President Bush and DOD Officials Violate Existing Regulations

by Dr. Doug Rokke

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=10183

Dennie Williams article on Common Dreams "Weapons Dust Worries Iraqis Provisional Government Seeks Cleanup; U.S. Downplays Risks by Thomas D. Williams" http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1101-01.htm verifies the total disregard and overt contempt by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld for their own legal regulations that require thorough environmental remediation of all depleted uranium and other combat caused low level radioactive contamination. The following direct quote from Mr. Williams article as provided by a Department of Defense spokesperson verifies that DOD officials ignore their own legal requirements as mandated in AR 700-48, TB 9-1300-278 , and numerous other documents. .Compliance with all provisions in U.S. Army Regulation is required as ordered by the Secretary of the Army and previous U.S. Army Cheif of Staff General Eric Shinseki.

quote: "The Department of Defense "does not clean up DU once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle," said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official." end quote

This demonstrates / verifies the willful refusal to comply with U.S. Army Regulation AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278. The reference to read the legal requirements is:

http://traprockpeace.org/rokke_du_3_ques.html

Pentagon officials are also acutely aware of the known adverse health and environmental effects as documented in an internal 2002 Pentagon briefing that can be reviewed at: http://traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html but they ignore simple facts in order to sustain use of uranium munitions and avoid all liability for their use as mandated by the March 1993 Los Alamos memorandum (reference: http://www.tv.cbc.ca/national/pgminfo/du/doc1.html ).

Although Pentagon officials state quote: "The Department of Defense "does not clean up DU once it leaves a U.S. weapons system such as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and hits an enemy building, or vehicle," said Melissa Bohan, an Army public affairs official." the pertinent section of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 requires the following actions.

Quote from Army Regulation 700-48 (Please see previous reference for complete text.) "RCE" means "radiologically contaminated equipment". :

"2-4. Handling of RCE

a. General.

(1) During peacetime or as soon as operational risk permits, the Corps/JTF/Division Commander's RSO will identify, segregate, isolate, secure, and label all RCE. Procedures to minimize the spread of radioactivity will be implemented as soon as possible.

(2) Radiologically contaminated equipment does not prevent the use of a combat vehicle or equipment for a combat mission.

(3) RSO must consider the operational situation, mission, level of contamination, and types of contaminate when evaluating the need to utilize contaminated equipment.

(4) After the Corps Commander certifies the equipment is decontaminated IAW established OEG or peacetime regulations, it may be reutilized.

(5) The equipment for release for unrestricted use must be decontaminated to comply with peacetime regulations versus OEG.

(6) Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Units will render equipment safe prior to retrograde operations when appropriate...."

----

HOSTAGE WITH SPINE OF STEEL NOW FEARED DEAD

Singapore Press
NOV 18, 2004
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/top/story/0,4136,77533,00.html

A CLOSE friend described her as 'one of those slender people with a spine of steel'.

She dedicated most of her working life to easing the plight of ordinary Iraqis. Yet all the good work and the numerous appeals failed to move Mrs Margaret Hassan's captors.

She has apparently been killed, Care International said early this morning.

Mrs Hassan was involved in humanitarian relief in Iraq for 30 years and for the last 12 years she worked for Care as its director.

Shortly after her abduction, patients at a Baghdad hospital took to the streets to protest against the kidnapping.

They credited her with helping to rebuild the medical facility last year, reported CNN.

The protesters carried pictures of her and banners which called for the release of 'Mama Margaret'.

The last project Care completed with her effort was a rehabilitation unit for patients with spinal injuries.

In a poignant demonstration, the patients who could, painstakingly wheeled themselves into the street, held up banners pleading for her release.

The news of her killing was reported by Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

It said it had obtained a video showing a masked militant shooting a blindfolded woman, who was referred to as Margaret Hassan, in the head using a handgun.

The TV network decided to wait on reporting the news until it confirmed the authenticity of the tape.

HUSBAND'S PLEA

After she was kidnapped, her husband Tahseen Ali Hassan pleaded with her kidnappers to let her go, even putting up posters in Baghdad.

He said: 'They should know that my wife has worked almost all her life for the Iraqi people and considers herself an Iraqi.'

Sky News reported that Mrs Hassan was a vocal opponent of international sanctions on Iraq. Before the war to topple Saddam Hussein, she warned it would bring a 'humanitarian catastrophe' on Iraq.

When war broke out, she was determined to stay to continue her work despite the danger. At the time she was taken hostage she was in charge of 60 Iraqis who run nutrition, health and water programmes throughout the country.

But her kidnapping led Care to withdraw from the country.

Mrs Hassan, who was in her 60s, held Irish-British-Iraqi citizenships.

Her family said in a written statement: 'Our hearts are broken. We have kept hoping for as long as we could, but we now have to accept that Margaret has probably gone and at last her suffering has ended.'

She is said to have fallen in love with Iraq more than 30 years ago, when she travelled there as a young bride with her Iraqi husband.

She converted to Islam, learned Arabic and took Iraqi citizenship.

Her film-maker friend, Felicity Arbuthnot, told the BBC recently: 'It was Iraq's children who haunted her, she called the children of the embargo 'the lost generation'.

'Half of Iraq's population is aged below 15. Childless herself, to see her cradle infants stricken with Iraq's myriad of illnesses which have reached epidemic proportions since 1991 - linked to the destruction of water facilities and the chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium weapons used - one felt her passion to protect all Iraq's children as her own.'

She said that while filming in an area of exceptional deprivation and poverty in Iraq, a crowd gathered. On seeing Mrs Hassan, thin, stressed faces, broke into wide smiles, children ran and hugged her round the knees chanting: 'Madam Margaret, Madam Margaret...'

Weeks before her kidnap, she told the Independent newspaper's Robert Fisk despairingly: 'There will be a second generation of lost children now.'

Mrs Hassan was kidnapped on Oct 19 by a group that did not identify itself.

The group said on Nov 2 that it would turn her over to an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group - Base of Jihad - if the British government did not pull its troops out of Iraq within 48 hours.

Base of Jihad has been blamed for numerous beheadings of foreigners in Iraq, including the slayings of Americans Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and Briton Kenneth Bigley. They also claimed responsibility for the killing of a Japanese hostage.

Mrs Hassan's husband has appealed to the kidnappers to return his wife's body.

He said: 'I beg those people who took Margaret to tell me what they have done with her... I need her back to rest in peace.'


-------- india / pakistan

India steps forward on Kashmir

washingtontimes
November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041117-085411-2696r.htm

India's new government is proving its will to continue to ratchet down tensions with Pakistan over one of the world's most dangerous potential flashpoints. India began this week to reduce its troops in its portion of the territory of Kashmir. The military reduction appears to be India's first since the insurgency in Kashmir began in 1989. Also, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his maiden voyage to Kashmir yesterday.

Pakistan and India have fought two wars since 1947 over the disputed territory of Kashmir, before the two countries had gone nuclear. Needless to say, another war between the nuclear-armed countries would be disastrous, and each is keen to avoid that prospect. Successful peace talks are also important for the U.S.-led counterterror effort, since the Kashmir dispute fuels an Islamic insurgency that could at any time shift its focus to international targets.

There were doubts whether Mr. Singh, who took office in May, would be as determined or able to negotiate peace as his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr. Singh, though, appears to be methodically plodding a course for peace with Pakistan.

India is believed to have between 250,000 and 500,000 troops in Kashmir, and is expected to pull out tens of thousands. This follows Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's proposed demilitarization of Kashmir. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the move was "a good development" that would build confidence and facilitate the dialogue.

The troop withdrawal coincided with Mr. Singh's first visit to Kashmir, where he unveiled a $5.3 billion economic revival plan for the state, which is aimed at creating 24,000 jobs. The funds would be used to build new houses, schools, hospitals, railway lines, phone connections, and irrigation and power generation systems. Mr. Singh also pledged to speak to all parties that have disavowed violence.

Mr. Singh's initiative comes despite an outbreak of violence by suspected Islamist militants. Mr. Singh, though, is wisely not letting the militant violence determine the course of the peace with Pakistan and the Kashmiri people.

Still, India's troop withdrawal puts extra onus on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist training camps and the movement of Pakistani militants into Indian-controlled Kashmir. Next week, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will arrive in New Delhi for talks. Both sides should work hard to keep the momentum going, and U.S. officials should not refrain from nudging them along.


-------- iran

Iran has black market nuclear bomb drawings, still enriches uranium: opposition

Nov 18, 2005
GEORGE JAHN
Canadian Press
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/041117/w111728.html

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Iran bought blueprints of a nuclear bomb from the same black-market network that gave Libya such diagrams and continues to enrich uranium despite a commitment to suspend the technology that can be used for atomic weapons, an Iranian opposition group said Wednesday.

Farid Soleimani, a senior official for the National Council for Resistance in Iran, said the diagram was provided by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani head of the nuclear network linked to clandestine programs in both Iran and Libya.

"He gave them the same weapons design he gave the Libyans as well as more in terms of weapons design," Soleimani told reporters in Vienna. He said the diagram and related material on how to make nuclear weapons was handed to the Iranians between 1994 and 1996.

Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the UN nuclear watchdog agency follows up "every solid lead," but that it would otherwise have no further comment on the allegations.

A diplomat familiar with the agency and its investigations into Libya's and Iran's nuclear programs said the IAEA has long feared that Iran might have received bomb-making blueprints from Khan.

Libya bought engineers' drawings of a Chinese-made bomb through the Khan network as part of a covert nuclear program that it renounced last year.

Iran says it does not have such drawings, and no evidence has been found to dispute that claim.

Former UN nuclear inspector David Albright earlier this year described the Chinese design that Libya owned up to having as something "that would not take a lot of modifying" to fit it on Iran's successfully tested Shahab-3 ballistic missile.

The opposition group made its claim days after Iran announced it would suspend all activities related to nuclear enrichment as part of an agreement with three European countries aimed at heading off a confrontation over its nuclear program.

Soleimani said centrifuges and other equipment needed to produce enriched uranium had been covertly moved from a facility at Lavizan-Shian to a nearby site within Tehran's city limits.

The opposition group says Lavizan-Shian was home to the Centre for Readiness and New Defence Technology and was part of the covert attempt to develop nuclear weapons.

A report detailing IAEA investigations into Iran's nuclear programs prepared for the agency's Nov. 25 board meeting notes that Iran has failed to produce a trailer that apparently contained nuclear equipment at Lavizan-Shian for IAEA inspection.

The IAEA report also said Iran has "declined to provide a list of equipment used" at Lavizan-Shian, which the government says was home to research on how to reduce casualties in case of nuclear attack.

Referring to the new, secret location, Soleimani said that "as we speak, the site continues to produce (enriched) uranium" and said it "is not the only one that is being kept secret."

Soleimani's organization is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen, or Mujahedeen Khalq, banned in the United States as a terrorist organization. While much of its information has not been confirmed, it was instrumental in 2002 in revealing Iran's enrichment program at Natanz.

Enrichment at low levels generates fuel for nuclear power - and Iran says that is its sole interest. But the United States says it suspects Iran wants to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium for nuclear warheads.

Lavizan-Shian was razed by the Iranian government earlier this year as IAEA inspectors prepared to visit it. The government says it was destroyed to make way for a park. But suspicions remain about the extent of the work done there - including the removal of topsoil, which reduced the effectiveness of environmental samples taken by IAEA inspectors looking for unreported nuclear activity at the site.

The IAEA says it will start monitoring Iran's commitment to halt enrichment activities starting early next week.

The suspension pledge reduced U.S. hopes of having the board refer Iran to the UN Security Council for alleged violations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Under the agreement, Tehran is to suspend all uranium enrichment in return for European guarantees that Iran has the right to pursue a peaceful nuclear program. The suspension holds only until a comprehensive agreement is sealed, but European diplomats hope the freeze will turn into a long-term arrangement.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called the agreement a "great victory" but said Wednesday that Tehran won't respect its commitment if Europeans fail to support his country at the IAEA board meeting.

"If the IAEA board of governors adopts a correct decision, it will be a step in the direction that will give us more hope that our rights will be exercised," Khatami said.

"If we see that they don't keep their promise, it's natural that we won't fulfil our promise," he said.

--------

Powell Says Iran Is Pursuing Bomb
Evidence Cited of Effort to Adapt Missile

By Robin Wright and Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57465-2004Nov17?language=printer

SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 17 -- The United States has intelligence that Iran is working to adapt missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon, further evidence that the Islamic republic is determined to acquire a nuclear bomb, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday.

Separately, an Iranian opposition exile group charged in Paris that Iran is enriching uranium at a secret military facility unknown to U.N. weapons inspectors. Iran has denied seeking to build nuclear weapons.

"I have seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. . . . You don't have a weapon until you put it in something that can deliver a weapon," Powell told reporters traveling with him to Chile for an Asia-Pacific economic summit. "I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead; I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."

Powell's comments came just three days after an agreement between Iran and three European countries -- Britain, France and Germany -- designed to limit Tehran's ability to divert its peaceful nuclear energy program for military use. The primary focus of the deal, accepted by Iran on Sunday and due to go into effect Nov. 22, is a stipulation that Iran indefinitely suspend its uranium enrichment program.

The issue of adapting a missile is separate from the question of enriching uranium for use in a weapon.

"I'm talking about information that says they not only have these missiles, but I am aware of information that suggests that they were working hard as to how to put the two together," Powell said, referring to the process of matching warheads to missiles. He spoke to reporters during a refueling stop in Manaus, Brazil.

"There is no doubt in my mind -- and it's fairly straightforward from what we've been saying for years -- that they have been interested in a nuclear weapon that has utility, meaning that it is something they would be able to deliver, not just something that sits there," Powell said.

Iran has long been known to have a missile program, while denying that it was seeking a nuclear bomb. Powell seemed to be suggesting that efforts not previously disclosed were underway to arm missiles with nuclear warheads. Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Powell's remarks indicated that Iran was trying to master the difficult technology of reducing the size of a nuclear warhead to fit on a ballistic missile.

"Powell appears to be saying the Iranians are working very hard on this capability," Cirincione said. He said Powell's comments were striking because the International Atomic Energy Agency said this week that it had not seen any information that Iran had conducted weapons-related work.

In a 32-page report, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," such as weapons programs. But ElBaradei said that he could not rule out the possibility that Iran was conducting a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Powell also told reporters that the United States had not decided what action to take following Sunday's agreement. The Bush administration had insisted that Iran's past violations warranted taking the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

Powell said the United States would monitor verification efforts "with necessary and deserved caution because for 20 years the Iranians have been trying to hide things from the international community."

Meanwhile, in Paris, the exile group charged that Iran was still enriching uranium and would continue to do so despite the pledge made Sunday to European foreign ministers. The group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran, or NCRI, also claimed that Iran received blueprints for a Chinese-made bomb in the mid-1990s from the global nuclear technology network led by the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Khan network sold the same type of bomb blueprint to Libya, which has since renounced its nuclear ambitions.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Paris-based NCRI, told reporters at a news conference that the Khan network delivered to the Iranians a small quantity of highly enriched uranium that could be used in making a bomb. But he said the amount was probably too small for use in a weapon.

The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen organization, which the State Department has labeled a terrorist organization. The NCRI helped expose Iran's nuclear ambitions in 2002 by disclosing the location of the government's secret uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. But many of its subsequent assertions about the program have proven inaccurate.

On Wednesday, Mohaddessin used satellite photos to pinpoint what he said was the new facility, inside a 60-acre complex in the northeast part of Tehran known as the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology. The group said that the site also houses Iranian chemical and biological weapons programs and that uranium enrichment began there a year and a half ago, to replace a nearby facility that was dismantled in March ahead of a visit by a U.N. inspections team.

The group gave no evidence for its claims, but Mohaddessin said, "Our sources were 100 percent sure about their intelligence." He and other group members said the NCRI relies on human sources, including scientists and other people working in the facilities and locals who might live near the facilities and see suspicious activities.

The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear monitoring body, had no immediate comment on the claims but said it took all such reports seriously.

The agency has no information to support the NCRI claims, according to Western diplomats with knowledge of the U.N. body's investigations of Iran.

Some diplomats and arms control experts privately discounted the Iranian group's latest claim, saying it appeared designed to undermine the deal that the Tehran government signed with Britain, France and Germany. In Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian officials said they considered the enrichment suspension temporary and contingent upon a favorable decision at the IAEA meeting next week and on quick progress in talks next month on long-term guarantees that Iran can apply nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Richburg reported from Paris. Staff writers Glenn Kessler and Dafna Linzer in Washington contributed to this report.

--------

Exiles Add to Claims on Iran Nuclear Arms

November 18, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18iran.html?pagewanted=all

PARIS, Nov. 17 - An Iranian opposition group leveled startling but unconfirmed charges on Wednesday that Iran had bought blueprints for a nuclear bomb and obtained weapons-grade uranium on the black market.

The group also charged that Iran was still secretly enriching uranium at an undisclosed Defense Ministry site in Tehran, despite an agreement with the Europeans two days ago to suspend all enrichment activities.

The claims, made in separate news conferences in Paris and Vienna by a group known as the National Council of Resistance, the political front for the People's Mujahedeen, could not be independently verified, and independent nuclear experts were divided about whether they could be true.

The group rattled the Iranian government and the arms control community in 2002 when it revealed the existence of two secret Iranian nuclear facilities, including an enrichment plant in the town of Natanz.

Wednesday's accusations follow by two days the announcement of Iran's agreement to suspend uranium enrichment while it negotiates with France, Germany and Britain for economic and political benefits. In that agreement, the People's Mujahedeen is placed in the same category as Al Qaeda - as terrorist groups that Iran and the European Union will combat together.

The United States and the European Union define the People's Mujahedeen as a terrorist group.

The charges also come eight days before the 35-country ruling board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, opens meetings in Vienna to decide whether Iran has curbed its nuclear activities or should be referred to the Security Council for censure.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan arms control group in Washington, said, "The timing of these revelations raises suspicions that the group is attempting to derail Iran's deal with the Europeans, particularly since there is no evidence to back up any of these claims."

He added that the allegation that Pakistan supplied Iran with highly enriched uranium in 2001 "seems preposterous, given the fact that was a year when the United States was really cracking down on Pakistan's nuclear export activities."

But Paul Leventhal, of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, said the group "has been accurate in the past." "Everything that came out initially about the Iranian clandestine program was from this organization," he said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Wednesday that he had seen new evidence suggesting that Iran had been "actively working" on a system to deliver a nuclear bomb, but he said he had no information on what help it might have received.

He said the intelligence tended to support the validity of the new accusations. "I have seen intelligence which would corroborate what this dissident group is saying, and it should be of concern to all parties," Mr. Powell said in Manaus, Brazil, while traveling to a meeting of Asian and Pacific nations in Chile.

A confidential report by the nuclear agency sent to its board on Monday for review next week provides a lengthy record of an Iranian pattern of secret nuclear activities, the provision of incomplete and misleading information and delay.

