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NUCLEAR
A Powerful Documentary Film
Report Links Exposures To Gulf War Syndrome
Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment: diplomats
Desire for Nuclear Empowerment a Uniting Factor in Iran
Iran Says Deal Near on Nuclear Program
Iran Agrees to Suspend Uranium Enrichment
Canada Likely to Face Missile Defense Issue Head-On
Feds Won't Test Nuclear Waste Casks
MILITARY
Flights Leave in Odd Calm in Ivory Coast
US to deploy hyper-missiles
Blair stirs controversy with terror remark
Spring Valley sick blame chemicals in WWI dumping
German Fears Grow That Far-Right Party Will Return to National Stage
Romania could pull its troops out of Iraq next June: PM
Iraqis purge informants from ranks
Humanitarian aid barred from Falluja
Denial Of Water To Iraqi Cities
Insurgents Routed in Falluja; Smaller Bands Still Resist
For Iraqi Leader, Political Risks of Attack on Falluja Grow
Troops Battle for Last Parts Of Fallujah
In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War
Israelis to Ban Weapons for Palestinians
In Shadow of Arafat's Death, Unity, Violence and Anger
Palestinians Say the Future Rests on Vote, Israeli Action
Palestinians Schedule Election for Jan. 9
Israel Takes Quiet Steps to Bolster Palestinians
Soviet-era dissidents despise Putin
Goss Reportedly Rebuffed Senior Officials at CIA
Long Fall for Pentagon Star
Lawmakers Divided on C.I.A. Chief's Leadership
CIA plans to purge its agency
Brass defends ongoing intelligence from Gitmo
U.S. and U.N. Renew Quarrel Over Iraq
Army Sets Hearing on Rape Accusation
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Wary Texans Keep Their Eyes on the Compound of a Polygamous Sect
Bush Faces Early Test on Immigration Policy
Groups, U.S. Battle Over 'Global Terrorist' Label
A Radical Who Remained Just Out of Reach
POLITICS
'Saving Private Ryan' an honorable honor
Sliding Scale of Moral Values Is All in the Phrasing
Lame Duck May Do Housekeeping
OTHER
Calif. Stem Cell Initiative Could Backfire Nationally
ACTIVISTS
Media Lockdown-Actions you can take
Asians offer filming of the green A festival focuses on environment
Anti-war protest halts city centre
-------- NUCLEAR
FATAL FALLOUT
A Powerful Documentary Film
by Gary Null,
November 14, 2004
http://www.garynull.com/Events/FatalFallout.aspx
Terrorists hijack a plane and strike a nuclear power plant located just thirty miles from midtown Manhattan.
This documentary feature film examines this devastating what-if scenario, as well as the all-too-real history of public exposure to radiation - the silent, invisible and odorless killer - from carcinogenic x-ray exams, to Hiroshima, and to the recent accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. While featuring chilling, formerly classified archival footage shot at government nuclear test sites, the film makes clear that the fatal legacy of nuclear power, post-9/11, is no longer relegated to B&W newsreel or a child's nightmares.
The current controversy that surrounds the woefully inadequate emergency evacuation plans for communities situated near nuclear reactors - such as Indian Point - would seem an eerie reflection of President Eisenhower's memo when asked what to tell the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons testing and the construction of power plants: "Keep them confused." Eight percent of the population of the United States, which includes all of New York City, live within a fifty-mile radius of Indian Point.
Click Here to Preview the Film
http://www.garynull.com/marketplace/media/TrailersT1/FatalFalloutTrailer.asx
-------- depleted uranium
Report Links Exposures To Gulf War Syndrome
November 14, 2004
By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS,
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/health/hc-gulfillness1114.artnov14,1,930450.story?coll=hc-headlines-health
The federal government has acknowledged that illnesses afflicting many veterans during the 1991 Persian Gulf War resulted from exposure to hazardous substances, but that hasn't helped the ill veterans still waiting for benefits, family members say.
Diane Dulka, 44, whose husband, Joseph, died of pancreatic cancer after the war and whose son, Joseph, was born with a cleft pallet, said Friday severely sick veterans are still being denied benefits. In the past few years, Dulka, of Windsor Locks, has tried, often unsuccessfully, she said, to help hundreds of Gulf War veterans whose requests for medical assistance have been rejected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
After more than seven years of fighting for her widow's benefits and medical benefits for her son, Dulka obtained the necessary approvals from the VA about five years ago. In the meantime, she became an advocate for other Gulf War veterans, a job she does when she is not working as a paralegal or caring for her 12-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, Lindsay.
For more than a decade, high-level federal health and military officials, sometimes during testimony under oath before Congress, denied U.S. and allied service members were sick from wartime exposures. The hazards included warfare gases, depleted uranium munitions dust, oil well fires, experimental drugs and vaccines and other pollutants. The Pentagon and federal health agencies have spent more than $100 million on inconclusive Gulf War illness investigations and studies.
On Friday, a federal panel of scientific experts and military veterans, called the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Illnesses, concluded progress in understanding Gulf War illnesses has been hampered by a lack of coordination and availability of data within both the VA and the Defense Department.
The panel said there is significant evidence linking chemical warfare exposures to the so-called Gulf War syndrome, a connection Pentagon officials have repeatedly rejected for many years. The research panel, set up by Congress and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, concluded veterans have long term, multi-symptom illnesses that cannot be explained in terms of stress or psychiatric illness that the Pentagon has long favored.
Asked why the report's findings are being released more than 13 years after the Gulf War ended, Dr. Lea Steele, scientific director for the panel, said, "I don't know. All the answers already have been found. So the reason is not scientific." Steele added that there could be only two reasons for not getting the answers until now, scientific or political, and she would not speculate on the political possibility.
Jonathan Perlin, the VA's acting undersecretary of heath, said, "This report opens up new doors in terms of research, but it doesn't provide a level of proof" for making specific health claims from the VA.
Other committee findings include:
Thousands of veterans have significant nervous system disorders consistent with low-level exposures to deadly warfare gases, including sarin.
Treatments to improve veterans' health are still badly needed.
A host of other wartime exposures, including depleted uranium munitions dust from U.S. and British weapons explosions, may also have contributed to the illnesses.
Significant questions about the health of service members' children and immediate family members and their relationship to soldiers' exposures remain unanswered.
Veterans' health has to be closely monitored for disease patterns and causes of death to determine if they are connected to wartime service
And research on these veterans' illnesses has important implications for other recent wars and the current conflict in Iraq. Some 32,000 service members are said to be sick from hazardous exposures in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The panel estimates the research needed to connect a specific illness to its cause will cost another $15 million.
In the 1991 Gulf War alone, roughly 697,000 U.S. troops served. By last year, 591,000 had left the service and of those more than 26 percent were disabled and receiving medical benefits. Another 11,074 have died, most from illnesses or accidents, after the war. The average age of those service members when they went to war was 36.
Figures from the VA show 182,000 disability claims granted, 27,270 denied and 26,507 still pending, almost 14 years after the end of the war.
Five thousand British service members of the 53,200 who served are reported ill from the first Gulf War with about 2,000 of them awarded war pensions, The Guardian Limited reported. More than 660 have died since the war. Thousands of other allied force soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who became sick from hazardous exposures have also died.
The Defense Department, according to a report issued in June by the Government Accountability Office, underestimated the exposure of chemical warfare agents such as nerve and mustard gas. Defense models of the effects of toxic plumes of chemical agents did not "realistically simulate actual bombings or demolitions," the GAO report said.
Despite these reports, Dulka said, many veterans and service members from other recent wars are not getting the help they need. Today, Dulka said, she is still trying to help a New Jersey widow get death benefits after her husband died of leukemia in 1994, apparently from constant Gulf War missions hauling fuel from depots. The widow gave birth to a child the year her husband died, and already had two toddlers, said Dulka.
It is well documented with the VA that some soldiers repeatedly exposed to petroleum developed leukemia and they have been approved for VA service-connected disabilities, Dulka said.
-------- iran
Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment: diplomats
VIENNA (AFP)
Nov 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041114165313.7z9wmymr.html
Iran has agreed to a full suspension of uranium enrichment in line with an agreeement worked out with the European Union, ending a deadlock over answering US charges that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, diplomats close to the talks told AFP Sunday.
"The letter from Tehran is on its way," a diplomat close to UN nuclear watchdog IAEA said, but he added that the IAEA had not yet seen the letter.
Another diplomat said there is "full acceptance between the EU and the Iranians" and that Iran had agreed to a full suspension of uranium enrichment including "no testing or production in any conversion facility."
The diplomat was referring to what had been a sticking point over Iran agreeing to not even manufacture the feedstock gas that is the first step in the enrichment process.
Iran's top official in charge of the country's nuclear programme, Hassan Rowhani, was due to announce the agreement later Sunday in Tehran, according to reports from the Iranian capital.
The diplomat in Vienna said "all has been negotiated" but cautioned that the announcement by Rowhani would be crucial.
He said the problem with conversion had come about since Iran had apparently already begun the process of converting some uranium yellowcake ore into the feedstock gas.
An IAEA team had arrived in Iran on Saturday to visit the conversion facility and determine what the problem was, he added.
He said Iran had agreed to suspend enrichment, the process that makes nuclear reactor fuel but which can also make what can be the explosive core of atomic bombs, until a long-term agreement was reached with the EU.
The European Union is ready to offer Iran incentives such as aceess to nuclear fuel and even a lightwater research reactor, but the diplomat said that none of these incentives were specifically mentioned in a two-page agreement reached with Iran and which obligates Iran to work towards a long-term agreement in meeting international concerns about its nuclear programme.
--------
Desire for Nuclear Empowerment a Uniting Factor in Iran
Issue Seen as Matter Of Independence, Reaction to U.S.
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48189-2004Nov13.html
TEHRAN -- Iranians are deeply divided on politics, the economy, the role of religion in government and a dress code for women. But reformers and conservatives, urban and rural, old and young, rich and poor, and men and women generally agree on one thing: Iran needs nuclear energy, and despite its oil and gas riches, the world should not deprive it of the technology, even though it could also be used to develop weapons.
Iranians cite four reasons for their increasingly fierce determination to acquire nuclear technology: the economics of oil, a population boom that is consuming more energy, regional security, and anger at what many perceive as a U.S. ultimatum that Iran end its nuclear program.
"Iranians are united not because of activities by the Iranian regime, but because of the U.S. position. Before U.S. intervention, many Iranians thought we didn't need nuclear technology, as it's expensive and dangerous. We remember Chernobyl, which is close to Iran," said Abbas Maleki, director of the Caspian Institute, a research organization based in Tehran, referring to the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine. "But now all Iranians believe we must promote our activities as a sign of independence."
Analysts say that public support for the program has given the government enormous leverage in negotiating an agreement with Britain, France and Germany over the country's plan to enrich uranium, which can be used in its new nuclear energy plant and in converting the technology for military use.
Iran and European governments are currently negotiating a deal to suspend enrichment, an action that would precede a permanent agreement to ensure that Iran fulfills its obligations as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is unable to produce a bomb. If those negotiations succeed, the second stage of talks would be much tougher, Iranian officials and Western diplomats here say. But the government would enter the process with a strong public mandate.
Kamal Kharrazi, Iran's foreign minister, said Saturday that the country was in the "final stages" of negotiation with the Europeans. But European envoys told the Associated Press that an agreement remained a long way off.
Students demonstrated last week at Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, demanding that the country pursue access to nuclear technology. "Enrichment is our natural right," they chanted, according to local media reports. "Nuclear technology is our legitimate right."
Nasser Hadian, a political scientist at Tehran University, called the issue "a matter of prestige."
"There's a perception among the young, even those critical of the government, that this is the technology of the future. So we have to have access," Hadian said.
Some Iranians say they fear that their country would be forced to rely on foreign sources of fuel if it did not have an enrichment program, making it susceptible to political or economic blackmail.
"When you can make a thing in your own country, it's not rational to buy it from the outside," said Amir Mohebian, political editor of the newspaper Resalat.
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran retains the right to produce nuclear energy. The country, however, concealed aspects of its nuclear program from the IAEA, conducting secret research that involved procedures potentially useful in making weapons. The Bush administration insists that Iran, as the world's fourth-largest oil producer and second-largest gas producer, does not need nuclear energy, even though the United States approved about 20 nuclear energy plants for Iran before the 1979 revolution.
Iranians counter that they need nuclear energy, specifically seven 1,000-megawatt plants, to accommodate domestic demand that already absorbs 1.8 million of the 4 million barrels of oil that Iran produces daily. Iran's population of 69 million is expected to increase to 90 million in 16 years, the government says.
As a result, Iran could be forced to use all its oil just to meet domestic demands within 20 years. That would be devastating for an economy dependent on oil exports for most of its revenue, said Ali Salehi, Iran's former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"This is the worst way of using our oil, especially since we won't have oil forever," Salehi said. "If we did that, we'd be like the United States, which is the third-largest producer of oil in the world but also the first importer of oil."
Although the cost of a nuclear reactor is much higher than a plant for fossil fuels, Iranian experts say the savings that would come from being able to export more of its oil as a result would pay for a nuclear facility in two to three years.
Iran is also wary of the cost of importing fuel for a nuclear plant, even if a permanent deal brokered by the Europeans includes lower rates. "We don't want to pay millions of dollars to Europe to buy the fuel," said Mohsen Rezaie, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who is seen as a potential presidential contender.
Iran has repeatedly denied that it intends to militarize its nuclear program. But U.S. officials and other Western envoys say they believe that some Iranians would like to be able to independently develop weapons capability.
Iran is still smarting from its war with Iraq in the 1980s, when chemical weapons killed or injured thousands of Iranians, according to U.S. estimates. The outside world did little to stop Iraq or protect Iran. "Many Iranians feel they can't rely on the world to defend us" against the use of weapons of mass destruction, Hadian said.
The neighborhood doesn't help. Pakistan, India, China, Russia and Israel all have the bomb, and Iraq and Libya have worked on it.
"Having the technology in itself has a psychological effect to deter countries," said Mohsen Mirdamadi, a former chairman of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee and one of three leaders of the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979. "Nuclear technology will not deter America, but for countries in the region, it has that effect."
--------
Iran Says Deal Near on Nuclear Program
November 14, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14iran.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Nov. 13 (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said Saturday that negotiations with the European Union over a deal that would spare Tehran from possible United Nations sanctions over its nuclear program were in their final stages.
"Negotiations with Europe were intense and important," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said on state television. "We have given them our final response and await their final decision, and we hope to pass this stage smoothly." Advertisement
Iran, Britain, Germany and France have been negotiating a deal for the past few weeks under which Tehran would freeze its program to enrich uranium. The process can be used to help make nuclear weapons, though Iran has insisted its program is only to produce electricity.
In return, the European Union would not push to send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions and would sit down with Iran to work out a lasting solution to the nuclear dispute.
Tehran gave its response to the European Union on Thursday, but there has been no announcement yet of a final agreement. European diplomats say Iran has been trying to change some terms, including the scope of the enrichment suspension.
--------
Iran Agrees to Suspend Uranium Enrichment
November 14, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html?hp&ex=1100494800&en=405d9e147f1ffd20&ei=5094&partner=homepage
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran has given the United Nations a written promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said on Sunday, in an apparent bid to dispel suspicions that Tehran wants to build a nuclear bomb.
The move also would appear to blunt an American drive to take Iran before the United Nations for the imposition of sanctions.
By issuing the written commitment to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency -- the International Atomic Energy Agency -- Iran dropped demands for modification of a tentative deal worked out on Nov. 7 with European negotiators, agreeing instead to continue a freeze on enrichment and to suspend related activities, diplomats told The Associated Press.
``Basically it's a full suspension,'' said one of the diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``It's what the Europeans were looking for.''
Washington has argued that Iran's enrichment activities are part of a nuclear arms program. Uranium enrichment is a precursor process to building nuclear bombs. As negotiators for France, Germany and Britain struggled with the Iran to bridge differences over the weekend, the IAEA delayed a report on Iran's nuclear activities scheduled for limited circulation to diplomats accredited to the agency.
A diplomat familiar with the IAEA said the delay was meant to give the two sides a chance to resolve the dispute and allow agency head Mohamed ElBaradei to include an Iranian commitment to suspend its uranium enrichment and related activities in his report.
The IAEA survey on nearly two decades of clandestine activities that the United States asserts is a secret weapons program is being prepared for review by the agency's 35-nation board of governors when they meet Nov. 25.
Based on that report, they will decide on actions that include possible referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which, in turn, could call for sanctions.
After ending talks in Paris with Iranian envoys last weekend, European diplomats said there was tentative agreement by Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment and all related activities. The suspension would be in effect for at least as long as it took for the two sides to negotiate a deal on European technical and financial aid, including help in the development of Iranian nuclear energy for power generation.
But on Friday the diplomats told The Associated Press that Iranian officials had presented British, French and German envoys in Tehran with a version of the agreement that was unacceptable to the three European powers -- the main negotiators of the deal -- and the European Union as a whole.
The key dispute was over the conversion of uranium into gas, which when spun in centrifuges can be enriched to lower levels for producing electricity or processed into high-level, weapons grade uranium, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
The diplomats -- all of them briefed on the dispute and based in Europe -- said that as of Friday Iran had insisted that the deal allowed it to process uranium into a precursor of uranium hexafluoride, the gas introduced into centrifuges for enrichment.
The diplomats said that was not allowed under the tentative deal reached in Paris.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year but has repeatedly refused to stop other related activities such as reprocessing uranium or building centrifuges, insisting its program is intended purely for the production of fuel for nuclear power generation.
A full suspension would be significant because it would commit Iran not only to continue its voluntary freeze on enriching uranium but also to stop the contentious activities linked to it.
The deal still falls short of U.S. calls for indefinite suspension if not an outright scrapping of Iran's domestic enrichment program.
On the Net: www.iaea.org
-------- missile defense
Canada Likely to Face Missile Defense Issue Head-On
Government Fears Political Consequences of Joining U.S. Plan
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48191-2004Nov13.html
TORONTO -- The reelection of President Bush is pushing the Canadian government toward a decision it had hoped to avoid: whether to join a new U.S. system designed to shoot down any missile headed for North America.
Off Canada's northwest shoulder, the United States already is lowering five-story interceptor missiles into silos in Alaska to start the experimental and controversial missile defense system that Bush has championed. His administration has made clear it would like Canada to be part of the project.
But a new opinion poll released this month showed 52 percent of people surveyed were opposed to the plan, and antipathy here to Bush was intensified by the contentious U.S. election. Opposition from Canada's splintered political parties has also given Prime Minister Paul Martin's government, already operating with a minority in the parliament, serious pause about promoting missile defense.
"I think this is one issue they would have liked to have skipped," Gordon O'Connor, a Conservative Party member of parliament, said of Martin's Liberal Party.
Sidestepping the issue will become harder given Bush's expected official visit to Ottawa before his second inauguration in January. Political observers said Bush is unlikely to press Martin for a decision, to avoid being seen as strong-arming Canada. But the missile defense issue has returned to the center of political debate, with supporters arguing that Canada needs to cooperate with Washington to help mend ties strained by the disagreement over the war in Iraq.
"There's an influential community that wants Canada to reassert itself as the United States' best friend, a position we lost to the United Kingdom," said Michael Byers, a security expert at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. "There's a desire to make up, in effect, for the refusal to go along with the Iraq war."
Proponents of the missile defense plan point to Canada's long partnership with the United States in NORAD -- the North American Aerospace Defense Command. They say Canada must continue to be included in planning by the United States for defense of the continent. And they note that, so far, the Bush administration is asking only for political support, not land or money for the system.
"Do we want the Americans to go ahead with something to defend North America that we're not going to participate in?" Defense Minister Bill Graham, who once opposed the system, argued in a televised interview in September.
Opponents echo the complaints of critics in the United States, arguing that the missile defense system is unproven, technologically difficult, hugely expensive and based on an outdated assumption that an attack will come in the form of an airborne missile. In addition, critics here say the system undermines Canada's preference for multinational teamwork and agreements over weapons and defense machinery.
"There are places we should be cooperating with the United States, but this is way down on the list," said John Polanyi, a chemist and Nobel laureate at the University of Toronto who has joined a phalanx of academics and political figures opposed to the system. He asserted that the missile defense plan inevitably would lead to putting weapons in space, long anathema to Canada.
"I would think that with Canada squawking all the time against weaponization of space, that would make us an unlikely partner for this," Polanyi said. "To be a good ally, you don't pick the weakest ideas of your ally to support, you pick the strong ones. This isn't one."
Martin's government is trying to avoid a clash over the issue that could weaken its already wobbly hold on power. It opposed a demand by the New Democratic Party for a series of public hearings on the subject.
"The majority of Canadians have made it quite clear they do not support Bush's values," said Alexa McDonough, a New Democratic Party parliament member from Halifax, Nova Scotia. "If we really think this is how we are going to build a safer world, we'd have to accept that having nuclear bits flying around above our head is good."
The main opposition group, the Conservative Party, has generally supported joining the project. But in a maneuver employed to make life difficult for Martin, the Conservatives have declared themselves neutral and demanded a parliamentary vote on the issue. The ruling Liberal Party reluctantly agreed, but announced that the result would be "nonbinding," and has yet to schedule the vote.
"If the government doesn't bring it to a vote, the opposition will force it," said Graham, the Conservatives' point man on the issue. "The opposition parties will decide whether it is binding. The government has to be careful. They are a minority."
Some analysts argue the political jockeying is largely irrelevant because the United States could go ahead with the program with or without Canada's participation. Last summer, Canada quietly agreed that the joint U.S.-Canada NORAD operations center in Colorado Springs could share incoming missile information with NORTHCOM, the U.S. command that will control the 40 interceptor rockets planned for Alaska and California and at sea.
"From a technical perspective, Canada is already in," said Byers, the security expert. "It has made the decision to cooperate to the degree necessary to let it go forward."
-------- us nuc waste
Feds Won't Test Nuclear Waste Casks
Monday, November 15, 2004
by the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=132696
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A federal agency is lacking the funds to test casks that will be used to transport nuclear waste across the country to the underground repository planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
But even without that testing, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the casks for transporting 3,000 tons of waste yearly past more than 11 million people in 45 states -- including Utah -- to the repository 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
The NRC, however, won't test casks to demonstrate their ability to survive severe real-world accidents, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday. The agency, instead, is relying on computer analyses and scale modeling.
One in question is the cask model destined to hold waste at a temporary storage facility in Utah.
Critics contend the computer simulations are inadequate.
"The NRC has adopted as fact the fictional notion there are no real-world accidents that could cause casks to fail," said Bob Halstead, a consultant to Nevada on Yucca Mountain transportation issues.
NRC senior transportation adviser Earl Easton says the agency doesn't have the money to do real-world testing.
"We're trying to scrape together the funds," Easton said.
The states of Utah and Nevada are demanding full testing of the casks.
NRC regulations require casks to pass a series of hypothetical accident conditions: a 30-foot free fall onto an unyielding surface, followed by a 40-inch fall onto a steel rod six inches in diameter.
Then, casks would be subjected to a 1,475-degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes before being submersed in 3 feet of water for eight hours. The sequence is supposed to mimic a rail or truck crash.
The casks are protected by "impact limiters," which are caps on both ends that make the containers resemble barbells and cover vulnerable seals and bolts.
The NRC has tested full-scale impact limiters by dropping them onto unyielding surfaces. But Halstead said the most dangerous impact wouldn't be to the limiters.
