakov, first deputy chairman of the Duma committee on natural resources, as saying that under no circumstances should the state abandon control over subsurface use. In his view, the state should also be in charge of geological exploration.
Trutnev was quoted as saying that Russia's biggest copper deposit at Udokan will be sold at auction in 2005. According to him, "Udokan is a typical example of how long it takes to bring a deposit to commissioning: it was entered on the balance of resources almost 50 years ago".
A report on the government meeting by external TV service NTV Mir noted that Russia has profitable reserves of gold up to 2011 and reserves of oil, copper and uranium up to 2015, but if a potential shortfall is to be avoided, action is needed now. It showed Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov saying: "In the midst of reform, our mineral and raw materials industry has found itself in a difficult situation. The raw materials base of existing enterprises has been seriously depleted because new deposits have been brought into operation slowly and there has been a considerable reduction in the volume of geological prospecting. These and other negative trends emerging over the past few years now require the government to draw up and implement an effective mineral and raw materials management policy in the interests of both today's citizens and future generations."
The report said the meeting adopted as a basis for further work a long-term state programme for the study of natural resources and replenishment of the minerals and raw materials base, with a view to increasing state investment in geological prospecting work. Over the entire period of the programme up to 2020, funding should total R255bn.
Sources:
ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0833 gmt 11 Nov 04
NTV Mir, Moscow, in Russian 1000 gmt 11 Nov 04
-------- health
Pesticide Study Using Children as Test Subjects Postponed
November 11, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=359
WASHINGTON - A planned government study into how children's bodies absorb pesticides and other chemicals has been temporarily suspended due to ethical concerns.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would ask an outside panel of scientists to review its planned two-year study involving the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., and report back by spring. The study's design has already been reviewed by four other external boards, including two universities.
The study was to look at how pesticides, which can cause neurological damage in children, and chemicals such as flame retardants might be ingested, inhaled or otherwise absorbed through such things as food, drink, soil, crop residue and household dust.
"If we decide to go forward with this study, we want to make sure it's done right," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said Wednesday. "There have been several concerns raised, including within the agency, and we want to be responsive and address those concerns."
Scientists at EPA and environmentalists questioned whether the government should give participating families $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes, saying it might encourage low-income families to use pesticides in their homes.
EPA also had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million study from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.
"It's fine that they pushed the pause button here," said Richard Wiles, senior vice president for the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy and research organization. "But for the study to have any integrity at all, they need to kick the chemical industry lobbyists and their money completely out of the process."
The trade group said in a statement that more review is useful, but it still supports the study "because of the great importance of increasing understanding of the exposures of young children to pesticides and other chemicals they naturally encounter in their daily lives."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Israel Re-Arrests Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu
Thursday, November 11th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/11/1540256
Israeli police re-arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu seven months after he was released from an 18-year jail term for leaking secrets about Israel's nuclear program. He was arrested for allegedly passing on classified information to unnamed international parties. As the world's attention focused on the death of Yasser Arafat, Israeli police re-arrested nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu early this morning. Police also searched his room in East Jerusalem and confiscated documents and other materials. The arrest comes seven months after he was released from an 18-year jail term for leaking secrets about Israel's nuclear program. The Guardian of London reports Israeli police arrested him for allegedly passing on classified information to unnamed international parties.
Since his release Mordechai Vanunu has been barred from speaking with foreign journalists. But he has broken this ban with a handful of news organizations including Democracy Now. Early in the morning of August 18 I reached Mordechai Vanunu in East Jerusalem and spoke to him for an hour. It was his first broadcast interview with the U.S. media.
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Israeli police arrest Vanunu
Agencies Guardian
Thursday November 11, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1348533,00.html
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has been arrested this morning by Israeli police for allegedly passing on classified information to unnamed international parties.
Mr Vanunu was released from Ashkelon prison in April, after serving an 18-year sentence for an interview he gave to The Sunday Times, which revealed the Israel's secret weapons program.
He has been barred from leaving Israel since his release from jail and has not been permitted to meet foreign journalists to discuss his work at Dimona, the nuclear facility in the Negev Desert.
A police spokesman confirmed this morning that he had been arrested on suspicion of "passing classified information to unauthorised parties", but would not provide further details.
Israeli media reported that an international crimes unit had carried out a search on his room at the Saint George Anglican Church in East Jerusalem this morning and found classified material. The investigation and search of Mr Vanunu's room was co-ordinated with the attorney general, Menahem Mazuz.
It was also reported that Mr Vanunu got around his ban on meeting with foreigners by speaking to Israelis, who then passed on his messages to foreign networks.
Mr Vanunu's case has become a cause celebre in the international community and the former nuclear technician has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize every year from 1988 to 2004.
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Vanunu arrested by Israeli police
Vanunu is widely regarded as a traitor in Israel
Thursday, 11 November, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4002227.stm
The Israeli former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, released in April after 18 years in jail, has been re-arrested, police say.
He was seized by armed officers and is being held on suspicion of passing on classified information, police say.
Vanunu was convicted of treason over his disclosures about Israel's nuclear weapons programme and jailed in 1986.
Strict conditions were imposed on him after release, including a ban on giving interviews to foreign media. They terrified, terrorised the guests and the pilgrims, none of whom knew why this invasion happened with machine guns Bishop Riah Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem
Bishop's anger over arrest
He has denied passing on classified information since his release, and insists that any information he may have is now nearly 20 years old.
However, Vanunu has repeatedly been in contact with journalists and was interviewed on BBC television just over two weeks ago.
Cathedral 'invasion'
The bishop of the Jerusalem church where Vanunu has lived since his release said he saw him seized by between 30 and 50 men, many armed with machine guns.
Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal told the BBC News website that Vanunu's room had been searched and his mobile phones, laptop, camera and notebooks seized.
The bishop said some Swedish pilgrims visiting St George's Church had been shocked to tears by the police operation.
"They invaded the cathedral close," he said. "Some of them climbed over the fences, others came through the main gate.
"They terrified, terrorised the guests and the pilgrims, none of whom knew why this invasion happened with machine guns."
The bishop said he was "very angry" at the way Vanunu was seized. He was not allowed to speak to him, but was told he was being taken for interrogation.
Police spokesman Gil Kleiman told the Reuters news agency that Vanunu would be charged at a court hearing on Friday.
Israeli trap
There have been suggestions that Vanunu's detention, coming on the day of Yasser Arafat's death, may have been timed to avoid widescale media coverage, says the BBC's Richard Miron in Jerusalem.
Vanunu revealed details of Israel's secret nuclear facilities to a British newspaper in 1986.
Despite Israeli denials, observers declared the country the world's sixth-largest nuclear power.
Before he could reveal more, Vanunu was lured out of hiding in London by a female Israeli secret agent, who persuaded him that she wanted to meet him in Rome.
Once there, Vanunu was overpowered and drugged by other Israeli agents, then shipped back to Israel to be tried in secret.
In an interview after his release, Vanunu said he had acted to prevent a nuclear holocaust.
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