"We follow up every solid lead," said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the agency.

The nuclear agency has long suspected that Iran, like Libya, received bomb blueprints from the secretive network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, known in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear bomb. Among the Mujahedeen's charges on Wednesday was that the Iranian blueprints came from the Khan network.

In September, the agency revealed that as early as 1995, Pakistan was providing Tehran with the designs for advanced centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel. The Iranians have never acknowledged that the source was Pakistan.

I.A.E.A. inspectors were able to nail down the connection between Iran and Pakistan because of similar centrifuge packaging material they found in Libya and Iran.

If it is proved that Iran received highly enriched uranium or blueprints for a bomb from Pakistan or any other country, it would set off widespread international condemnation and could derail the European agreement with Iran.

That agreement envisions the start of talks next month on a package of economic, technological and political incentives in exchange for a freeze on Iran's production of enriched uranium, which can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

It could also prompt the Bush administration to make good on its threats to haul Iran before the Security Council.

"The game is over if all this is true," said one Western diplomat with close ties to the nuclear agency. "But the I.A.E.A. needs more than suspicions, and the Iranian resistance hasn't given it anything it can follow up on."

In both news conferences on Wednesday, the group specifically charged that Iran moved uranium enrichment equipment this year from a suspicious site before demolishing the buildings and carting off the rubble as I.A.E.A. inspectors were preparing to visit. The Iranian government said it was destroyed to make way for a park. As proof, the opposition group presented satellite photographs that were already in the public domain.

The opposition group also claimed that the equipment was moved to a nearby Defense Ministry site, called the Center for the Development of Advanced Defense Technology, in Lavizan in the northernmost part of Tehran, and is being used to enriched uranium there.

In reply to a question in Vienna, Farid Soleimani, an opposition group spokesman, said the Khan nuclear network in Pakistan "gave Iran a quantity" of highly enriched uranium in 2001 but added, "I would doubt it was given enough for a weapon."

Mr. Soleimani said Mr. Khan also "gave them the same weapons design he gave the Libyans, as well as more in terms of weapons design," sometime between 1994 and 1996.

There was no immediate comment on the Mujahedeen's allegations in Tehran on Wednesday.

Early in the day, Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, hailed Iran's agreement with the Europeans as a "great victory," because the Europeans "have recognized that Iran can exercise its rights" in seeking peaceful nuclear technology. He added that the first test of the Europeans' "good will" would be next week's meeting of the atomic agency.

"If the I.A.E.A. board of governors adopts a correct decision, it will be a step in the direction that will give us more hope that our rights will be exercised," he said. However, he added, "If we see that they don't keep their promise, it's natural that we won't fulfill our promise."

Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Manaus, Brazil,for this article, and Ariane Bernard from Paris.

--------

Iran said to be developing weapons-delivery systems

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jennifer Joan Lee
November 18, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041117-094509-8506r.htm

PARIS - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday the United States has seen signs that Iran is developing technology to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile.

He spoke just hours after an Iranian opposition group charged that Tehran has a secret, military-run uranium-enrichment plant and has bought the blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

Mr. Powell made his remarks while traveling with reporters to an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile.

"I have seen some information that would suggest they have been actively working on delivery systems. ... You don't have a weapon until you can put it in something that can deliver a weapon," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

"I'm talking about what one does with a warhead," Mr. Powell said. "We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles, but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together."

Hours earlier, officials of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) said at twin press conferences in Paris and in Vienna, Austria, that Tehran had bought plans for a nuclear weapon, as well as weapons-grade uranium from the black-market network that sold similar designs to Libya.

The NCRI is on the State Department's terrorist list, along with its affiliate, the Mujahideen Khalq, or People's Mujahideen.

The senior spokesman for the NCRI - which first exposed Iran's nuclear program two years ago - said in Vienna that the diagram was provided by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani head of the nuclear network linked to clandestine operations around the world.

Farid Soleimani said the material was handed to the Iranians between 1994 and 1996. Libya bought Chinese-language warhead-design documents through Mr. Khan's network before it publicly renounced its covert nuclear-weapons program last year.

U.S. officials have estimated that Iran is three to five years from developing a nuclear weapon, but some independent experts have said it could obtain one sooner.

Joseph Cirincione, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Non-Proliferation Project, told Reuters that it takes considerable expertise to shrink a nuclear bomb to fit on a missile with a 1-ton payload and to make it sturdy enough to survive rocket launch and re-entry.

It was not clear whether diagrams provided by the A.Q. Khan network would meet those requirements, but Pakistan, a declared nuclear power, is believed to have mounted warheads on missiles.

A U.S. official familiar with intelligence on the Pakistani network questioned some of the claims yesterday by the Iranian opposition group, but did not elaborate.

A Vienna-based diplomat familiar with the International Atomic Energy Agency said such suspicions "have been around for almost a year, and they don't help us get closer to the truth."

Mr. Powell told reporters that he could not corroborate the Iranian opposition group's claims.

But NCRI spokesman Mohammad Mohaddessin said in Paris that Iran's Ministry of Defense had moved equipment used to enrich uranium as well as develop biological and chemical weapons to a new 60-acre site in the Lavizan district of Tehran.

Now known as "the Modern Defensive Readiness and Technology Center," the former military battalion site was to be used for nuclear research separate from the country's civilian nuclear-energy program.

"I don't know if the plant is in operation yet, but our sources say they know that centrifuges have been installed and that nuclear research is being undertaken there," Mr. Mohadessin said.

He went on to describe the building and gave out the names, addresses and phone numbers of four nuclear scientists working in Iran's Ministry of Defense.

NCRI's claims, if true, point to serious weaknesses in the latest deal between Iran and Europe, whereby Tehran pledged it would suspend its uranium-enrichment activities as the group thrashes out the details of a longer-term nonproliferation pact.

"The larger point that this speaks to is, despite the agreement Iran has reached with Europe, are they going to continue to develop things secretly? This group is arguing yes," said Valerie Lincy, of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.

"That is going to be the big hole in any agreement," she said in Washington. "It is very hard to detect low-level nuclear research and development and bench-scale type experiments."

It is unlikely that the United States will publicly pursue the NCRI's information because of the terrorist designation of the organization and its affiliate.

The State Department said yesterday it had "no comment" on the opposition group's claims, although a number of its revelations have proved accurate in the past.

•Sharon Behn in Washington contributed to this report.


-------- korea

Threat of 'nukes to spare' in N Korea

November 18, 2004
The Australian Peter Alford
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11418369%255E2703,00.html

NORTH Korea has built enough nuclear weapons to sell some of them to other rogue states or terrorist groups and still retain enough to deter attacks on its territory.

That must be the new baseline assumption for the US and other countries trying to disarm the communist state, according to International Crisis Group president and former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans.

"It's happened in the last two years," Mr Evans told The Australian from Seoul. "Since we lost track of the spent fuel rods at Yongbyong (nuclear plant), we have to assume they have reprocessed enough plutonium to make six to eight weapons."

A new ICG report says the strong likelihood that North Korea has as many as 10 nuclear bombs -- US intelligence assumes two weapons existed before a 1994 agreement to freeze plutonium production -- makes the task of dismantling the rogue program increasingly urgent.

The study suggests the US-led approach to disarming North Korea since the collapse of the 1994 agreement two years ago has been a dangerous waste of time.

"While six-party talks have continued with results in Beijing, North Korea has probably reprocessed its (8000) fuel rods and may have turned the plutonium into weapons," the report says.

"It almost certainly has enough bombs to deter an attack and still have some to sell to other states or even terrorist groups."

Since October 2002, when the Americans accused Kim Jong-il's regime of running another covert nuclear program, there has been no effective international oversight of North Korea's nuclear industry and its spent rods stockpile.

Having already breached the 1994 Agreed Framework several times previously, Pyongyang in late 2002 renounced the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Commission safeguards.

Since then the US -- working with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- has insisted on "complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement" of the weapons programs before it would consider resuming energy or food aid or guaranteeing that the North will be from attack.

The six-party process produced no breakthroughs before it stalled in September, while the North awaited the outcome of the US presidential election. Talks are unlikely to resume before the new year.

"This (period) has been less than non-productive," Mr Evans said yesterday.

"The international community has no basis for self-congratulation -- international interests have gone backwards."

The ICG is now calling for the Americans to lead the six-party process in a new direction, by setting out in detail for the North Koreans a process of disarmament, accompanied by a series of economic and security benefits.

This would be enforced by sanctions and -- if the North attempted to sell weapons or nuclear material to another state or terror group -- a credible threat of military force. Mr Evans said he awaited more details of the US State Department's "new management" under Condoleezza Rice before judging whether the Bush administration was ready to change course on North Korea.

"I'm not assuming that things are going to get any easier," he said. "But the US has so few alternatives in terms of approach, I believe that in the end some kind of rationality has to prevail."


-------- missile defense

Missile shield project ignites bidding war
Japan defense firms see 1 trillion yen project as chance to build industry

The Japan Times
By NAO SHIMOYACHI
Nov. 18, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20041118f1.htm

Tokyo's decision last year to deploy an expensive U.S.-developed defense system against North Korea's ballistic missiles has triggered a heated race between the defense industries of Japan and the United States to get the most out of the 1 trillion yen project.

Last week, major U.S. defense firms Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co., Boeing Co. and Computer Sciences Corp. showcased their missile defense products at the Parliamentary Museum in Tokyo, where Japanese and U.S. defense policymakers, industry figures and politicians gathered for a two-day security symposium.

Lockheed Martin, the largest U.S. defense contractor, set up a full-scale replica of the PAC-3 interceptor missile Japan will deploy for the ground-based portion of the system.

Raytheon, the prime contractor of the SM-3 interceptor missiles Japan will use in the sea-based portion of the system, displayed a computer system that can simulate missile interception on monitors.

But while Japanese defense industry leaders agreed that it was important to learn from and cooperate with their U.S. counterparts, they also stressed the need for Japan to develop its own technology.

"Japan's environment is unique when it comes to missile defense," said Hidetsugu Horikawa, vice president of the aerospace unit of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, the second-largest defense contractor in Japan.

Given the extremely short time it would take for a missile to reach Japan from North Korea, Horikawa said, Japan needs a highly effective system that can detect a launch at the earliest possible stage and rapidly relay that information so the missile can be tracked and intercepted.

"To build a (financially) practical and effective system, Japan needs to carefully assess which parts it should introduce from the U.S. and which parts it should develop on its own," he said.

The Japanese side sees the missile defense project as a great opportunity to establish domestic defense research, development and production bases. The expected lifting of the government's self-imposed ban on arms exports by year's end is also fueling expectations in the sector that military-related production will become a new cash cow.

By 2011, Japan plans to deploy a two-tier missile shield combining sea- and land-based systems. Deployment will begin in 2006, with the total cost estimated at 1 trillion yen.

The government has already decided to purchase interceptor missiles -- SM-3s to be launched from Aegis-equipped warships and PAC-3s to be deployed on the ground -- from the U.S., at least for the next fiscal year.

But the Japanese defense industry, led by the Defense Production Committee of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren), is pressing the government to let Japanese companies produce these missiles under license.

"To maintain our current technology level as well as for future technological development, we, the defense industry, will continue urging the government to let us start licensed production as early as possible," said Takashi Nishioka, vice chairman of Keidanren and chairman of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

MHI, Japan's largest defense contractor, already makes the PAC-2, predecessor of the PAC-3, under license.

The Defense Agency has promised to consider the request, saying it didn't have enough time to negotiate a PAC-3 licensing agreement with the U.S. this year.

A command, control and communications system for the missile defense system is to be built by upgrading the Air Self-Defense Force's existing Base Air Defense Ground Environment system. The agency has yet to decide how the contracts for this project will be allotted.

The agency is also in talks with the U.S. to launch joint research aimed at improving antiair radar and a battle management system for Aegis-equipped ships. It plans to use technology from both Japanese and U.S firms for the research.

For the U.S., which is expected to declare its missile defense shield to be operational by the end of the year, Japan is the most promising research partner and overseas market for missile defense-related products.

Only the U.S., Israel and Japan are expected to have an operational missile defense system within the next few years. Given that Israel is only deploying the Arrow, a ground-based missile system aimed at countering Iran's short-range missiles, Japan is expected to become the leading missile defense nation after the U.S.

"Japan's addition of missile defense capabilities to its Self-Defense Forces can make Japan a world leader in missile defense," Aaron Fuller III, president of the Defense Mission and Engineering Division at Computer Sciences, said at the symposium. His company developed the software for the Aegis Weapon System.

Indeed, the race for contracts appears to have no bounds.

During last week's symposium, a Boeing representative strongly urged Japan to use the firm's airborne laser system, or ABL, which is designed to detect and destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles as they take off. Defense experts say Tokyo has little use for such a long-range system, as its main concern is North Korea.

Industry officials in both Japan and the U.S. say they welcome the expected lifting of Japan's weapons export ban, expressing hope that it will help promote joint research and technology transfer.

Yet the Japanese side is determined not to give its U.S. rivals a free hand, having learned a lesson from its bitter experience with the FS-X fighter in the late 1980s.

The Defense Agency had intended to develop the FS-X, a successor to the ASDF's F-1 support fighter, using domestic technology. But bending to strong pressure from the U.S., Japan gave up on the option of domestic development and chose to remodel the U.S.-developed F-16 fighter.

U.S. fears over losing key technologies through the project also led to highly limited technology transfers and 40 percent of the work going to U.S. firms.

"As soon as the new government policy (on arms exports) becomes clear, we will start exchanging information with the U.S. private sector and present concrete proposals to the Japanese government," Keidanren's Nishioka said during the symposium. "That will enable Japan to take a more active position toward the U.S."


-------- russia

Russia Rewrites Its Nuclear Doctrine With Mobile Launchers

Moscow (UPI)
by Peter Lavelle
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04w.html

Speaking to the country's top military brass on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia's nuclear deterrent would soon be significantly upgraded with weapons technology unmatched by other nuclear powers. While making it clear Russia's top security priority is the war against international terrorism, Putin has also signaled that the country's nuclear deterrent will remain a key element of national defense.

In what is widely interpreted as a prep talk to Russia's military leadership, Putin boasted of technological breakthroughs that would considerably modernize the country nuclear arsenal. Providing few details, Putin stated, We are not only conducting research and successful test on state-of-the-art nuclear missile systems, but I am convinced that there will appear ... weapons that not a single other nuclear power has, or will have, in the near future.

Defense experts in Russia and around the world believe Putin was referring to either a new mobile version of the Topol-M ballistic missile, deployed in silos since 1998, or a significant upgrade of the Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile. Still other analysts contend that Russia is also developing a new generation of heavy missiles with a payload of up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing more than tons - currently a Topol-M has a 1.32-ton warhead capacity.

The technological breakthrough suspected is the ability to have warheads detached from the main delivery missile during the final stage of its descent, then to continue the flight as crisis missiles. Such missiles, experts believe, would be able to evade any existing or planned missile defense shield. Russian military officials claim this new technology was successfully tested in February of this year.

Putin's announcements were also for international consumption, particularly the United States - vigorously developing its own missile defense shield. Russia strongly protested America's withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, only to later let the issue pass and develop technologies that would render any U.S. missile defense shield obsolete before complete deployment.

The U.S. reaction to Putin's address has been to play down any sense of alarm. White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Wednesday said: This is not something we look at as new. He added, We are very well aware of their longstanding modernization efforts for the military. ... We are allies now in global war on terrorism.

While there appears to be little doubt Putin's announcements were to remind the United States and other nuclear powers that Russia will continue to upgrade its nuclear deterrent, Putin's boasts were for more internal consumption. Putin reminded the world that Russia remains a superpower in at least one sense. He also reminded Russians that, like many other reform efforts, the military is also on the mend after almost a decade of decay, low morale, underinvestment, and ineffectiveness in Chechnya.

Military reform has been a top priority during Putin's presidency, with only limited results to date. After five years in office, Putin finally felt confident enough to remove top military brass resistant to reforms designed to modernization Russia's military establishment, which remains remarkably Soviet in outlook and structure.

Russia's conventional forces remain dangerously weak, with some defense analysts believing that in the case of foreign attack the country might not be able to defend itself. Missile defense is very different, its mere existence serves as a deterrent.

Impatient and unable to quicken the pace of conventional forces reform, the Kremlin has changed its military doctrine to compensate for this weakness, and missile defense is seen as the only solution ensuring the country's security. Russia's current national security doctrine, signed by Putin in 2001, allows for use of nuclear weapons if other forms of defense fail. Previously, the use of Russia's nuclear deterrent could only be called into play if it was deemed the country's sovereignty was in peril.

Putin's announcement that Russia will continue to support state-of-the-art nuclear deterrence certainly puts would be aggressors on notice. It reminds the United States that Russia is a very meaningful military peer. At home, the military and the average citizen can take pride in the fact that Russia is still a very powerful country in the world. However, in all of this is embedded a very grave danger.

If upgrading Russia's nuclear deterrent is a substitute for conventional forces reform, neither Russia nor the world is any safer. Without radical conventional forces reform, the Kremlin has effectively lowered the threshold to use nuclear weapons. Lowering the threshold permitting the use of such weapons only encourages other nuclear powers to do the same. It also may encourage some countries that do not have nuclear weapons to acquire them.

Breakthroughs in military technology cannot ensure Russia's security, but well-trained, modern, and highly motivated ground forces can. One has to wonder if the Kremlin is opting to be smart instead of practical.

Peter Lavelle is an independent Moscow-based analyst and the author of the electronic newsletter on Russia Untimely Thoughts untimely-thoughts.com.

-----

Russia seeks active participation in Iran's peaceful nuclear programme

MOSCOW (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118220500.pvctng2l.html

Russia wishes to participate actively in Iran's peaceful nuclear programme in due conformity with international commitments, the secretary of the national security council was quoted as saying Thursday.

"Russia intends to participate actively in the development of civil nuclear energy in Iran in line with international obligations," Russsian news agencies quoted Igor Ivanov as telling his Iranian equivalent Hassan Rohani by telephone.

Iran has informed Russia of the terms of an agreement reached with France, Germany and Britain -- on behalf of the European Union -- on the controversy of Iranian nuclear power.

Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment in order to defuse international concern about its nuclear programme -- seen by the United States as a cover for an atomic weapons drive.

The deal brokered by the EU three offered Iran trade, security and technological incentives in return for its cooperation.

Tehran asserts that it only wants to generate atomic energy in order to meet booming domestic power demand and free up its vast oil and gas resources for export.

RIA Novosti news agency reported that Russia had expressed satisfaction at the accord with the western powers, saying it would help to normalise the Iran's situation.

Moscow is in the process of completing Iran's first nuclear power plant, although it has refused to provide fuel for the project until it guarantees its safe return to Russia for reprocessing.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in September his Islamic state was pushing forward with nuclear cooperation with Russia despite protests from the West.