"It's a sideways truck jackknifing so the bridge abutment hits the cask in the body, bypassing the limiter, causing it to twist and force the lid to pop open, like Popeye's can of spinach," he said.
That could cause a tiny opening and allow lethal radioactive cesium and strontium to escape.
The casks, weighing between 25 and 125 tons, are made of multiple layers of steel and other materials. The NRC has certified 16 different designs, including a rail-transport model made by New Jersey-based Holtec International that Private Fuel Storage would use at its facility proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Holtec would be willing to sell the $3 million casks for any kind of testing NRC would want to do, said Joy Russell, a Holtec spokeswoman.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight utilities, is planning to send 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel to an open-air storage site in Skull Valley.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is expected to decide early next year whether Skull Valley can safely keep nuclear fuel. The board in March 2003 stalled construction by ruling the chances of a fighter jet from Hill Air Force Base crashing into the storage pad makes the project too risky. It has taken arguments for and against that decision and is weighing other aspects of the project.
As planned, the storage pad would hold up to 4,000 casks filled with depleted nuclear fuel -- about 10 million rods -- across 100 acres of the Skull Valley. The waste would be shipped over rail lines, mostly from reactors east of the Mississippi. Utah has no nuclear power plants.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Flights Leave in Odd Calm in Ivory Coast
November 14, 2004
By LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/africa/14ivory.html?pagewanted=all
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Nov. 13 - President Laurent Gbagbo on Saturday blamed France for the current crisis in Ivory Coast and said that he had attacked the rebels who control half the country, breaking a cease-fire agreement, only to spare this troubled region a new round of overlapping civil wars.
"The rebels threatened to resume the war and spread it around the region," Mr. Gbagbo said in an interview in his sprawling residence here. "They were organizing with Charles Taylor and mercenaries from Sierra Leone. So we launched a counterstrike with aircraft on specific targets."
The attacks, which began on Nov. 4, hit a French peacekeepers' camp in the rebel-held North a week ago, killing nine French soldiers and one American civilian. France retaliated by striking the Ivoirian Air Force, destroying much of its tiny fleet.
Mr. Gbagbo contended that France had overreacted, precipitating a week of mob violence fueled by anti-French sentiment among Mr. Gbagbo's supporters.
"What happened is very unbelievable," he said of the French action. "They immediately, without any prior investigation, decided to perpetuate their own justice."
Michel Barnier, France's foreign minister, speaking on Europe 1 radio Saturday morning, stated France's position. "We have thought and we have said that this was a deliberate attack on the part of Ivoirian fighter jets," he said. "That's why the president of the Republic immediately replied by having all these planes neutralized so that they don't attempt against the lives of our soldiers."
Mr. Gbagbo replaced his army chief of staff with Col. Philippe Mangou, former chief of army operations, seen as a hard-liner, Reuters reported Saturday.
An eerie calm prevailed on the streets of the this battered city on Saturday after a week of anti-French violence spurred by clashes between the Ivoirian and French armies.
Hundreds of foreigners waited at the airport for flights out of the country, but the desperate scenes of Westerners trying to flee had given way to orderly lines of passengers waiting for scheduled commercial flights, which had begun flying within the region. French and Ivoirian soldiers maintained an uneasy distance from one another, with a truckload of a dozen French troops, riot shields dangling from their arms, standing by at the departure terminal.
Mr. Gbagbo's invocation of the region's troubled history of civil war speaks to the deepest fears of aid officials here, who warned that for all the focus on the departure of thousands of French citizens and other Westerners, another mass departure is of greatest concern to them.
They said it is the prospect of mass departure of large numbers of people whose roots are in neighboring African nations, who were drawn by the lure of plentiful jobs in Ivory Coast's once-booming economy, that poses the greatest threat to the stability of a strife-prone region.
"Any massive displacement would lead to regional war," said Joël Boutroue, chief of coordination of intervention services at the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, speaking after an emergency conference of United Nations agencies on the crisis in Dakar, Senegal, on Friday.
"The countries in the region cannot withstand hundreds of thousands of people coming into their borders," he continued. "Can Mali or Burkina Faso absorb half a million people who left two or three generations ago?"
While attention has focused on violence in Abidjan, the largest city and power base for the wealthy southern elite, the northern portion of the country, which is controlled by the rebel group New Forces, and the west, are the epicenter of what could become a crisis, Mr. Boutroue said.
Several thousand people fleeing clashes between warring factions have trekked through dense forest in the west and into Liberia, which is just emerging from 15 years of civil war, United Nations officials said.
The prospect of Ivory Coast tumbling into open civil war has caused fears that the region's most recent cycle of civil war and strife will start anew. The worst case envisioned by the United Nations, if efforts to reunify the country fail, more than a million Africans of foreign extraction would flee their homes, either within Ivory Coast or to the countries of their parents and grandparents.
Mr. Gbagbo was elected in a vote many viewed as flawed because his main rival, Alassane Ouattara, a northerner, was barred from running because he was deemed not pure Ivoirian.
A cease-fire deal called for changes in the laws governing citizenship and for rebels and pro-government militias to lay down their arms. But the laws were not enacted, so the disarmament, scheduled to begin last month, never happened.
-------- arms
US to deploy hyper-missiles
Anywhere on Earth could be targeted 'within two hours'
The Observer
November 14, 2004
Robin McKie and David Smith
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1350890,00.html
American scientists are developing hypersonic cruise missiles that will fly 10 times faster than current rockets, penetrate concrete armouring and could be launched from any site in the world. The missiles would have a range of 9,000 miles, more than a third of Earth's circumference and be able to reach their targets within two hours. First prototypes are expected to be tested next year, though the missile is not expected to be deployed until the end of the decade.
'If someone is messing with us - or Britain - from far away, we could whack them straight away,' said Preston Carter, an aerospace engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California.
The new missiles will exploit supersonic combustion ramjet - or scramjet - technology. Nasa engineers will tomorrow attempt to fly a robot X-43A scramjet over the Pacific at speeds around 7,200 mph, 10 times the speed of sound.
The flight will be crucial in demonstrating the feasibility of hypersonic travel. Most media attention has focused on its commercial exploitation for jets that could travel from London to Sydney in two hours. The prime aim is to create hypersonic rockets that would replace current cruise missiles.
'The new missiles could strike pretty much anywhere within a couple of hours,' said Graham Warwick, Americas editor of Flight International . 'Current cruise missile have to be carried on a B52 bomber. That involves planning and takes at least 24 hours. The military want a quick solution, so if they knew bin Laden was sipping coffee at a cafe they could get a bomb on target in two hours.'
Scramjets work on the same principle as all jets, by igniting fuel in compressed air and using the expanding gases to propel the aircraft. Standard turbojets use fans to compress the air: scramjets use a plane's forward motion alone to bring air into the combustion chamber and require an initial boost from a rocket.
The entire aircraft then becomes an enormous scoop that receives air which is compressed and injected - and ignited - with a chemical called silane before hydrogen fuel is added. The feat compares to 'lighting a match in a hurricane', says Nasa.
'We'll see a military application initially as a "bunker buster" that would hit its target and bore into the ground before exploding,' said Carter.'
'We are talking about the ability to strike more cost-effectively. If the US has to deploy troops to the other side of the world, it is expensive. This may keep enemies in check and act as a deterrent.'
-------- britain
Blair stirs controversy with terror remark
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
By Patrick Hennessy
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041113-111215-9630r.htm
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday reignited a dispute over the Guantanamo Bay detention center for suspected terrorists by saying former British detainees were "causing difficulties again" since their release.
Mr. Blair's comments, in a television interview, came as it was confirmed that the five former terrorism suspects freed this year from the U.S. naval base prison in Cuba are subject to round-the-clock police surveillance.
A senior official said the men are under suspicion and the activities of more than one was "worrying" police.
Mr. Blair's remarks were branded "highly defamatory, misleading and irresponsible" by Gareth Peirce, attorney for three of the former detainees. She called on the prime minister to clarify what he meant.
After his talks with President Bush at the White House, Mr. Blair was asked by a reporter whether the four Britons still at Guantanamo Bay would also be sent home.
Mr. Blair replied: "We are in discussions with them. It's difficult, because we have to make sure our own security is going to be properly protected if we have people back in this country.
"As you know, there have been incidents of people who have been back and causing difficulties again, so you need to be careful."
None of the five men sent home from Camp Delta has been arrested. However, they are under surveillance 24 hours a day.
Ms. Peirce, the solicitor for Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, denied that any of her clients had been in trouble with authorities and said Mr. Blair's words would be libelous if applied to them.
"On the face of it, uncorrected, what he has said is highly defamatory, misleading and irresponsible," she said. "Whatever Blair meant, he has a responsibility to make it utterly clear that these young men have led entirely law-abiding existences trying to rebuild their lives."
Ms. Peirce, whose clients claimed they were tortured and beaten during more than two years' detention, called on Mr. Blair to explain himself.
"If by the word 'difficulties,' Mr. Blair means they have produced an exhaustive account of the conditions, the methodology of coercion and the torture that prevails in Guantanamo, then the 'difficulties' consists of bringing to the public the unlawful practices of the U.S. government and the complicity of the British government," she said.
The five returned Britons are Mr. Iqbal, 22; Mr. Rasul, 26; Mr. Ahmed, 22; Tarek Dergoul, 26, and Jamal al-Harith, 37. They were captured in Afghanistan and north Pakistan in late 2001.
Mr. Iqbal, Mr. Rasul, Mr. Ahmed and Mr. al-Harith brought legal action seeking $10 million in damages against the U.S. government, claiming torture.
"After the disgusting treatment of Tarek at the hands of the Americans," a relative of Mr. Dergoul said, "he has one arm and is severely traumatized and cannot cope with life. What kind of criminal act does Mr. Blair think that he can carry out?"
-------- chemical weapons
Spring Valley sick blame chemicals in WWI dumping
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jon Ward
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20041114-121810-5745r.htm
A survey of the incidence of disease among residents of Spring Valley is renewing questions about whether the Army's chemical-weapons tests in the Northwest neighborhood during World War I led to later health problems.
The yearlong, unscientific survey by the Northwest Current, a weekly newspaper, collected health data from 345 Spring Valley households. It found 131 current or former residents with chronic - and sometimes rare and life-threatening - diseases.
Some residents say they believe their illnesses are linked directly to long-term exposure to chemicals that contaminated the soil or were buried after World War I ended in 1918.
"I'm absolutely and totally convinced it came from the chemicals," said Geza Teleki, 60, who lived in Spring Valley for most of the period 1974 to 2002 and five years ago developed diabetes, hypothyroidism, and kidney, colon and heart disease.
"You don't have substantial portions of your internal organs fail within a period of five years if you haven't been exposed to something," said Mr. Teleki, who two years ago moved his family to Bethesda.
But Greg Beumel, a toxicologist whose criticisms of the Current's methodology were cited by the newspaper, yesterday said its findings would be more meaningful if compared with those from a similar neighborhood.
The evidence does raise questions, he said.
"I think we need to see what would happen if a well-designed health study were conducted," Mr. Beumel said in an interview with The Washington Times.
Mr. Teleki said his kidney failure occurred 10 months ago. His wife, Heather, 50, has a vision problem known as peripheral neuropathy. He said their son, Aidan, 9, has severe headaches and stomach pains.
Mr. Teleki went on dialysis treatment but says he has been rejected for kidney-donor lists because "so many other internal organs are failing."
The Current's survey found 160 cases of disease among the 131 current or former residents. The 56 different diseases included Parkinson's, several types of cancer and blood disorders, among them forms of anemia, which lowers the number of red blood cells. Many were autoimmune disorders, which cause the body to attack itself.
"There's definitely a higher incidence of illnesses, cancer and other blood-related illnesses in this area than you would find in a normal community of this sort," said Curtis "Buff" Bohlen, 77, who has lived in Spring Valley with his wife, Janet, 75, since 1958.
Mrs. Bohlen, an avid gardener, discovered four years ago that she has a cancer known as non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Mr. Bohlen said the couple have no plans to leave the neighborhood before the Army Corps of Engineers finishes testing his property.
Spring Valley, comprising about 1,300 homes, is adjacent to Massachusetts Avenue north of American University.
The Current's extensive report includes three health experts who studied conditions there and cast doubt on the newspaper's findings, which were inserted into Wednesday's editions in a package of 11 articles and a two-page map.
In one article, Mr. Beumel and two other specialists challenge the survey. One criticism was that its unscientific methodology resulted in anecdotal, inconclusive findings.
Mr. Beumel, the toxicologist, requested a copy of a D.C. Health Department study comparing Spring Valley residents with those in Potomac. He also called for an expansive investigation by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Current reporter Charles Bermpohl, who researched and wrote the articles, agreed with those Spring Valley residents who say it is difficult to conclusively link the illnesses to chemicals buried more than 80 years ago.
Mr. Bermpohl, 62, a journalist for 35 years, said the evidence is circumstantial but compelling.
"There were no studies done like this, going out into the community and knocking on doors, or going out and talking to people," Mr. Bermpohl said.
The Current's report suggests the chemicals could have contributed to illnesses in the family of former President George H.W. Bush.
Mr. Bush and his wife, Barbara, lived in Spring Valley with son Marvin for five months in 1967. Mr. and Mrs. Bush both now have an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid known as Graves' disease. Marvin Bush was diagnosed with colitis in 1986; doctors removed his colon.
A spokesman for the former president, who is 80, last week said the Bush family has no comment on the matter.
During World War I, the Army devoted 661 acres, 1,200 chemists and more than 600 technicians to its American University Experiment Station, a center for testing and developing chemical weapons such as chlorine, chloride, cyanide, Lewisite, mustard gas and ricin.
The Army was developing weapons to counter Germany's. When the war ended, officials had assembled a large cache of weapons at the American University but had nowhere to put them. The Army shipped some chemicals to another testing site and buried others.
Camille Saum, 60, an interior designer, lived in the Spring Valley neighborhood until she was 20. She says her childhood was dominated by physical weakness and sickness.
Miss Saum said she developed a form of anemia at age 5 and now has renal stenosis and lupus. And she believes her learning disabilities, including dyslexia, are related to chemical exposure.
"The reason I'm upset with this is because I didn't have a nice childhood," Miss Saum said. "I was absolutely so embarrassed and humiliated because I was so stupid. Now I run a successful business. I was always just sort of sick, but nobody ever knew why."
-------- europe
German Fears Grow That Far-Right Party Will Return to National Stage
November 14, 2004
By JUDY DEMPSEY
International Herald Tribune
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/europe/14cnd-germany.html?oref=login
BERLIN, Nov. 14 - After a string of electoral successes, there are growing fears that a far-right party could be elected in 2006 to Germany's Bundestag, or Parliament - the first time since World War II.
The fears have increased because of the growing support that extreme-right parties are enjoying in Eastern Germany, where the German People's Party and the more powerful and better organized National Democratic Party of Germany, or NPD, recently won 10 percent of the vote in regional state elections in Brandenburg and Saxony.
The two rival parties have since agreed to stand on a united ticket in 2006 to increase their chances of winning 5 percent of the vote, the minimum required to get elected to the Bundestag.
Such concern took a new twist last week in Saxony, where to the dismay of the mainstream political parties, two deputies from amid their ranks voted for a NPD candidate and not for Georg Milbradt, who was seeking re-election as the state's Christian Democratic prime minister. Mr. Milbradt eventually scraped home, but without the support of two non-NPD deputies who twice voted for the NPD candidate Uwe Leichenring.
Although the ballot was secret, deputies from the mainstream parties believed the two votes cast for the NPD had come inside the CDU, which has harbored sympathizers from the extreme right.
"You can't imagine how shocked we were," said Uta Windisch, a CDU deputy. "This is a very bad signal. It is very dangerous."
Extreme-right parties have been elected for short periods to a few state parliaments in East and West Germany. But the presence of the NPD in Saxony's Parliament is the first time since the 1960's that this party has made its reappearance on the wider German political scene.
The NPD's long absence was due to the rebellion carried out by the generation born in West Germany during or after World War II. These include Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
An amalgam of left-wing and Marxist groups had taken to the streets demanding that the mainstream political parties make a clean break with the extreme right. They wanted the judiciary and political echelons of people cleansed of those who had links with the Nazis and called for zero tolerance, particularly of the NPD, considered the most dangerous of the far-right parties.
"The 1960's in West Germany was the break with the past," said Burkart Lutz, professor at the Center for Social Research, an independently financed research group in Halle, in Eastern Germany. "For a variety of reasons, Eastern Germany has not had this kind of rebellion."
One reason is that the communist-ruled former German Democratic Republic claimed it was the GDR that had resisted Nazism and fascism, thus giving it no reason to confront the Nazi era. Yet 15 years since reunification, the taboos held by West Germans that made it unacceptable to tolerate parties such as the NPD have found little resonance in Eastern Germany.
Some of Mr. Schröder's governing Social Democrats and Angela Merkel's opposition Christian Democrats still say the appeal of the extreme right in Eastern Germany will in any case weaken over time because they are divided and disorganized.
But individual CDU members, such as Ms. Windisch who on the one hand sees for herself the high levels of unemployment and on the other the political skills of the far right, completely disagree.
"You should see how the NPD works in Saxony's Parliament," Ms. Windisch said.. "It is disciplined. The deputies are educated. They are the best prepared of all the parties."
Indeed, like Ms. Windisch, Mr. Lutz too believes that the extreme-right parties in Eastern Germany are not ephemeral.
He says the NPD is becoming more professional and has a large reservoir of recruits - thanks to the social changes that took place in the GDR in the 1980's.
During the 1980's, a radical shift took place in East Germany's demographic structure after the Communist regime provided generous maternity leave and a network of all-day child care facilities.
"One in every three children born at that time in the whole of Germany was born in the GDR," Mr. Lutz said. The population of West Germany in the 1980's was 63 million, in East Germany, 17 million.
The result today is that that East German generation, now in their 20's, have either left the Eastern states because of unemployment or have stayed. Often, particularly in places of high unemployment, they have become vulnerable to the appeal of the extreme right.
"I call these 20-something-year-olds 'the lost generation,' " Mr. Lutz said.
"The extreme right can easily recruit some of them," Mr. Lutz said. "If we are to avoid the growing appeal of the far right, similar to what happened during the 1920's, we have to find jobs and address their social needs."
----
Romania could pull its troops out of Iraq next June: PM
BUCHAREST (AFP)
Nov 14, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041114202028.mmwtg2d2.html
Romania could pull its 800 troops out of the US-led coalition in Iraq next June if the situation in the war-torn country stabilises, Prime Minister Adrian Nastase said Sunday.
"We hope that the elections in January will lead to a gradual normalisation of the situation in Iraq, and if this is the case Romanian troops could be withdrawn in June 2005," he said.
Iraqi voters are in January due to choose a national assembly, a parliament for the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan and 18 provincial councils, but there are fears that relentless violence could derail the process in large swathes of the country.
The Romanian soldiers are serving in the Polish-led multinational force in Iraq that operates in a region south of Baghdad.
The Romanian defence ministry said Sunday one of its soldiers had suffered light wounds in a rocket attack the day before on a US base in Baghdad.
-------- iraq
Iraqis purge informants from ranks
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Borzou Daragahi
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041114-121758-5411r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraqi authorities are moving against enemy informants and sympathizers in the ranks of the nation's hastily trained security forces by firing thousands of police officers and taking over from Americans the screening of new recruits.
Such informants are believed to have undermined numerous operations and tipped off terrorists, who last month killed 49 unarmed Iraqi army recruits as they traveled by bus near the Iranian border.
"Most of the screening as far as the staff is up to the Iraqi staff now," said U.S. Army Capt. Kevin Bradley, who trains Iraqi national guardsmen. "Right now, whether or not the person is clean, it depends on the Iraqis."
With a major offensive under way against Fallujah and other bases of the Sunni-led insurgency, U.S. military commanders were forced to shift troops to Mosul last week after American-trained Iraqi police fled their posts and turned parts of the city over to militants without firing a shot.
In Fallujah yesterday, U.S. military officials said American troops had occupied the entire city and there were no more major concentrations of insurgents still fighting after nearly a week of intense urban combat.
A U.S. officer told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that Fallujah was "occupied but not subdued." Artillery and air strikes were halted after nightfall to prevent mistaken attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces who had taken up positions throughout the city.
Military operations also surged along the Euphrates River valley well to the north and west of Baghdad, with clashes reported in Qaim on the Syrian border and in Hit and Ramadi, nearer to the capital.
Mosul's police chief was fired last week, as was the police chief of Samarra, after waves of insurgent attacks.
They are among the latest of thousands of police officers whom U.S. and Iraqi officials confirm have been fired for incompetence or suspected insurgent sentiments since Iraqis regained sovereignty from coalition forces at the end of June.
The action follows frequent reports of police officers who publicly express support for the insurgency or do not act against terrorists who plant roadside bombs.
"There are some good people in the security services who are the ex-military people," said Iraqi army Lt. Bashar Sadigha, who attended Rostemiya Military Academy near Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's regime. "But there are many people who signed up just to be able to earn a living."
The Iraqi armed forces, meanwhile, have taken charge of their own recruiting. They often employ methods that, while falling short of U.S. civil rights standards, are proving effective, Capt. Bradley said.
In April, when fighting broke out in various parts of the country, many Iraqi soldiers and police ran for their lives or handed their weapons to the attackers.
Iraqi authorities have raised the recruitment age from 17 to 20 and instituted new rules to keep anti-government sympathizers out of the ranks.
Each recruit must now bring a letter of approval from his local community council, and each military base now dispatches committees to new recruits' neighborhoods to check on their "moral background," Maj. Ala al-Khifajey of the Iraqi national guard said.
What's more, nepotism is now the rule: Every new recruit must have a relative already in the service to vouch for him.
"We know our people," he said. "We know who to recruit and who to reject."
That marks a sharp departure from the methods used by the Americans, who ran the recruiting program the way they were used to doing at home, Maj. al-Khifajey said.
"The American way was, you fill out a three-page application form, they check your name against their list of terrorists, and after a medical and fitness test, you had the job."
But privacy rules and fair-hiring practices simply didn't work in a country surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, infiltrated by suicidal Islamic extremists and ravaged by decades of poverty and war, he said.
"Maybe 10 years down the line we'll have the kind of society where a man can just walk in off the street and sign up for the army," Maj. al-Khifajey said, "but definitely not now."
-----
Humanitarian aid barred from Falluja
Red Crescent says 157 families are still in the heart of Falluja
Sunday 14 November 2004,
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/443C3B4E-C2D2-4B18-9C5C-7C9B657A8DCF.htm
An Iraqi Red Crescent convoy blocked from entering Falluja by US forces has asked the United Nations for help.
US troops have directed the convoy, carrying emergency food, water and medical supplies into the Falluja hospital on the outskirts of the town, away from the reach of local citizens.
"They will not be allowed to cross the bridge today," Capt. Adam Collier told Reuters at Falluja hospital, where the convoy is waiting to cross the Euphrates River into the main part of the embattled Iraqi city. He cited security reasons.
Abu Fahd, a member of the relief convoy, told Aljazeera that "the relief convoy wants to enter Falluja town for humanitarian purposes only, to save women, children and elderly people.
"I hope the United Nations will hear our appeals," he said.
"We are now in Falluja hospital, outside the city. There is no one in the hospital except the medical team, doing nothing."