He said the reactor in the southern Iranian town of Bushehr would go ahead despite resistance from the United States and Israel.

-----

Putin: Russia to Deploy Missiles 'Unlikely to Exist' Elsewhere

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56417-2004Nov17.html

MOSCOW, Nov. 17 -- President Vladimir Putin told a conference of top military officials Wednesday that Russia was planning to deploy a nuclear missile of a kind that other nuclear powers were unlikely to develop.

Putin gave no other details, but over the last several months Russian military officials have spoken about developing a ballistic missile that could penetrate any missile defense system, such as the one being put in place by the United States. It reportedly would have the maneuverability of a cruise missile after reentering the atmosphere from space, helping it to evade interceptor rockets.

"We have not only conducted tests of the latest nuclear rocket systems," Putin said at a meeting in Moscow of the armed forces leadership, according to Russian news services. "I am sure that in the coming years we will deploy them. . . . Moreover, these will be things which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers."

Russian officials have talked of shield-evading missiles since the 1980s, when the Reagan administration promoted its Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile system.

In announcing a planned missile defense system in 2001, the Bush administration said it was designed to protect the country from "rogue states" such as North Korea, not Russia's massive arsenal.

But the announcement prompted a new round of statements from Russian officials that their country would develop missiles capable of penetrating such a shield.

The Itar-Tass news service said Putin may have been referring to a pending mobile version of the Topol-M, the only intercontinental missile developed by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Earlier this month, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia expected to test the missile soon and that production might begin in 2005.

Some analysts questioned whether the projected 2005 defense budget was sufficient to finance an upgrading of Russia's nuclear forces. The army and security agencies, including the police, are projected to receive about $32 billion, or 30.5 percent of the federal budget.

"Putin's statement looks rather political," Ruslan Pukhov, an analyst at Moscow-based Center AST, which specializes in security studies, told the Bloomberg news service. "Most likely, Putin meant some research and design, conducted during Soviet times and dusted off recently."

--------

Putin Says New Missile Systems Will Give Russia a Nuclear Edge

November 18, 2004
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/europe/18russia.html?pagewanted=all

MOSCOW, Nov. 17 - President Vladimir V. Putin, meeting with Russia's defense officials and military commanders here, said Wednesday that the country would soon deploy new nuclear missile systems that would surpass those of any other nuclear power.

Reiterating previous statements and providing no new details, Mr. Putin said Russia would continue to emphasize its nuclear deterrent, even as it continues its focus on terrorism, which has roiled the country in recent months with deadly results.

"We are not only conducting research and successful testing of the newest nuclear missile systems," he said in concluding remarks to a regular gathering of commanders at the Ministry of Defense, which were reported by news agencies and broadcast on NTV. "I am certain that in the immediate years to come we will be armed with them. These are such developments and such systems that other nuclear states do not have and will not have in the immediate years to come."

In his remarks, which amounted to a broad overview of military strategy and budgets with a dash of boosterism, Mr. Putin did not elaborate on the new systems.

The Russian military is widely reported to have been trying to perfect land- and sea-based ballistic missiles with warheads that could elude a missile-defense system like the one being constructed by the Bush administration. Still, Russia already has more than enough missiles to overwhelm the limited system the United States is constructing.

In February, Mr. Putin announced that Russia had successfully tested a new nuclear-tipped missile during an exercise that included two embarrassing missile misfires. At the time, he said the system would allow "deep maneuvering," a statement that arms experts in Russia and abroad took to mean a warhead that could alter its course as it approached its target.

A day after that exercise, Col. Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, who this summer was promoted to the chief of the military's general staff, said the missile was a "hypersonic flying vehicle," though neither he nor any other officials have provided details about the weapon or, more important, its viability.

The missile is reportedly a variant of the Topol, a ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile that is already in Russia's arsenal, but Russia's efforts are shrouded in secrecy.

Dmitri V. Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and an expert on the Russian military, said Mr. Putin's remarks, made almost in passing and not a part of his main address, revealed nothing particularly new.

Mr. Trenin described the comments as a gesture to bolster the confidence of the armed services, which remain beleaguered, despite the government's efforts to increase spending, including a 27-percent increase, to roughly $20 billion, in the military budget for 2005.

Last month, a senior missile designer publicly complained in remarks to Russian news agencies that production of the Topol missiles had twice this year ground to a halt because of a lack of financing.


-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Atomic energy's second wind

The Japan Times
By DAVID HOWELL
Nov. 18, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?eo20041118dh.htm

LONDON -- American utility companies are returning to the idea of building nuclear power stations. They believe they can get approval for licenses to start doing so by 2007, and they also believe, despite bitter past experience, that safety problems can finally be solved and the economics can be justified.

This is bold thinking, but is it realistic? All over the world nuclear power programs have long been in limbo for years and a huge political resistance has developed. Although accidents have been rare and performance generally reliable, America's Three Mile Island incident in 1979 and, even more, the Soviet Union's Chernobyl disaster in 1986 have left an indelible imprint of fear that no amount of statistics showing years of safe operation seem able eradicate.

An even deeper fear focuses on the handling of radioactive waste. The public remains convinced that the super-toxic material left over from nuclear electricity generation cannot be transported, stored or disposed of safely.

In vain the nuclear industry has pointed out that the quantities involved are minute (all the waste ever generated by nuclear power stations so far would probably cover no more than three football fields) and that poisonous radioactive material can be encased in glass (vitrified) and buried for centuries until it is harmless. But the public remains skeptical.

Then there is the cost problem. The issue that has long frightened investors away from the nuclear power industry is the colossal cost of eventually decommissioning a plant. It is what made nuclear power so unattractive to financial markets in Britain back in the 1980s when the rest of the electricity industry was successfully privatized.

These are still formidably steep mountains to climb, so why the revived optimism? The answer is that nuclear advocates now think that new designs and technical innovation can overcome safety as well as cost problems. They argue that the danger of a nuclear reactor core being drained of coolant and overheating, as happened at Chernobyl (and as depicted in the mythical but chilling movie "The China Syndrome"), can be eliminated with new designs.

They also maintain that decommissioning costs can be drastically cut and that electricity can be generated from new nuclear stations for about $1.70 a kilowatt-hour over the reactor's lifetime, compared with $1.80 for coal-fired stations and much more for oil and gas.

But much more significant than any of these semi-technical issues are two new "drivers" that nuclear enthusiasts point to. The first is, quite simply, that nuclear power is clean -- it produces no carbon dioxide (CO2 emissions. Of course, the process of constructing a nuclear power station, with its megatons of concrete and metal, is highly energy-intensive. But once the plant is up and running, it is goodbye to the CO2 pollution that many fear is threatening the planet.

The second big new "driver" for the cause of nuclear energy is that oil and gas supplies are becoming less and less reliable. There may be plenty of oil and gas left, both in discovered reserves and in hidden, more remote areas (such as under the Arctic ice cap). But at what cost can it be extracted and will it keep flowing? Those are the questions.

More and more hydrocarbon energy deposits are destined to come from regions that are very unreliable politically. How painful will the price of a barrel of oil get to cover the vast risks of interruption, sabotage, terrorism, blackmail, insurgency, revolution -- not to mention natural disasters like earthquakes?

Can countries afford to rely on the boiling Middle East, unsettled Nigeria, unpredictable Russia, troubled Venezuela, embattled Algeria, for example, for their daily light, heat and industrial production?

Nations and societies that are self-sufficient in oil can perhaps sleep a little easier in face of all these dangers. But America has long ceased to be one of these. Since claiming self-reliance in energy 40 years ago, it has allowed itself, almost absentmindedly, to drift into the hair-raising position of having to import 73 percent of its daily oil needs from the outside world.

Of course, what goes for America goes for other countries, too, but at least some of them are getting prepared. Japan has made strides toward using less oil and is thinking, however reluctantly, about expanding nuclear power further.

Finland, always a center of green issue concerns, has bitten the bullet and is building six new, state-of-the-art, nuclear stations. Even Germany is overcoming its long-held hesitations.

Admittedly the wider dangers of nuclear power in an age of terrorism cannot be overlooked. The tightest possible international monitoring of all nuclear activity is essential if nuclear materials are not to slip into irresponsible hands.

But the plain truth of the world's energy future is now written in letters a mile high: Burning fossil fuels has become both a high risk and threat to the planet.

Renewable energy can help at the margin, but even giant wind farms have a big environmental downside. Conservation and solar panels can do their part, especially in the home, but the massive power that industry and 21st-century life need will have to come increasingly from safe nuclear energy. The experts know this as do the technicians, but dare the politicians break the news to a still nervous public, or will they wait until the lights go out, industry seizes up and the heating fails -- by which time it will be too late to take remedial action.

As President George W. Bush settles into his third term, his advisers are rightly warning him that America needs a radically new energy policy. Could this be the time for some real leadership?

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords.

-----

U.S. nuclear power workers show no unexepected radiation related cancer

News-Medical in Medical Study News
Thursday, 18-Nov-2004
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=6391

A first-of-its-kind study of more than 53,000 U.S. nuclear power workers has found that employees in the commercial nuclear industry are less likely than the general population to die from cancer or non-cancer diseases due, in large measure, to the so-called "healthy worker effect."

The study by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health tracked workers from 15 nuclear utilities in the U.S. for periods of up to 18 years between 1979 and 1997. Mortality rates of these workers showed that they were 60 percent lower than cause-specific U.S. mortality rates for a population similar in terms of gender, age and calendar year. In order to work in the nuclear industry, workers have to be healthy and are usually required to have annual medical check-ups.

The most important results of this study were findings with respect to radiation-related leukemia and radiation-related other cancers. According to the records, which were maintained by the facilities themselves and by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy, positive, although non-statistically-significant, associations with radiation were seen for mortality from some forms of leukemia and other cancers as a whole. The magnitude of these associations is very similar to those from other radiation studies on which current radiation safety standards are based, indicating that the standards are appropriate.

The researchers did report, however, a strong positive and statistically significant association between radiation dose and death from arteriosclerotic heart disease, including coronary heart disease.

Cautions Geoffrey Howe, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School and principal investigator of the study, "While associations with heart disease have been reported by some other occupational studies, the magnitude of the present association is not consistent with them, and, therefore, needs cautious interpretation and merits further attention."

According to Dr. Howe, "With a mean age of 45 years, this cohort is still relatively young which explains the small number of deaths. Further follow-up and data from an on-going analysis of nuclear workers from 15 countries will provide an additional opportunity for studying the effects of low-dose radiation exposures and greater power to evaluate the present findings."

This study represents the culmination of efforts by individuals in industry, government and academia to combine available sources of information on occupational radiation doses received by U.S. commercial nuclear workers. Currently, there is no single depository of radiation doses in the U.S. and researchers believe one is desirable.

The study, "Analysis of the Mortality Experience Amongst U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Workers After Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation," is published in the November issue of Radiation Research (Rad Res 162, 517-526, 2004), the official journal of the American Radiation Research Society. The 15 nuclear utilities voluntarily participated in the study conducted by the independent researchers. The results are of value in informing U.S. nuclear workers about the latest findings on the safety of their workplace.

http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu

-------- connecticut

Millstone Tax Case Turns On Definition Of 'alteration'
Dominion argues air pollution devices deserved tax credit

The Day
11/18/2004
By PATRICIA DADDONA
http://www.theday.com/eng/web/news/re.aspx?re=2B4648E7-2B68-48D1-A2F2-3243E9722977

New Britain - Attorneys for Dominion, the owner of Millstone Power Station in Waterford, argued with town lawyers Wednesday in New Britain Superior Court over tax credits for air pollution control devices at the Millstone 3 reactor.

At stake is an estimated $3 million a year in tax revenue for the town or, conversely, in tax credits for the company.

The devices monitor and manage steam and radiological emissions at the reactor using mechanical and chemical systems for plant ventilation, leak-detection and other functions. Under state law, the Department of Environmental Protection requires business taxpayers to certify whether there have been "any alterations" to such equipment before granting or renewing tax exemptions for air pollution control.

Wednesday's court session dealt with whether the devices have been altered and whether they still qualify for tax exemptions first issued in 1994.

In the first half of what is expected to be a two-part appeal before Judge Arnold W. Aronson, Dominion attorney Charles D. Ray of the Hartford firm McCarter & English argued that the town assessor erred in failing to credit Dominion three years ago for the devices, which had been certified as tax exempt since 1994.

The town's attorneys, Daniel E. Casagrande of the Danbury firm of Pinney Payne, P.C., and Anthony Roisman of NLS in Lyme, N.H., countered Wednesday that Town Assessor Michael Bekech correctly applied the law when denying tax credits. The law, they said, is clear and unambiguous.

Filed in 261 separate counts in 2001, Dominion's tax appeal challenges the town's property tax, which is based on an appraised value of Millstone of slightly less than $1.2 billion. The company states that the three nuclear reactors and associated buildings were really worth only $854 million.

Dominion bought the power station with three plants, two of them operational, for $1.3 billion, less than half the $3 billion or more the property was worth before deregulation introduced competition into the nuclear marketplace.

The judge will rule on the validity of air pollution control exemptions, which account for 83 counts of the appeal, after receiving briefs and final oral arguments in January. In February, attorneys will argue the merits of their appraisers' views.

The judge's ruling on the tax exemptions alone could affect as much as $2 million a year in payments for Dominion, said John R. Malin, another Dominion attorney from McCarter & English.

It was not until Judge Aronson was considering whether to stop hearing expert witnesses, and rely on written briefs from each side, that the court heard testimony on what alterations might have been made to the pollution devices.

Dominion called the town assessor, Bekech, to the stand in an effort to show he could have investigated more before denying Dominion's exemptions.

Bekech testified that before he denied the exemptions, Dominion's tax supervisor claimed, "no alterations ... have materially changed since 1994." A Dominion engineer added that the function and form of the equipment did not change. Those answers did not satisfy him, he said.

"The statute, I believe, is very clear," he said. "It says, 'altered in any manner.'"

"We disagree that any change is an alteration," said Ray, representing Dominion. "If you go down that road it is going to end up being a silly result, because that can't be what the legislature intended ... The essential structures certified in 1994 were not changed as a result of whatever little changes were made."

Aronson allowed testimony from Dominion's second and only other witness, nuclear mechanical engineer David Miller of Sargent & Lundy, who has 28 years experience in the nuclear industry. The firm is an engineering and business consultant for the electric power industry.

Miller explained the findings of a report he compiled for Dominion. Of 10,350 design changes at the reactor, 1,115 were associated with air pollution control, and of those, 1,086 were minor, he said. Of the 29 significant changes, only two "might have the potential" to affect a system's function, he said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not the DEP, would regulate such changes, Miller said.

"The change was minor," Miller wrote repeatedly when describing modifications to seven systems, "and did not alter the air pollution control function; therefore this change was not considered a change" to the tax exemption certificate already on file.

In other words, he said, the change did not necessitate a change in the license or design amendment to the plant through the NRC.

The word "alteration" is just not used in the power business, he added, so he had to analyze the changes closely. He explained several of them, translating highly technical terms into words the average person could understand.

Under cross-examination, Roisman, the town's attorney, elicited testimony from Miller establishing that even re-painting a piece of air pollution control equipment could actually be a major undertaking, and involved safety analysis, temperature and other standards.

For instance, paint that peeled and chipped could block a pump, which could conceivably contribute to an accident, and so "is not trivial," Roisman said. Miller agreed.

Aronson asked attorneys to file briefs on Jan. 7. The trial could resume in February.

p.daddona@theday.com

-------- new mexico

Richardson speaks on Los Alamos contract

11/18/2004
The Associated Press
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_2464293

LOS ANGELES - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson urged the University of California on Wednesday to fight to keep its contract to manage the nation's top nuclear laboratory.

Richardson addressed members of the university's governing board as they met in Los Angeles, telling them the university has been a good steward of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and urging them to seek renewal of the contract to operate the lab in northern New Mexico.

The university has managed the lab for 60 years on no-bid contracts. But security slip-ups and allegations of sloppy financial management prompted federal officials to insist on open bidding when the current contract expires in September 2005.

University officials have not decided whether they will seek the contract, although they have instructed staff to prepare as though the school were offering a bid.

Richardson said the university should join forces with industry so the school can delegate security, safety and hazardous waste-disposal problems to another party.

That would free university officials to concentrate on scientific research, said Richardson.


-------- MILITARY

Child Soldiers Still on the March

Inter Press Service
by Sanjay Suri
November 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/suri.php?articleid=4000

LONDON - Hundreds of thousands of child soldiers are being used in conflicts around the world and governments are doing little to stop this, says a report published Wednesday.

"Governments are undermining progress in ending the use of children as soldiers," says the "Child Soldiers Global Report 2004" produced by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, a group of human rights and humanitarian organizations.

The report says children are fighting in almost every major conflict, in both government and opposition forces. "They are being injured, subjected to horrific abuse, and killed," the report says.

"Tens of thousands of children are being used by government armed forces in Myanmar [Burma]," head of the coalition Casey Kelso told IPS. "In Colombia, upwards of 14,000 child soldiers are being used both by rebels and the government-backed paramilitaries."

Up to 100,000 child soldiers are engaged in conflicts across Africa, with "at least 30,000 in Sudan," he said. A precise worldwide total is difficult to obtain because "this is an unacceptable practice that more and more governments try to hide," Kelso said. "It is hard to get at hard figures."

Some of the other countries with a high use of child soldiers in conflicts are Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, and now also southern Taiwan, Kelso said.

Until last year the United States was also on the list, following an admission that it had deployed 17-year-olds in conflict situations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child categorizes a child as someone below 18 years of age.

The coalition says that "at least 60 governments, including Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States continue to legally recruit children aged 16 and 17."

Influential groups such as the G8 (the leading industrialized nations, comprising the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia), the United Nations, and the European Union (EU) have all adopted positions against the use of child soldiers, Kelso said. "There are a lot of good things on paper, but they have not been translated into action," he said.

Four members of the Security Council - Algeria, Benin, China, and Russia - have not ratified the child soldiers treaty arising from the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Others are not finding the political will to impose arms embargoes and political sanctions against countries using child soldiers, he said. Such actions cost money, and Western governments don't want to end arms sales, he said.

"The international community is responsible for making these declarations and resolutions, and so it must follow up on them or people will begin to see through the paper," Kelso said.

The report reviews trends and developments since 2001 in 196 countries. "Despite some improvements the situation remained the same or deteriorated in many countries," the report says. "Wars ending in Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone led to the demobilization of 40,000 children, but over 25,000 were drawn into conflicts in Cote d'Ivoire and Sudan alone."

Dozens of groups in at least 21 conflicts have recruited tens of thousands of children since 2001, "forcing them into combat, training them to use explosives and weapons, and subjecting them to rape, violence, and hard labor," the report says.

The report says that "opportunities for progress, including the creation of and growing support for a UN child soldiers treaty, the creation of demobilization programs in some countries, and momentum toward prosecutions of those recruiting children, have been undermined by governments actively breaking pledges or failing to show political leadership."

The coalition says the Security Council should take "immediate and decisive action to get children out of conflict by applying targeted sanctions and referring child recruiters to the International Criminal Court for prosecution."

The steering committee of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers consists of Amnesty International, Defense for Children International, Human Rights Watch, International Federation Terre des Hommes, International Save the Children Alliance, Jesuit Refugee Service, the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, and World Vision International.

-------- afghanistan

U.N. Reports Boom in Opium Production in Afghanistan

November 18, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Afghanistan-Opium.html?hp&ex=1100840400&en=6e9c71206a67b054&ei=5094&partner=homepage

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Heroin production is booming in Afghanistan, undermining democracy and putting money in the coffers of terrorists, according to a U.N. report Thursday that called on U.S. and NATO-led forces get more involved in fighting drug traffickers.

``Fighting narcotics is equivalent to fighting terrorism,'' said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. ``It would be an historical error to abandon Afghanistan to opium, right after we reclaimed it from the Taliban and al-Qaida.''

Yet while all sides agree on the goal, disputes over tactics surfaced.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called fighting the narcotics industry his ``top priority,'' but came out Thursday against U.S. proposals to use crop dusters, citing possible risks to the health of villagers.

``The government of Afghanistan opposes the aerial spraying of poppy fields as an instrument of eradication,'' Karzai's office in Kabul said.

Despite the political progress epitomized by Karzai's election, and local drug control efforts led by British military advisers, the U.N. agency said cultivation of opium -- the raw material for heroin -- has spread to all of Afghanistan, with 10 percent of the population benefiting from the trade.

This year's cultivation was up by nearly two-thirds, it found. Bad weather and disease kept production from setting a record, although Afghanistan still accounted for 87 percent of the world supply, up from 76 percent in 2003.

Opium is the ``main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,'' the report said. It valued the trade at $2.8 billion, or more than 60 percent of Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product.

Most is smuggled across the eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida remnants demand transit and protection fees, Costa told reporters.

Calling the problem ``overwhelming'' for the weak Afghan army and government, Costa called on U.S.- and NATO-led forces to help out more in operations against drug labs and convoys of traffickers.

America and Britain are training small paramilitary units to smash laboratories and arrest drug suspects.

Generally, though, NATO nations have been reluctant get their troops directly involved in the drug fight.

Last week in New York, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged the United Nations to come up with a drug-fighting plan for Afghanistan and said the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan would be willing to discuss working under that umbrella.

Afghan officials say the government needs foreign help to eradicate drugs. Costa said international donors must help alleviate poverty in the countryside and root out corruption in the Afghan army, police and judiciary.

He urged the Afghan government to pursue a ``significant eradication campaign,'' prosecute major drug trafficking cases and take ``measurable actions against corruption.''

``The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is slowly becoming a reality,'' Costa said in the report. ``Opium cultivation, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, could ultimately incinerate everything: democracy, reconstruction and stability.''

The Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 found that cultivation rose 64 percent over 2003, with 323,701 acres dedicated to the poppies that produce opium.

That set a double record, Costa said, for ``the highest drug cultivation in the country's history, and the largest in the world.''

The total output of 4,200 tons was only 17 percent higher than last year because bad weather and disease reduced yields by almost 30 percent, the survey found. Still, 2004 production was close to the peak of 4,600 tons in 1999 -- a year before the Taliban banned new cultivation.

By contrast, opium production in southeast Asia's notorious ``Golden Triangle'' has diminished 75 percent and the region ``may soon be declared drug-free,'' Costa said.

Associated Press correspondent Stephen Graham in Kabul contributed to this report.

On the Net:
The report: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/crop--monitoring.html

-------- africa

Children of war: Africa's civil conflicts harm 100,000 young lives

UK Independent
18 November 2004
By Meera Selva in Nairobi
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=583993

More than 100,000 children have been abducted, tortured and sexually abused before being recruited to fight in Africa's long-running civil wars in the past three years, a report revealed yesterday.

Teenage boys and girls forced to join militias are being subjected to psychological torture so that they can be indoctrinated.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has more than 30,000 child soldiers fighting in militias and acting as bodyguards for government army commanders. Girls are also kidnapped and gang-raped by soldiers using them as entertainment and rewards for bravery.

The country is part of the Great Lakes region of Africa, the global epicentre of child warfare, where a total of 50,000 children have been used by armed groups to win power struggles in their own and neighbouring countries.

Martin was abducted aged 13 by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which has fought an 18-year guerrilla war against the Ugandan government. "Early on, when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA explained to us that all five brothers couldn't serve in the LRA because we would not perform well," he said. "So they tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until two of them died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old."

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers described some of the tactics used in the world's most brutal conflicts in its report, released yesterday.

Geoffrey Oyat of Save the Children, part of the coalition, said: "Children are forced to go through orchestrated events that turn them from victims to perpetrators, and make them feel they have no option but to join the militias."

A girl kidnapped at the age of 13 by militias in Burundi told interviewers: "They would eat and drink, then they would call for you. They were so many. It was so painful. If you refused, they used sticks to whip you. They all had sex with me. A man would come, then another and another. I wasn't the youngest."

Militias and government troops in Sudan have also used children to fight their internal conflicts. The coalition said children as young as 14 had been recruited into the government militias of the Local Defence Forces, in Rwanda, even though the Rwandan government denies using children as soldiers.

Napolean Adok, who was recruited as a child soldier with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to fight in southern Sudan's 21-year war against the government, said: "In long-running civil wars, groups run out of manpower. All the adult men get killed. No wonder they need children. In Sudan, there are no street children even though the country is so poor. On the pretext of reforming them, the government recruits them as child soldiers."

The influx of light ammunition into Africa has boosted child recruitment, the report says. "Let's face it, small guns are perfect for small hands," said Tony Tate, the children's rights director at Human Rights Watch. "If we sent light ammunition to these countries, they will be used by children."

Some countries had run demobilisation programmes for children, the report said, but many teenagers found it hard to fit back into normal society. Girls who had been abducted by militias were particularly vulnerable because they were often shunned by their families if they had been raped and become pregnant.

Mr Adok, the former SPLA fighter, said: "For child soldiers, something that looked like a toy became a killing machine. Even after a war ends, former child soldiers remain a social landmine. They cannot fit into society and often end up joining some other militia."

Child soldiers have been used to fight wars in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Pakistan. In the Middle East, Palestinian groups have accepted children as suicide bombers. The United States was also criticised by the coalition for detaining 16 and 17-year-olds in Guantanamo Bay as "enemy combatants".

The plight of child soldiers was as bad as it was three years ago, despite the fact that the UN had introduced a protocol in 2002 to end the recruitment of children. So far, 115 countries have signed up, but many, especially in Asia and Africa, have violated the agreements. Countries can legally be tried for using soldiers under the age of 15 through the International Criminal Court, but none have yet been prosecuted.

The coalition called on the UN Security Council, which meets in Nairobi this week, to apply sanctions against countries that allow children to be used as soldiers.

----

French ship arrives ahead of West African military exercise

COTONOU (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118170705.u5p2e7t3.html

A French naval amphibious landing ship will arrive on Friday off the west African country of Benin ahead of a mission to train west African troops to keep the peace in their volatile region.

French and Beninois officials confirmed that the 9,000-tonne TCD Sirocco would arrive in Cotonou anchorage at around 0800 GMT on Friday to take part twoards the end of the month in RECAMP IV, a peacekeeping exercise.

The ship, a versatile transport vessel with a helicopter deck and a docking areaf rom which to launch amphibious assaults, is carrying 170 troopsm 1,300 tonnes of equipment and 60 military vehicles.

The exercise comes as French and west African troops are involved in a tense UN-mandated peacekeeping mission in nearby Ivory Coast. Nine French soldiers were killed earlier this month by an Ivorian government air raid.

Under the RECAMP programme, which was launched in the 1990s and has held exercises and seminars in several west African countries, France trains African armies to improve their ability to conduct peacekeeping missions.


-------- arms

Estonia to buy 60 armoured vehicles from Finland

TALLINN (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118163215.poyoylqs.html

New NATO member Estonia will buy 60 used Pasi armoured personnel carriers from Finland to update its military capabilities, officials in the Baltic state said Thursday.

"The purchase is part of the Estonian defence strategy, which foresees the development of our army as a member of NATO," defence ministry spokesman Madis Mikko told AFP.

The government made the purchasing decision Thursday, while negotiations are still being finalised.

The cost of the deal is about 200 million Estonian kroons (12.7 million euros, 16.5 million dollars), Mikko said.

The personnel carriers will be equipped wth light weaponry in Estonia.

"The vehicles can be used for the transport of infantry units, either in training at home or in international peacekeeping operations," Mikko said.

He said there was no link between the purchase and the fact that two Estonian troops have been killed in Iraq.

The vehicles, which the Finnish defense forces have used in international missions, will arrive in Estonia in the course of next year.

Estonia joined NATO in March, along with six other former communist countries.

The Estonian defence forces, which number 3,500, have participated in international peace support operations in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Since 2002, the Estonian defence expenditures have been set at two per cent of the GDP.

-----

Dutch parliament wants to continue EU arms embargo for China

THE HAGUE (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118183425.o7vbokmz.html

A majority of the Dutch parliament has urged the government, which currently holds the rotating European Union presidency, to work to maintain an EU arms sales embargo against China, the Dutch ANP news agency reported Thursday.

Dutch European Affairs Minister Atzo Nicolai told the parliament that the Netherlands will lobby for the continuation of the embargo if it becomes clear that other countries also support it, according to ANP.

On Wednesday the European Parliament voted to maintain the armes sales embargo against China until it improves its human rights record.

The vote flew in the face of the wishes of leading EU member states France and Germany.

Britain and Italy have also expressed their support for a lifting of the arms embargo but Denmark and Sweden oppose it.

Parliament passed a motion asking the Dutch government to lobby for the continuation of the embargo earlier this year but the government had argued that the country would become isolated as the only one to support the ban.

Now that is has become clear that Sweden and Denmark also oppose the lifting of the embargo, parliament has reiterated its call.

The continuation of the embargo is likely to be discussed at an EU summit in Brussels in December.


-------- business

Intel to spread computer literacy in India

NEW DELHI (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/041118125319.hhrm9oys.html

Legendary Silicon Valley firm, Intel Corp. signed a raft of agreements Thursday with India's department of technology and three state governments to spread computer literacy in the country.

"Technology is already transforming lives in India, improving education and fueling economic growth. We want to support the continuation of these trends," said Craig Barrett, chief of the world's largest maker of microchips for computers and other electronic gadgets.

Intel is to help India's IT department make technology more accessible to school teachers throughout India.

The US tech giant signed separate pacts with three states -- Uttaranchal, Kerala and Karnataka -- on specific learning and e-government projects.

"Intel is anchoring a community programme in a remote district called Malapuram in Kerala which has turned young children and grandmothers computer literate," said Kerala's IT secretary Aruna Sounderrajan.

"As part of one of the ongoing programmes, Intel wired up 650 cyber cafes in rural Malapuram. Today, villagers and farmers walk into the cyber cafes to use the computers and the Internet. Some even settle their electricity bills using net banking," she added.

"We will scale up these programmes with help from Intel."

The Intel learning programmes will target students in the 10 to 18 age group, said A. Sinha, IT secretary of Uttaranchal state.

Barrett said Intel was looking at India as one possible site for setting up a microchip manufacturing unit.

"I am not going to say no to that question," Barrett said when asked whether India could become the site for Intel's next multi-million dollar microchip manufacturing facility.

"India is one of the several countries that we are evaluating for setting up a manufacturing facility. India is one of the competitors."

Intel has a development centre in the southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore. More than 2,400 software engineers who work at this center design Intel's next generation microchip processors and semi-conductors.

Intel's third-quarter profit jumped 15 percent from a year ago to 1.9 billion dollars, and revenues hit 8.5 billion dollars, up eight percent more than last year.


-------- colombia

Assassination Is an Issue in Trade Talks

November 18, 2004
By JUAN FORERO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/business/worldbusiness/18union.html?pagewanted=all&position=

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Nov. 17 - With tears in her eyes, 80-year-old Mercedes Cuéllar wrapped her arms around her son, one of Colombia's top union leaders, and said goodbye as he boarded a flight to Miami and temporary exile from the country's long conflict.

As the secretary general of the union that represents energy sector workers, Francisco Ramírez had survived seven assassination attempts, including one on Oct. 10. He was still alive, but hundreds of his compatriots, victims of the political assassinations that have been a scourge in this Andean country, have not been so lucky.

"I was so afraid for him that I wanted to see him go to another country," Ms. Cuéllar said, dabbing tears as Mr. Ramírez prepared to go through customs on a recent afternoon. "I'm much calmer that he's not here."

As union activists have fallen by the hundreds here, making Colombia the world's most dangerous country for union organizers, their families and those who have dodged assassins' bullets have had little recourse. Practically all killings of union leaders have gone unsolved.

Now, labor rights groups and some members of the United States Congress have promised to do something about the violence and the impunity, using free trade negotiations between Colombia and the Bush administration to prod the government of President Álvaro Uribe to do more to protect union activists and prosecute the killers.

The idea, say labor activists from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and senior Congressional aides, is to make the issue of violence and impunity as important a component in trade talks as the struggle over agriculture tariffs and intellectual property rights. Its failure to protect union members, the argument goes, gives Colombia an unfair edge over countries that do, like the United States.

"A country should not achieve an unfair comparative advantage by willful omission or noncompliance of labor standards," said Stan Gacek, assistant director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s international affairs department, which works with unions in other countries. "The issue of rights is not an obstruction to trade, it is absolutely essential to the success of trade."

An American trade official, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous, says that Colombia is obligated to enforce its own labor laws, which guarantee freedom of association and other labor standards.

"And how do I know someone is denied freedom of association?" he said. The murder of trade unionists, the official said, is a violation of freedom of association. "So clearly violence against trade unionists or impunity for killers is an issue with Colombia, and we've told them that."

The pressure is already having an effect.

Trying to mitigate the damage, Vice President Francisco Santos in September traveled to the United States to meet with a bipartisan Congressional group and John J. Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. "The government has a right to defend its record and that is the reason for my visit, and surely I'll return several times," Mr. Santos said in an interview.

Mr. Santos says that Mr. Uribe's government, which is widely credited with reducing violence since taking office in 2002, has made the country considerably safer for unionists. While 94 were slain last year, 58 had been assassinated as of Tuesday, according to the National Union School, a research and educational center in Medellín. The numbers are still staggering, Mr. Santos acknowledged, but they do represent a marked drop from 1996, when 222 were killed.

The vice president attributes the improvements to a new emphasis on prosecutions and a protection program that has received budget increases of 45 percent, to $13.8 million, since 2001.

Some rights officials, even those long critical of the Colombian government, said that the government had become more responsive to complaints from unionists fearful of being killed.

"I don't think this is a government where you have to make hundreds of phone calls and lobby them to make a serious case," said José Miguel Vivanco, who oversees the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, the rights monitoring organization based in New York.

But Mr. Vivanco, other rights leaders and the unionists say that impunity continues largely unabated, despite the government's assurances.

The vice president's figures show that the number of successful prosecutions of assassins - 19 - represents a small fraction of all the cases involving murders of union organizers. Nearly 2,100 union members have been slain since 1991, according to the National Union School.

Union advocates in the United States attribute the decline in violence to a cease-fire that Colombia's main paramilitary coalition, the United Self-Defense Forces, declared in December 2002 before embarking on disarmament talks with the government. The cease-fire has been violated numerous times.

Those paramilitary groups - right-wing, antiguerrilla militias financed by landowners and the cocaine trade - have long targeted unions, accusing their members of being rebels or working with Colombia's two leftist insurgent groups.

Asked about the murders of unionists, Rodrigo Tovar, one of the group's most feared leaders, was adamant about the need to ferret out guerrillas from unions.

"We have always acted against guerrillas, armed or not armed," Mr. Tovar, who commands 5,000 fighters, said last week in an interview on a ranch in northern Colombia. "Our war has been against the subversives, against communist guerrillas, however they are dressed."

Mr. Tovar denied that paramilitaries had worked with companies to eliminate union organizers. But few in Colombia dispute that union leaders have made enemies in the country's highly stratified society, both for their leftist declarations and for their harsh criticism of fiscally conservative governments bent on privatizing industries and holding down labor costs.

Indeed, Mr. Tovar, who was a wealthy landowner and businessman before joining the paramilitaries, could not contain his disdain for unions. He said that they had been "a disaster in Colombia for business" and that union activists were "the ones who sabotage, who hurt companies."

The deaths of union members here, particularly those who work for big foreign multinational companies, has become a thorny international problem for Colombia's establishment and the Bush administration.

Five lawsuits have been filed in American courts accusing companies like Drummond, a coal producer based in Birmingham, Ala., and two bottlers affiliated with Coca-Cola of using paramilitary gunmen to eliminate union organizers. The companies strenuously deny the allegations.

But the lawsuits, filed in American courts under a 215-year-old statute, have put an unwanted spotlight on Colombia's problems and irritated the Bush administration, which argues that they interfere with foreign policy and open multinational companies to sometimes frivolous grievances.

It is just the kind of pressure that union advocates in the United States want to increase, using the trade talks as a way of further prodding the two governments.

"They're looking for levers of pressure," said Michael Shifter, a senior policy analyst who closely follows Colombia for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington group. "And it's not surprising as the United States begins negotiations with Colombia on a free trade deal that they're going to explore the possibility of using this as a way of increasing pressure."

Several recent incidents in Colombia have energized union activists in the United States.

In September, the attorney general's office charged three soldiers with having murdered three union activists, an account that sharply contrasted with the army's earlier claim that the unionists were guerrillas killed in a firefight. And earlier this month, an army major escaped - apparently with the help of other military officials - from a military prison where he was serving a 27-year term for the attempted assassination of a union leader.

Mr. Santos, the vice president, said the arrests of the soldiers showed that the government was serious about pursuing the killers of union organizers. The government also quickly fired four military officers at the prison from which the convicted major escaped.

But inaction, union advocates say, is mostly the norm when it comes to the murders of union organizers like Luis Obdulio Camacho, who once headed a cement workers' local in Antioquia province.

Mr. Camacho had lost a son, also a union member, to paramilitary gunmen in 1991. Then, in 1998, he himself was slain; two gunmen shot him in front of several witnesses.

Today, Mr. Camacho's widow, Sixta Tulia Rojas, 69, lives in a small house in Bogotá, where she fled to escape her husband's fate. She yearns for justice, but long ago gave up on the government ever making an arrest in the case.

"No one saw anything and that's what's so terrible - the silence," Ms. Rojas said. Pointing to a framed poster of 10 union leaders, including her husband, she said: "Look at that photo. All of them were killed and no one was arrested."