But the US military said it saw no need for the Iraqi Red Crescent to deliver aid to people inside Falluja and said it did not think any Iraqi civilians were trapped inside the city.
'Aid not needed'
"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said US marine Colonel Mike Shupp.
The relief convoy aims to help civilians stuck in Falluja town
"Now that the bridge (into Falluja) is open I will bring out casualties and all aid work can be done here (at Falluja's hospital)," he added.
He said he had not heard of any Iraqi civilians being trapped inside the city and did not think that was the case.
But 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 Firdus al-Ubadi of the Iraqi Red Crescent.
No medicines
The Iraqi Red Crescent sent seven trucks and ambulances to Falluja on Saturday, hoping to get food, blankets, water purification tablets and medicine to hundreds of families trapped inside the city during the past six days of fighting.
"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people"
Colonel Mike Shupp, US marine
"None of the injured residents are being allowed to come to the hospital, while those outside are not allowed to go into the town," Abu Fahd said.
"The town is suffering from cuts in power and water supplies. There are no medicines or ambulances either.
"The injured and the dead are now on the streets. Many families want to get out of their houses, but they have no alternative shelters to go into," he said.
"The US forces have prevented us from entering the town claiming it is not safe. US forces have said they control 80% of the town."
Relief team
"I have asked them to allow the relief team into the areas they control, to offer humanitarian aid for women, children and the elderly, and transfer the injured to the hospital, but they have refused," Abu Fahd said.
Baghdad hospitals received wounded refugee children
The Red Crescent sent a convoy of essential goods along with 53 volunteers and three doctors from Baghdad to attend to people in Falluja.
It believes that 157 families are still in the heart of Falluja, but it is concerned about the plight of tens of thousands of people living in refugee camps and villages dotted outside.
"They are dying of starvation and lack of water, especially the children," Red Crescent spokeswoman Firdus al-Ubadi said.
"If there is no solution to this crisis it will expand to other cities and other parts of Iraq and there will be a great disaster here."
Earlier, the Red Crescent society despatched a convoy of four relief trucks and an ambulance to Amiriyat al-Falluja and a tourist village in Habbaniya, where an additional 1500 refugees are camped.
----
Denial Of Water To Iraqi Cities
Rense.com
11-14-4
http://rense.com/general59/denialofwatertoiraq.htm
Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other Coalition members, and the Iraqi interim government.
EVIDENCE FOR THE DENIAL OF WATER
Tall Afar
On 19 September 2004, the Washington Post reported that US forces 'had turned off' water supplies to Tall Afar 'for at least three days' (1). Turkish television reported a statement from the Iraqi Turkoman Front that 'Tall Afar is completely surrounded. Entries and exits are banned. The water shortage is very serious' (2). Al-Manar television in Lebanon interviewed an aid worker who stated that 'the main problem facing the people of Tall Afar and adjacent areas is shortage of water' (3). Relief workers reported a shortage of clean water (4). Moreover, the Washington Post reports that the US army failed to offer water to those fleeing Tall Afar, including children and pregnant women (5).
Samarra
'Water and electricity [were] cut off' during the assault on Samarra on Friday 1 October 2004, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers (6) and the Independent (7). The Washington Post explicitly blames 'U.S. forces' for this (8). Iraqi TV station Al-Sharqiyah reported that technical teams were working to 'restore the power and water supply and repair the sewage networks in Samarra' (9). Al Jazeera interviewed an aid worker who confirmed that 'the city is experiencing a crisis in which power and water are cut off' (10), as well as the commander of the Samarra Police, who reported that 'there is no electricity and no water' (11).
Fallujah
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that: 'Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra.' (12)
Residents of Fallujah have told the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks that 'they had no food or clean water and did not have time to store enough to hold out through the impending battle' (13). The water shortage has been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujah(14), Fadhil Badrani, a BBC journalist in Falluja, confirmed on 8 November that 'the water supply has been cut off'.
In light of the shortage of water and other supplies, the Red Cross has attempted to deliver water to Fallujah. However the US has refused to allow shipments of water into Fallujah until it has taken control of the city (15).
Other cases
There have been allegations that the water supply was cut off during the assault on Najaf in August 2004, and during the invasion of Basra in 2003. We have not investigated these claims.
JUSTIFICATIONS FOR THE DENIAL OF WATER
Some military analysts have attempted to justify the denial of water on tactical or humanitarian grounds. Ian Kemp, editor of military journal 'Jane's Defense Weekly', argues that: 'The longer the city [Fallujah] is sealed off with the insurgents inside, the more difficult it is going to be for them. Eventually, their supplies of food and water are going to dwindle' (16).
Barak Salmoni, assistant professor in National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, told the San Francisco Chronicle that civilians would probably be encouraged to leave Fallujah 'by cutting off water and other supplies' (17).
These arguments are deeply flawed on legal, humanitarian and political grounds. The majority of the population of Fallujah fled before the American attack. Those who have not already fled Fallujah are forced to remain, since roads out of the city have been blocked (18), including by British troops (19). Not only are those remaining unable to leave, but they are likely to consist largely of those too old, weak, or ill to flee - precisely the groups which will be most severely affected by a shortage of water.
REACTION IN IRAQ
The information reported above is more widely known in Iraq than in the US and UK, and has had become a significant political issue. Belief that US tactics involve denial of water is widespread. According to the LA Times: 'As soon as the women of Fallouja learned that four Americans had been killed, their bodies mutilated, burned and strung up from a bridge, they knew a terrible battle was coming. They filled their bathtubs and buckets with water...' (20)
Condemnations of the tactic have been issued by several major Iraqi political groups. On 1 October the Iraqi Islamic Party issued a statement criticising the US attack on Fallujah which 'cut off water, electricity, and medical supplies', and arguing that such an approach 'will further aggravate and complicate the security situation'. It also called for compensation for the victims (21).
Three days later Muqtada al-Sadr criticized both the denial of water to Samarra, and the lack of international outrage at it: 'They say that this city is experiencing the worst humanitarian situations, without water and electricity, but no-one speaks about this. If the wronged party were America, wouldn't the whole world come to its rescue and wouldn't it denounce this?' (22)
Denial of water is one of the misguided tactics which increases distrust of the Coalition forces. Asked in June how much confidence they had in US and UK forces, 50.8% of participating Iraqis responded 'none at all', with a further 29.5% saying 'not very much' (23).
This in turn fuels anti-American violence. A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, one of the most significant Sunni political groupings in Iraq, reported that the party's representative in Samarra had told him that 'there was no water'. He argued that partly as a result of this: 'The Iraqis no longer trust the Americans. It is not a question of military manifestations. It is now a question of popular rejection for the Americans, not for the military manifestations.' (24)
His analysis is confirmed by the Oxford Research International poll, according to which one third of Iraqis regard attacks against Coalition forces as 'acceptable' (25).
REACTION IN THE UK
Awareness of this issue remains extremely limited among the British public. The British government denies involvement. Despite inquiries from CASI and others, they appear not to have raised the issue with their American counterparts. UK Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram has denied knowledge of US action to cut off water supplies in Tall Afar (26), despite coverage in the Washington Post. Similarly Hilary Benn, the UK Secretary of State for International Development, says he has not discussed the issue with his American counterparts (27). This lack of communication with the American side suggests a lack of concern for the humanitarian implications of the conflict in Iraq, and an unwillingness to comment on American activities. Concerning British forces, Mr. Ingram has claimed that: 'With regard to the action of our own Forces, I can also confirm that we have not cut off water supplies to civilians. It is possible that local temporary disruptions may have occurred at some time due to damage from combat with anti-Iraqi Forces but we are not aware of any actual cases where this has happened' (28). LEGAL IMPLICATIONS
The denial of water to civilians is illegal both under Iraqi and international law. Article 12 of the Transitional Administrative Law, which serves as a constitution during the interim period, states that:
'Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the security of his person' (29)
International law specifically forbids the denial of water to civilians during conflict. Under Article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions,
'Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.' (30)
RECOMMENDATIONS
CASI calls on Members of Parliament to raise this issue with ministers as a matter of urgency. The UK government must use its influence with our US ally to ensure that all military operations are conducted within the bounds of international law. In addition to the suffering caused to the civilian population, use of these tactics by US forces puts our own troops at risk from rising insurgency.
We hope that the issue will be taken up by international NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Deliberate disruption of civilian water supplies should be a matter of concern for all who are promoting human rights in Iraq.
CASI urges journalists on the ground in Iraq to investigate the above reports further, in order to build up a clearer picture of use of this tactic. The UK media must give greater weight to the plight of civilian populations in their coverage of conflicts such as Fallujah. The UK public needs to know that our Coalition partner is using this illegal tactic.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This briefing was prepared for CASI by Daniel O'Huiginn and Alison Klevnas. Thanks to Felicity Arbuthnot, Anne Campbell, Helena Cobban, Mike Lewis, Rory McCarthy, Glen Rangwala, Colin Rowat, Shirin, Jonathan Stevenson, Per Klevnas and the members of the CASI Analysis list for their help and advice. Except where otherwise noted, extracts from the Iraqi press and broadcast media are taken from the BBC news monitoring service.
For more information on this issue, please contact:
Daniel O'Huiginn, Tel: 01223 328040 Mobile: 07745 192426
(1) 'After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts from Scratch', by Steve Fainaru. 19 September 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ac2/wp-dyn/A31377-2004Sep18?language=printer
(2) Comments by Faruq Abd-al-Rahman, leader of the Iraqi Turkoman Front, on TRT 2 Television, Ankara, 1600 gmt 12 September 2004
(3) Al-Manar Television, Beirut, 0440 gmt 14 September 2004
(4) Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad, 1200 gmt 15 September 2004
(5) 'After Recapturing N. Iraqi City, Rebuilding Starts from Scratch', by Steve Fainaru. 19 September 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A31377-2004Sep18?language=printer
(6) 'US, Iraqi forces take control of Samarra'. By Nancy A. Youssef and Patrick Kerkstra, 1 October 2004,
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/world/9813499.htm
(7) 'Onslaught in Samarra escalates in 'dress rehearsal' for major US assault on rebels'. Ken Sengupta, Independent, 3 October.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=56835
(8) Washington Post, 16 October 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A34612-2004Oct15?language=printer
(9) Al-Sharqiyah, Baghdad, 1300GMT 8 October 2004
(10) Al-Jazeera TV, 1505 gmt 1 October 2004
(11) Al Jazeera TV, 1810 gmt 2 October 2004
(12) Washington Post, 16 October 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/ wp-dyn/A34612-2004Oct15?language=printer
(13) 'Iraq: thousands of residents have fled Fallujah'. IRIN, 8 November.
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa87 36b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/c8e6aade2a3db177c 1256f460051db3b?OpenDocument
(14) Comment by Shirin,
http://justworldnews.org/MT/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=966
(15) 'Iraq: thousands of residents have fled Fallujah'. IRIN, 8 November.
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa 8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/c8e6aade2a3d b177c1256f460051db3b?OpenDocument
(16) 'Iraq: US troops surround al-Fallujah as offensive preparations continue'. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty feature, 8 November 2004.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/ 2004/11/f29d2002-7151-4453-9e91-97c77a17d3f2.html
(17) San Francisco Chronicle, 6th November 2004.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article. cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/06/MNGHL9NBU11.DTL
(18) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=580548
(19) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3989815.stm
(20) LA Times, 24 October,
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/ world/la-fg-fallouja24oct24,1,6787318.story? coll=la-headlines-world
(21) Statement issued by the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Islamic Party, on 19 Sha'ban 1425 AH, corresponding to 3 Oct 2004. Reported on Dar al-Salam radio, Baghdad in Arabic 1600 gmt 4 Oct 04
(22) Statement by Muqtada al-Sadr on Al-Manar Television, Beirut, in Arabic 1800 gmt 4 October 2004
(23) Survey conducted in June 2004 by Oxford Research International,
http://www.oxfordresearch.com/Iraq% 20June%202004%20Frequency%20Tables.PD
June 2004 Frequency Tables.PD
(24) Al-Jazeera TV, 1615 GMT 2 October 2004
(25) Survey c
http://www.oxfordresearch.com/Iraq20June%202004%20Frequency%20Tables.PD
June 2004 Frequency Tables.PD
(26) Response of Adam Ingram on 25 October 2004 to questions 191479
(tabled by Llwyd, and 192090, 192089, and 192087 tabled by Adam Price.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/ pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/cm041025/text/41025w03. htm#41025w03.html_spnew9
(27) Response to question by Adam Price MP: Adam Price: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what discussions he has had with counterparts in the US Administration on cutting off water supplies in Iraq. [192088] Hilary Benn: I have had no such discussions
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm 200304/cmhansrd/cm041103/text/41103w03.htm#41103w03.html_spnew4
(28) Letter from Adam Ingram to Anne Campbell MP, dated 21 October 2004, ref D/Min(AF)/AI 4770/04/C
(29) Law of administration for the state of Iraq for the transitional period, http://www.cpa-iraq.org/government/TAL.html
(30) http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42 141256739003e636b/d67c3971bcff1c10c125641e0052b545
----
Insurgents Routed in Falluja; Smaller Bands Still Resist
November 14, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS and ROBERT F. WORTH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-falluja.html?hp&ex=1100494800&en=15543330172a22ec&ei=5094&partner=homepage
FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 14 - Foot soldiers combed the smashed and deserted houses in southern Falluja this afternoon after a mechanized unit smashed through the neighborhood, called Shuhada, the day before, routing insurgents in their last major redoubt within the city.
In house after house, the searches have turned up large caches of weaponry, like artillery shells and mortar rounds, along with electronics for making bombs and mujahedeen literature. Fearing booby traps, the troops generally entered the houses only after tanks rammed through walls or specialists put explosive charges on doors.
As the searches moved southward through the neighborhood, leaving a swath of devastation behind, shooting continued around the city, and at least one marine was killed by a sniper this morning, shot through the head from an area that had been all but obliterated the night before.
But it seemed clear that any further resistance in Falluja would have to come from smaller bands of remaining mujahedeen rather than a coherent fighting force.
"We're sweeping through the city now," said Maj. Gen. Richard Natonski, the top Marine commander in Iraq. "We're clearing out pockets of resistance. There are groups numbering from 5 to 30. They're moving too. They're trying to get behind us."
General Natonski added: "People will never appreciate the movement of soldiers down here, what it took to move them and immediately conduct a relief in place with the soldiers. It ought to go down in the history books."
In one remaining mystery, few bodies have been found in the houses, raising the question of whether most of the fighters left for other places in Falluja or parts unknown before the tanks rolled in last night.
Sporadic gun battles continued today in the northern city of Mosul, where insurgents have been trying to carry out an uprising for the last four days. Many of the streets remained clear, both because residents said they feared the violence, and because it was the first day of Eid, the three-day festival marking the end of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.
A senior military official in Baghdad said the city was infested with insurgent cells, and that the Americans will now have to work on flushing them out. The Americans also have to figure out how to rebuild the police forces, after many police officers fled during a guerilla siege of stations across the city on Thursday, the official said.
In the most pitched battle today, insurgents barricaded in a police station fended off a counteroffensive by a company of Iraqi commandos sent to the city by the Ministry of Interior, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman for Task Force Olympia, which is charged with controlling the city.
The five-hour battle began around noon, when the commandos crossed the northernmost bridge spanning the Tigris River to try to secure the police station, which guerrillas had raided and looted on Thursday. As the soldiers crossed to the west bank, roadside bombs exploded around them. At the station itself, snipers shot at them from the roof.
At least 20 Iraqi soldiers were wounded, Colonel Hastings said. American forces in light-armored Stryker vehicles rushed to the scene and helped evacuate the wounded. The battle raged on for the rest of the afternoon, until the American-led forces retook the station.
"There was a pretty substantial engagement there," the colonel said.
In the town of Tal Afar, just 30 miles west of Mosul, insurgents made several attacks on police stations. They blew up part of one station in a neighboring town. The director of the general hospital in Tal Afar said in an interview that insurgents had stormed a prison and freed all the prisoners, though the American military said it had no information on this.
Stryker vehicles had blocked roads around the town, and families were fleeing throughout the day, saying that the mujahedeen were trying to seize control and that the Americans appeared ready to do battle.
The wave of violence in Tal Afar comes only two months after the Stryker Brigade cordoned off the town and swept through it, trying to flush out bands of guerrillas that had run rampant. The Americans said at the time they had re-established control, and the Iraqi government installed a new police chief. But the attacks there, which began around the same time as the uprising in Mosul, show that the insurgency in the area is self-regenerating, as it is in much of the embattled Sunni triangle.
In France, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said at a political congress that he believed two French journalists abducted south of Baghdad in August were in a relatively calm area of Iraq. Mr. Raffarin said the assumption was based on information from the journalists' Syrian driver, who was discovered in a house in Falluja last week. "The messages we are getting have reassured us a little," Mr. Raffarin said, according to the Reuters news agency.
The kidnapped reporters are Georges Malbrunot, a writer for Le Figaro, and Christian Chesnot, who works for Radio France International.
--------
ELECTIONS
For Iraqi Leader, Political Risks of Attack on Falluja Grow
November 14, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14allawi.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 13 - As Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, starts to position his party for the coming national elections, rising public denunciation of the invasion of Falluja by prominent Iraqi groups has put his political support at risk when he needs it most.
Dr. Allawi will almost certainly run for one of the 275 national assembly seats up for grabs in January. His party, the Iraqi National Accord, and other politicians have begun jockeying to form coalitions in order to secure as many votes as possible.
But depending on the outcome in Falluja, Dr. Allawi, 58, could find himself without a significant political ally. Even if the battle ends quickly and without a large number of civilian casualties, Dr. Allawi, by ordering the invasion, has affirmed his image as an ardent supporter of the American presence here. That is enough to keep politicians from wanting to be linked to him.
"The Allawi government has full responsibility for whatever happens in Falluja," said Redha Jowad Taki, a senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party.
"Support for the government has been eroding since last summer," Mr. Taki said. "It had big backing among the people then, but it's failed to deal with gangs of terrorists, and that has led to the loss of support."
Further, public condemnation of Dr. Allawi's role in the invasion has come from across Iraq's political spectrum.
The leading group of Sunni clerics, the Muslim Scholars Association, singled out Dr. Allawi for criticism last week when it called for a boycott of elections to protest the offensive.
"The Iraqi clerics place on the government of Ayad Allawi the entire legal and historical responsibility for what Falluja is going through, which is genocide at the hands of the occupiers," said Harith al-Dhari, the association's leader.
What may do more political harm to Dr. Allawi, who is a Shiite, is the fact that Shiite leaders are also condemning the invasion. Shiites make up at least 60 percent of Iraq and are the largest voting bloc.
The most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said through a spokesman on Friday that the security issue should be solved through peaceful means. Representatives of Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric, are calling on Iraqis not to take part in the offensive.
"Don't stain your hands with Iraqi blood," an aide to Mr. Sadr, Sheik Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, said in front of thousands of worshippers at a Baghdad mosque on Friday. "We demand you stop fighting against your brothers in Falluja."
The pressures on Dr. Allawi have increased enormously over the week, with his backing of the American forces now costing him personally as well as politically. On Tuesday night, insurgents kidnapped a first cousin, Ghazi Majeed Allawi, the cousin's wife and a daughter-in-law. A militant group called Ansar al-Jihad posted an Internet message the next day saying it would behead the captives in 48 hours if Dr. Allawi did not halt the invasion of Falluja and release all prisoners in Iraq.
The deadline expired sometime on Friday. No word has emerged of the fates of the hostages.
Some Iraqis, mostly Shiites and Kurds, do support the Falluja invasion, which is aimed at wiping out resistance from Sunni insurgents. The problem is that with elections coming up, even those supporters could publicly denounce the offensive no matter what they really think, because siding with the American-led forces could lose them votes. So Dr. Allawi finds himself increasingly alone in the political arena.
Since taking office in June when the United States handed formal sovereignty to Iraq, Dr. Allawi has struggled to portray himself as a representative of the Iraqi people rather than of the American government. His background as an exile with close ties to the Central Intelligence Agency has made that difficult. The decision to invade Falluja finally forced him into a corner. He had to say publicly that the decision, not very popular among Iraqis, was fully his own.
It is unclear how much power the Bush administration gave Dr. Allawi in setting the timing of the invasion. A senior Pentagon official said the timing "was a mutual decision, involving the White House and Allawi, and everyone else in between," he said.
A senior military official in Iraq said that Dr. Allawi had insisted on starting the offensive before Nov. 12 so there would be enough time to wrap it up by Nov. 22, when Dr. Allawi and other Iraqi officials are to attend a conference in Egypt on the future of Iraq.
Dr. Allawi became testy when asked at a news conference last week whether his decision to invade Falluja would deepen a divide in Iraq between those people who back the resistance and those who oppose it. He tried to portray his decision as one with immense popular support.
"I think there is a misperception on your part," he said to a reporter. "There is a division between the Iraqi people and the terrorists. We are after terrorists. We are not after anyone else."
Even if Dr. Allawi had never ordered an invasion of Falluja, his party might have had a tough time finding political allies. It is secular, and Iraq is becoming an increasingly religious society.
Even more troubling for many Iraqis, the party is made up of many former Baath Party officials, including Dr. Allawi. Asked on Saturday how Dr. Allawi was taking the political heat over his order to invade Falluja, one of his confidants, Kassim Daoud, the national security adviser, shrugged it off.
"Listening to criticism is practicing democracy," Mr. Daoud said. "We don't mind being criticized by any party."
Robert E.Worth contributed reporting from Falluja for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
--------
Troops Battle for Last Parts Of Fallujah
Senior Iraqi Officials Claim City Is Liberated
By Jackie Spinner and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47334-2004Nov13?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 13 -- As senior Iraqi officials declared Fallujah liberated, U.S. forces on Saturday continued intense combat operations aimed at securing the last section of the city from an insurgent force fighting with surprising discipline, organization and the trappings of a professional army, American commanders said.
In the southernmost section of Fallujah, where a showdown still loomed, U.S. soldiers discovered an underground bunker and steel-enforced tunnels connecting a ring of houses filled with weapons, medical supplies and bunk beds.
The fighters in the area were armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and dressed in blue camouflage uniforms with full military battle gear. U.S. soldiers reported finding American Meals Ready to Eat and other equipment that the U.S. government donated earlier this year to set up a local security force, which was quickly corrupted and taken over by insurgents.
The interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, announced "a clear-cut victory over the insurgents and terrorists" in Fallujah but acknowledged that fighters had taken parts of the northern city of Mosul and had attacked sites in several other cities.
Commanders said the fighters in Fallujah exhibited far more skill on the battlefield than the ragtag insurgents who had fleetingly engaged U.S.-led security forces in the first days of the battle. U.S. military units reported heavy casualties for the second day in a row; 24 troops have been killed since the battle began.
"When we found those boys in that bunker with their equipment, it became a whole new ballgame," said Pfc. Troy Langley, 19, of Wister, Okla., who is assigned to Task Force 2-2 of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. "The way these guys fight is different than the insurgents."
The reality of the situation served to challenge the declarations of senior Iraqi officials, who as early as Friday were announcing that the battle for Fallujah was over in time for Iraqis to celebrate the end of Ramadan on Sunday in peace.
"It is with all pleasure that I announce to you that operation New Dawn has been concluded," the minister of state for national security, Qasim Dawood, said at a news conference in Baghdad, as Marine artillery and aerial gunships continued to pummel Fallujah 35 miles to the west. "Major operations have been brought to a conclusion."