-------- europe

Norway to contribute troops to EU rapid intervention force

OSLO (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118185912.p0i8mzhu.html

Non-EU member Norway will contribute up to 150 soldiers to a rapid intervention force that the European Union is planning to put together by 2007, the Norwegian defense ministry said on Thursday.

"The Norwegian participation in this force is a natural extension of our support to the EU's defense and security policy," Defense Minister Kristin Krohn Devold said, explaining that Norwegian troops had already been engaged, or were poised to be, in EU-led operations in Macedonia and Bosnia.

Sought by the minority centre-right government, Norway's participation in the project was also supported by the Labour opposition.

The EU's so-called battle groups project, which has been under discussion since last year, will create nine 1,500-strong forces deployable within 15 days to deal with situations ranging from peacekeeping right up to full-blown conflict.

As of 2008, the Norwegian troops are expected to be placed in a Nordic grouping under Swedish command.

Norway is a member of NATO but has twice rejected membership in the European Union.

A dozen battlegroups are currently in the process of being formed.

"With this tool, the EU has found an effective method of strengthening the UN's capacities, which is a goal shared by Norway," Krohn Devold said.

"The fact that the troops will train intensively with one another will improve European countries' ability to operate together," she said.

To counter the opposition of eurosceptics, Krohn Devold said that the decision of whether or not to participate in a particular conflict would remain up to the Norwegian government.

-------- iran

Amnesty Calls for Prevention of War Crimes in Iraq

(One World)
by Jim Lobe
November 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3998

In the wake of the apparent extrajudicial execution by a U.S. soldier of a wounded Iraqi prisoner in Fallujah, caught on videotape by NBC, Amnesty International is calling on the U.S. authorities to issue "unequivocal orders" for the proper treatment of unarmed or wounded insurgents.

The appeal, issued by Amnesty from its London headquarters Tuesday, followed a statement issued Friday by the world's best-known human rights organization, in which it said it was "deeply concerned that the rules of war protecting civilians and combatants have been violated in the current fighting between U.S. and Iraqi forces and insurgents" in and around Fallujah

The earlier statement blamed all sides for possible war crimes, noting that 20 Iraqi medical staff and dozens of other citizens were killed when a missile hit a clinic in Fallujah during the opening hours of the U.S.-led assault on the city, which had been controlled by insurgents since last April.

Amnesty said the origin of the missile was unknown, but that all sides were jeopardizing the lives of civilian noncombatants in the city. It noted at the same time that U.S. military spokespersons had provided estimates of the number of deaths among an estimated 2,000 insurgents who were believed to have been holed up in Fallujah as the assault began, but not of civilian casualties.

Reports from the city, virtually all of which had been secured by U.S. and Iraqi government forces by Tuesday, were divided as to whether the estimated 1,000-1,200 insurgents that U.S. commanders claimed had been killed in the fighting included civilians and, if so, how many. Some sources claimed that hundreds of noncombatants were included in the death toll, despite the fact that as many as 250,000 of the city's 300,000 inhabitants had fled Fallujah in advance.

U.S. forces suffered 37 dead in the week-long assault, as well as another 320 wounded.

Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the commanding officer of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, announced Tuesday that he had ordered a full investigation into possible war crimes after one of his troops was filmed by an "embedded" NBC camera crew Saturday shooting at close range an apparently injured and unarmed insurgent who was being held inside a mosque that had reportedly been the site of a fierce firefight the day before.

The scene, which has been broadcast here and around the world, depicted Marines approaching several injured men who had apparently been left there from the previous day.

Narrating the video, NBC correspondent Kevin Sites reported that one of the Marines noticed that one of the injured was breathing. "He's f">king faking he's dead," the Marine shouts, raising his rifle and firing a single shot in the man's direction. At that point, the video as broadcast on U.S. television goes black, but an unidentified voice is heard saying, "He's dead now."

In a report that accompanied the footage, Sites said, "The prisoner did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way."

Under international law, military forces have an obligation to protect and provide necessary medical attention to wounded insurgents who are "hors de combat" - or outside of combat - that is, those who no longer pose a threat.

"The deliberate shooting of unarmed and wounded fighters who pose no immediate threat is a war crime under international law," said Amnesty, who stressed that the U.S. authorities should immediately investigate the case and hold perpetrators responsible.

Under the circumstances, the only defense would be that the Marine had reason to believe that the insurgent was armed and posed a threat, in which case the shooting would constitute an act of self-defense.

For his part, Sattler insisted, "We follow the law of armed conflict and hold ourselves to a high standard of accountability. The facts of this case will be thoroughly pursued to make an informed decision and to protect the rights of all persons involved."

The military command also announced that the unnamed Marine who fired the shot had been taken off the battlefield and could face a court martial depending on the results of the investigation.

Amnesty stressed that the investigation should be open and transparent and that the findings should be made public.

It noted that it had already called on the U.S. authorities to investigate another Nov. 11 incident, reported on Britain's Channel Four News, in which a U.S. soldier appeared to have fired one shot in the direction of a wounded insurgent who was off-screen. The soldier then walked away and said, "He's gone."

Coincidentally, the Pentagon announced Tuesday that an Army lieutenant has been charged with premeditated murder in a similar incident that occurred in August in Baghdad's Sadr City. Two other soldiers had already been charged with murder over the same incident.

"Unequivocal orders for the proper treatment of unarmed and wounded insurgents must be issued or reinforced to all U.S. and Iraqi military and civilian personnel," Amnesty said.

An analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW) said his group was also concerned about the incidents. "If there is a general sense that perhaps these rules can be trampled, whether it is this case, whether at Abu Ghraib [prison], or in a different context at Guantanamo, in all of these places we see the rules being ignored," Steve Crawshaw of HRW's London office told the Voice of America.

-----

Fallujah toll climbs to 51 marines, 8 Iraqi soldiers killed: general

WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118173011.xdlkms8d.html

Insurgents killed a US Marine and an Iraqi soldier in Fallujah Thursday, raising the coalition toll in the fighting to retake the city to 51 US dead and eight Iraqis, the top US marine commander there said.

Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the two were killed after insurgents opened fire on marines clearing a building in the southwestern sector of the city just before sunset Thursday.

"I'm sad to report that we had one marine killed and one of our Iraqi security partners killed with him. One marine and one Iraqi soldier wounded," Sattler said from Iraq in a videoteleconference with reporters in Washington and Iraq.

He said 51 US troops and eight Iraqis have been killed since US-led forces launched a massive offensive 11 days ago to retake the city, an insurgent bastion. At least 425 US troops and 43 Iraqi Army troops have been wounded, he said.

Sattler said a previously reported estimate that more than 1,200 insurgents were killed "is probably a safe number."

The general said he had no reports of civilians killed in the fighting, but he added that the US military had treated between 25 and 30 people for injuries.

"But once again, we're still moving through the town, and there's a number of buildings that are, in fact, rubbled," he said.

"But I can honestly say at this point I know of none that were killed, and only a handful that have been treated," he said.

-------- iraq

Falluja fighters resist as clashes spread

aljazeera
18 November 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4A62DCD9-BDE2-4DBA-84C5-A5BFB1689D9F.htm

Fighters in Falluja are continuing to hold out in the face of massive firepower US forces are unleashing to try and seize overall control of the city.

"Fierce resistance is still raging with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine guns against the US forces stationed on the outskirts of Falluja," an Iraqi journalist in the city, Fadil al-Badrani, said.

Badrani said American war planes and tanks had resorted to bombing the holdout sectors of the city and some areas were still not under their control.

"Clashes are still continuing the southern and eastern edges of the town. US forces have so far failed to storm the northern al-Julan neighbourhood," he said.

He added that US-led forces had abandoned al-Julan and the northern parts of the city, resorting shelling and aerial bombing those areas.

News agencies reported heavy machine gunfire and explosions were heard on Wednesday morning coming from the south-central parts of the town as US marines continued to hunt remaining fighters.

US scaling down

But the US said its aerial missions over Iraq were beginning to slow after a 50% jump that accompanied the Falluja offensive, said Rear Admiral Barry McCullough, commander of the USS John F Kennedy battle group in the Arabian Gulf.

"The operation is starting to wind down now. That doesn't mean there aren't pockets of insurgents and terrorists in Falluja," he said.

Stepped-up assaults on fighters in Falluja and elsewhere have pushed the US toll to at least 91 in November, making it the second-deadliest month for US troops since the Iraq invasion in March 2003, Pentagon figures show.

The worst month was April, with 135 deaths, when marines fought fierce battles in Falluja, only to eventually withdraw.

Violence across Iraq

Meanwhile, fighting flared on a number of fronts across the country. In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, clashes erupted on Wednesday evening between US soldiers and armed groups opposed to the US-led government, leaving seven people dead, according to hospital officials.

The fighters fired RPG, mortar and machine gun rounds at US forces at several locations in the town, Abd al-Karim al-Hiti of Ramadi general hospital said.

The three-hour gun battle broke out after evening prayers at around 6pm local time. Another 13 people were injured in the fighting, according to al-Hiti.

Several floors of two residential buildings in the Aziziya district were set ablaze by the firefight, residents said.

Soldiers wounded

Northeast of the capital, in al-Mugdadiya and al-Khalis, an unknown number of US soldiers were wounded and several military vehicles damaged in heavy fighting between US troops and fighters, Aljazeera has learned.

Reinforcement troops were called in to assist in Mosul

Fighting also broke out in Baiji, which lies north of Baghdad. Iraqi police sources told Aljazeera that 15 Iraqis were wounded when an explosive device destroyed a US armoured vehicle.

US forces immediately cordoned off the site, ordering residents to stay in their homes and threatening to shoot anybody who ventured out.

In the northern city of Mosul, US and Iraqi troops said they had recaptured police stations and secured bridges.

Loud explosions

Nineveh province's deputy governor had said fighters blew up the Zuhur police station before the US advance, but the US military denied any police stations were destroyed.

On Tuesday, loud explosions and gunfire had rung out as US warplanes and helicopters circled over Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city with more than one million residents.

US forces say the worst month was April with 135 deaths

Mortar shells hit two areas near the main government building in the city centre, killing three civilians and wounding 25, hospital officials said.

One soldier was wounded when a car bomb exploded near a US convoy in western Mosul, the military said.

The stated aim of the US-led offensive is to seize control of the city 362km north of Baghdad, where fighters stormed police stations, bridges and political offices last week.

The operation was launched after US and Iraqi reinforcements were rushed to Mosul.

A US army infantry battalion was recalled from the fighting in Falluja, 300 Iraqi national guardsmen came from garrisons along the borders with Iran and Syria, and a special police battalion was sent from Baghdad.

Mosul residents reported on Wednesday that one of the five bridges had been reopened to traffic.

Elsewhere

In other incidents on Wednesday, a rocket hit a busy commercial district near the government administration building in the northern town of Kirkuk, killing one person and wounding three, Iraqi officials reported.

In Baghdad a US Humvee, part of a military convoy, was damaged and several soldiers wounded in a roadside blast in the Sindiya district.

In a separate development in the capital, US troops arrested Nasir Ayaif, a deputy head of the Iraqi National Council and a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, according to Iyad al-Samarrai, an official of the Sunni Muslim political party.

Al-Samarrai said the arrest was in response to the party's criticism of the Falluja offensive and opposition to security policies of the US command and the US-backed interim government.

There was no comment from US authorities. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's office said it was demanding that Ayaif be turned over to the government and promised any charges would be investigated fairly.

-------- israel / palestine

Israeli paper says soldiers regularly desecrate bodies of dead

Associated Press
November 18, 2004
http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=2582202

JERUSALEM The Israeli army is looking into allegations that combat soldiers desecrated the body of a Palestinian in Gaza and posed for a picture alongside the ravaged corpse. The army announced the investigation after the Web site of an Israeli newspaper (Yediot Ahronot) released an advance portion of a larger article to be published Friday. The article quotes unnamed soldiers as testifying that they posed for pictures and desecrated the bodies of Palestinians.

In general, the military condemned such incidents. But the army challenged the accuracy of some of the newspaper's account.

In one incident, the report says, an unnamed soldier described how the body of an unarmed Palestinian killed in Gaza was brought to the army outpost and soldiers posed with the body. They took souvenir photos and gave him the nickname "Inny" for "innocent civilian."

--------

Fallujah Residents Emerge, Find 'City of Mosques' in Ruins

By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58510-2004Nov17.html

FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 17 -- The night the Americans came, Abu Saad hunkered in the little room at the back of his house in the center of the city, where he prayed that the bombs would not find him. He and his father, brother and nephew tried to drown the sound of the artillery with their prayers. Dear God, he chanted over and over, please protect us.

Describing their ordeal on Wednesday, Abu Saad, 31, recalled how the first night blurred into day, and then into a second night. Dawn broke four times while they hid. During daylight, they fasted in observance of the holy month of Ramadan. At night, Abu Saad rushed to the kitchen to cook a pot of chicken and then whisked it back to his hiding place, where he and his relatives pulled the meat off the bones with their fingers and listened to the sound of their city falling around them.

After four days, Abu Saad heard voices outside, then the smash of the front door being broken down. In the back room, Iraqi security forces found Abu Saad and his relatives, alive, blinking in the light, relieved and praising God. As the Iraqi soldiers led Abu Saad out of his home, assuring him that he would be protected, he got a first glimpse of the rubble that was once his neighborhood. Stunned by the sight of crumbled concrete, damaged mosques and shops blistered by bullets and artillery shells during fighting between U.S. forces and insurgents, Abu Saad said he felt his heart break.

"This is the city of the mosques," he said on Wednesday at a yellow-brick school near his house. "I felt sad after I saw the city, the buildings. I feel sad even talking about it."

U.S. and Iraqi officials declared last weekend that the fight for Fallujah, which began on the night of Nov. 8, was over and that the city had been liberated from insurgents who had controlled it since April. Yet on Wednesday, most of the streets remained deserted. The only traffic was military vehicles that sped through the city, wary of snipers and roadside bombs. Announcements over loudspeakers at mosques told people where to go to find food and water, and many have responded, showing up in groups carrying white flags.

During the past two days, more than 500 civilians who hid during the fighting rather than leave their homes have turned up at the school and a nearby mosque, where U.S. and Iraqi security forces are providing food and water.

"It's not a humanitarian crisis," said Maj. Jim Orbock, a soldier with the Army's 445th Civil Affairs Battalion. "I think we have a decent handle on what's going on. As the civilians are coming out, we're feeding them. We have everything -- food, water."

The majority of Fallujah's 250,000 residents fled before the offensive began, and Orbock said it was hard to estimate how many stayed, probably fewer than 1,000. "We know they are out there," he said.

Abu Saad said he sent his mother and family out of the city before the fighting, but his elderly father refused to leave. "I couldn't leave him," said Abu Saad, a thin man with a neatly trimmed mustache who was dressed in a dark gray cotton dishdasha, a traditional gown. "I knew God would protect me."

The Iraqi army is responsible for running the food and water distribution points, and on Wednesday, a soldier who gave his name as Sgt. Habeeb said the civilians generally have been happy to see the Iraqi forces. "It's very, very important what we're doing," Habeeb said. "It's making a difference."

As Abu Saad waited for water and food at the school, a 12-year-old boy with a chipped tooth and shy grin came up and put his arm around the older man's waist. Abu Saad reached down and patted the boy's head in greeting. The boy, Abdullah, was a neighbor who also had come looking for something to eat.

Abdullah said his house was damaged during the battle but that he never was afraid. "I said, 'God, you're the greatest,' and he took care of me," Abdullah recalled, a blue-striped polo shirt tucked into blue sweatpants.

When Ghamer, 36, and his uncle, Mohammad, 52, walked up the street to the school, Ghamer held a wooden stock with a ragged white cloth tacked to it. He rolled up the white cloth as he came inside, and held out his hand to be dusted for signs that he had handled explosives, which security forces would consider a sign he was an insurgent. Once cleared, he was handed a white bag filled with candy and snacks and a microwaveable meal, even though the city's electricity was cut more than a week ago.

Ghamer, who declined to give his last name, said he hid in his house until it was damaged by an artillery round. He fled to his uncle's house and spent several days there until food and water started to run out. On Monday, he came to the school for food and has been coming back every day, carrying his white cloth on the stick so American forces would not mistake him for an insurgent and kill him.

The uncle, Mohammad, who also did not give his last name, said he blamed foreign insurgents in the city for forcing the battle with American forces. "If the Arab fighters leave the town, nobody can be hurt," Mohammad said. He shook his head and waited to stick out his hand to be checked.

Abu Saad picked up his box to head home, where he planned to spend the rest of the day cleaning the house and garden.

It made him feel better, he said, and eventually his mother would return home. He wanted the house to be clean.

-------

Car Bombing Kills 10 in N. Iraq; Battles Flare in Fallujah

By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56586-2004Nov17?language=printer

BAGHDAD, Nov. 17 -- A car carrying explosives ripped into a U.S. convoy Wednesday in northern Iraq, killing at least 10 people, and U.S. troops encountered pockets of resistance in Fallujah, a city wrecked by more than a week of fighting.

Black smoke billowed over Fallujah, once home to about 250,000 people, as insurgents staged hit-and-run raids on U.S. patrols moving through the city's dense warrens. Military commanders said they had no estimates on the number of rebels still fighting, but the staccato bursts of gunfire and thunder from tank rounds in the city's center countered Iraqi and U.S. claims over the weekend that the battle there had largely ended.

U.S. commanders said they held the entire city but acknowledged that rebels have moved back into areas that were believed to have been secured. While the entrances to the city are blocked, the insurgents may be plying old paths into Fallujah or crossing the Euphrates River, whose palm-shrouded banks skirt the city.

In Baiji, an oil refinery town north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said a car carrying explosives barreled toward a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and detonated, wounding three soldiers. The military did not say how many civilian casualties there were, but news agencies, quoting hospital officials, reported that at least 10 people were killed in the blast and the shooting that ensued.

Insurgents in Baiji, a town that has long been unstable, have tried to target the oil refinery and other installations and establish a greater presence in the streets.

In Mosul, which more than 2,500 U.S. troops entered Tuesday after attacks by insurgents on police stations, four of the city's five bridges spanning the Tigris River remained closed. But residents reported the streets were quieter, and fewer rebels were seen in public.

Since last week, fighting has surged across a swath of Iraq stretching from northern cities to a turbulent area south of Baghdad, where residents say Sunni Muslims intent on strict religious rule have almost complete control such towns as Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah.

The fighting, which has killed dozens of U.S. troops and hundreds of insurgents, has played out as efforts continue to prepare Iraq for elections at the end of January. The American military is determined to achieve at least a modicum of stability, particularly in the restive Sunni regions. Insurgents are no less determined to derail the voting, which, if successful, would probably be perceived as a victory for the U.S. project in Iraq.

The insurgents' tactics have ranged from more conventional guerrilla warfare, with the daily deployment of car bombs, to the sabotage of Iraq's tattered oil pipelines and other infrastructure to the brutal intimidation of Iraqi police, National Guard and army units whose development U.S. officials have made a priority.