U.S. soldiers and Marines, meanwhile, kept fighting.
"We control 90 percent, but the 10 percent that's left is the most difficult," said Capt. Erik Krivda, a member of Task Force 2-2 tactical operations command from Gaithersburg.
U.S. and Iraqi security forces have been battling fighters in this insurgent stronghold since ground troops followed a barrage of artillery fire into the city Monday night. Dawood said that more than 1,000 insurgents had been killed and 200 captured. A militia group, the Army of Mohammad, reported that 73 fighters had been killed.
It was unclear how many insurgents remained in the fight, or even the city. A U.S. military cordon around Fallujah proved porous, with Iraqi reporters entering the city from the south, and fighters leaving the same way. Others escaped by boat across the Euphrates River to the west, according to witnesses.
The insurgents who remained were very low on food, relying on fruit and canned goods, according to witnesses. But the fighters continued to harass U.S. forces, and the Iraqi troops who were trailing them, by moving through the maze of buildings behind the advance, and even answering American psychological warfare operations.
In areas controlled by U.S. forces, loudspeakers mounted on Humvees urged that "all fighters in Fallujah should surrender, and we guarantee they will not be killed or insulted."
From a loudspeaker on a mosque still controlled by insurgents, the fighters replied: "We ask the American soldiers to surrender and we guarantee that we will kill and torture them."
Dawood said the offensive failed to produce Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, a guerrilla group that had made a base in Fallujah in an uneasy alliance with local insurgents. Indeed, by Friday morning, insurgent leaders claimed that 90 percent of the group's fighters had left the city and that the remaining 10 percent had been killed. Dozens of survivors were said to be traveling to Baghdad to carry out attacks.
An insurgent spokesman, speaking on al-Jazeera television, called on "scores or hundreds of brothers of the mujaheddin . . . to press the American forces" outside Fallujah. And a group of insurgents released a videotape to "announce the spread of the battle to all . . . parts of Iraq," according to Reuters news agency, which received the tape in Fallujah.
Large portions of Mosul remained under the control of insurgents. On the western side of the city of 1.8 million, residents reported no sign of government authority or a U.S. military presence. Police stations, overrun and looted by insurgents on Thursday and Friday, remained deserted. Streets were empty of all but rubbish and armed men who roamed the city. A car bomb detonated beside a convoy of Iraqi National Guard troops, injuring seven.
Dawood said, however, that Mosul was "not out of the control of the government."
"Just because a bunch of gangsters attacked police stations and declared that they were in control for not more than two hours does not mean that the government has lost control," he said.
Allawi said reinforcements of Iraqi security forces had begun arriving overnight to replace the Mosul police -- a force of perhaps 5,000 -- who largely deserted when the insurgents attacked.
Insurgents also harassed U.S. and Iraqi security forces in other cities in Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, including Baiji, Hawija, Tall Afar and Samarra.
In Baghdad, the Shiite Muslim mayor of the southern neighborhood of Bayaa, home to both Shiites and Sunnis, was assassinated, as was his Shiite predecessor earlier this year. Insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Education Ministry, the Associated Press reported.
Explosions echoed across the capital for a fourth day. Residents of the predominantly Sunni Adhamiyah neighborhood said insurgents fought U.S. troops for two hours overnight. Gunmen also roamed districts in the west and south overnight. On Saturday morning, a U.S. tank secured the southern edge of the Jadriya Bridge, which leads north toward the city center.
The battle for Fallujah, which insurgents have held since April, began with U.S. troops encountering only light to moderate resistance. Heavy artillery fire and air power seemed to knock the punch out of the resistance, which steadily pulled back from the main U.S. advance in the northern part of the city. But commanders warned that insurgents were likely to make a serious stand somewhere in the city.
Some U.S. commanders expressed surprise at finding fighters wearing uniforms and fighting like professionals. Unlike the insurgents who battled forces in the northern district, the forces in the south popped up, shot off a round and then moved.
But in urban combat, an organized force is also easier to identify, said Staff Sgt. Christopher Echevarria, 25, an Army Task Force 2-2 soldier from Crescent City, Calif.
"It's good they have uniforms," he said. "It makes it easier to know who to kill."
Vick reported from Baghdad. Special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War
'We Knew When We Got to the South We Were Going to Get Pounded'
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48226-2004Nov13?language=printer
NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 13 -- On his first night in the city, Sgt. Aristotel Barbosa slept uneasily on the floor near the door of a vacant house that his Marine unit had taken over. A squad leader in the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Barbosa had been prepared for the worst when U.S. and Iraqi forces began storming into Fallujah on Monday night.
Instead, the slight 26-year-old from Southern California was surprised to find fighters in the city putting up little resistance. By Thursday night, U.S. troops had taken control of the northern half of Fallujah, which lies about 35 miles west of Baghdad, and Barbosa was feeling optimistic about the battle when he woke up Friday. He decided not to shave, figuring things would be over soon enough. "I'm thinking and hoping that it's not that bad," he said, recalling his mood at the time.
But for many Marine and Army units, the battle for Fallujah was only beginning.
Barbosa and his squad set off on foot at 7:40 a.m. Friday following a slow-moving column of Marine infantrymen heading east just below the main highway that divides northern and southern Fallujah.
As he trudged through the desolate, rubble-filled streets, Barbosa said he remembered thinking how bad the city looked, worse than he had imagined. "Basically every house has a hole through it," he said.
Then the unease hit again. "All the squad leaders and myself, we knew when we got to the south we were going to get pounded."
As they began the turn south, gunfire burst from a mosque in front of them. Another platoon began shooting back, and Barbosa led his squad around to the side. "The whole company kept pushing, and we started getting hit from the other side of the street," he said.
Gunfire tore through an aluminum gate when the squad passed a house. Barbosa said he felt a sting in his right bicep. He had been shot. Two other members of his squad were wounded within minutes of each other, including Lance Cpl. Matthew Vetor, 21, who was hit in the lower back just under his flak jacket.
"It was like a whole block of insurgents," Barbosa said Saturday while recuperating with Vetor in a Navy field hospital at a military outpost near the city. "They started throwing grenades at us. It was like a shock. I couldn't believe I got hurt. I went two more blocks. I couldn't believe it."
It was 12:30 p.m.
Barbosa found his gunnery sergeant, who ordered him back to a medical vehicle that the Marines call the "track" or the "big bus."
"I thought they were going to get me out of there," Barbosa said. "But we kept pushing. I could still fight. I had to go leftie, but I was still fighting."
Meanwhile, Vetor was feeling the blood trickling down his face from a shrapnel wound. "I thought it was just my face," he said, until he felt the pain in his back. "I started to run," he recalled. "But it was difficult. We just kept making our way to the track. The hatch opened, and I jumped in. I gave out all my ammo. They took my flak and Kevlar. The doc had me lay down in the center and pulled out some shrapnel."
From inside the medical vehicle, Vetor said he could hear the fighting. "I'm there without my flak or helmet. You hear the shooting going on," he said. He felt afraid.
The column of Marines kept moving, with Vetor riding in the medical vehicle and Barbosa continuing on foot. Barbosa said the unit had to keep moving so the air power could come in behind them and clear the houses the insurgents were shooting from.
"There wasn't one house that didn't have weapons," Barbosa said. Every house had at last one rocket-propelled grenade and a couple of hand grenades, he said.
"They were very prepared," Vetor said, as he and Barbosa sat next to each other on a green cot in the field hospital's overflow medical ward.
"Like they were waiting for us," Barbosa said. "They were waiting for us."
As he walked along the street, Barbosa said, he had to step gingerly around improvised explosive devices that had been strung together.
About an hour later, Barbosa and Vetor found themselves in a large, vacant residence not far from the scene of the gun battle. The Iraqi special forces assigned to their unit found some rice and vegetables and made lunch. The Marines were nursing their wounds and eating hot chow when an explosion occurred nearby, shattering the windows and flicking shards of glass into the food.
It was 1:45 p.m.
Five hours later, Barbosa and Vetor made it out of the city to a staging area. They were taken to the military hospital, where on Saturday afternoon they were watching a movie and waiting to be transferred back to their unit.
Barbosa, twirling a cigarette lighter in his hand, planned to get back into the fight. Vetor, who said he could squeeze shrapnel out of his facial wounds, would not be able to return just yet.
"You know it could happen to you, but you really don't think it will be you," Vetor said, looking at the TV screen. "I'm just glad I was part of it. I was glad I got to fight with these guys. It had to be done. We were really fighting. We were doing great. It doesn't stop us. We'll keep going."
Barbosa said that even when the offensive was officially declared over, his squad planned to remain in the city to keep the peace. He expected things might get worse then, particularly if the artillery and mechanized infantry move out.
"We're not going to kill everyone, and they're not all going to surrender," he said. "I know that a lot of them are left. They'll wait for things to calm down, and they'll come back. They always do."
Barbosa said he would, too, and took a swig of juice from the box in his hand.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis to Ban Weapons for Palestinians
The Associated Press
Nov 14, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS_GUNS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's military will stop allowing Palestinian security forces in the West Bank to carry weapons in public within the next 24 hours, the army chief told the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday.
Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said security forces in the West Bank city of Ramallah would be allowed to carry their weapons openly until later Sunday, when the three-day mourning period for Yasser Arafat ends, meeting participants said.
Israeli and Palestinian security commanders will hold a coordination meeting later Sunday, Yaalon told the ministers. Both sides were concerned that chaos at Arafat's funeral Friday could erupt into disarray in the entire West Bank and spark a wave of anti-Israeli attacks, he said.
Sunday's meeting will continue the talks between the security officials held late Thursday, Yaalon said, according to the participants. Israel allowed the carrying of the weapons in the meeting as a goodwill gesture. "We established coordination on the night before of a kind that we haven't had in a long time," Yaalon was quoted as saying.
Israel barred Palestinian security forces in the West Bank from carrying guns in early 2002 after a large Israeli offensive into the area launched in response to a suicide bombing.
-----
In Shadow of Arafat's Death, Unity, Violence and Anger
November 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE and STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14gaza.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GAZA, Nov. 13 - Yasir Arafat's death has brought the Palestinian factions together in a rare display of unity, which the emerging leadership is hoping to cement in order to hold elections and take a fresh look at relations with Israel.
But in a sign of how difficult it may be to hold the factions together, the armed militant groups among them - most prominently Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades - say they will not agree to any cease-fire as long as Israeli forces remain in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"We will continue to resist and confront the enemy as a strategic choice until the end of the occupation," said Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, which has carried out the largest number of suicide bombings.
Such statements come partly in the expectation that Mahmoud Abbas, the new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Ahmed Qurei, the prime minister, may try to pursue a truce. During his brief tenure as prime minister last year, Mr. Abbas got the factions to agree to a cease-fire, and he is under pressure from Washington and Israel to show that he will begin to confront militancy and terrorism in a way that Mr. Arafat did not.
The truce last year sharply reduced the overall level of violence for about two months, but it never really took hold. Israelis and Palestinians blamed each other for its collapse.
"Last year we accepted a truce and it didn't succeed because Israel continued its aggression," said Muhammad al-Hindi, a leader in Islamic Jihad, which has also been responsible for many of the attacks.
Mr. Qurei will now be in charge of the security forces, but both he and Mr. Abbas are seen as pragmatic, suit-and-tie politicians who have little sway over the angry young men who walk the Palestinian streets with automatic rifles, and they are not expected to confront the militants head on.
Palestinians are broadly supportive of presidential elections to replace Mr. Arafat within two months, as stipulated by Palestinian law. More moderate Palestinians say they hope that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will take part in the elections, their first democratic test. The moderates also hope a new, more democratic leadership can revive the credibility of institutions like the Palestinian Authority, which has largely fallen apart in the last four years of violence, causing a vacuum that groups like Hamas have begun to fill.
But such a ballot requires calm.
Mr. Hindi said a minimum requirement for elections should be an Israeli withdrawal to the positions the forces held in September 2000, just before the start of the intifada uprising. "No election will be genuine elections as long as Israeli troops are present," he said.
There is some evidence that the armed Palestinian groups have scaled back attacks, at least temporarily. Gaza was the scene of the worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting this year, and during the summer, various Palestinian factions battled among themselves. Rival security services have tried to kill each other's commanders. But in recent days, more than a dozen Palestinian factions have met in Gaza with the aim of maintaining unity.
In the last month, there have also been few rocket attacks by Hamas from northern Gaza on Israeli communities; such attacks prompted a major Israeli raid during the first half of October.
But Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, part of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement, pledged Friday to step up attacks. The group says it believes Mr. Arafat was poisoned by Israel, though Palestinian leaders insist there is no evidence of that.
"We will respond to the assassination of the leader and symbol by striking deep inside the Israeli entity," the group's statement said, adding that it would now call itself the Yasir Arafat Martyrs Brigades. "We strongly warn anyone who would try to bargain over our cause."
Still, the armed groups acknowledge that Palestinians are vulnerable and need to present a united front, as evidenced by the meetings by the factions in Gaza. "There is a Palestinian consensus that there should be a unified leadership and that we should agree on a specific program following the death of Mr. Arafat," Mr. Hindi said.
For its part, Israel has said it will show restraint if the new Palestinian leadership makes a major effort to halt attacks. But Israel says it will continue to act against Palestinians actively planning or mounting attacks, and the Israeli military, whose troops remain on the outskirts of most cities in the West Bank, has continued raiding Palestinian areas and arresting suspected militants.
Over time, at least, the Palestinians need to resolve their internal contradiction: a leadership committed to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, and armed factions committed to Israel's destruction. Mr. Arafat issued routine statements condemning Palestinian suicide bombings, but neither the Israelis nor the Palestinian militants took him seriously. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Mr. Arafat of refusing to order his security forces to act to halt terror attacks.
The Palestinian factions themselves said they did not feel pressure from Mr. Arafat to halt attacks.
As the intifada has ground on through a fourth year, some armed groups have grown in popularity.
Hamas, long esteemed by Palestinians for its charitable activities, has seen its stature increase because of its willingness to use suicide bombings and rocket strikes against Israel. Hamas is engaging in the already planned elections for municipal authorities, hoping to turn its appeal into administrative influence. Opinion polls suggest it would run a strong second to Fatah in Gaza, with up to 30 percent of the vote. It is weaker in the West Bank.
Islamic Jihad, unlike Hamas, has little in the way of an associated political arm.
Both groups refused to take part in the one and only Palestinian election, held in 1996, for the parliament and presidency of the Palestinian Authority. But this time it is waiting for the details of the presidential election before deciding.
There are some questions about how those factions would arrange to field candidates for the Palestinian Authority, since it was formed as a result of the 1993 Oslo accords, which was premised on a two-state solution, and both groups call for Israel's destruction. Also, Israeli action against militants has taken a toll, particularly on Hamas. In a pair of airstrikes last spring, Israel killed Hamas's two top leaders: its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and his successor, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Since then, Hamas has refused to divulge the name of its current leader in Gaza, and its leading figures, who used to appear regularly at rallies, have tended to remain out of sight. That leaves Hamas no obvious candidate to run for president.
Greg Myre reported from Gaza for this article, and Steven Erlanger from Ramallah, West Bank.
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Palestinians Say the Future Rests on Vote, Israeli Action
Arafat's Death Opens Way To Political Transformation
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48219-2004Nov13.html
JERUSALEM, Nov. 13 -- Palestinians must act quickly to hold elections for a leader to replace Yasser Arafat if they are to peacefully transform their political system after more than three decades of one-man control, according to Palestinian politicians, academics and analysts.
But their ability to organize a free and fair vote within 60 days, as mandated by Palestinian law, will depend in large part on whether the Israeli government eases its occupation and controls of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians said.
Arafat, considered the father of the Palestinian national movement and the symbol of his people's fight for an independent state, died Thursday at a hospital outside Paris. He groomed no successor, and his responsibilities were divided among four senior Palestinian leaders, all of whom lack Arafat's stature and charisma and whose legitimacy would be greatly enhanced by elections.
The speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Rawhi Fattouh, 55, was named interim president of the Palestinian Authority, the governing entity for the West Bank and Gaza, until a new president is elected. The other top leaders are Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, 66; Mahmoud Abbas, 69, who was named head of the Palestine Liberation Organization; and Farouk Kaddoumi, 70, who was named leader of the Fatah political movement.
One Palestinian official called on President Bush to play an important role during the run-up to the election. "It's the first challenge for him and his credibility when he speaks about the larger issue of bringing democracy to the Middle East," said Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator with Israel. In a joint White House appearance with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday, the day Arafat was buried, Bush pledged to work to encourage the creation of an independent and democratic Palestinian state.
Elections following Arafat's death represent the first step toward "reform and the transformation of the Palestinian revolution," said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. But Hadi said the success of elections depends partly on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
"If Sharon stops the killings and the incursions, releases Palestinian prisoners, lifts the siege over Jerusalem," which prevents most Palestinians from visiting the city, "and does not interfere with the upcoming Palestinian municipal elections in December, he will be endorsing this historic change and allowing moderates to rise," Hadi said. "If he doesn't, it will be a disaster."
Sharon has ruled out the possibility of releasing prisoners or making other such gestures, saying that the new Palestinian government must prove that it is serious about tackling terrorism before Israel will treat it as a partner for peace.
"Elections are not a substitute for fighting terrorism," a Sharon spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said Saturday. "To get to a democratic state, they have to fight terrorism."
"If they want to move away from the Arafat policies, they have to start doing something, and when we see that they're going in that direction, we'll be there to assist them," he said.
The Palestinians must overcome longtime rivalries and mistrust between Arafat's loyalists from the Palestinian exile community and a younger generation of reformers who grew up in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Even deeper differences exist between Muslim militant groups, which have become popular and powerful during the Palestinians' four-year uprising, and the governing Palestinian Authority and Arafat's Fatah political movement, both of which are secular.
Qureia, a member of Fatah, has already begun fence-mending with the militant groups. He met with a dozen security chiefs and senior militant leaders in the Gaza Strip just before Arafat's death to discuss a more collective style of leadership.
Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political analyst and pollster, said it was important for the old guard and young reformers within Fatah to coalesce around a single candidate. He and other Palestinians said the likely choice was Abbas, who served as prime minister before Qureia.
"The old guard must forge an immediate coalition with the young guard and embrace them, allow internal elections for Fatah, and remove the old guard and Arafat cronies from the government," Shikaki said. Perhaps most important, he said, Israel should release the leader of the young reformers, Marwan Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence in prison for his involvement in the killing of five people.
"The most important element in organizing an election is a cease-fire, and Barghouti's help is going to be critical," Shikaki added. "Barghouti speaks for the young guard reformers, and to make the elections positive and to influence the outcome, he must be released."
Public opinion surveys show that, other than Arafat, Barghouti, a charismatic, firebrand orator and former head of Fatah in the West Bank, is about twice as popular as any other Palestinian politician, and his support will be crucial for Abbas or any other Fatah candidate.
Gissin, Sharon's spokesman, rejected the possibility of releasing Barghouti, saying: "His hands are tainted with blood. Would the United States release someone serving a life sentence to run for president?"
Barghouti did not recognize the legitimacy or legality of his Israeli trial, saying that because he was considered an enemy of the state, his guilt before an Israeli judge was a foregone conclusion.
"Marwan Barghouti hasn't decided what he's going to do," said Sa'd Nimr, the leader of the campaign to release him. If elected as the next Palestinian leader, Nimr said, Barghouti could appoint a vice president or deputy to rule in his place.
Correspondent Molly Moore contributed to this report.
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Palestinians Schedule Election for Jan. 9
November 14, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html?ei=5094&en=cf24868b86d5f64b&hp=&ex=1100494800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 - Palestinians have scheduled presidential elections for Jan. 9 to replace Yasir Arafat, officials said today. Meanwhile, the favored candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, escaped injury as Palestinians waged a deadly gun battle during a mourning service for Mr. Arafat in Gaza City.
The Palestinian leadership has moved swiftly to fill Mr. Arafat's posts since his death on Thursday, and the January election will choose a new leader for the Palestinian Authority, which runs Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But Palestinian areas remain highly combustible as evidenced by the shooting at a large mourning tent erected so that Palestinians could pay respects to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, traveled from the West Bank and arrived this afternoon at the grounds, an open field near Mr. Arafat's seaside compound in Gaza City.
Armed men in the crowd began chanting, "No to Abu Mazen," and "No to Dahlan," a reference to Muhammad Dahlan, an ex-security chief who accompanied Mr. Abbas. Some of the armed men then began firing their rifles into the air, witnesses said.
Security guards surrounded Mr. Abbas, 69, as more shooting erupted and carried on for several minutes. Two Palestinian security officers were killed and four were injured, witnesses and Palestinian officials said. Mr. Abbas was whisked away after the shooting stopped.
The gunmen involved in the shooting wore civilian clothes and many had black-and-white checkered scarves around their necks, the kind favored by Mr. Arafat. They were believed to be members of the Fatah movement. Mr. Arafat was the movement's founder and longtime leader, and Mr. Abbas has been a senior Fatah figure for many years.
The gunmen eventually left the scene, but were in no hurry, and no one was arrested, according to witnesses and Palestinian officials.
"It was not an assassination attempt," Mr. Abbas told reporters shortly afterward at his office in Gaza City. "Emotions were high. There was random gunfire and pushing in the crowd."
The shooting reflected the lawlessness in Palestinian areas, where militants freely roam the streets and feel little restraint about firing into the air.
"We must deal with the security situation. Some aspects of the security situation are chaotic," Mr. Abbas said.
Mr.. Abbas served briefly as prime minister last year, and immediately after Mr. Arafat's death on Thursday was named as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which incorporates multiple factions, including Fatah.
While seen as the strongest contender in the presidential election, he has no real support on the Palestinian street. Mr. Abbas prefers quiet negotiations to the public stage, and perhaps more than any other senior Palestinian figure, he has criticized Palestinian violence against Israel as counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. This stance has angered many militants, who were fiercely loyal to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat was the dominant Palestinian figure for nearly four decades, and the election will be crucial in providing legitimacy to his successor.
The January vote could also improve the prospect for renewed peace talks, or at least some sort of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue that has collapsed almost entirely during the past four years of fighting.
Rawhi Fattouh, installed as the caretaker leader of the Palestinian Authority just hours after Mr. Arafat's death, announced the ballot in the West Bank city of Ramallah, at the compound where Mr. Arafat was confined for the final three years of his life and is now buried.
"There will be free and direct elections," Mr. Fattouh said. The ballot is in keeping with Palestinian law, which requires a vote within 60 days if a leader dies.
Just a few hundred yards away, ordinary Palestinians arrived throughout the day to visit the marble and stone gravesite, which is covered with floral wreaths and photos.
The Palestinian areas have been mostly calm in recent days, but there are several obstacles to holding elections in January.
Israeli troops have been in or near Palestinian cities in the West Bank for the past two and a half years, and stage frequent raids in against Palestinian militants. Palestinians are demanding the soldiers be pulled back for the election.
Israel has not said how it will respond, though Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed a willingness to facilitate the election, according to Gary L. Ackerman, a Democratic congressman from New York who met Mr. Sharon today.
Mr. Ackerman said Mr. Sharon "wants them to have successful elections, and Israel will not put obstacles in their way."
The prime minister also said he "expected that the military presence would be reduced," Mr. Ackerman said.
There is also the question of whether Israel will allow the more than 200,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem to vote, as they did in the only previous Palestinian national election, in 1996.
"They have the right according to all agreements," said the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed it. Although the move has never been recognized internationally, Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital and some officials believe its position would be weakened if Palestinian residents vote in a Palestinian election.
Ehud Olmert, the vice prime minister, told Israel radio that East Jerusalem residents should not be allowed to vote because the Israeli government does not envision any part of the city coming under Palestinian control.
"Their participation is liable to be misunderstood that their area will be part of the Palestinian entity, that's to say, that we're intending to divide Jerusalem," Mr. Olmert said.
But Mr. Ackerman cited Mr. Sharon as saying that Palestinians in East Jerusalem would be allowed to vote.
Mr. Arafat easily won the leadership position in the 1996 vote, and his Fatah movement dominated the legislative elections. Palestinian leaders have cited the ongoing fighting with Israel as the main reason subsequent elections have not been held.
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Israel Takes Quiet Steps to Bolster Palestinians
November 14, 2004
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/middleeast/14diplo.html
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Under American encouragement and, in some cases, pressure, Israel has quietly taken steps aimed at strengthening the standing of Palestinian moderates and has agreed to consider others now that the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, has died, according to American and Israeli officials.
A week ago, for example, with Mr. Arafat in the final days of his life in a Paris hospital, Israel released $40 million in frozen tax funds to the Palestinian Authority after long resisting such an action, the officials said. In addition, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has agreed to consider removing Israeli security forces from Palestinian population areas, at the behest of the Bush administration, to facilitate Palestinian elections in the next two months, according to an official close to the discussions.
The official said that Israel had serious misgivings about the proposal, fearing that a pullback could reignite anti-Israel violence, but that Mr. Sharon's government was willing to think about the idea under certain conditions, including if Palestinian forces could be mobilized in the Israelis' place. "When it comes to implementing the decision to have elections in 60 days, the question arises of what you do with the I.D.F.," said the official, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. "You want freedom of movement for the Palestinians, but you have to make sure that nothing is done that costs Israeli lives."
The death of Mr. Arafat is viewed as an opportunity to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace effort. Steps were already under way to have Israel make gestures to gain more Palestinians' support for Mr. Sharon's planned withdrawal from Gaza, and with the illness of Mr. Arafat, other ideas came forward to support Palestinian moderates. Many of the Israeli actions aimed at easing conditions of the Palestinians have been carried out with little or no publicity, in part because it suited the political interests of both President Bush and Mr. Sharon.
At a news conference on Friday with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, Mr. Bush said there was a "great chance" to establish a Palestinian state. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, speaking on NBC on Saturday, said of the new leadership, "We know these gentlemen well, and I hope to be able to see them in the very near future to discuss what their plans are and how to move forward."
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, called Saturday for a speedy resumption of peace efforts with Israel, saying that with determination the two sides could reach an agreement "in a very short time." He said Palestinian elections would be held by Jan. 9.
Israel responded with another gesture on Saturday, according to The Associated Press, which reported from Jerusalem that the Israeli army has decided to let Palestinian security forces carry guns in public, overturning a policy in effect since 2002.
The White House and Mr. Sharon's office are also discussing other steps to facilitate the elections that are points of dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.
For example, Israel is resisting the idea of allowing Palestinians in the Jerusalem area to vote, as they did in the 1996 elections won by Mr. Arafat, on grounds that Jerusalem is not a Palestinian constituency.
Israel says that as a good-will gesture to bolster the Palestinian moderates and gain backing for its plan to withdraw settlers and forces from Gaza, it eased many checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the West Bank.
But it reimposed many of them after two suicide bombers from Hebron blew up two buses in Beersheba, killing 16 Israelis, in August. Hamas, a leading Islamic militant group that aspires to challenge the moderate Palestinian leaders, claimed responsibility.
Israel is said to be extremely concerned about a repetition of such episodes if it should withdraw forces from Palestinian population areas to help with elections. More bus bombs might turn Israelis against Mr. Sharon and especially against his plan to Gaza withdrawal plan.
In Gaza, representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said that while they favored Palestinian unity and wanted to take part in Palestinian politics, they opposed any suspension of their violent war with Israel so long as Israeli troops remain anywhere in Gaza or the West Bank.
American officials are also raising questions about the extensive presence of Israeli troops if the planned elections are to succeed, a similar problem to the situation in Iraq, where elections are being planned as American and other forces remain entrenched in population centers.
"How do you conduct elections in 60 days if the Israelis are still all over Gaza and areas of the West Bank?" asked an American official. "That's been a question we've started to have to think about."
Mr. Sharon, in the midst of a tough fight to win approval of the Gaza pullout plan, has not wanted to be seen as yielding to American pressure, especially as some of his conservative allies are warning that the withdrawal will jeopardize Israeli security.
For his part, Mr. Bush was loath to talk of getting Israel to make concessions while he was campaigning for re-election and counting on supporters of Israel in the Jewish and conservative Christian communities in crucial states.
While quietly pressuring Israel on some matters, Mr. Bush has given Mr. Sharon's government wide latitude to expand settlements in certain parts of the West Bank and to construct a separation barrier.
There is also a discussion between Israel and the United States about what would most strengthen the hand of Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, who has emerged as the principal Palestinian leader.
He is expected to run for president of the Palestinian Authority, the post held by Mr. Arafat, and is trying to organize a cease-fire with militant groups.
Mr. Abbas and his ally, Mr. Qurei, may face opposition from Hamas leaders and militant factions in their own camp.
As a result, the issue of what Israel can do to strengthen Mr. Abbas's hand is coming to the fore, said European, Arab, American and Israeli officials.
There is also a problem of the credibility of Mr. Sharon's plan to pull out of Gaza, which Arab and Palestinian leaders with the support of some people in Europe say is a kind of trick aimed at making sure that Israel continues to hold on to the West Bank in perpetuity.
For that reason, some officials said, Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush issued a joint statement on Friday reaffirming that the Gaza withdrawal, while a step forward, had to be connected to talks that would create a full Palestinian state in the West Bank as well.
-------- russia / chechnya
Soviet-era dissidents despise Putin
November 14, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041113-111225-7336r.htm
NEW YORK - Physicist Yuri Orlov, one of the most celebrated of the Soviet dissidents of the 1970s, has railed against totalitarianism and government oppression for most of his 80 years.
He knows what it's like to challenge a repressive regime, and his latest target is Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
"Russia is flying backwards in time," said Mr. Orlov, a compact man with wild hair and a demeanor that is as Norman Mailer as it is Albert Einstein.
"Putin is like Stalin, and he speaks in the language of the thug, the mafia," he said.
When Mr. Orlov and scores of other Soviet "refuseniks" gathered on Thursday evening for a reunion sponsored by the American Jewish Committee , Mr. Putin drew almost as much criticism as his communist predecessors.
The Russian president's crackdown on Chechens, closure of independent news media and other restrictions has kindled outrage among this aging group of lions, many of whom spent more than a decade in Soviet work camps, mental hospitals and prisons because they openly criticized the Soviet government and demanded basic human rights.
They see alarming similarities between Mr. Putin's police and the infamous KGB he used to command.
An increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church and lurching economic policies provide even more traction to curtail human rights so recently won.
The gray-haired "heroes of conscience" hugged and wept and, over small tumblers of Russian vodka and blended whiskey, denounced the renewed erosion of civil rights in their homeland and the passive support they say Mr. Putin receives from the United States and other Western governments.
"I am worried that the Bush administration is being duped," said Victor Balashov, 62, who emigrated to the United States in 1974 after a decade in a Soviet prison.
"The government should be more thoughtful. It is like Mr. Reagan said, 'trust but verify.' You must make a judgment about Putin, ... and you can have no doubt that he is running a dictatorship."
The emotional evening, organized by the Gratitude Fund, which was established by dissident Yuri Fedorov to assist former political prisoners still living in the former Soviet Union.
Tatiana Yankelevich, the grown daughter of the legendary Elena Bonner who administers the Sakharov Foundation at Harvard University, said the global war on terrorism has been used "to justify the most brutal suppression and killing" in Chechnya.
"This is a grand deceit, and many wish to be deceived," she said, referring to many of those nations and organizations that worked to free her parents' generation.
The National Park Service is creating a traveling exhibit about the infamous Soviet prison camp Perm 36.
Part of the international "museums of conscience" movement, the show will feature testimonies, a recreation of prison cells and recovered objects.
It will open on Ellis Island, N.Y., in May 2006, and will travel to Boston, Atlanta, Topeka, Kan., Washington and Manzanar, Calif., where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II.
-------- spies
Goss Reportedly Rebuffed Senior Officials at CIA
Four Fear New Chief Is Isolating Himself
Washington Post
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
November 14, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48254-2004Nov13?language=printer
Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials aware of the communications.
The four senior officials represent nearly two decades of experience leading the Directorate of Operations under both Republican and Democratic presidents. The officials were dismayed by the reaction and were concerned that Goss has isolated himself from the agency's senior staff, said former clandestine service officers aware of the offers.
The senior operations officials "wanted to talk as old colleagues and tell him to stop what he was doing the way he was doing it," said a former senior official familiar with the effort.
Last week, Deputy Director John E. McLaughlin retired after a series of confrontations between senior operations officials and Goss's top aide, Patrick Murray. Days before, the chief of the clandestine service, Stephen R. Kappes, said he would resign rather than carry out Murray's demand to fire Kappes's deputy, Michael Sulick, for challenging Murray's authority.
Goss and the White House asked Kappes to delay his decision until tomorrow, but they are actively considering his replacement, several current and former CIA officials said.
Kappes, whose accomplishments include persuading Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to renounce weapons of mass destruction this year, began removing personal photos from his office walls yesterday, associates said.
A handful of other senior undercover operations officers have talked seriously about resigning, as soon as tomorrow.
"Each side doesn't understand the other's culture very well," one former senior operations officer said. "There is a way to do this elegantly. You don't have to humiliate people. You bring in people with really weak credentials, and everyone is going to rally around the flag."
Agency officials have criticized as inexperienced the four former Hill staff members Goss brought with him. Goss's first choice for executive director -- the agency's third-ranking official -- withdrew his name after The Washington Post reported that he left the agency 20 years ago after having been arrested for shoplifting.
Through his CIA spokesman, Goss, a former CIA case officer and chairman of the House intelligence committee, declined to comment about these matters.
At his Senate confirmation hearing Sept. 14, Goss said, "There is too much management at headquarters," which he said was "too bureaucratic" and had "stifled some of the innovation, some of the creativity and, frankly some of the risk-taking in the field."
He described one "stroke-of-a-pen fix" that he was considering: "Reassurance that people will be supported in the field, building the morale, those are more leadership issues."
He also offered a glimpse of his management style. "I believe it takes, sometimes, very blunt, strong language" to get changes made. "I don't like doing it -- I call it tough love -- but I think occasionally you have to do that."
Goss has adopted a management style that relies heavily on former committee staff aides, several of whom are former mid-level CIA employees not well regarded within the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Murray, the new chief of staff, has been perceived by operations officers as particularly disrespectful and mistrustful of career employees.
One former senior DO official agreed yesterday that some changes were needed, saying: "Clean the place out if it's needed, but you've got to be clever about it."
The disruption comes as the CIA is trying to stay abreast of a worldwide terrorist threat from al Qaeda, a growing insurgency in Iraq, the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and congressional proposals to reorganize the intelligence agencies. The agency also has been criticized for not preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and not accurately assessing Saddam Hussein's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction.
The four former deputy directors of operations who have tried to offer Goss advice are Thomas Twetten, Jack Downing, Richard F. Stoltz and the recently retired James L. Pavitt.
They "wanted to save him from going through" what two other directors, Stansfield Turner and John M. Deutch, had experienced when they tried to make personnel changes quickly, one former senior official aware of their efforts said.
Turner and Deutch served under Democratic presidents. Turner wanted to clean house after the Watergate scandal and CIA "dirty tricks" exposed during the Church Commission hearings. Deutch sought to change the inbred culture of the operations staff after the Iran-contra scandal.
The Directorate of Operations numbers about 5,000 people, including about 1,000 covert operators overseas, and runs foreign spying, including counterterrorism operations. Because its operators engage in undercover activities, often on their own, they are a difficult group to manage and control.
To win their support, Goss's immediate predecessor, George J. Tenet, met with the former directors regularly. He sought advice from them individually and started to rebuild the clandestine service, which was cut by Deutch after its main adversary, the Soviet Union, dissolved, and before terrorism became a central focus.
Although Kappes has not left his job, several people have been approached or screened as his replacement. One is the director of the counterterrorism center; the other is the station chief in London. Both are undercover and may not be identified by name.
Another candidate, according to current and former CIA officials, is Richard P. Lawless Jr., a former CIA operations officer who is deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific affairs, according to a CIA official who asked not to be identified. Lawless served in the agency from 1972 to 1987, when he left after running afoul of senior DO officers while carrying out secret missions for then-CIA Director William J. Casey.
Lawless then opened a private consulting firm that did business in Asia, particularly with Taiwan and South Korea. In a 2002 profile in the Taipei Times, Lawless was described as having "long-term ties to President Bush's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush." The two met shortly after Lawless set up his consulting firm and Jeb Bush was Florida's secretary of commerce seeking business in Asia.
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Long Fall for Pentagon Star
Druyun Doled Out Favors by the Millions
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48241-2004Nov13?language=printer
In the macho world of the Pentagon, Darleen A. Druyun was rare: a woman who had scaled the heights of power, controlled billions of dollars in weapons programs and could punish or reward global corporations and the men who ran them.
Once the most feared woman in the world of military contracting, Druyun, 57, helped direct the Air Force's $30 billion procurement budget -- nearly three times the size of the Army's.
She was at the peak of her power as a top Air Force weapons buyer in 1999 when she scolded leaders of Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor, for some of its work on satellites and rockets. Her tone was blunt: One program had "pitiful" software and a company proposal had a "crappy design." The incident contributed to the early retirement of one Lockheed executive and the company rushed to address Druyun's concerns, according to several people familiar with the situation.
But now it is Druyun who has fallen from grace. In April, she pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for negotiating for a job with Boeing Co. while still supervising the company's work for the Air Force. Last month she stunned military and industry leaders by admitting that she gave Boeing preferential treatment for years before taking a job with the company.
The Pentagon announced last week that because of Druyun's illegal behavior it has begun investigations into all of her contracting-related actions during her nine years as the Air Force's deputy acquisition chief. The Defense Department also began the largest review of how it buys weapons since the investigation of influence peddling in the 1980s known as Operation Ill Wind. The fallout could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars as companies unfairly ruled out of contracts seek restitution for the costs they incurred during the bidding process.
Since she was sentenced to nine months in prison, a portrait of Druyun has emerged from court papers and interviews with her associates of a woman who acquired power beyond her status at the Air Force then walked over subordinates, humbled industry executives and sought personal advantage at government expense. Druyun is an imposing figure with a sharp -- and sometimes vulgar -- tongue, who was right at home in the male-dominated Pentagon world. Her renown as a tough government negotiator and stickler for the rules encouraged her superiors to rely on her judgment, according to industry insiders. For nearly 40 percent of her time at the Pentagon she had no supervisor at all. Her rise to power coincided with a government-wide push to build closer relationships with contractors as partners. "I was surprised that someone who was around [during the Ill Wind investigation] would be in essence doing the same things that Ill Wind was all about," said Joseph J. Aronica, the lead prosecutor in that investigation, now a lawyer with Duane Morris LLP. "I guess these things in a way are cyclical. She may have thought no one was looking any more."
Druyun did not respond to letters and could not be reached by telephone to comment on this article. Her lawyer declined comment through his secretary.
Druyun began her career in government work in 1970 when she landed a job as an Air Force contractor negotiator at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia. Her father, who had worked at the base for 40 years, was "instrumental" in getting her the job, according to court documents. Druyun's husband, William S. Druyun, is a retired Air Force official who was a mid-level manager at Falls Church-based General Dynamics Corp. before retiring in September.
For the next 20 years, she bounced between the Air Force, the Office of Management and Budget and NASA before being named the Air Force's deputy acquisition chief, a position she would hold until her retirement in November 2002.
But no sooner had she climbed the heights of Air Force procurement than she became involved in a controversy over work she had done three years before. She and four other Air Force officials were accused by Pentagon inspector general of improperly funneling $349 million to McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1990 to keep the C-17 transport aircraft program on track. After a separate Air Force investigation found no wrongdoing, Defense Secretary Les Aspin dismissed one general and disciplined three others, saying the program was poorly managed. Druyun was cleared.
Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff at the time, said he petitioned Aspin on Druyun's behalf. "I thought she was a strong person, giving strong leadership in the acquisition community, so if I was going to save one person I thought" it should be Druyun, said McPeak, who retired in 1994 and is now president of an aerospace consulting firm. "She was the one who would come into my office and tell me I was wrong about something. . . . She had the stomach to not be a yes-woman."
Druyun then reinvented herself as a reformer, developing "Lightning Bolt" initiatives that aimed to make Air Force weapons procurement more efficient and stressed the importance of a company's past performance in awarding new contracts. The Air Force said the program saved $20 billion.
The fortunes of defense contractors rested on Druyun's decisions on competitions, her policy decrees and her awards of bonuses. In 1999, she emerged as the Pentagon's top advocate of the F/A-22, a boon to Lockheed, the fighter jet's manufacturer. In 2001, Druyun eliminated Raytheon Co. from a $2.5 billion competition to build the small-diameter bomb, surprising industry handicappers and realigning the competitive landscape.
An official at Druyun's level would not normally decide the outcome of as many competitions as she did or get involved in the nitty-gritty of contract negotiations, according to people in the industry. Those tasks were left to underlings who made the decisions themselves or offered their recommendations. "Once in a blue moon there will be a mess where you can't resolve an issue and the issue will float up the chain of command," said John W. Douglas, the former assistant Navy secretary for research, development and acquisition.
Druyun, however, actively discouraged her staff from making recommendations, according to a former defense official who worked with her. "She began accreting this authority up to her," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigations. "She would say, 'Don't send it up with a recommendation, just send it up with information.' "
The power creep did not escape the notice of her superiors. In one or two cases, "I was surprised she was getting involved, but they were large [contracts] and . . . she was a hands-on kind of person," said Jacques Gansler, the Pentagon's acquisition chief from 1997 to 2001. "People above and around her in the Air Force should have been overseeing her."
The rough edges of Druyun's personality also emerged. Staff members who seemed unprepared or provided Druyun with inadequate or faulty information would be frozen out of later meetings, according to government and industry officials who worked with her. "Those who have feared going to see the 'Dragon Lady' only feared if they didn't have their act together, or were trying to 'cover' an error," retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Lawrence A. Mitchell said in a letter of support included in court records. "She justifiably had no time for 'BS-ers' or liars."
Gradually, Druyun's allegiances began to shift as her personal and professional lives became entangled. When her daughter's fiance, Michael McKee, was looking for a job in 2000, she contacted a longtime Boeing associate, Michael M. Sears, the company's chief financial officer, for help, according to court records. McKee was hired for a position in St. Louis. Druyun also helped her daughter, Heather, land a job at Boeing two months later -- a position created for her, the records show.
After years fostering a reputation as the defense contractors' toughest adversary, Druyun felt indebted to Boeing. She then made a series of decisions that were rooted in her sense of gratitude, she told the court.
In 2000, she agreed to increase the size of a Boeing contract for C-17 transport planes by $412 million. Two years later, she restructured the company's program to modernize 18 NATO planes used as airborne command posts, and approved a $100 million payment.
In 2001, Druyun picked Boeing over Lockheed to upgrade the avionics on C-130 transport planes. The decision stunned industry analysts because Lockheed had built the planes and was considered the most probable choice to modernize them. Industry analysts pointed to the competition as proof that Boeing's strategy to apply commercial technology to the military sector was working and that Lockheed was failing to capture the Air Force's imagination.
But Druyun soon had a new boss: Marvin R. Sambur, who managed the $1.5 billion defense business of ITT Industries Inc., was appointed Air Force acquisition chief in late 2001.
Sambur said he was surprised to learn that Druyun, not her subordinates, was deciding the outcome of competitions and contract bonuses, which often made up a company's profit margin. Druyun also hoarded information and kept the decision-making process secret, he said in an interview. He felt, Sambur said, like summer help.
"At the beginning when I came in here, a lot of people in the meetings would look to her to see if she agreed with what I had to say," Sambur said. "The recognition was . . . she's going to be here for a long time and I may be like the other acquisition people who stayed here for a relatively short period of time or didn't have the type of background necessary to run this."
Sambur said he began dismantling Druyun's power. First, he stripped her of the ability to decide competitions, then took away her authority to negotiate final contract terms or change requirements.
With her authority diminished, Druyun told Sambur that she intended to retire. Federal regulations restricted what kind of job Druyun, now the civilian equivalent of a lieutenant general, could take in the defense industry, but she soon forged a handshake agreement to join the executive ranks of Lockheed, the Pentagon's largest contractor.
Meanwhile, Druyun also met with Lockheed's largest rival, Boeing, about a job, according to court documents. She initially used her daughter Heather as intermediary. In e-mails to Sears, Heather said that her mother would consider moving out of Washington but insisted on a position with considerable responsibility.
Druyun soon reneged on her agreement with Lockheed, according to court records, and accepted a position at Boeing as a vice president. She had barely moved in when she became the center of controversy again.
In her final months at the Pentagon, Druyun was the chief negotiator of a $20 billion program to lease, then purchase, Boeing 767s converted into refueling tankers. The proposal had attracted the attention of the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, John McCain (R-Ariz.), who called the proposal a welfare program for Boeing and criticized Sambur and other Air Force officials for their handling of the deal.
Critics said it was more than a coincidence that Druyun, the chief Air Force negotiator, would take a $250,000-a-year job with Boeing. Boeing publicly defended the tanker proposal and its employment of Druyun, but also hired an outside law firm to investigate the hiring. The firm found that the employment talks had occurred while Druyun was overseeing Boeing contracts -- a violation of federal law. Druyun was fired and pleaded guilty, sparing prosecution of her daughter, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Sears, who negotiated Druyun's employment, is scheduled to plead guilty on Monday.
Druyun would still not reveal the entire truth for several months -- and only then after failing two polygraph tests. After initially admitting only to a technical violation -- holding improper employment discussions -- she acknowledged years of preferential treatment of Boeing. She agreed to a higher price on the tanker deal as a "parting gift" to the firm, she told the court.
"Getting to the truth of matters can sometimes be difficult," Druyun's lawyer, John M. Dowd, told the judge before she was sentenced. "There is no denying [Darleen] made a serious mistake and there is no denying she had difficulty coming to grips with certain matters."
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Lawmakers Divided on C.I.A. Chief's Leadership
November 14, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/politics/14cnd-intel.html?hp&ex=1100494800&en=48c782cd50472b4a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 - Amid reports of serious turmoil in the Central Intelligence Agency under the new leadership of Porter Goss, legislators differed sharply today over whether Mr. Goss was bringing needed change to what one Republican senator called a "dysfunctional" and a "rogue" agency or was, as a Democrat said, recklessly driving out capable intelligence veterans.
The controversy erupted as the Congress prepared to return for a post-election session under pressure to reach accord on legislation that would create the powerful post of national director of intelligence, a position for which Mr. Goss would presumably be a top candidate.
John McLaughlin, the agency's No. 2 official, announced his retirement on Friday. He described his retirement, which was expected, as a "purely personal decision."