The Interior Ministry said Wednesday that it was investigating a report from police in the southern city of Karbala that 31 recruits may have been abducted in Rutbah, in the west, as they returned from training in neighboring Jordan. But a spokesman, Sabah Kadhim, said the ministry had no information about any kidnappings and said the police chief in Rutbah, contacted Wednesday night, had no report of abductions.

"I cannot confirm anything," Kadhim said. "There are a lot of rumors right now."

In past months, insurgents have kidnapped security force recruits and their relatives, and on Monday, the Interior Ministry reported that a wounded policeman had been seized from his hospital bed and dismembered, his remains hung in a city square. In October, gunmen ambushed a group of unarmed army recruits returning home from training. Forty-nine of them were killed execution-style, with gunshots to the back of the head.

Along a street in Baghdad, next to banners of the most feared insurgent group, now known as al Qaeda in Iraq, guerrillas have strung up uniforms of Iraqi National Guard members as a warning.

In Fallujah, which was a base for the insurgent group, fighting flared again Wednesday, with a near-constant barrage of mortar and rifle fire. In a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, snipers penetrated a building held by Marines. A rocket barrage forced a reporter to leave the scene, and it was unclear how the clash ended.

Just outside the city, U.S. warplanes bombed a suspected hideout after insurgents tried to attack a passing convoy. Dust thrown up by the blast could be seen a mile away.

Residents said fighters were fleeing south, some of them swimming across the Euphrates with their weapons. One 32-year-old guerrilla, who identified himself as Abu Salman, said the attacks in that part of the city were intended to divert U.S. attention and allow others to escape.

The corpses of slain fighters could still be seen in the streets, and more than 100 rebels, dozens of them Arabs from outside Iraq, were buried in a new graveyard. Residents said a statement purportedly from Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who leads al Qaeda in Iraq, was circulated among those still fighting, urging them to take their campaign to Baghdad and target the Iraqi police, army and foreigners.

Some of Fallujah's rebels may also have fled west to Ramadi and south to Latifiyah and nearby towns. Residents quoted by the Associated Press said that masked men with rocket-propelled grenades took up positions in neighborhoods of Ramadi, where the U.S. military has noted a more sophisticated and better-organized guerrilla presence.

The fighting in Fallujah and the eruption of clashes elsewhere in the region north and west of the capital, popularly known as the Sunni Triangle, represent tactical moves, but they also have increasingly taken on the veneer of a public relations battle. Both sides have sought to channel sentiments in a country beset by unease and fear over the worsening bloodshed.

So far, the anger unleashed by the fighting has not approached the intensity of that produced by another round of fighting in April, and regions dominated by Shiite Muslims have stayed relatively quiet.

But there are still signs of displeasure over the fighting, particularly in other Arab countries. On Rotana, a popular Arabic music channel, text messages sent by viewers and broadcast at the bottom of the screen have conveyed pledges of support for Fallujah.

"Long live Fallujah, long live the resistance," one said this week.

Staff writer Jackie Spinner in Fallujah and special correspondents Naseer Nouri and Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.

--------

U.S. Says It May Have Found Zarqawi's Command Center

November 18, 2004
The New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH and EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1100840400&en=acd7ab8762e092fc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - American military officials said they had discovered a house today in the devastated city of Falluja that appears to have been a command center for the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in Iraq.

The cement house, in the south-central part of the city, contains murals showing symbols associated with Al Qaeda, said Maj. David Johnson, who accompanied the First Infantry Division unit that searched the house after being alerted by Iraqi soldiers.

The Iraqis also discovered letters they believed to be from Mr. Zarqawi to his lieutenants, the major said, along with computers, materials for making car bombs, identification papers that included a Sudanese passport and medical supplies from the International Red Cross and the United States Agency for International Development.

Mr. Zarqawi's network is believed to be responsible for ambushes, bombings and beheadings that have left hundreds dead across Iraq since the summer of 2003. American commanders say he almost certainly fled Falluja in the days or weeks leading up the recent offensive. Mr. Zarqawi, who has a $25 million bounty on his head, recently changed the name of his group from One God and Jihad to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The discovery of the command center came as Marines in rubble-strewn southern Falluja continued to engage in pitched firefights with pockets of insurgents. A Marine and an Iraqi soldier were killed at sunset when they came under fire as they were trying to clear a building. An American tank unloaded a round into the building where the insurgents had fired from, ending the battle.

So far, at least 51 American servicemen have been killed and 425 wounded in the city since the American assault began on Nov. 8, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, said here at Camp Falluja, the Marine headquarters. Eight Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 43 wounded. About 1,200 insurgents appear to have been killed, the general said.

General Sattler also asserted that the offensive had "broken the back of the insurgency" and had "disrupted them around the country."

That assessment appeared to be contradicted by the wave of assaults that continued today across central and northern Iraq, in the areas dominated by Sunni Arabs, who ruled the country under Saddam Hussein.

Bombings in Baghdad and two northern cities killed at least eight Iraqis. In Mosul, pushed to the brink of chaos by a revolt last week, rebels attacked a police station and lobbed 10 mortars at the provincial government center, injuring at least four of the governor's bodyguards. The Iraqi government was investigating reports that 63 freshly trained policemen had been abducted at gunpoint earlier this week as they were driving in from Jordan.

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna, an extremist group believed to be responsible for many recent beheadings, posted an Internet message saying it would kill any Iraqi running or voting in the general elections scheduled for January. In recent weeks, Mr. Zarqawi's group has also distributed flyers in Baghdad with similar warnings. The threats come as American and Iraqi officials are scrambling to tackle the daunting task of election security.

General Sattler's conclusions also appeared optimistic next to the fact that Abdullah Janabi, the leader of Falluja's mujahedeen council, was still operating in the city, and next to a recent Marine intelligence report that warned of the resurrection of the insurgency in the Falluja area should the American military decrease troops levels there, as has been planned.

American soldiers are now "ubiquitous" throughout Falluja, General Sattler said at the news conference, and are searching the city's houses for insurgents. They continue to find large stores of weapons and bomb-making facilities, he added, as well as command centers used by insurgents. That included the Zarqawi safe house, whose discovery was reported earlier today by CNN and The Washington Post on its Web site. With gun battles and mortar fire still shaking the city, it will be "some time" before it is safe enough to allow many of Falluja's 300,000 residents to return, General Sattler said. The decision to move people back in will be made by the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, based on a recommendation by American commanders.

Almost all of the city has been pulverized, and the biggest question facing American and Iraqi officials is how residents will react to seeing the vast swaths of destruction. Residents of the city were generally supportive of the mujahedeen and did not want the Americans to enter. American commanders say rebuilding efforts will win over the Fallujans, but reconstruction efforts by the Americans in other urban battle zones in Iraq, like Najaf, have stumbled badly.

Falluja is known as the City of Mosques, but the landscape is now dotted by broken minarets, many destroyed by airstrikes.

Falah al-Naqib, the Iraqi interior minister, said at a news conference in Baghdad that families who fled would receive food rations and 150,000 dinars, or about $110, on their return.

The resettlement will take place in phases, moving from the north to the south end of the city as American troops root out remaining insurgents and as basic services become available, General Sattler said. Engineers are also evaluating how to restore power, water and sewage systems to the city, where hazards like downed power lines continue to pose a danger.

The main water plant is in relatively good condition and should be repaired within two to three days, the general said, but many pipes are damaged and residents may need to rely on bottled water for some time.

Robert F. Worth reported near Falluja for this article, and Edward Wong from Baghdad.

--------

MILITARY ASSESSMENT
Marine Officers See Risks in Reducing U.S. Troops in Falluja

November 18, 2004
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18troops.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are warning that if American troop levels in the Falluja area are significantly reduced during reconstruction there, as has been planned, insurgents in the region will rebound from their defeat. The rebels could thwart the retraining of Iraqi security forces, intimidate the local population and derail elections set for January, the officers say.

They have further advised that despite taking heavy casualties in the weeklong battle, the insurgents will continue to grow in number, wage guerrilla attacks and try to foment unrest among Falluja's returning residents, emphasizing that expectations for improved conditions have not been met.

The pessimistic analysis is contained in a seven-page classified report prepared by intelligence officers in the First Marine Expeditionary Force, or I MEF, last weekend as the offensive in Falluja was winding down. The assessment was distributed to senior Marine and Army officers in Iraq, where one officer called it "brutally honest."

Marine commanders marshaled about 12,000 marines and soldiers, and roughly 2,500 Iraqi forces for the Falluja campaign, but they always expected to send thousands of American troops back to other locations in Iraq eventually, after the major fighting in Falluja. This intelligence assessment suggests that such a move would be risky.

Some senior military officers in Iraq and Washington who have read the report have cautioned that the assessment is a subjective judgment by some Marine intelligence officers near the front lines and does not reflect the views of all intelligence officials and senior commanders in Iraq.

"The assessment of the enemy is a worst-case assessment," Brig. Gen. John DeFreitas III of the Army, the senior military intelligence officer in Iraq, said of the Marine report in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "We have no intention of creating a vacuum and walking away from Falluja."

The report offers a stark counterpoint to more upbeat assessments voiced by military commanders in the wake of the Falluja operation, which they say completed its goals well ahead of schedule and with fewer American and Iraqi civilian casualties than expected.

Although the resistance crumbled in the face of the offensive, the report warns that if American forces do not remain in sufficient numbers for some time, "The enemy will be able to effectively defeat I MEF's ability to accomplish its primary objectives of developing an effective Iraqi security force and setting the conditions for successful Iraqi elections.

The American military and Iraqi government are poised to pour humanitarian aid and conduct reconstruction efforts in the battle-scarred city, most of whose nearly 300,000 residents fled before the fighting began last week.

"The view from the tactical level has been generally more pessimistic," said one senior Marine officer in Washington, referring to the view from the ground. "They may well be right, but I would also say that tactical intel is almost always more dour than that done at the strategic level."

Details of the report and some of its verbatim findings were provided to The New York Times this week by four active-duty or retired military officers in Iraq and Washington who have read the report or heard descriptions of it.

The assessment draws on intelligence gathered in the Falluja operation and 10 intelligence reports compiled in the last six months in the Marines' area of responsibility in Iraq, principally Al Anbar and Babil Provinces, officials said.

Senior officers said the intelligence report was meant to help top Marine commanders in Iraq, including Lieut. Gen. John F. Sattler and Maj. Gen. Richard F. Natonski, and their military superiors in Baghdad, decide how many American forces to keep in the Falluja-Ramadi area when the offensive is over and reconstruction efforts are in full swing.

Senior officers have said that they would keep a sizable American military presence in and around Falluja in the long reconstruction phase that has just begun, until sufficiently trained and equipped Iraqi forces could take the lead in providing security.

"It will take a security presence for a while until a well-trained Iraqi security force can take over the presence in Falluja and maintain security so that the insurgents don't come back, as they have tried to do in every one of the cities that we have thrown them out of," Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, said on Nov. 8.

American commanders have expressed disappointment in some of the Iraqis they have been training, especially members of the Iraqi police force. Other troops have performed well, the officers have said.

The commanders are looking at a range of options on how many troops to keep in the area, depending on the security situation and how quickly Iraqi forces can take control. But if many American troops and the better-trained specialized Iraqi forces, like the commando and special police units, are committed to Falluja for a long time, they will not be available to go elsewhere in Iraq, possibly creating critical shortfalls.

Already, hundreds of American troops in a battalion of an Army Stryker Brigade in the Falluja area have been returned to Mosul in the north to help quell insurgent attacks there.

The Marine report paints a generally gloomy picture of the insurgents' expected reaction if American forces are reduced too much during the critical reconstruction.

"At current projected force levels, the enemy will be able to maintain a sufficient level of intimidation of the Al Anbar and Babil Province populations and infiltrate or otherwise further degrade the capabilities" of the Iraqi security forces in western and south-central Iraq, where the Marines operate, the report says.

The insurgency has shown "outstanding resilience" and the militants' willingness to fight is bolstered by four main factors, the report says. One, the tribal and insurgent leaders understand the limitations of the United Nations, American elections and internal Iraqi government politics, and try to exploit them. Two, they are skilled at turning battlefield defeats into symbolic victories, just as Saddam Hussein did after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Insurgents will make the battle of Falluja into an excellent recruiting tool, the report says.

Three, the insurgents are dedicated propagandists who use the Internet and other means to feed exaggerated and contrived reporting from the battlefield to jihadists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. Al Jazeera and Arab media then pick it up, the report says.

Finally, the report says, the insurgents believe they are more willing to suffer casualties than the American military and public, and "will continue to find refuge among sympathetic tribes and former regime members."

The report predicts that insurgents will try to disrupt voter registration, which the officers say is already two weeks behind in Al Anbar Province, and that elections in the region will be cast into doubt.

Officers who have read the report played down its dire warnings and pointed out several successes noted in the document. The report, for instance, says that the Falluja operation achieved its basic goal, to deny the insurgents their largest sanctuary in Iraq, and has forced the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to move to a new base of operations in the country, probably Mosul.

The report also says that the number of attacks in Ramadi, the capital of Al Anbar Province, has declined by 40 percent in the last few weeks, after security was heightened in the region, according to Maj. Douglas M. Powell, a Marine spokesman in Washington.

Eric Schmitt reported from Washington for this article, and Robert F. Worth from Falluja.

--------

Conspiracy Theories Persist on Arafat's Death
Many Palestinians Still Assert Israel Poisoned Leader

By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58516-2004Nov17.html

JERUSALEM, Nov. 17 -- What, or who, killed Yasser Arafat?

The rapid decline of the 75-year-old Palestinian leader's health, the refusal of his wife and authorities at the French military hospital where he died last Thursday to release his medical records and Israel's threat a year ago to "remove" him have spawned a cottage industry of speculation among Palestinians. Unwilling to accept the official explanation that Arafat died of an illness, many seem to favor the explanation that Israel, with help from a senior Arafat aide, poisoned him, a charge Israelis deny and many others have discounted.

The French government, constrained by privacy laws, went as far as it could on Wednesday to quash rumors that Arafat was poisoned, without explicitly denying it.

"If the doctors had had the slightest doubt, they would have referred it to the police. I note that permission was given for him to be buried," a government spokesman, Jean-Francois Cope, told reporters after the weekly French cabinet meeting, according to news accounts. He repeated France's refusal to release Arafat's medical records to anyone but his family, saying, "The public authorities can in no case violate this law, which touches on fundamental freedoms."

Nonetheless, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia on Wednesday ordered an inquiry to determine the cause of Arafat's death. The Associated Press reported that a commission, to be headed by Health Minister Jawad Tibi, will take testimony from Palestinian and other Arab doctors and follow up with medical teams that performed "tests on President Arafat in Ramallah, in order to get the available information about the sickness of President Arafat, and the reasons of his death," a commission statement said.

The suspicion that Arafat was murdered is not being peddled just by a few conspiracy theorists, but by many, including some of Arafat's top aides. His Jordanian doctor has called for an autopsy, citing possible poisoning. Tayeb Abdul Rahim, the secretary general of Palestinian Authority's Office of the President, also raised the possibility of poisoning, saying that Palestinians deserved to know what caused Arafat's death.

"In the Western media, you think this is paranoid conspiracy theories, but here in the Arab world, that is not the case at all," said Hishad Ahmed, a political scientist at Bir Zeit University, on the outskirts of Ramallah. "If people found that Yasser Arafat was poisoned, it would be a volcano here -- a big earthquake."

"I strongly believe" Arafat was poisoned, he said, adding "most likely it was done by Israel, but it would have to have been executed by those around Arafat." As evidence, he cited previous assassination attempts by Israel against Palestinian leaders, Israel's threats against Arafat, the demand by Arafat's doctor for an autopsy, his treatment at a military hospital that was not likely to divulge secrets and the "campaign of disruption Palestinian officials engaged in for two weeks" during Arafat's hospitalization.

Adding to the confusion is the lack of information that was released during his treatment. Arafat's wife, Suha, refused to allow Arafat's aides to see him and withheld virtually all information about his condition, which she was allowed to do under French privacy laws.

When Palestinian officials flew to Paris to see Arafat for themselves, his wife complained to al-Jazeera television that there was a huge conspiracy against her husband and that officials were coming to bury him alive.

When the officials arrived, they mended fences with Suha Arafat, and during a news conference afterward, Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath gave the most complete account to date of Arafat's health. Doctors, he said, "don't have a full understanding of why his status has deteriorated, which means that we don't really have a full diagnosis. . . . We know what it is not. It is not malignancy or cancer anywhere in his body, and the doctors today ruled out completely poisoning."

But Palestinian officials continue to complain that Arafat's wife is blocking the full release of information about his cause of death, which they say is preventing their people from reaching closure.

"Maybe I don't have the full information about how [Arafat] died and the reason, but I am totally convinced it was an abnormal and unusual cause of death," said Hussein Sheikh, the general secretary of Arafat's Fatah political movement in the West Bank. Arafat "is not the property of Suha. He's the property of the Palestinian people, and it is the right of the Palestinian people to know how their president died."

--------

Direct Aid for Palestinians Is Planned

Reuters
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A36
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58512-2004Nov17.html

The Bush administration, as part of a renewed push for peace in the Middle East, plans to give $20 million in U.S. aid directly to the Palestinian Authority, sources familiar with the plan said yesterday.

The administration notified key congressional committees yesterday of the move, which could be announced when outgoing Secretary of State Colin L. Powell meets with Palestinian officials in the West Bank early next week, the sources said.

--------

Israel Apologizes for Killing Egyptian Officers

November 18, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18cnd-mide.html?oref=login&pagewanted=all

JERUSALEM, Nov. 18 - The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, apologized to Egypt today after an Israeli army tank crew fired on an Egyptian patrol near the border with Gaza, killing three Egyptian police officers.

In the dark, the Israeli tank crew thought the Egyptian patrol was a group of Palestinian militants trying to plant explosives close to the Israeli-controlled corridor separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Israeli army said. The tank fired one shell about 3 a.m. local time, the army said.

Mr. Sharon telephoned the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to apologize and promised to share the results of the Israeli investigation into the incident. Mr. Mubarak accepted the apology, an Israeli official said.

Still, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a sharp protest to Israel and demanded "an immediate, full and comprehensive investigation."

Israeli officials were unanimous in their apologies, and the army put an Arabic-speaking spokesman on Al Jazeera television to express sorrow.

It was not clear whether the Israelis had first identified suspected terrorists and hit the Egyptian patrol instead, or whether they thought the Egyptians were the terrorists.

Israeli officials are worried that the killings will delay an important visit here, scheduled for Wednesday, by Egypt's intelligence minister, Omar Suleiman, and foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit.

Under Israeli and American pressure, the Egyptians had recently stepped up efforts to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza and Israel along their border, whether over land or through tunnels into Gaza. One such tunnel near Rafah collapsed today, trapping an unknown number of people.