But current and former intelligence officials said Mr. McLaughlin had warned Mr. Goss that tensions between the new director's staff and officials in the directorate of operations, the most powerful and secretive part of the agency, had reached a dangerous point, The New York Times reported.
Steven Kappes, deputy director of operations, has reportedly threatened to resign. Former C.I.A. officials said tensions in the agency were the worst they had seen in 25 years.
Today, Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, squarely blamed Mr. Goss's staff - some of it brought along from the House, where he had headed that committee - for what she said were missteps in dealing with C.I.A. staff that could produce a "hemorrhage" of experienced officials.
But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the very reasons behind Mr. Goss's appointment to run the powerful agency after all its intelligence failures related to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq was undertaking deeply needed change.
"I think this kind of shakeup is absolutely necessary," Mr. McCain said on the ABC News program "This Week." "One thing that has become abundantly clear, if it wasn't already: this is a dysfunctional agency, and in some ways a rogue agency."
It was Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, who reportedly told President Bush that evidence that Iraq held unconventional weapons was a "slam dunk," or a sure thing, Mr. McCain said. And, the senator added, "We know very little more about North Korea and Iran than we did 10 years ago."
"This agency needs to be reformed," Mr. McCain said, adding, "Porter Goss is on the right track."
But Ms. Harman was particularly pointed in her criticism of Mr. Goss's staff.
"What's going on here, sadly, I think is mostly the product of a highly partisan, inexperienced staff that came over to the C.I.A. with Porter Goss," she said.
She called Mr. Goss "capable" and said he deserved a chance to make changes at the C.I.A.
But to do so, Ms. Harman added, he needed "an experienced staff, and he doesn't have one."
"Many of us worked with that staff in the House," she said. "Frankly, on both sides of the aisle in the committee, we were happy to see them go."
Another Democrat, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, said he hoped the friction in the C.I.A. was not caused by any attempt by Mr. Goss to take a more political approach to intelligence, something other Democratic critics of Mr. Goss had said they feared.
"If that's the issue," said Mr. Levin, a member of the intelligence committee, "then it seems to me that we've got to be very cautious."
Mr. Bush has set an intelligence overhaul as a second-term priority and has urged the House and the Senate to reconcile their differences on legislation.
A point of contention has been whether a new national intelligence director would wield budget control over the bulk of the far-flung United States intelligence community, or whether the Pentagon would keep decisive power over its own large intelligence operations.
Ms. Harman suggested that the resistance was coming largely from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The holdouts are a few members of the majority in the House," she said, "Republican members who are guided by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who continues to oppose reform."
She suggested it was time for President Bush to tell Mr. Rumsfeld "to stand down."
"If that doesn't happen," Ms. Harman added, "the bill is dead."
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CIA plans to purge its agency
Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush
newsday.com
BY KNUT ROYCE
November 14, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia1114,0,707331.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.
"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."
One of the first casualties appears to be Stephen R. Kappes, deputy director of clandestine services, the CIA's most powerful division. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Kappes had tendered his resignation after a confrontation with Goss' chief of staff, Patrick Murray, but at the behest of the White House had agreed to delay his decision till tomorrow.
But the former senior CIA official said that the White House "doesn't want Steve Kappes to reconsider his resignation. That might be the spin they put on it, but they want him out." He said the job had already been offered to the former chief of the European Division who retired after a spat with then-CIA Director George Tenet.
Another recently retired top CIA official said he was unsure Kappes had "officially resigned, but I do know he was unhappy."
Without confirming or denying that the job offer had been made, a CIA spokesman asked Newsday to withhold naming the former officer because of his undercover role over the years. He said he had no comment about Goss' personnel plans, but he added that changes at the top are not unusual when new directors come in.
On Friday John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year veteran of the intelligence division who served as acting CIA director before Goss took over, announced that he was retiring. The spokesman said that the retirement had been planned and was unrelated to the Kappes resignation or to other morale problems inside the CIA.
It could not be learned yesterday if the White House had identified Kappes, a respected operations officer, as one of the officials "disloyal" to Bush.
"The president understands and appreciates the sacrifices made by the members of the intelligence community in the war against terrorism," said a White House official of the report that he was purging the CIA of "disloyal" officials. " . . . The suggestion [that he ordered a purge] is inaccurate."
But another former CIA official who retains good contacts within the agency said that Goss and his top aides, who served on his staff when Goss was chairman of the House intelligence committee, believe the agency had relied too much over the years on liaison work with foreign intelligence agencies and had not done enough to develop its own intelligence collection system.
"Goss is not a believer in liaison work," said this retired official. But, he said, the CIA's "best intelligence really comes from liaison work. The CIA is simply not going to develop the assets [agents and case officers] that would meet the intelligence requirements."
Tensions between the White House and the CIA have been the talk of the town for at least a year, especially as leaks about the mishandling of the Iraq war have dominated front pages.
Some of the most damaging leaks came from Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, who wrote a book anonymously called "Imperial Hubris" that criticized what he said was the administration's lack of resolve in tracking down the al-Qaida chieftain and the reallocation of intelligence and military manpower from the war on terrorism to the war in Iraq. Scheuer announced Thursday that he was resigning from the agency.
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Brass defends ongoing intelligence from Gitmo
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Guy Taylor
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041114-125413-4233r.htm
Military officials at Guantanamo Bay aggressively defend the "tremendous" intelligence value of detainees held at the naval base despite a legal battle over the detainees' rights and critics who say information from men imprisoned nearly three years is, at best, dated.
"Detainees under our charge right now have provided us tremendous insight and intelligence regarding how terrorist organizations recruit, fund, train and plan, and how they have the ability to compartmentalize information, operations and projects," said Army Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Guantanamo prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
Held at the prison are about 550 detainees, the vast majority captured in Afghanistan in the months after the September 11 attacks during the U.S.-led campaign to topple the al Qaeda-backing Taliban regime.
Gen. Hood, who spoke last week with reporters at Guantanamo, said intelligence gleaned during interrogation sessions "has been of extraordinary value to the United States as we take on terrorist organizations as enemies of our country."
But some intelligence authorities question the motivation behind continuing to interrogate men imprisoned in near-solitary confinement for nearly three years.
"The longer you keep these people, the less valuable they become," said Melvin A. Goodwin, a former CIA senior analyst. "They get socialized, they figure out what kind of answers interrogators want and they provide them.
"If you don't get [good intelligence] in an initial go-round, chances are you're never going to get it," said Mr. Goodwin, who heads the National Security Program at the Center for International Policy, an advocacy group for international cooperation, demilitarization and human rights.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official who was involved with interrogations in the Near East, said that "the thing to remember is that information is amazingly perishable."
"When they are talking about holding people three years after the fact and still getting information from them, I just don't believe that," said Mr. Giraldi, who previously was an Army intelligence case officer. "The men at Gitmo probably know little or nothing about the current practices in al Qaeda."
Gen. Hood acknowledged that intelligence pulled from detainees "is far more on the strategic side than the specific-action side," meaning it cannot be used to guide immediate arrests or military action.
But he defended its relevance, suggesting that some nonmilitary agencies depend on it. Each week, he said, agencies from across the U.S. government send "hundreds of individual requests for information associated with the detainees under our control."
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert L. Maginnis said it makes sense other agencies would be hungry for information drawn from such a religious, cultural, ethnic and historic reservoir.
"We really do not, even three years after 9/11, have a thorough understanding of some of the complexities of the enemy that's out there, especially as they involve cultural, tribal, ethnic and religious issues," Col. Maginnis said.
From a strategic standpoint, he said, the detainees could be valuable in piecing together information about the relationship between terrorist organizations and certain Middle East governments.
However, Mr. Giraldi dismissed the notion that such intelligence is coming from the detainees.
"Strategic intelligence is information that enables you to connect the dots in a broad-brush way," he said. "The problem is that even strategic information becomes less and less useful with the passage of time."
He added that a more realistic motivation behind continuing to interrogate detainees is their usefulness in "training and testing interrogators" on live subjects.
Mr. Goodwin agreed it is highly unlikely the detainees are providing "anything of strategic value." Strategic intelligence, he said, would consist of "longer-term motivations of the organizations they come from, what is the agenda of these groups, what motivates them."
He said men held at Guantanamo would not have such information about al Qaeda because they were captured as low-level foot soldiers during battle in Afghanistan.
"This was just a grab bag. They were just scooping people up off the battlefield," he said, adding that truly valuable al Qaeda suspects such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed - the mastermind of September 11 - are not held at Guantanamo. The government will not say where Mohammed is being interrogated.
Other top terrorists - such as Hambali, who headed the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group in Asia and is believed responsible for the 2002 bombings that killed hundreds in a Bali nightclub in Indonesia - reportedly are held at the U.S. military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
Mr. Goodwin complained of the "borderline torture" of some Guantanamo detainees. The Pentagon has acknowledged some abuses, including an incident in which a female interrogator removed her uniform top, stripped down to her T-shirt and "ran her fingers through the detainee's hair and sat on his lap." In other cases, detainees were made to kneel for extended periods.
Human rights groups condemn such tactics. Compounding the situation is a legal battle over the rights of detainees to challenge their detention.
Calling the detainees "enemy combatants" undeserving of protection under the Geneva Conventions, the administration intends to try many in special war-crimes tribunals.
But that plan was dealt a blow Monday when a federal judge in the District ruled that President Bush overstepped his authority in classifying detainees eligible for the tribunals, intended to be the first of their kind since World War II.
The administration vowed to appeal.
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DIPLOMACY
U.S. and U.N. Renew Quarrel Over Iraq
November 14, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/international/14annan.html?pagewanted=all&position=
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 12 - Secretary General Kofi Annan's reluctance to commit staff members to Iraq in large numbers and a series of comments he has made about the war have strained relations with the Bush administration and left many Americans bewildered, according to both supporters and critics of the United Nations.
Mr. Annan withdrew international staff members from Iraq in October 2003 in the wake of attacks on relief workers and the bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters, which killed 22 people, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello. Although the United Nations has been assigned the task of setting up elections scheduled for January, Mr. Annan has declined to send more than a handful of electoral workers to Iraq, citing the lack of security forces to protect them.
"The Iraqis and the Americans are completely frustrated," said a senior American official at the United Nations, reporting views he said he heard in the White House this week. "The secretary general is still recommending many thousands of peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and the Congo, and yet there are seven election workers in Iraq. That tells the whole story."
This official said that warnings were resurfacing at the White House that the United Nations was risking becoming irrelevant and that such comments were now being combined with a dismissive attitude toward Mr. Annan himself.
"We're beyond anger," the official said. "We won re-election, Kofi's term is up in '06 and though we have been asking him to define the U.N. role in Iraq, he is thumbing his nose at us."
William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association of the United States, acknowledged concern among the organization's backers. "I think a lot of Americans who are very sympathetic to the U.N. are confused with this last phase," he said.
"Most Americans don't really take into account the rule-of-law aspects of international behavior," Mr. Luers said. "We generally think what we do is right and in a certain sense we set the rules. Nonetheless, the world doesn't see it that way, and I think Kofi is talking to that world. I think he almost has to be where he is, but it's a tough time for him among Americans."
In an interview Thursday night at his office overlooking the East River, Mr. Annan said he was distressed by the criticism.
"I have tried to be as helpful as possible, and I have stated at every opportunity that the stabilization of Iraq is everyone's responsibility," Mr. Annan said. "I have argued that regardless of one's position on the war, we must all come together to stabilize Iraq."
At issue are three recent actions by Mr. Annan. In September, he suggested in a BBC interview that the war in Iraq was "illegal." He barred lawyers with the United Nations war crimes tribunal from taking part in training sessions last month for Iraqi judges and prosecutors who will be trying Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi leaders. And two weeks ago he sent a letter to the United States, British and Iraqi governments warning that a military assault on Falluja could further alienate Iraqis and undermine the elections scheduled for January.
"All of these actions were unhelpful," said Rich Williamson, who was a deputy United States ambassador to the United Nations from 2001 to 2003. "Iraq is a place where the U.N. could show that it can make a valuable and important contribution, but it is just hurting itself in not helping the Iraqi people and sitting on the sidelines."
Further jeopardizing Mr. Annan's image in American eyes are the allegations of corruption and a cover-up in the scandal-ridden oil-for-food program and the intense anger on Capitol Hill at the refusal of the independent investigation headed by Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, to share documents with the various Congressional committees conducting their own inquiries.
Officials in Mr. Annan's office say they fear a return to the mood of the 1980's when the United States, the organization's single biggest donor, reacted to Congressional displeasure with the United Nations by withholding payments.
In the interview, Mr. Annan denied that he was being obstructionist over Iraq, and he contended that the United Nations had been instrumental in selecting the interim Iraqi government and had succeeded in training 6,000 election registrars and opening up hundreds of registration places across the country, despite a low number of United Nations staff members now in Baghdad.
Asked if he was under pressure from countries opposed to the war not to cooperate with the Americans, he replied: "Actually, it's the other way around. I am the one who is always telling governments, including those that did not support the war, that the civilization of Iraq is everyone's business because we cannot have a chaotic Iraq in the middle of that region."
He said he had had little success in persuading any countries to contribute troops to a 4,000-member force called for in a Security Council resolution in June that was intended to protect the United Nations and allow it to increase its presence in Iraq. Asked why countries were resisting, he said, "I think they are concerned about the security situation, and they probably have their own public opinion and parliaments to convince."
He said he was concerned about the damage to the United Nations' reputation caused by the oil-for-food scandal and accusations that he was being passive in reacting to it. But he said his interest in protecting the integrity of the Volcker investigation and his obligation to maintain its independence prevented him from taking any individual action.
As for the requests from Congressional committees for records and documents, he said, "It's a bit like having a case in court in New York, and you have several other courts from other places that want to deal with the same case."
Speaking of his directive preventing United Nations judicial officials from helping to create the Iraqi courts, he noted that there was no Security Council mandate for such assistance and cited the organization's formal opposition to judicial systems that include the death penalty. "As you know," he said, "quite a few members of this organization won't even extradite someone to a country where the death penalty exists."
With the United States pressuring him to increase the United Nations presence in Iraq and with the unions representing the world body's 60,000 employees around the globe demanding that the organization leave Iraq all together, Mr. Annan said he had to find creative ways to maintain a balance. "At least we are there, and many others are not there," he said.
"Without being boastful," he said, "I think that except for these activities of ours, we would not have moved as far as we have, whether it was the establishment of an interim Iraqi government or the preparation for the elections. I think our role has been essential, and not one that is played by an organization that is irrelevant."
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Army Sets Hearing on Rape Accusation
November 14, 2004
By COREY KILGANNON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/nyregion/14army.html
An Army lieutenant will face an investigative hearing next week concerning an accusation that he raped a female officer from New Jersey who has refused to return to duty, the Army said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Richard Steele said that the lieutenant, Michael R. Hall of the 278th Regimental Combat Team, must appear at a hearing on Tuesday at Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Miss. Lt. Jennifer Dyer, 26, a member of the 250th Signal Battalion, has accused him of raping her.
Military officials said that Lieutenant Hall would not comment.
Lieutenant Dyer, who is in the New Jersey Army National Guard, was accused by the Army of being AWOL over the last two months because she refused to return to Camp Shelby, saying her attacker was still on the base. The Army later said that she could report to any other military installation, but Lieutenant Dyer said she wanted to quit the service.
Her fiancé, Edward Ottepka, a police officer, said in a telephone interview yesterday, "She refused to go back because he was still there."
"They treated her like the criminal, and now they want her to return so they can continue mistreating her," said Mr. Ottepka, a former marine. He said that Army officials had called Lieutenant Dyer, who is also a police officer, and ordered her to go to a base for a psychiatric evaluation but that she had refused.
Colonel Steele said the Army intended to offer her "counseling" appropriate for anyone who believes they have been sexually abused. He declined to say whether her request to be discharged would be granted. "She's AWOL," he said, "and we can't do anything until she reports."
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Wary Texans Keep Their Eyes on the Compound of a Polygamous Sect
November 14, 2004
By SIMON ROMERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/national/14texas.html
ELDORADO, Tex. - David Doran, the Schleicher County sheriff, drives his truck almost every week to the outskirts of town and gazes at the 1,700-acre compound through a pair of binoculars. On most of his stakeouts, Sheriff Doran receives a call on his cellphone from a guard in the compound's watchtower asking if anything is amiss.
"I just tell him I'm on business, just checking things out," Sheriff Doran said recently. "I tell them they have a right to be here and that their rights will be respected, but that doesn't mean I won't be vigilant."
Eldorado's vigilance regarding its new neighbors, however, is bordering on obsession these days. Nearly everyone in this town of 1,900 people on the arid West Texas plains 125 miles southeast of Odessa is wondering about the community that has been established by the members of an Arizona-based offshoot of the Mormon Church, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The sect split from the Mormon Church about 70 years ago after Mormon leaders officially renounced polygamy. Members of the sect continue to practice polygamy.
Leaders of the sect bought the ranch late last year in an effort to settle some families away from their larger community, in Colorado City, Ariz., just south of the Utah border.
The sect called its new compound the Yearning for Zion Ranch. After arriving in Eldorado at the start of the year, the ranch's residents set up a limestone quarry on the property and began to put up several large buildings. Pilots of airplanes that take off from Eldorado's small airstrip can see concrete foundations being laid for a large community. "They're obviously clean, meticulous, very hardworking people," said J. D. Doyle, a pilot who regularly flies over the flatlands around Eldorado, where Yearning for Zion was cleared from a landscape normally dotted with juniper trees. "I think we'd all just like to know what they're planning on doing here."
A lack of communication from the sect is not helping calm nerves here. Its members are often hesitant to communicate with outsiders, whom they call gentiles, and they do not grant interviews to journalists. Representatives have told Eldorado officials that residents at the ranch do practice polygamy. Here and in other areas of the United States, the church's male followers have generally avoided prosecution under antipolygamy laws by legally registering only one of their wives.
It is not clear how many residents are at the ranch now, but local estimates run from 50 to 100. Eldoradans say they sometimes run into residents of the ranch at the Texaco Star Shop filling their trucks with gasoline, but small talk is scant. The men, in jeans and long-sleeve shirts, and the women, in long skirts, rarely return greetings or make eye contact, residents say.
In Colorado City, meanwhile, recent fissures within the group have led to theories that its leader and self-proclaimed prophet, Warren Jeffs, may be searching for a new home for many of his estimated 6,000 followers. Mr. Jeffs, said by former church members to have more than 30 wives, recently expelled more than a dozen men from the sect over their criticism of his leadership.
Mr. Jeffs is also facing legal challenges as the target of sexual abuse investigations by Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff. The sect's lawyer and spokesman in Salt Lake City, Rodney Parker, warned against a "hysterical reaction" to developments within the church or at the settlement in Eldorado.
"The worst thing is when people start comparing this to a potential Waco, something that is completely unfounded," Mr. Parker said in a telephone interview, referring to the 1993 standoff between federal agents and Branch Davidian cult members that ended in a fire and about 80 deaths.
"They just do not want any attention,'' Mr. Parker added. "They want to live quiet lives."
In an effort to learn more about the newcomers, Sheriff Doran and his deputy, George Arispe, visited Colorado City in May, meeting with local police officials there. Since then, he said, he has learned that members of the sect had sold some of their land in Arizona as part of a plan to move families to Eldorado and another settlement in Mancos, Colo.
The sect and similar Mormon offshoot groups that practice polygamy have already established communities at Bountiful in British Columbia and near the town of Galeana in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.
The interest in more information about Yearning for Zion has made it the lead article in nearly every issue since March of The Eldorado Success, a weekly newspaper owned by Randy Mankin, a former city administrator for Eldorado. Mr. Mankin said he was concerned about the impact the ranch might have on Eldorado's politics if its residents began registering to vote in local elections.
"Can you imagine 500 or 1,000 new voters in a county with an electorate of only 1,300 or so?" Mr. Mankin said, adding, "They could run things around here if they chose to."
Not everyone in Eldorado is so concerned, though outright support for Yearning for Zion is nearly impossible to find. "This country was founded on religious freedom," said Susan Buchholz, a sculptor who moved to Eldorado from Austin. "Everyone needs to temper their views when it comes to our new neighbors."
Such sentiment appears to be in the minority in Eldorado, a community that depends a great deal on revenue from deer hunting season. So far, the sect's only brush with the law came in February when Sheriff Doran fined one of its members for killing a deer out of season, a common infraction here.
"Warren Jeffs seems like an unstable guy," said Jim Runge, a local entrepreneur who has tried to draw tourists to Eldorado with an event each spring called the Elgoatarod, modeled on the Iditarod sled-dog race in Alaska but involving goats pulling carts around the courthouse square. "Maybe they'll implode before taking over our little corner of the world."
-------- immigration / refugees
Bush Faces Early Test on Immigration Policy
November 14, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-politics-immigration.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush faces an early test on immigration policy this week as Congress considers legislation denounced by Latino groups as anti-Hispanic and anti-immigrant.
Several provisions that would affect the lives of immigrants and asylum seekers found their way into a bill passed by the House of Representatives to reform the nation's intelligence services.
The bill stems directly from recommendations by the bipartisan commission which investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The Senate version of the bill does not contain these immigration clauses.
House and Senate conferees will try once again to reconcile their differing bills when Congress reconvenes for a lame duck session this week. The White House is on record as strongly opposing some of the House provisions but it remains to be seen whether Bush is willing to expend any political capital by putting pressure on Republican legislators to drop them.
``The House Republicans think they have a strong hand on this and seem ready to go to the mat. They seem to want to paint immigrants as the bad guys in the war on terror,'' said Angela Kelley of the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigration group.
Opponents of the House bill say it would make it more difficult for refugees to obtain political asylum in the United States by raising the standards of proof required. It would also make it easier for the authorities to deport non-citizens, including legal residents.
``The bill is the biggest assault we have ever seen on political asylum. If passed, it would make it incredibly difficult for anyone to be granted asylum in this country,'' said Erin Corcoran of Human Rights First.
The bill also seeks to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers' licenses and would withdraw recognition of ID cards issued by Latin American embassies that many immigrants carry that now allow them to open bank accounts, obtain drivers licenses and even board aircraft.
Mexico has issued over 2 million of the cards, known as the ``matricula consular'' to its nationals, whether they are in the United States legally or illegally, and several other Latin American countries also issue ID cards.
LATINOS DENOUNCE BILL
Four major Latino organizations issued a joint statement last month denouncing the provisions as ``anti-Latino and anti-immigrant.''
``These provisions will have a profound, negative impact on Latinos and other immigrants communities. They will not make us safer and, in fact, may make us less safe by driving a wedge between American communities and law enforcement,'' they said.
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a leading advocate of the bill, said all its provisions stemmed directly from the report of the 9/11 Commission.
``The legislation enhances security around our borders, and reduces opportunities for terrorists to enter and stay in the United States,'' he said. ``Every provision in this bill that is within the Judiciary Committee's jurisdiction, is tied directly to a specific recommendation made by the 9/11 Commission.''
Dan Stein of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors reducing immigration, said the provisions would close loopholes in the nation's defenses by making it easier to identify, track and deport illegal immigrants.
But the 9/11 Commission itself said the immigration clauses were not part of its report.
``We believe strongly that this bill is not the right occasion for tackling controversial immigration and law enforcement issues that go well beyond the Commission's recommendations,'' Commission chair Thomas Kean and vice chair Lee Hamilton said in a letter last month.