The Egyptians, Mr. Suleiman in particular, are playing an important role in talking to the various Palestinian factions in Gaza about how to approach Israel's unilateral withdrawal of its settlers from there and how Gaza will be run afterward. With the death of Yasir Arafat, American and European officials are eager to bring a new Palestinian leadership into talks with the Israelis about the Gaza withdrawal, as a way of easing into a pattern of negotiations.

The Americans, Europeans, Russians and the United Nations have a "road map" for peace that both Israelis and Palestinians have accepted, but that has been in abeyance, because Mr. Sharon argued that Mr. Arafat was not serious about combating violence and terrorism. After Mr. Arafat's death, these officials see Gaza as a way "back to the road map" and diplomacy itself.

The American secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, is due in Israel and the West Bank on Monday to talk to Mr. Sharon and the new Palestinian leadership, in particular Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei. The Americans want to help the Palestinians hold elections to replace Mr. Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority by Jan. 9; the private hope is that Mr. Abbas will run and win.

But Mr. Powell's visit will be followed in short order next week by the British and Russian foreign ministers, Jack Straw and Sergei Lavrov, with their Spanish and German counterparts expected to follow. Mr. Arafat had been isolated by Israel and European foreign ministers, except for the French, had not visited him for more than a year. The last time Mr. Powell met with the Palestinian leadership was more than two years ago, after Mr. Bush, in June 2002, said that the Palestinians needed "new leadership and not compromise by terrorism."

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qurei have been in Gaza for a few days meeting with Palestinian factions, including those sworn to Israel's destruction, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are trying to negotiate a period of quiet before the January vote, if not a formal cease-fire with Israel that Hamas could not publicly countenance.

Today, Mr. Qurei, the prime minister, spoke of the need to halt "the chaos of arms" and the display of weaponry. "This chaos serves no one, apart from those who profit personally," he said. He repeated the new leadership's call for law and order.

On Sunday, Mr. Abbas and his Gazan ally, Muhammad Dahlan, escaped a shooting incident in Gaza when members of the Al Aksa Martyrs's Brigades, affiliated with Mr. Arafat and his Fatah faction, opened fire in a tent devoted to mourning Mr. Arafat. Two bodyguards were killed, and the incident was regarded as a warning to the more moderate Mr. Abbas not to ignore the views of younger militants committed to Mr. Arafat and the intifada.

The Al Aksa members seem to feel that with their main protector and sponsor, Mr. Arafat, gone, Mr. Abbas, Mr. Qurei and Mr. Dahlan will move too far in Israel's direction and betray Mr. Arafat's legacy.

In another, ongoing embarrassment for the Israeli army, the military police are continuing to investigate the killing by multiple gunshots of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, Imam al-Hams, by Israeli soldiers on Oct. 5 as she approached a military observation post near the Rafah refugee camp. The soldiers said they thought she was planting a bomb; their captain, who has not been identified, has been arrested. Soldiers have testified that the officer walked up to the girl after she was hit and riddled her with automatic fire to "verify the kill." The officer has denied the charge, saying he shot at the ground.

The army wants to exhume the body to confirm the range from which she was shot, but so far the family has refused, said their Israeli lawyer, Lea Tzemel. Autopsies are forbidden under Islamic law, and the family thinks the army simply wants to clear the officer.

An Israeli army officer said today that the captain was likely to face a court-martial, and that higher officers were furious because he appeared to have lied in the initial field investigation of the killing.

Separately, a Hamas political leader, Sheikh Hassan Yussef, was released today after two years in an Israeli jail and immediately went to Ramallah to pay his respects at Mr. Arafat's grave. Mr. Yussef said he thought Hamas should participate in the presidential elections, as well as in municipal and legislative elections. But Hamas has said it would boycott the presidential vote while participating in the municipal one. Legislative elections have not been scheduled, even though the mandate of Palestinian legislators expired four years ago.


-------- landmines

Report: Land Mine Pact Cuts Global Casualties

WORLD IN BRIEF
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58799-2004Nov17.html

TRAPEANG VENG, Cambodia -- More than 8,000 people were killed or maimed last year by land mines, although a 1997 international treaty that banned the weapons has reduced the carnage, an activist group said Wednesday.

As many as 20,000 more people may have fallen victim to land mines during the period because so many cases go unreported, but even that would be an improvement on annual estimates before the Mine Ban Treaty, which was implemented in 1999, officials from the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines said.

Countries increasingly are shunning land mines, but the United States, China and Russia are among those that haven't joined and stockpile millions of the devices, according to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group.

Since the treaty, more than 100 countries that signed it have destroyed more than 62 million stockpiled mines and cleared more than 425 square miles of land of the weapons, the group said in its global report. Only Burma and Russia have continuously used mines since 1999, it said.

-----

One million Mozambicans still vulnerable to landmines
Nobel Laureates to present report on global mine problem

November 18, 2004
The News International
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/nov2004-daily/18-11-2004/world/w7.htm

MAPUTO: Twelve years after the end of a brutal civil war, Mozambique is still dealing with a "critical situation" from landmines in areas where more than one million people live, an official said Wednesday.

"The situation of landmines in Mozambique is still critical," Gamiliel Munguambe, director of the National Demining Institute told AFP on Wednesday on the sidelines of the launching of Handicap International's annual report on landmines.

"The fact that people continue to be maimed or killed in landmine explosions is in itself an indicator that there's still a lot more to do in terms of clearance, especially in agricultural land, around wells and roads," Munguambe said.

He said at least nine people were killed and 33 other lost limbs in landmine accidents nationwide over the past two years although more cases have gone unrecorded.

More than 1,000 sappers from six local and foreign non-governmental organisations and 20 private firms were involved in clearing the estimated two million mines planted in all the country's 10 provinces during the 16-year civil war.

"We have many teams on the ground but our territory is very vast," he said, adding: "Should the partnership with international donors continue, we hope to conclude demining at least in the areas confirmed to contain mines by 2009." Munguambe said a total of 220 million square metres (2.3 billion square feet) of land had been cleared since 1992 at a cost of 183 million dollars (140 million euros), which was funded by the international community.

Official statistics say that 1,022,501 of Mozambique's 17 million people are currently directly affected by landmines and thereby have their movements restricted in 583 villages and surrounding agricultural land totalling some 528 million square metres.

Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams will present a report Wednesday on the scale of the global land mine problem.

-------- latin america

Brazil Official Eyes Secret Military Files

Associated Press
By VIVIAN SEQUERA
November 18, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BRAZIL_MILITARY?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) -- A Brazilian government party official on Wednesday urged the opening of sealed records that could contain details of citizens tortured and killed by the former 21-year military dictatorship.

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wants to unseal the records and isn't dissuaded by the opposition of the armed forces, said Jose Genoino, president of Silva's Workers Party, or PT.

"The PT favors access to these records ... in President Lula's term," Genoino said. Silva's four-year term ends in 2007.

The dictatorship's records were ordered sealed for 50 years in 2002.

"We have to solve this. We have to change the legislation," said Genoino, who fought the dictatorship in a guerrilla war in the eastern Amazon jungle and spent five years in prison.

He added: "The country cannot look at its past with fear."

The armed forces seized power in 1964, overthrowing democratically elected President Joao Goulart. They returned to the barracks in 1985 and have maintained generally good relations with the civilian government.

But tensions flared recently when the newspaper Correio Braziliense printed a photo of a naked political prisoner in a cell. Many thought the prisoner was Vladimir Herzog, a TV journalist who was arrested by the military's intelligence unit and found hanged in his cell in 1975. The army's initial response made things worse. The army seemed to defend repressive measures as "a legitimate answer to the violence of those who refused dialogue."

Silva reportedly was furious, and Defense Minister Jose Viegas resigned in protest. Army commander Gen. Francisco Albuquerque issued a second, more conciliatory statement saying for the first time the army "lamented" Herzog's death.

Silva, a former factory worker and labor leader, also had run-ins with the military. He was convicted of violating Brazil's "National Security Law" for leading a labor strike and thrown into prison, but the decision was later reversed and he was released.

"We're not afraid of the military," said Genoino, responding to accusations by rights groups that the government was overly passive to the army's attitude.

Opening the files would not lead to the trial of officers accused of abuses. Brazil decreed a general amnesty in 1979.

"The question is not to judge, but rather to attend the families" of Brazilians who were killed or disappeared during the dictatorship, Genoino said.

Among those who vanished were members of the Brazilian Communist Party who fought with Genoino in the guerrilla war. The fate of some 70 guerrillas in the Araguaia region of the Amazon remains unknown.


-------- nato

NATO invites Israel to joint military, anti-terror exercises

Haaretz,
By Aluf Benn
November 18, 2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/502537.html

BRUSSELS - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has suggested that the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time, take part in multinational military exercises and participate in anti-terror activities such as patrols in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. NATO is also considering sending forces to the Gaza Strip after Israel implements the disengagement plan, if Israel and the Palestinian Authority reach an agreement on the withdrawal and ask for NATO help.

A military summit was to be held in Brussels on Wednesday, with the participation of the chiefs of staff of 26 NATO members and countries that have ties with the organization. For the first time, Israel will send a senior IDF representative to the summit: operations directorate chief Major General Yisrael Ziv, who was sent at the last minute in place of Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon.

NATO plans to upgrade what it calls the "Mediterranean dialogue" it is conducting with Israel and six Muslim nations: Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauretania. This means that policy discussions will be conducted by leaders of a higher rank, and that the level of joint military operations will be raised through coordinated military exercises, the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and joint planning for civilian disaster readiness.

The IDF's first-ever role in NATO military exercises is part of the organization's decision to invite the armies of the "Mediterranean dialogue" countries to take part in the exercises.

Seven exercises were proposed to the IDF, including training that will take place in Ukraine in June. NATO sources said experience has taught that it is worthwhile to start with sending officers from countries new to alliance activities to view multinational operations as a way of learning the methods.

Diplomatic, not just military, dialogue is also on the agenda. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was invited to participate with his colleagues from the other "dialogue" nations, in a meeting with the NATO foreign ministers council which will meet in Brussels next month.

In the last few weeks, the suggestion has been made in the United States and other Western nations that NATO should send its forces to the Gaza Strip after Israel pulls out. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told the Financial Times, in an interview published Tuesday, that the ambassadors of the member nations would discuss the possibility of operating in Gaza, if Israel and the Palestinians reach an agreement and ask for NATO help.

De Hoop Scheffer wants the organization to play a diplomatic role, especially regarding strengthening the trans-Atlantic understanding that was somewhat disrupted by the war in Iraq. Last week he visited the U.S. and met with President Bush.

NATO, an alliance of 26 countries from North America and Europe, was founded in 1949 during the Cold War to oppose the Soviet Union and its European allies. In the last few years, the organization has been searching for new assignments, and today tries to help fight terror, even though its members don't agree on the definition of terror or on a list of terror groups.

In the last few years, NATO forces have operated in Bosnia, and today are involved in rehabilitating Afghanistan. The organization will also train the new Iraqi army. NATO warships operate in the Mediterranean Sea to intercept ships suspected of smuggling weapons for terrorism and to escort merchant ships. The Israeli navy will be invited to take part in the operation.

-----

Russia's new nuclear plans will have to be discussed with NATO: Henault

OTTAWA (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118175400.yishio83.html

Canadian air force general Ray Henault, who will take over as chair of NATO's military committee next year, said Thursday that Russia's plans to develop new nuclear weaponry will have to be discussed with Moscow.

Henault, currently Canada's Chief of Defence Staff, described Russia's announcement Wednesday as "obviously very significant."

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would soon be armed with nuclear weapons systems "which do not exist and are unlikely to exist in other nuclear powers."

But Henault said he did not know the details of the planned new Russian weaponry.

"We will have to talk to them," he said, adding there was already close cooperation between NATO and Russia, including regular talks in the framework of the NATO-Russia Council.

Talking to Canadian reporters by teleconference call from NATO headquarters, Henault said his appointment as the NATO Council's top military adviser was a "great honour for Canada" and a recognition of Canada's role in the alliance. Henault will take over as chair of the military committee next June. He will remain as chief of defence staff in Ottawa until April.

Looking ahead to his first months as the top military advisor to the NATO Council, Henault said priorities included integrating the seven new members of the alliance into the NATO command structure and tackling new international security problems

-------- pakistan / india

US notifies Congress of 1.3 billion arms package for Pakistan

WASHINGTON (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118164306.mq68gq6h.html

The United States has notified Congress of a possible 1.3 billion dollar arms package for Pakistan, including eight P-3C Orion planes to beef up surveillance of its coasts and borders to stop the movement of terrorists and drug smugglers, defense officials said Thursday.

It would be the largest US foreign military sale to the country since sanctions against Pakistan were lifted in late 2001 as a reward for supporting US forces fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

Besides the Orion surveillance planes, Pakistan also has requested 2,000 TOW-2A anti-armor guided missiles and six Phalanx Close-in Weapons Systems for Pakistani warships.

"The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not affect the basic military balance in the region," the Defense Security and Cooperation Agency said in notifications that went to Congress November 16.

Although regarded as an indispensible US ally in the war on terror, nuclear-armed Pakistan also has longstanding military rivalry with neighboring nuclear-armed India, with which it has fought three wars since independence in

The Pentagon can conclude negotiations with Pakistan on the proposed sale unless Congress acts to stop it within 30 days.

The costliest items in the package are the P-3 aircraft, with an estimated value of 970 million dollars if all options are exercised, the Pentagon said.

"The command-and-control capabilities of these aircraft will improve Pakistan's ability to restrict the littoral movement of terrorists along Pakistan's southern border and ensure Pakistan's overall ability to maintain integrity of their borders," it said.

It said Pakistan intends to use them to develop "a long needed fleet of martime and border surveillance aircraft."

"The addition of these aircraft will provide Pakistan with search surveillance and control capability in support of maritime interdiction operations and increase their ability to support the US Operation Enduring Freedom operations," it said.

The P-3s also are designed to hunt ships and submarines and will enhance the "regional influence" of the Pakistani navy, it said.

The TOW anti-armor guided missiles were valued at 82 million dollars, while the Phalanx weapons systems were put at 155 million dollars.

The Pentagon said the TOW anti-armor guided missiles would help Pakistan "provide for its own legitimate self defense needs and to enable Pakistan to support US operations against terrorist activity along its porous borders."

"In addition, these missiles have most recently been employed in several global war on terrorism operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan and have allowed -- when coupled with Cobra attack helicopters -- the government of Pakistan to employ new tactics, techniques and procedures that have proven highly effective against terrorists," it said.


-------- prisoners of war

Gitmo Trials Continue Despite Ruling

The NewStandard
November 18, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=3999

In spite of a court ruling that halted the military trial of a Guantanamo detainee last week, the military is continuing to conduct another kind of controversial hearing for prisoners held at the U.S. base in Cuba.

On Monday, a prisoner accused of delivering money to the Taliban stood before a Combat Status Review Tribunal made up of military judges.

The Review Tribunals are not criminal trials. Instead, the express purpose of the Review Tribunals is to allow each detainee to try to persuade the military that he is not an "enemy combatant." The tribunals are the Bush administration's answer to a summer Supreme Court decision that the Guantanamo detainees must be given the chance to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts.

Many human and civil rights groups that have been advocating for the legal rights of the detainees accuse the Bush administration of creating the Review Tribunals in order to prevent the detainees from gaining access to civilian courts, where the standards of evidence and access to legal representation are higher.

Back in early August, when the Review Tribunals began, Jeff Fogel, legal director at Center for Constitutional Rights, slammed the process in a press statement. His organization has been at the forefront of the legal battle to provide basic rights to the detainees held at Guantanamo

"The so-called 'Personal Representatives' assigned to [the detainees] have no legal background and are not advocates: they are required to pass on any information gleaned from a detainee during their conversations," said Fogel, referring to the military officers appointed to assist the prisoners in navigating the Review process. "These tribunals are a sham," he continued. "The detainees ... have no right to meaningfully contest any classified evidence against them, and no meaningful way to call any witnesses in their favor."

Last Monday a federal judge ruled that the military trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan must be halted. Hamdan, who had already gone through a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, was in the early stages of a criminal trial in front of a panel of military judges. Hamdan's lawyers successfully argued to the federal judge that the military tribunal under which their client was being tried violated international law.

The crux of their case was that under the Geneva Conventions, Hamdan should be considered a "prisoner of war," not an "enemy combatant," as the government had labeled him in order to keep him out of the jurisdiction of the Conventions. U.S. District Judge James Robertson agreed with Hamdan's lawyers, writing, "Hamdan has asserted his entitlement to POW status, and the Army's regulations provide that whenever a detainee makes such a claim his status is 'in doubt.'"

Robertson further wrote that "there is nothing in this record to suggest that a competent tribunal has determined that Hamdan is not a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions." Noting that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals were "not established to address detainees' status under the Geneva Conventions," Robertson ordered that a "competent tribunal" must be convened to determine the matter and that unless such a commission decides Hamdan is not a prisoner of war, he must be afforded all relevant rights of a person protected by the Conventions.

Though last week's ruling applied only to Hamdan, many analysts suggest that the decision, which is being appealed by the government, carried implications for the entire legal structure set up by the Bush administration to try the detainees held at Guantanamo

Thus far, however, it does not appear to have affected the ongoing Combat Status Review hearings.

In related news, family members and supporters of four British citizens being held at Guantanamo held a Sunday protest to pressure Tony Blair's administration into securing the prisoners' release from the prison camp.

Amir Karim, a relative of one of the detained men, was quoted by the Scotsman as saying, "The entire legal process is a farce, and the lawyers have come to the end of the road in using all legal channels."

Karim added, "We simply ask for a fair trial in open court in Britain - is that too much to ask?"


-------- un

Uncovering Saddam's cover

washingtontimes
November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041117-085409-1750r.htm

The scandal surrounding Saddam Hussein's embezzlement of U.N. oil-for-food revenues continues to mushroom. Until this week, his regime was estimated to have stolen approximately $10 billion. But on Monday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations disclosed that Saddam and his cronies took more than $21 billion. The lion's share of the thievery (more than $17 billion) occured on the watch of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1997-2003).

Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker - appointed by Mr. Annan to head the U.N. investigation of the scandal - rejected a bipartisan request made by subcommittee Chairman Norm Coleman and the ranking member, Sen. Carl Levin, that U.N. officials waive diplomatic immunity and testify before Congress. In response to a Nov. 9 letter from Messrs. Coleman and Levin requesting that Mr. Annan reconsider his decision to bar release of more than 55 internal audits of the oil-for-food program, Mr. Volcker defended withholding the data. He cited the U.N.'s "need to maintain confidentiality in its internal deliberations." Mr. Annan's spokesman says that the U.N. boss feels himself bound by Mr. Volcker's request. Mr. Volcker says he will release an interim report on some of the allegations of misconduct in January, with a more comprehensive report to be issued in the middle of next year. It will indeed be interesting to see what Mr. Volcker, who was appointed by Mr. Annan and lacks subpoena power, manages to unearth.