Bush won 44 percent of the fast-growing Hispanic vote in the Nov. 2 presidential election, up from 35 percent in 2000 according to exit polls. His administration has said it wants to make immigration reform a major focus of his second term.
However, there is a strong element in the Republican Party that opposes any concessions to illegal immigrants and would like to see restrictions placed on legal immigration as well.
-------- terrorism
Groups, U.S. Battle Over 'Global Terrorist' Label
By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48156-2004Nov13?language=printer
Three years ago, two dozen FBI agents raided the headquarters of the Global Relief Foundation outside Chicago, the second-largest Islamic charity in the United States. Without a warrant, they stripped it clean of records and froze $900,000 in assets.
The same day, NATO troops searched the charity's offices halfway across the world in Kosovo, the strife-torn southern province of Serbia. A NATO statement cited "intelligence information" that some Global Relief officials may have been "planning attacks against targets in the U.S.A. and Europe."
It was another 10 months before the U.S. Treasury Department officially designated the charity a supporter of terrorism, citing links to Osama bin Laden. By then, Global Relief was already out of business.
"Our organization is dead and gone and cannot be revived now," said Roger C. Simmons, the charity's lawyer.
The designation process has set off an intense debate between attorneys for several Islamic charities in the United States, who say their clients are being denied normal U.S. legal protections, and government officials, who say that the designations are being carefully managed and reflect the realities of the post-9/11 world.
As of today, neither Global Relief nor any of its officials have been charged with a crime. Charity officials have also not had a chance to confront all of the government's evidence linking the group to terrorism. The classified evidence remains out of reach, and much of the unclassified evidence turned out to be allegations in newspaper clippings.
Global Relief is one of three Islamic charities that were forced to shut down before they were formally declared "specially designated global terrorists" as part of the U.S. government's three-year-old campaign to starve terrorists of funds. So far, more than 390 groups and individuals have been designated supporters or financiers of terrorism under the program -- meaning they are subject to seizure of assets and prevented from doing business with anyone without government permission.
The government's treatment of Global Relief and other charities "raises substantial civil liberties concerns," said a report on terrorist financing that the 9/11 commission published in late August. Being able to freeze assets of a group pending an investigation "is a powerful weapon with potentially dangerous applications when applied to domestic institutions."
Because U.S. authorities face enormous obstacles in gathering evidence usable in court, the report found, the Treasury designations were being based on more nebulous "links" to terrorists rather than hard proof of "funding." The report said attorneys for charities such as Global Relief -- "experienced lawyers steeped in the federal courts' rules of evidence and due process" -- found the designations "manifestly unfair," citing the use of classified evidence and material that would normally be considered hearsay.
A Treasury official said the government believes it is on firm legal ground. Global Relief failed in appealing the freeze on constitutional grounds. A federal judge who reviewed the classified evidence concluded that there was "probable cause to believe Global Relief and the executive director were agents of a foreign power." The charity now awaits a hearing on the merits of the government's evidence.
"The designation process, including the ability to block [funds] pending investigation, is a very important tool used to combat terrorist dollars," Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said.
Of the 20 groups or individuals who have tried to get their designation overturned, only seven have succeeded, six of them coming out of a single case. The rest face what amounts to a life sentence, their lawyers said.
"Once designated, there is no time limit for when the designation runs out," said Stanton D. Anderson, a Washington lawyer who until last month represented Saudi businessman Yasin al-Qadi, who was designated shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks. "It's a lifetime bar. That's pretty draconian."
The charity lawyers complain that there is no legal definition of a "specially designated global terrorist." Millerwise provided a fact sheet from the State Department's counterterrorism office stating that a global terrorist is anyone determined "to assist in, sponsor, or provide financial, material or technological support for" anyone engaged in terrorism or designated as a terrorist supporter.
Charity lawyers and their supporters say that definition is so sweeping and vague that it is virtually meaningless.
"If the category has no definition, then how would a group who challenges the designation know what it is?" asked Georgetown Law Center professor David Cole, who is involved in a California case. "It's whatever the government says it is."
Juan Zarate, Treasury's assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said in an interview that the government had used its powers to freeze assets sparingly and been upheld by the courts.
"If they looked at these cases, the American people would certainly support the way we've used it," Zarate said. Questionable Ties
Six weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. The legislation broadened presidential authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows a president to determine an "extraordinary threat" from abroad and impose sanctions. The act had been primarily used to take economic measures against "rogue nations" such as Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Libya.
Designations under the act are formally determined by the secretaries of state or treasury in consultation with a high-level interagency committee. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control compiles the information to support the designations, implements sanctions and forwards names to the United Nations, which marks them as international pariahs.
So far, Treasury has not succeeded in obtaining a terrorist conviction against any of the three charities whose assets were frozen pending investigation -- Global Relief, Benevolence International Foundation and al Haramain Islamic Foundation. Only one charity official has been convicted on any criminal charge -- Enaam Arnaout, executive director of Illinois-based Benevolence. He pleaded guilty in February 2003 to fraudulent diversion of $316,000 in donations to Chechen and Bosnian combatants and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
One cited example in the Sept. 11 terrorism financing report involved the designation in November 2001 of Al Barakaat, a worldwide network of money remitters centered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and used mainly by immigrants from Somalia.
Federal agents raided eight of Al Barakaat's U.S. offices and froze their assets. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill called Al Barakaat the "quartermasters of terror" and "a principal source of funding, intelligence and money transfers for bin Laden."
In an unprecedented display of cooperation, the UAE central bank gave U.S. investigators unfettered access to Al Barakaat's records, turning over 17,000 pages of documents.
The result: "The FBI could not substantiate any links between al-Barakaat and terrorism," the 9/11 commission stated. A Look at the Evidence
Global Relief, with its headquarters in Bridgeview, Ill., had raised $5.2 million in 2001 and claimed "over 20,000 contributors" and a mailing list of more than 250,000 people, according to court documents. It had aid programs in 22 countries including hot spots such as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Chechnya. After the charity's assets were frozen on Dec. 14, 2001, it appealed to the courts and Treasury.
In June 2002, an Illinois federal court sided with the government. "As a general principle," wrote U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen, "this court should avoid impairment of decisions made by the Congress or President in matters involving foreign affairs or national security."
Global Relief's lawyers have been fighting for years to obtain all of the evidence against their client, classified and unclassified. In late March 2002, Treasury turned over four large volumes containing unclassified materials seized from Global Relief's U.S. offices and other evidence. A Post reporter who reviewed the materials found that they included 61 newspaper articles dating back to 1999.
"We found ourselves trying to rebut newspaper reports from around the world," Simmons said.
Not until Simmons had read the 9/11 commission's terrorist financing report in late August did he get a glimpse of the government's classified evidence: various internal FBI documents predating the Sept. 11 attacks.
One memo from 2000 said that "although the majority of GRF funding goes toward legitimate relief operations, a significant percentage is diverted to fund extremist causes." The FBI agents had been unable to substantiate this, however. "The money trail generally stopped at the U.S. border, and the agents could never trace it directly to jihadists or terrorists," the monograph said.
The report also disclosed that U.S. intelligence agencies had records of phone calls between the director of the Global Relief's branch in Belgium and Wadih el-Hage, bin Laden's personal secretary who was convicted for his role in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Simmons provided Treasury with an affidavit from the director in question, Nabil Sayadi, who stated he had talked to el-Hage a number of times between 1995 and 1997. The reason, he said, was that el-Hage wanted Global Relief to fund a malaria eradication project in Kenya and a scheme to import sesame seeds from Sudan. Sayadi said he rejected both ideas.
In the end, the report's authors, who were given access to Treasury's internal documents supporting the designation, agonized over the dilemma posed by the charities: "There may not have been a smoking gun proving that these entities funded terrorism, but the evidence of their links to terrorists and jihadists is significant."
But in conclusion, the report asked whether the destruction of Global Relief and Benevolence had been worth the price: "Did it enhance the security of the United States or was it a feckless act that violated civil rights with no real gain in security?" The Chechnya Connection
Three months after it froze Global Relief's assets, Treasury targeted a Saudi government-supported charity, al Haramain Islamic Foundation. It operated in 50 countries, providing health care and welfare assistance, and proselytizing for Wahhabism, the kingdom's strict Islamic official creed.
In March 2002, Treasury designated al Haramain offices in Somalia and Bosnia as financiers for terrorists, and prevailed upon the Saudis and local governments to close them, presenting the Saudis with U.S. intelligence on the charity's "ties to terrorism," the Sept. 11 monograph stated.
One by one, al Haramain's branches in Africa, Asia and European were designated and closed. The assets of the branch office in Ashland, Ore., were frozen in February.
Al Haramain's Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, asked Treasury for the evidence against her client. She said she received mainly articles from newspapers and policy journals.
Treasury also sent the affidavit of an IRS agent who outlined how he had tracked hundreds of thousands of dollars moved by the charity's Saudi treasurer, Soliman Albuthi. The agent said Albuthi had failed to declare $130,000 in traveler's checks when he traveled from the United States to Saudi Arabia in March 2000.
The agent concluded that the money was destined for Chechen rebels battling Russia.
In reply, Bernabei submitted Saudi and Russian documents showing that Albuthi had deposited the money with the charity's headquarters in Riyadh. The funds were used to finance aid to Chechen refugees, an act that had been officially approved by both Saudi Arabia and Russia, according to documents provided by Bernabei.
Bernabei was in the process of delivering the documents to Treasury on Sept. 9 when Treasury designated Albuthi and al Haramain's Oregon office -- nine months after the initial freeze.
For the first time, Bernabei learned that the U.S. government believed there were "direct links" between the Oregon office and bin Laden. The Treasury statement said U.S. intelligence showed donations to Chechen refugees "were diverted to support mujahideen as well as Chechen leaders affiliated with the al Qaeda network."
In an e-mail sent from his home in Riyadh, Albuthi denied supporting terrorists. "I just bring the money from US to fundraiser in SA and I got a receipt from the cashier with notice that this is for our Muslim brothers and sisters in Chechnya," he wrote.
Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
--------
A Radical Who Remained Just Out of Reach
Suspect in Madrid Attacks Moved Freely in Europe
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47519-2004Nov13?language=printer
SAARBRUECKEN, Germany -- Shortly after departing this southwestern German city on a Paris-bound train, a mysterious foreigner was pulled aside by police at the French border. The passenger claimed to be Palestinian, but carried no identification. He wouldn't say where he was going, or why.
Assuming they had caught an illegal immigrant looking for a better life in Europe, German authorities jailed the Arabic-speaking man in June 1999 and prepared to deport him. But they were unable to confirm his identity or figure out where to send him, so they moved him to a loosely supervised asylum camp for illegal immigrants. Officials there paid little attention when he vanished two weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.
The man who would later be code-named "Mohamed the Egyptian" by his Islamic radical friends resumed his illegal travels across Europe in 2001, taking advantage of the continent's open borders to move freely among Germany, Spain, France, Italy and possibly other countries.
Over the next three years, investigators say, he recruited volunteers for suicide missions, frequented fundamentalist mosques and played a key role in planning the biggest terror attack on European soil, the train bombings in Madrid on March 11 this year.
All along, Mohamed -- whose legal name is Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed -- was able to dodge police and counterterrorism officials in at least three countries. They repeatedly put him on watch lists under a variety of names, but failed to figure out what he was up to, according to interviews with European investigators and a review of court and immigration documents.
"I know who they are, but they don't know who I am," the former Egyptian army officer said to a friend in Milan this past June, shortly before he was arrested by Italian police, who had been recording his conversations. "You confuse them, they won't know where you came from. . . . You're clandestine, but you move around with no problem."
The case highlights Europe's weakest defense in its fight against terrorism: As the continent removes internal barriers to trade and travel, Islamic militants find it easier to move around undetected. When they do attract notice, cell members can often stay a step ahead of the law by changing their names or slipping across borders, aided by long-standing bureaucratic and legal obstacles that prevent European counterterrorism officials from working together more closely.
"They are able to exploit the weaknesses that exist in our system," said Joerg Ziercke, president of the Bundeskriminalamt, Germany's federal law enforcement agency. "They change routes, go across borders. We must close the gaps that we have in our information systems, and we must ensure that terrorists do not use one country as a haven while they are acting in another country."
European leaders have moved to address the vulnerabilities by adopting such measures as common legal standards that make it easier to issue arrest warrants and extradition orders across the continent. But they have had a tough time reaching consensus on many other proposed reforms. Europe has also struggled to overcome resistance among counterterrorism agencies to share sensitive information with neighboring countries or cooperate on prosecutions.
For instance, France has been trying for nine years to extradite Rachid Ramda, a suspect in the 1995 fatal bombing of a Paris Metro station. Ramda is in custody in London, but his case remains tied up in the British courts.
Another breakdown in cooperation surfaced last month, when Spanish police said the ringleader of a cell suspected of plotting to blow up the Supreme Court building in Madrid was being held in a Swiss jail. At first, Swiss authorities denied they had custody of the suspect, Mohamed Achraf, but then acknowledged they did.
Swiss intelligence officials later said they had suspected Achraf of ties to Islamic radicals in Spain but didn't notify Swiss police or the Spanish government. Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher blamed the mix-up on "an information breakdown."
Antonio Vitorino, former European commissioner for justice and home affairs, called the Madrid bombings "a wake-up call" that underscores the need to eliminate old rivalries among the many intelligence and law enforcement agencies in Europe that fight terrorism.
"We cannot fix this overnight," Vitorino said to a group of journalists at a dinner in Brussels last summer, shortly before leaving office. "The sharing of intelligence among member states is still far from desirable. . . . We Europeans are all equally targeted by the terrorist threat, and we all should be equally involved in fighting it." A Natural Leader
The asylum camp in Lebach, Germany, has enough cinder-block apartments to house about 1,500 immigrants. They are mainly North Africans, Turks and Palestinians. Most stay a few months as they wait for German authorities to decide whether they can remain in the country for the long term.
On Sept. 13, 2000, a man calling himself Mohamed Abdul Hadi Fayad arrived at the camp after spending a year in jail and quickly assumed a leadership role among the residents. He presented their grievances to camp authorities. He spoke Arabic, English and Spanish, which made him useful as an interpreter. He also put together a makeshift mosque and led prayers during Ramadan.
"He called himself 'the Imam,' " recalled Barbara Paulus, a case worker at the camp in Lebach, a town of about 22,000 near the regional capital of Saarbruecken. "We didn't have any problems with him. The others respected him. He reported their problems and talked to us on their behalf."
Fayad was an anonymous foreigner who had been arrested a year earlier on his way to Paris. Soon after the arrest, he requested asylum. Though he had no papers, he identified himself as a stateless Palestinian who had been living in Lebanon. He said he arrived in Europe in April 1999 on a flight to Frankfurt and had been staying with a friend there.
The German government usually grants asylum as a matter of policy to Palestinians, but officials were unable to verify Fayad's story. Lebanese and Palestinian authorities said they could not confirm his identity and suspected he might be North African, according to a German law enforcement official involved in the case.
Immigration officials denied Fayad's asylum request. But Germany could not deport him because officials didn't know where to send him. That situation is common in Germany, where about one in 20 asylum seekers is unable to verify their claimed nationality.
With his case in limbo, Fayad remained at the Lebach camp for almost a year. Residents are forbidden from leaving the local area, but they are not confined or closely monitored. As a practical matter, camp officials say, there is little they can do to make sure people stay.
So it didn't strike anyone as unusual when Fayad vanished. He was last seen in the camp on Aug. 29, 2001, when he came to the main office to pick up his twice-weekly food rations. Three weeks later, immigration officials notified the Lebach town hall that Fayad was no longer a resident and crossed his name off their case list.
"Each month, a lot of people disappear here," said Paulus, the case worker. "I don't know how they do it, but each month we have to close a lot of files." Always on the Move
Investigators have since established that the man had left the camp before, traveling across Europe under a variety of identities and passports.
In January 2001, he was seen with Islamic radicals in Madrid, police reported. Six months later, he applied for a residency permit in the Spanish capital under the name Rabei Osman el Sayed Ahmed, producing an Egyptian passport as proof of identity, according to a German law enforcement official involved in the case.
On Sept. 6, 2001, a few days after he left Germany for good, he visited the Egyptian Embassy in Madrid and applied for a duplicate passport, saying he had lost his old one, the official said. That is a common trick in producing false identity documents -- the old passport is altered and given to someone else.
Soon after the visit, Ahmed attracted renewed attention in Germany and Spain, but for different reasons.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, German authorities investigated thousands of fundamentalist Muslims in the country to determine if any had ties to the Hamburg cell that planned the hijackings.
As part of this sweep, they reexamined the case of the stateless Palestinian who turned out to be Ahmed, prompted by people in the Lebach camp who noted he had disappeared a few days before Sept. 11 and seemed extreme in his religious beliefs. Investigators later determined he was not connected to the attacks, German officials said.
Meanwhile, in Madrid, Spanish counterterrorism officials opened a separate investigation into Ahmed in December 2001 after they noticed that he was in frequent contact with members of a suspected cell of Islamic radicals, court papers show. One month later, Spanish investigators notified German law enforcement officials that they had Ahmed under surveillance and requested information about his background, according to reports compiled by German diplomats in Madrid.
While Spanish police kept an eye on Ahmed, he worked as a painter in Madrid and married a Tunisian woman, according to investigators and a former roommate. He was apparently aware that he was being monitored and tried to keep low.
In a later conversation taped by Italian investigators, Ahmed told a friend that he spent years planning the Madrid attacks and had to be very cautious.
"In Spain I used different nationalities: Jordan, Egyptian, Palestinian, Syrian," he said. "Until my friends said it was enough -- I should be careful or I'll get caught. . . . After 9/11, I was forced to move everything from Spain to Paris, because in Spain, there was a lot of movement from the secret service." Keeping a Low Profile
Ahmed left Madrid for Paris in February 2003. French investigators said he spent five months there, again working as a painter and frequenting a mosque in an immigrant neighborhood. How often he went is unclear. A cleric at the mosque, a two-story beige building with bars on the windows, said he didn't recall seeing Ahmed. "I've been working here for 15 years, but I never knew him," Ahmed Abou Hachem said.
Few other details have emerged about Ahmed's stay in France. But while he was in Paris, he again attracted fresh interest in a neighboring country.
In April 2003, German prosecutors opened another investigation into his activities. Frauke-Katrin Scheuten, a spokeswoman for the German prosecutor's office, said the case remained open now but declined to say what prompted it.
Ahmed returned to Madrid from Paris in July 2003. Four months later, Spanish police issued a report warning that they were investigating "the structure of a possible al Qaeda cell in Spain" headed by Ahmed, and that the cell had "links to other European countries." It is unclear if the report was shared with other European countries. One month after the warning, Ahmed moved on, this time to Italy. Authorities Close In
In Milan, Ahmed sought work again as a painter and shared apartments with other Egyptian immigrants, moving frequently. He told roommates he was feuding with his wife in Spain and was worried she would report him to authorities, court papers show.
Italian authorities were not aware of his presence until April, five months after he arrived, when they were contacted by Spanish officials.
The Madrid commuter train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured thousands, touched off a furious investigation by Spanish authorities. The probe turned up Ahmed's cell phone number in the electronic address books of two suicide bombers and another suspect.
What followed was a rare case of successful cross-border coordination. Investigators traced the number and determined the phone was being used in Italy. They informed Italian authorities, who placed Ahmed under surveillance and bugged his phone and apartment in Milan.
According to transcripts of the wiretaps contained in an arrest warrant affidavit, Ahmed bragged to a roommate that "I was the leader of Madrid," adding that "the Madrid bombings were my project, and those who died as martyrs there were my beloved friends."
Italian police arrested him June 8, after hearing him discuss plans for another attack, possibly a suicide assault in Belgium, Italian officials said. In a computer in his apartment, they found photos of suitcase bombs similar to ones used in the Madrid attacks.
Investigators say there is still a lot they don't know about Ahmed; for instance, does he take orders from an international terrorist group and how did he come to Europe in the first place? They also disagree on whether he directed the Madrid attacks as he claimed in the wiretaps or if he was inflating his role.
In court papers, Spanish and Italian prosecutors charged that Ahmed was the "organizer of the terrorist group responsible for the attacks in Madrid" and also accused him of being the "coordinator of terrorist cells operating in various European countries," including Belgium, France and Spain.
Armando Spataro, an Italian prosecutor and chief of the antiterrorism investigative unit in Milan, said investigators were convinced Ahmed was a key figure in Islamic radical circles. "We know he was important because he was the one who coordinated all the communications," Spataro said. "Only an important figure could have been able to move as much as he did and keep in contact with all these people."
Investigators said Ahmed hadn't talked since his arrest. One of his Italian lawyers, Viviana Bossi, said that he "denies any responsibility regarding all the charges."
He remains in jail in Milan, where he is fighting attempts to extradite him to Spain.
Special correspondents Sarah Delaney in Milan and Shannon Smiley contributed to this report.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
'Saving Private Ryan' an honorable honor
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor,
November 14, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20041113-102454-7648r.htm
ABC's unedited presentation of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" Veterans Day evening is not a matter of indecency or immorality ("ABC, McCain help save 'Private Ryan,' " Nation, Friday). "Ryan" is a matter of battlefield reality where our young GIs are forced to finish what the politicians in Washington start.
Yes, the language is rough. If viewers are offended by the stark reality of battlefield conditions, change channels and watch some inane sitcom.
Perhaps a network movie such as this, which ordinarily would be aired for cable programming, will inspire some GI-mom in Iowa without HBO to begin her crusade to get our men and women out of Iraq.
Don't think for a moment that what America saw Thursday night in terms of violence, mayhem and death is something that was reserved only for our World War II GIs along Omaha's bloody beach and tidal water.
This movie was presented to honor us, the veterans, on our reserved and hallowed day, Veterans Day. Any fines assessed against ABC, or its affiliate stations for broadcasting "Ryan" would be an egregious affront to us, the true American heroes, the American GI.
EARL BEAL Terre Haute, Ind.
--------
Sliding Scale of Moral Values Is All in the Phrasing
By Charles Babington and Brian Faler
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48363-2004Nov13.html
Much has been made of presidential exit polls indicating that voters cared more about "moral values" than Iraq, terrorism or other issues. Numerous pundits have concluded that Democrats badly miscalculated President Bush's strengths and weaknesses and that the party is terribly out of touch with the heartland.
Well, not so fast.
Voters' responses, it turns out, vary dramatically depending on how the question is asked. If pollsters let voters name anything they choose as the "most important factor" in their decision -- rather than giving them a list to pick from -- Iraq easily outdistances moral values. A close third is the economy and jobs.
When the Pew Research Center polled 1,209 voters after the Nov. 2 election, it used both methods to ask what was "the most important factor" in choosing between Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
Some sampled by Pew were given the same options that exit pollsters gave voters on Election Day. Of these, Pew found, 27 percent listed "moral values" as most important, 22 percent said "Iraq," 21 percent chose "economy and jobs," and 14 percent said "terrorism." The Nov. 2 exit poll results were 22 percent "moral values," 20 percent "economy and jobs," 19 percent "terrorism," and 15 percent "Iraq."
But when Pew's post-election pollsters let voters offer any answer, results were starkly different: 25 percent cited Iraq, 14 percent moral values, 12 percent economy and jobs, and 9 percent terrorism. The biggest category, at 31 percent, was "other," which included "honesty," dislike or like of Bush or Kerry, and so on.
If Iraq and terrorism are combined as one issue -- which is how the Bush campaign portrayed them -- it easily tops the list under either method of framing the question (36 percent and 34 percent, respectively).
Keep on the Sunny Side
Speaking of polls, voters seem to be patting themselves on the back. The University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that, after Nov. 2, Americans are more optimistic about the nation's direction.
Forty-seven percent said the country is "generally going in the right direction," compared with 40 percent in pre-election polls. After the election, 46 percent said "things are seriously off on the wrong track," compared with 53 percent before the vote.
They Demand a Recount
A couple of minor-party presidential candidates hope to have a major impact on the ongoing vote count in Ohio. Green Party nominee David Cobb and Libertarian Michael Badnarik said last week that they want a recount of the state's presidential vote -- and are willing to pay to force it.
Ohio law allows candidates to demand a recount, provided they pay the cost, estimated at $113,000 for all precincts. The political odd couple is off to a fast fundraising start for the effort. The Cobb campaign said Friday that it had raised $71,000, while the Badnarik camp had no estimate of its fundraising. Both campaigns said they want to ensure the Ohio tally's accuracy.
"Unless you conduct an audit, essentially you don't know what problems there are," Cobb spokesman Blair Bobier said.
Their effort comes as the Internet burbles with rumors of voter fraud in Ohio and elsewhere. Bush won the critical battleground state by about 136,000 votes in unofficial returns.
The two minor candidates were little more than afterthoughts during the campaign. Cobb wasn't on the Ohio ballot but received 24 write-in votes. Badnarik made the ballot and received about 14,300 votes.
The Kerry campaign, which still has volunteer lawyers monitoring vote tallies in nearly every Ohio county, expressed no opinion on the Cobb-Badnarik campaign. "We can't prevent anybody else from asking for a recount," said Dan Hoffheimer, its state legal counsel. No Democratic group, he said, is "behind any effort to have a recount."
Tough Crowd in Nevada
As residents of a coveted presidential battleground state, Nevadans had plenty of reason to vote Nov. 2. Among those who turned out were 3,600 who cast ballots for -- drum roll, please -- none of the above, an option required by Nevada law.
They accounted for less than half of 1 percent of all state voters. Nonetheless, NOTA outpolled Libertarian Michael Badnarik, the Green Party's David Cobb and Constitution Party nominee Michael Peroutka. Independent Ralph Nader avoided similar humiliation, beating no one by 1,100 votes.
In Search of a New Leader
Democrats, still reeling from the election, are weighing more than a dozen possible contenders to succeed Terry McAuliffe as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Several party activists said Friday that no one has emerged as a front-runner.
Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack might be a strong candidate because a broad cross-section of party activists likes him (or doesn't strongly dislike him, which can be just as important), some party loyalists said. Others said to be testing the waters include former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen, political adviser Harold Ickes, former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk and former Georgia governor Roy Barnes.
Party insiders said it was unclear whether Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential contender, might be interested. Those who have ruled themselves out include Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign.
-------- us politics
Lame Duck May Do Housekeeping
Hill Reconvenes This Week to Polish Off Domestic Funding and Debt Ceiling
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48182-2004Nov13.html
When Congress adjourned last month for the election, it appeared lawmakers would have more to do when they returned this week than haggle over how to fund federal domestic agencies in 2005.
Republican leaders held out the possibility of using the "lame duck" session to revamp the intelligence community along lines suggested by the Sept. 11 commission, and perhaps limit class-action lawsuits, a priority for business groups. GOP officials have not abandoned those goals. But barring last-minute breakthroughs, prospects do not appear good that either will be enacted before the 108th Congress ends.
Sen. Ted Stevens: "overwhelming need for more money."
House-Senate negotiators on the intelligence legislation acknowledged that time was running out. If so, the proposal will have to be restarted in the Congress that convenes in January. Some lawmakers also hope to reauthorize the government's main program for educating handicapped students, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Business lobbyists said last week they were urging lawmakers to attach the class-action bill to a big package of domestic spending legislation that must be enacted before Congress adjourns for the year, but they had received no guarantees.
That leaves action on a mammoth $385 billion "omnibus" spending bill for the 2005 fiscal year that began Oct. 1 as the main order of business. The bill, still taking shape, will lump together a new foreign aid bill and as many as eight other bills funding every agency except the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Defense and the District of Columbia.
After years of rapid growth in many domestic programs, Congress this year agreed to strict limits on discretionary spending not related to defense or counterterrorism. The Bush administration budget called for an increase in domestic spending amounting to six-tenths of 1 percent. Congress, bowing to fiscal conservatives, went one better and called for a freeze.
In effect, spending on popular domestic programs finally is being squeezed by the huge costs of fighting the war on terrorism at home and abroad. Congress approved a $391 billion defense spending bill for fiscal 2005, but the figure did not cover costs of the Iraq war. Congress in July approved $25 billion more for the war, and the administration is expected to seek as much as $75 billion in addition early next year.
Adding to the fiscal pressure is the soaring budget deficit, which has pushed the federal government close to a $7.4 billion statutory limit on borrowing. Republican leaders plan to attach to the omnibus bill a provision increasing the debt ceiling by $700 billion to $800 billion, according to GOP sources.
The funding constraints are squeezing NASA, Amtrak, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies.
To save money -- and force the Bush administration to share the pain -- early versions of the annual spending bills slashed numerous White House priorities, including new funds for community colleges, the president's signature Millennium Challenge foreign aid program and even the American Masterpieces cultural program championed by Laura Bush.
The challenge now, said Sean M. Spicer, spokesman for the House Budget Committee, is for Congress to maintain "self-control." That could be especially difficult after an election, he suggested. But a senior congressional aide said that "the election didn't change the fundamental problem: There's not enough money in these bills."
Some key Republicans agree. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said last month there was "an overwhelming need for more money" in the bills funding domestic spending.
The House and Senate are working under a self-imposed $821.9 billion ceiling for all spending requiring annual appropriations. Enacted bills funding defense, homeland security and the District have used up $436 billion of that total.
Senate versions of the domestic package contain $8 billion more spending than the House measure, as a result of accounting devices employed to pump up the bills to a level where they could win approval from senators on Stevens's committee.
Under pressure from fiscal conservatives, however, most of the gimmicks -- other than one that will ensure help for elderly and poor people's winter heating bills -- will be dropped, sources said. To stay within the budget target and still pay for additional spending on such key activities as veterans health care and education, GOP leaders plan a small cut in hundreds of programs.
Federal aid to education, running about $60 billion a year, could lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Republicans note, however, that the bill funding education, health and job training soared by 75 percent over the last seven years. "Everybody wants to take a hard line on spending, but everybody's got their pet rock," a GOP aide said. "This isn't easy to deal with when you have a near-zero-growth budget."
As of this weekend, many issues were unresolved, including one that could delay or even doom long-term funding for the Yucca Mountain, Nev., nuclear waste repository. Building a permanent storage site for used nuclear fuel is essential to reviving the U.S. nuclear industry. But Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.), who will succeed defeated Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) as the Senate's Democratic leader in the next Congress, opposes the Yucca site.
"His new position won't make him easier to deal with on this," a Senate Republican aide said.
Some controversial riders added earlier to the spending legislation may be dropped. Those include eased restrictions on trade with Cuba, a provision partially blocking the administration's new rules on overtime pay eligibility and a provision that would set aside administration rules encouraging private contractors to compete for jobs performed by federal workers.
Staff writers Charles Babington and Helen Dewar contributed to this report.
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
Calif. Stem Cell Initiative Could Backfire Nationally
By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A48184-2004Nov13?language=printer
The resounding victory of California's $3 billion ballot initiative for embryonic stem cell studies may have the unintended consequence of slowing research on the national level and creating a backlash from religious conservatives who feel emboldened by President Bush's reelection, say activists on both sides of the issue.
With the support of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californians approved the bond proposal 59 percent to 41 percent, paving the way for a 10-year project that aims to make the state a global leader in the controversial new field.
Already, the initiative is upending the biomedical industry, prompting some entrepreneurial scientists to relocate from other states and several California universities to draw up blueprints for new laboratories. But the measure has reinvigorated a battle in Washington over the government's role in science, the meaning of this year's election results and the question of when life begins.
"California putting such an extravagant amount of money into embryonic stem cells and cloning research really takes the wind out of the argument there needs to be federal funding," said Wendy Wright, senior policy director of Concerned Women for America, a conservative advocacy group that opposes the research. "Moral values was a strong premise for many people's vote, and that should give congressmen pause to look at the public policies they're backing and assess them against moral values."
In the Senate, where Republicans picked up four seats, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) is considering expanding his legislation banning human cloning to include a prohibition on research that mixes genetic material from humans and animals. The bill as currently written outlaws a laboratory process in which cloned embryos are made in a petri dish. Scientists say the process, called somatic cell nuclear transfer (or therapeutic cloning), is a great potential source of embryonic stem cells.
"It seems that most of the country agrees with John Kerry that life begins at conception," Brownback said in an interview. "If that's the vast middle swath of the country, then it seems we should be able to move something like this through." And as they have on issues such as gun control and same-sex marriage, he thinks Democrats may retreat from the most liberal positions related to stem cell science, such as allowing therapeutic cloning.
One vote-counting stem cell advocate said proponents lost at least three prominent backers in the Senate. The source, who feared retribution if named, expects Bush to "cater" to the religious right. "They put him in office." He fears the California program "will be a big excuse for the president to not even have to deal with this."
Under Proposition 71, California researchers are eligible for $295 million a year in grants to work on cell colonies -- or lines -- taken from five-day-old human embryos. Scientists say embryonic stem cells hold great promise for treating conditions such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries, because the cells can morph into virtually any type of tissue or cell.
Opponents say the work is akin to murder because extracting the stem cells kills the embryo. In August 2001, Bush struck a compromise, announcing he would allow federal funding for research on the limited number of cell lines that existed then. Researchers and patient groups have been frustrated by those restrictions, saying the 20-plus available lines and $24 million in federal grants have not been sufficient.
Led by a real estate developer whose son has Type 1 diabetes, an eclectic coalition of patients, Hollywood celebrities, Nobel Prize winners and venture capitalists bankrolled the California initiative, raising almost as much money as the total federal investment in embryonic stem cell research.
In Massachusetts, Robert Lanza, medical director of Advanced Cell Technology, said the measure will "usher in a new era" of medical breakthroughs that will benefit not only Californians "but all Americans." The company, which conducted some of the earliest efforts to retrieve stem cells from normal and cloned human embryos, has sent its CEO to the West Coast to scout possible laboratory sites.
Much of the debate over the broader implications of Proposition 71 stems from two dramatically different interpretations of this year's election results.
Pointing to national surveys that registered 70 percent support for stem cell research and the fact that Proposition 71 drew almost 300,000 more votes in California than Democratic nominee Kerry, advocates say the president's policy is out of step with most Americans, including many Republicans.
"People in the Bush administration know what worked for them this year and what didn't," said Daniel Perry, head of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which promotes stem cell science. "They understand stem cell research was appealing to people at a very profound and fundamental level -- the level of hope."
Rep. Michael N. Castle (Del.), president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said the overwhelming victory in "the most significant state in the country, with a Republican governor endorsing it, is very hard to ignore." He said 190 House members have endorsed his bill expanding federal funding to research on stem cells obtained from "spare" embryos at fertility clinics, if donors give written consent and do not receive a financial inducement.
Last summer, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a physician, said he thought the Bush policy should be revisited after Election Day. The implication, according to Castle and others, was that Frist hoped to broaden it. Now Frist is not certain that would be possible in the new, more Republican Senate, said one adviser who could not be quoted discussing internal deliberations.
"The fulcrum of the center has moved to the right," this aide said, making it hard "for people who want to expand the president's policy."
Weighing on Frist is the potency of the stem cell issue with the GOP base, his adviser said. "We've been surprised by the fervor. It almost rivals abortion."
Many conservatives argue that California does not represent mainstream America and that the authors of Prop 71 overstepped by allowing state funding of therapeutic cloning.
"This means California will become a center for human cloning research, and I don't think most voters realized that," said Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"It will invite retaliatory action by people like Senator Brownback, who wanted to criminalize all types of research," said H. Rex Greene, a San Mateo physician who opposed Prop 71. "That's what these guys invited when they took such an extreme position." Brownback's cloning ban would make it a crime for patients treated outside the United States with therapies derived from embryonic stem cells to reenter.
Doerflinger said the bishops' conference may revive its campaign to pressure undecided lawmakers to support the Brownback bill, which he said may have a majority of Senate votes but perhaps not a filibuster-proof 60 votes.
At a minimum, conservatives expressed confidence they will be able to curtail federal spending on embryonic stem cells by arguing that at a time of growing deficits it is unnecessary to duplicate California's massive investment.
Carl Feldbaum, president of the pro-research Biotechnology Industry Organization, said he does not expect the political wars to cease until there is a "demonstrable success" in the laboratory. "People are claiming it's unproven and may not work," he said. "The research will have to debunk that."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Media Lockdown-Actions you can take
From: WheresthePaper.org Posting of Nov 11,'04 Link: http://www.wheresthepaper.org/mediaLockdown.htm
Letter from a friend:
On Friday I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS - I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse - far scarier.
She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified - every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her to speak out, even if covertly, and she therefore asked me to "spread" the word...She said that journalism and the truth are at stake. She said another friend of hers, a producer at MSNBC, said that an anchor by the name of Keith Olbermann had brought it up on his show on Friday eve and the axe came down. He's at least fighting back and talking about it on his "Blog", but she said that people there are worried that he's going to be fired by higher ups.
She said at this point the only way that the "real news" was going to be known is if the people started talking about it and made a big enough stink about it to our elected officials, the FEC, and "noise" to the international media, that our own media won't have any choice but to cover it. The only place you'll see this talked about right now is on the internet and on AirAmericaRadio.
People and Agencies to Contact regarding this matter:
1) Your two US Senators & Congressional Representative - here is the main switchboard number for the House and Senate: 1-800-839-5276 Although individual numbers are listed below, you can reach all Senators and Representatives via this 800 number
2) Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader: 202-225-4965
3) These members are allegedly/reportedly looking into the issue - urge them to introduce a bill to investigate voter fraud: Rep. Henry Waxman of CA - 202-225-3976 Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of OH - 202-225-7032 Rep. Dennis Kucinich of OH - 202-225-5871 Rep. Tim Ryan of OH - 202-225-5261
4) Democratic & Republican Members of the House Judiciary Committee: Rep. Robert Wexler of FL - 202-225-3001 Rep. Maxine Waters of CA - 202-225-2201 Rep. Chabot of OH (R)- 202-225-2216 Rep. King of IA (R)- 202-225-4426
5) Democrat & Republican Members (call both) of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Sen. Patrick Leahy of VT - 202-224-4242 Sen. Ted Kennedy of MA - 202-224-4543 Sen. Joe Biden of DE - 202-224-5042 Sen. Russ Feingold of WI - 202-224-5323 Sen. Charles Schumer of NY - 202-224-6542 Sen. Arlen Specter of PA (R) - 202-224-4254 (thank him also for having urged the Pres. to not choose anti-abortion judges and taking the body blows) Sen. Mike DeWine of OH (R) - 202-224-2315 Sen. Chuck Grassley of IA (R)- 202-224-3744
6) Federal Elections Commission: Audit Division Joseph Stoltz, Assistant Staff Director, Telephone: 800-424-9530 (press 0, then ext. 1200)
Inspector General Lynne McFarland, Inspector General, Telephone: 800-424-9530 (press 0, then ext. 1015)
7) The news media - we have to put pressure on them:
NBC/MSNBC- Nightly@N... & viewerservices@m...
CNN- http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
CBS- 212-258-6000 - 60II@c..., evening@c..., 48hours@c..., earlyshow@c...
8) Call the Secretary of State's office in the state of OH and FL - Tell them that you demand under the HAVA law to have all votes counted - especially the absentee, military and all provisional ballots counted and verified - tell them you suspect foul-play.
Phone to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell's Office: toll free - 1-877-767-6446 or email: election@s... or phone 614-466-2585
Phone to FL Sec. of State Glenda Hood's Office: 850-245-6500
9) Donate $5 to Bev Harris at http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ - she has been filing 1000's of information requests under the "FOIA-Freedom of Information Act" to account for the various voting machines across the country.
10) Email or Fax Ralph Nader - Yep, here's his opportunity to make up for any feelings of bad will after the 2000 election and the current one. Ralph has been a lifelong advocate for us, the consumer and little guy and he is actually in the unique position right now to do something since he was a Presidential candidate and has the ability to be listened to. He has actually already filed a challenge in NH (not that he is looking to overturn the results, but because he can prove there may have been bigger problems and he qualifies there as having been on the ballot).
http://www.votenader.org/media_press/index.php?cid=400
Urge him to do this across the board on a national level. The media seemed to love him before the election, could they possibly ignore him now? Contact Ralph at - 202-265-4000
11) Call/email Jimmy Carter at the Carter Center: carterweb@e... or call at (800) 550-3560 Former President Jimmy Carter and the Carter Center are considered to be the most experienced in the election process and conducting fair democratic elections - urge him to get involved and investigate possible fraud and the unexplainable discrepancies throughout the election involving the computer voting machines, especially in swing states.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - -Mahatma Ghandi
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government." - - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I'd rather be Don Quixote than another statistic." - -Douglas L. Wilson
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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Asians offer filming of the green A festival focuses on environment
Globe Newspaper Company
By Kimberly W. Moy,
November 14, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/11/14/asians_offer_filming_of_the_green/
Jeremy Liu likes the story of a Chinese-American acquaintance whose long foray into working for the National Park Service began after his parents read an article about job growth in the environmental field.
Whether for practical or passionate reasons, Liu wants to see more Asian-Americans involved in environmental issues.
And so when Sato Asaoka, a former film festival director in Tokyo, took a summer internship last year at Liu's Chinatown nonprofit, the Asian Community Development Corp., it was only natural that their interests melded to produce Boston's first environmental film festival, one with an Asian-American flavor.
The festival, "Stories from the Land: Environmental Films from the Asian Diaspora," runs through next Sunday, with films being shown at Tufts University's Boston and Medford campuses, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Peabody Essex Museum.
In addition to compelling stories on the big screen, the festival offers talks by filmmakers, question-and-answer sessions, and panel discussions.
"The neat thing is that we're actually integrating information and panelists, who are actively working in the field, [to talk] about how you get involved," said Liu, festival coproducer. "It's kind of like a bait and switch."
With films touching on stories of life after Chernobyl's nuclear accident, flooding threats to a Himalayan village due to global warming, and illnesses in Iraq linked to depleted uranium ammunition, Asaoka, 29, emphasizes the universality of environmental issues.
"Some films might deal with local issues, but those issues can relate to us," said Asaoka. "Films screened in these film festivals are made very sensitively and take a lot of time to make. It's very different from news articles. So people can understand [environmental issues] more deeply."
Major cities like Tokyo and Berlin and locales across the US and in France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, and the Czech Republic host environmental film festivals every year or two, Asaoka said.
She was surprised to learn that Boston had none. But with its mix of urban and green space and its openness to other cultures, she said, "I think Boston is one of the best places to hold an environmental film festival."
Asaoka worked for the Tokyo-based group Earth Vision for almost four years, and returned to Japan after her Boston internship to briefly work for its Ministry of Environment.
Collaboration on a festival focusing on environmental issues was welcomed by the staff of Boston's Asian American Resource Workshop. The workshop has run Asian-American film festivals in Boston for a number of years, but it was involved in a time-consuming 25th-anniversary fund-raiser this year, said Ching-In Chen, 26, who started as the workshop's director of programs this summer.
The Asian-American festivals had started in 1981 as a "huge film screening" and had "mutated" over the years, Chen said, into "multimedia festivals which had film as a component." The group uses art to promote activism and welcomed the opportunity, with the environmental theme, to participate in a relatively new field for Asian-Americans, Chen said.
"It seemed to make sense to focus the Asian-American film programming on environmental issues, and it had never been done before," Chen said.
Because the approach was so novel, Chen said, she had to go through considerable legwork to find films for the Asian-American segments she had taken on.
Many of her selections are by community activists, including a new film, "My Backyard," which was featured Thursday by the Roxbury-based Alternatives for Community & Environment.
Still, Chen said she anticipates a growth in environmental film-making, as people turn to increasingly available digital videos to document local stories. Environmental activism is also broadening, she said, to include not only hazardous-waste cleanup and asthma prevention, but also monitoring gentrification and affordable housing availability. "It's being able to live a decent life where we live, work, and play."
Lest potential viewers fear that the films will bombard the senses with depressing landscapes and angry protesters, Asaoka describes some of her favorites as documentaries that both move and charm.
"Alexei and the Spring," directed by Seiichi Motohashi, describes life in a Belarussian village near Chernobyl.
Motohashi, also a professional photographer, has compiled beautiful images that don't dwell on the nuclear accident but show the strength of villagers, Asaoka said. "You can sense that they enjoy life."
"Wrapped in Green," by director Keming Zhang, depicts an ordinary woman battling both the Chinese government and her family by collecting used batteries after reading an article about the effects of batteries on the environment, Asaoka said.
Her husband becomes frustrated with her. "In the middle of the film, he says, 'I will divorce you,' and she cries."
Asaoka said she wants to see the festival become an annual event, if she can find someone to take over when she returns to Japan in January. She already has plans for February, when she returns to Boston to focus on nuclear proliferation.
"Next April we want to make another film festival, I and another professor at Tufts," Asaoka said.
For more information, see www.storiesfromtheland.org and www.aarw.org/programs/pdf/filmfest2004.pdf or call 617-627-3453.
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Anti-war protest halts city centre
sundayherald.com
By Jenifer Johnston
14 November 2004
http://www.sundayherald.com/46016
Hundreds of anti-war protesters brought Glasgow to a standstill yesterday as they protested against the "humanitarian crisis" brought on by the US-led attacks on Fallujah.
Strathclyde Police said last night that three people - two women and a man - had been arrested for minor offences after around 50 people lay down in the street outside the city's busy Queen Street station.
Organisers said the "die-in" was a symbolic gesture to bring attention to the war.
City centre traffic was halted for around an hour.
The demonstrators then staged a silent march through the city centre before holding an emotionally charged rally in St Enoch Square.
Rose Gentle, whose 19-year-old son Gordon was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra, addressed the crowd and renewed calls for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq.
Gentle and her family have become high-profile anti-war campaigners in recent weeks, and visited Downing Street last month to protest against the war.
Other speakers included Scottish Socialist MSP Rosie Kane, Green MSP Patrick Harvie and SNP MSP Sandra White.
Phill Jones of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said the protesters were anxious about the human cost of the latest phase in the war.
"We are concerned about the strategy of using force to bring about democracy," he said.
"The growing concern is that the Americans are stopping aid agencies and medical agencies and the fact they have shut off all water and electricity is creating a huge humanitarian crisis.
"The bombing and shooting after the curfew is also causing a huge number of civilian casualties. Thousands of ordinary Iraqis will suffer as a result of this.
"We have always been opposed to the military strategy, but we think this [tactic] is not going to stop terrorism but rather provoke and promote it even more."
Before the rally, Isobel Lindsay, convener of the Scottish Coalition For Justice Not War, laid a wreath of white poppies at the war memorial in George Square.
A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police estimated that between 300 and 400 people joined in with the rally, while organisers claim around 800 took part.
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