If the Volcker panel's handling of a private firm's investigation of corruption in oil-for-food is any indication, it's difficult to see how any U.N. probe will yield much useful information. The Washington Times reported yesterday that IBIS Risk Management Services Inc., a company tasked by the panel with investigating the program, uncovered new information - some of it dealing with connections between the program and possible oil-for-food payments to French President Jacques Chirac - that was ignored by U.N. officials. An IBIS representative said he believes the lack of interest was due to incompetence or a desire to ignore information that could pose problems for the United Nations.

These problems include the distinct possibility that oil-for-food largesse meant to alleviate the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanctions went to subsidize Saddam's military programs and favored terrorist groups. Mr. Coleman said the cash from the program went to purchase missiles, munitions and dual-use military items. Committee investigators said recipients of oil-for-food money include such terrorist groups as the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. At a hearing held yesterday by the House International Relations Committee, lawmakers heard testimony that Saddam tapped secret bank accounts in Jordan to pay $25,000 each to compensate the families of Palestinian suicide bombers targeting Israel. The Treasury and Defense Departments, together with the FBI, continue to search for stolen oil-for-food money that may have been diverted to support Iraq's terrorist insurgency. What has come out thus far - despite U.N. stonewalling - is very likely just the tip of the iceberg.

-----

Bank lapses cited in Iraq oil program

By Bill Gertz
November 18, 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041118-120331-8156r.htm

The French bank that handled funds for the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq made tens of millions of dollars in fees and did not properly monitor transactions involving Saddam Hussein's oil sales, congressional investigators said yesterday.

The New York branch of the Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas, or BNP Paribas, was the sole bank for administering the $64 billion U.N. program and did not have adequate checks on whether money was being funneled to terrorists, a House International Relations Committee probe found.

"We have uncovered what appears to be serious malfeasance on an international scale," said Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and chairman of the committee. "There are indications that the bank may have been noncompliant in administering the oil-for-food program. If true, these possible banking lapses may have facilitated Saddam Hussein's manipulation and corruption of the program."

Committee investigators uncovered evidence that BNP Paribas made payments without proof that goods were delivered and sanctioned payments to third parties not identified as authorized recipients, Mr. Hyde said at a hearing yesterday.

Mr. Hyde said investigators think the bank "facilitated improper payments to companies that were shipping illegal goods to Iraq."

Investigators estimate that the bank received more than $700 million in fees under the U.N. program that began in 1996 and ended after the ouster of Saddam in March 2003, Mr. Hyde said.

"This is a lot of money, and it is reasonable to ask if BNP Paribas adequately supervised its compliance programs overseeing the administration of the oil-for-food program," he said.

Mr. Hyde said problems with the oil-for-food program prompted him to introduce legislation yesterday to require greater accountability at the United Nations. "We need international institutions that are transparent, answerable to outside scrutiny and beyond reproach," he said. The bill was co-sponsored by Rep. Tom Lantos, California Democrat.

The House inquiry is one of at least three congressional investigations into the oil-for-food program. In addition, the Bush administration is investigating the program, and the United Nations has started its own probe, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

Everett Schenk, the chief executive officer of BNP Paribas in North America, told the committee that the bank followed the direction of the United Nations in issuing letters of credit under the oil-for-food program.

He denied that the bank improperly made payments under the program. Apart from "temporary backlogs" in administering letters of credit, the bank acted within U.S. laws and regulations, he said.

However, committee investigators said that in at least one case, the bank issued three U.N.-approved payments for Al Riyahd International Flowers that instead were paid to a company known as East Star Trading Co. Ltd.

"These third-party payments were an exception to BNP's procedures relating to the assignment of letter of credit proceeds," one investigator said. "BNP explained that a senior manager at BNP authorized this exception based on the request of Al Riyahd International Flowers and did so in accordance with BNP's procedures for the escrow account."

Committee investigators said eight government agencies notified the French bank about "deficiencies" in handling money in the U.N. program. Four internal audits and memoranda also found problems with the bank's procedures.

Mr. Hyde said some U.S. allies "did all they could to facilitate business" with Saddam's regime, and that committee investigators think Saddam used money obtained through oil sales to fund terrorists.

"According to the information provided to this committee, Saddam paid $25,000 rewards to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers through the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan out of accounts in the Rafidain bank in Amman, which held kickback money Saddam demanded from suppliers to his regime," Mr. Hyde said.

Mr. Lantos, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Russia and France were involved in helping the regime through commercial transactions and political support within the United Nations. He also said the State Department failed to act against illegal activities in the U.N. program.

"I'm stunned at the failure of our own State Department to put a halt to Saddam's larceny," Mr. Lantos said, adding that the committee should "turn our attention as far as Moscow and Paris, and as near as Foggy Bottom."

The panel investigators say Saddam was allowed to set the sale price of Iraqi oil 50 cents per barrel above market prices. That added amount was then paid back to his aides by oil purchasers and placed in banks in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The U.S. and British governments first uncovered the kickback scam in 2001 and, through a diplomatic battle at the United Nations, ended the "spot-pricing" of oil.

Russia and France opposed the U.S. and British effort because both countries were making money from the illicit oil sales, the investigators said.

-----

Brazil, Germany bullish on UN Security Council seats

BRASILIA (AFP)
Nov 18, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/041118185705.8na5zyks.html

Brazil and Germany said Thursday they are confident of winning permanent seats on the UN Security Council and aim to step up cooperation in bringing peace to global hotspots.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Brazil and Germany were optimistic they would be included in an expanded council as part of a sweeping reform of the institution, which the UN hopes to begin in earnest next year.

"The chances were never so good," Amorim said after talks with his German counterpart Joschka Fischer, when asked about Brasilia and Berlin's joint Security Council drive.

Fischer, who was also to meet President Luiz Inacio da Silva during a four-day visit, said he agreed with Amorim's assessment, stressing the council needed to become a better forum for "multilateralism".

In September, Brazil, Germany, India and Japan launched a united campaign for permanent seats on the council, with mutual pledges of support for each other's candidacies.

The 15-nation Security Council has had the same five permanent members with veto power -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- since the UN was established in 1945, after the end of World War II.

Any expansion would require the approval of the UN General Assembly and the Security Council.

Amorim and Fischer underscored the contributions their countries were making on the world stage.

Amorim said Brazil "wanted to stronger involvement" in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and had recently sent an envoy to the West Bank as part of those efforts.

Fischer said he hoped for a new drive from reelected US President George W. Bush to get the peace process moving again.

"In Iran, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- the international community must work together with all the forces of reason and moderation in the region and this will be very dependent on the engagement of the new US government," Fischer said.

"I think this is particularly important in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Fischer added that he had also discussed with Amorim a preliminary deal between Iran and European Union heavyweights Britain, France and Germany for the Islamic republic to stop its uranium enrichment program.

"We hope that the agreements with Iran on a true negotiation process can lead to the long-term elimination of the danger of a military nuclearization of Iran," Fischer said.

Though they stressed their "excellent" bilateral relations, Fischer and Amorim expressed clear differences on nuclear power.

Brazil agreed this month to replace a 1975 nuclear accord with Germany with an energy cooperation pact to include the use of renewable energy sources.

That accord foresaw the construction of eight atomic reactors, of which only two have gone online.

But while Germany has committed to a long-term phasing out of its atomic energy program, Amorim said it would be "senseless" for Brazil to do the same.

Asked whether the new pact would include a ban on German nuclear exports, both ministers said negotiations were continuing and stressed they would include a much stronger focus on ecological energy sources.

"We in Germany have a policy of phasing out (nuclear power) and this will flow into our international relations," he said.

"I think we have a broad basis for cooperation on renewable energy."

Fischer will travel later Thursday to Sao Paolo before returning to Berlin Saturday.


-------- us

Acting Secretary of Army Resigns

Reuters
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58798-2004Nov17.html

The acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, submitted his resignation yesterday and will step down Dec. 3, the Pentagon said.

Brownlee, a highly decorated veteran and former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has served as acting secretary since May 2003 after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld forced Thomas E. White out as secretary. Brownlee was White's deputy.

"Secretary Brownlee has led the Army with distinction while this nation has been at war," Rumsfeld said in a statement. "He will have completed more than four decades of service to our country. I appreciate his service and wish him all the best."

The Senate confirmed Francis J. Harvey as the new Army secretary Tuesday. Some had supported Brownlee for the job, but the White House nominated Harvey instead.

----

Rumsfeld urged to 'defend' Scouts movement

THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Rowan Scarborough
November 18, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041118-120306-2962r.htm

A lawmaker and veterans are calling on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to reverse administration lawyers who agreed to warn military bases against officially sponsoring the Boy Scouts of America as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Critics of the settlement said that the Pentagon caved to the ACLU, which said the government improperly supported a group that requires belief in God, and that it was particularly offensive after the Nov. 2 elections, when the most pressing voter issue was the country's values.

"The voters of this nation, if it's a choice between expanding NAMBLA and preserving the scouting movement, the voters of America want to defend the scouting movement," said Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican and an Eagle Scout, referring to the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

The ACLU defended NAMBLA in a wrongful-death suit brought by the parents of a 10-year-old Massachusetts boy slain by a member of the association.

In the Pentagon case, the Justice Department defends the partial settlement of a 1999 lawsuit as merely restating existing policy, which prohibits the military from sponsoring any outside groups.

But critics say the settlement encourages the ACLU to continue its drive to force the military to cut off all taxpayer support to the Scouts, which uses military bases for meetings and events. Part of the still-pending Illinois suit accuses the government of aiding the Boy Scouts through such means as preparing a Virginia military base for the Boy Scout Jamboree.

Mr. Hayworth has sent a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld, himself an Eagle Scout, calling on him to countermand his lawyers.

"Without a shot being fired, Department of Defense lawyers apparently abandoned the Boy Scouts, threw up their hands and surrendered to the ACLU's latest radical attack on the cherished heritage and values of this nation," Mr. Hayworth wrote.

The Boy Scouts, which requires members to believe in God and declare it in the group's oath, aims to build values and character through a series of outdoor activities.

The ACLU lawsuit filed in Illinois argues that the federal government should not support the group's exclusion of youths who want to become Scouts but do not believe in God. It also named as defendants the city of Chicago and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The city of Chicago settled, agreeing not to engage in official sponsorship of Scout activities.

"If our Constitution's promise of religious liberty is to be a reality, the government should not be administering religious oaths or discriminating based on religious beliefs," said ACLU lawyer Adam Schwartz after the Monday release of the settlement's details.

Mr. Hayworth said the Pentagon's warning to commanders will have a "chilling effect on the scouting movement on American military bases."

His letter calls on Mr. Rumsfeld to instruct "Pentagonites" to "encourage the voluntary support and promotion of activities such as scouting that inspire an appreciation and commitment to the bedrock God-and-country values on which America thrives."

Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita said the secretary did not know about the settlement before it was made.

The American Legion, the country's largest veterans group, also weighed in. National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus, whose organization sponsors Scout troops nationwide, sent a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld demanding that he "stand up to the ACLU."

"The idea that sponsorship of scouting by American military units is 'unconstitutional' goes beyond the absurd, even well past the point of stupidity," Mr. Cadmus wrote. "How is it the government can fund chapels on military bases and chaplains in the military, but not accommodate scouting?

"Why is it that the rank of Eagle Scout is an attribute high-sought in candidates for military academies, but will soon become unwelcome on military bases? How is it the Congress can sanction scouting by issuing them a federal charter, but the courts can declare them 'outlaws.' "

Mr. Cadmus called on Mr. Rumsfeld to "stand up to the ACLU. Find a way to give those who serve our nation the chance to serve their children."

Although its allies criticized the Pentagon, the Boy Scouts of America says it can live with the settlement, although it realizes that the ACLU is fighting the Scouts on other issues, such as receiving support at military bases.

"We appreciate the support, but we don't really have a huge problem with what happened," said Bob Bork, a spokesman for the Scouts. "It didn't change anything. The Boy Scouts are still able to be on military facilities."

He said the settlement enforces a "long-standing [Department of Defense] regulation that predates us" on not officially sponsoring outside groups.

Mr. Bork said the settlement affects about 400 military-sponsored Scout units, which is a small fraction of troops nationwide. He said the Boy Scouts began finding other sponsors in the summer, such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"We have access to bases just like any other citizen groups," he said.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the "very limited settlement ... does not prohibit the Department of Defense from supporting the Boy Scouts of America. Boy Scout units are permitted to meet on military bases, and military personnel are allowed to remain active in Boy Scout programs. Additionally, the settlement does not reduce the level of support provided to the Boy Scouts by the Department of Defense."

The Pentagon has filed legal briefs in defense of providing what amounts to taxpayer support when events are held on a base.

Mr. Hayworth calls the lawsuit "an ongoing effort on the part of the ACLU to drive the Boy Scouts of America into extinction."

"The ACLU has had a maniacal obsession with the Boy Scouts for decades. I have no doubt they want to force us out of any relationship with the military or any government entity whatsoever," Mr. Bork said.


-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE

-------- death penalty

Effort to Reinstate Death Penalty Law Is Stalled in Albany

November 18, 2004
By AL BAKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/nyregion/18death.html?pagewanted=all&position=

ALBANY, Nov. 17 - Five months after New York's highest court struck down the state's death penalty, lawmakers in Albany have little hope this year of fixing flaws in the law to put capital punishment back on the books. In fact, supporters and opponents alike say the delay could stop the law from ultimately being re-enacted.

Lawmakers in the Assembly, led by Democrats, are now deeply divided over the issue, in part because of a changed political and cultural landscape.

While no one has been executed in New York State since 1963, Gov. George E. Pataki, a third-term Republican, signed a law to revive the death penalty on March 7, 1995, fulfilling a campaign promise that helped propel him to victory over Mario M. Cuomo, an ardent opponent of capital punishment. The issue was galvanizing back then, as surging murder rates and high-profile crimes like the mass shootings by Colin Ferguson on a Long Island Rail Road train served as rallying points to restore the death penalty.

But in June, the Court of Appeals struck down the 1995 law, which never led to an execution, finding a central element of the sentencing provisions unconstitutional.

Opponents of the death penalty have seized on the ruling as a chance to do away with it altogether, and legislators in both parties, citing a lack of urgency in the Assembly and the court's ruling, say they have serious doubts that Albany has the political will to restore the death penalty in New York.

One Republican lawmaker, Senator Dale M. Volker, said that when the Court of Appeals struck down the 1995 law, New York heard "the death knell of the death penalty, for the time being."

Sheldon Silver, the Democratic speaker of the Assembly, has said that he supports the death penalty, but he has also said that many people "are willing to accept life without parole, which was not an available remedy before 10 years ago."

He said that the Assembly, many of whose members oppose capital punishment, would hold public hearings on the matter. The hearings, to be held around the state, will continue at least through the end of January, when a newly elected Legislature will have convened. One hearing, on Dec. 15, will be in New York City.

"Many people have questions," the speaker said, adding, "I don't think it is something that should be on a fast track."

Eliot L. Spitzer, the state attorney general, is among the proponents of the death penalty in New York. Mr. Spitzer has consistently expressed support for it and supports it today, Darren Dopp, a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, said yesterday. "He has articulated that it should be part of the law enforcement arsenal," Mr. Dopp said.

Other states, like New Jersey and Connecticut, have yet to carry out executions since reinstituting the death penalty, although Connecticut is poised to carry out its first execution. Texas is at the opposite end of the spectrum, having executed more than 300 people since 1982, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Many Republicans in New York are angry that the Legislature is not moving faster to fix the flaws identified by the Court of Appeals. They have blamed Mr. Silver for slowing things down. Republicans in the Senate even passed a bill in August to fix the provision of the law that the court invalidated. That bill was proposed by Governor Pataki himself.

"We continue to believe it is a strong deterrent, that it is legal and constitutional and that we can address the court's concern," said John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader of the Republican-led Senate. "We spent 20 years trying to get it enacted in this state, and we'll continue to strongly advocate for its enactment going forward."

An aide to the governor has accused the Assembly leadership of obstruction by not moving to pass a death penalty measure, a charge that Mr. Silver's aides dispute. And the Pataki administration plans to keep pushing the matter even if it spills into the next legislative session in January.

"The people of New York have clearly called for justice, for those who commit the most serious crimes, by using capital punishment," said Lynn Rasic, a spokeswoman for the governor. "Speaker Silver claims to favor the death penalty, but he continues to refuse to allow a vote on this important legislation."

The death penalty issue was once one of the most emotionally volatile in New York, but as the crime rate has fallen, it has lost resonance; no one is marching on Albany calling for executions. Furthermore, opinions on capital punishment are shifting, opponents and proponents agree. Some policy makers no longer view the death penalty as a fair punishment for a certain class of murderers, including those who kill police officers, or as an appropriate deterrent to crime.

In recent years, juries and state legislatures have shown a pattern of limiting the use of the death penalty and imposing life in prison without parole instead, said Jonathan Gradess, the executive director of the New York State Defenders Association, a group that provides support for public defense lawyers. He said that since 1973 nearly 120 people have been removed from death rows in states around the country.

More recently a wide-ranging national debate was touched off by George Ryan, then the governor of Illinois, who declared the state's capital punishment system broken and issued a blanket commutation of death sentences, citing a series of close calls in which men on death row were found to be innocent.

Since then, the death penalty has come under attack in other states. Recently, a group of lawyers in California asked for a moratorium on the death penalty there, and the issue is being studied in other states, like Maryland and Nebraska. In New York, a Democratic state senator, Liz Krueger, had called for a moratorium on the death penalty before the Court of Appeals made its ruling.

Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a Democrat from Harlem and an opponent of capital punishment, said: "Just because you have a governor who wants to reinstate the death penalty doesn't mean it's necessarily the will of the people. The world has changed so much since 1995, when we passed it, that it's a new date, a new time. I think we, as legislators, need to hear what everyone has to say."

David Kaczynski, the executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty and someone who gained attention for turning in his brother as the Unabomber in 1996, is among those planning to speak at the Assembly's hearings. He said the death penalty was unfair and could lead to the execution of innocent people.

He also said that at least $175 million had been spent in New York State on death penalty litigation since 1995, money he said could have been better spent on victims' families or on crime prevention programs. He said the death penalty was not being used uniformly in counties across the state.

"If we've seen anything in New York State over the last nine years, it's that it's not being evenly applied by the district attorneys," Mr. Kaczynski said, citing the fact that three of the seven people sentenced to death in the state came from Suffolk County, a relatively wealthy and crime-free area. "In effect, we have 62 different death penalty laws: there are some who seek it often, there are some who seek it very reluctantly, and there are some who seldom or perhaps never seek it."

Republican supporters of capital punishment, including Senator Volker, said the death penalty saved money in the state because hundreds of defendants plead guilty to lesser offenses and avoid trials and their costs. He said it was still a valid method of deterring crime.

"Every time we pass the death penalty the murders go down, and then after they go down, people say, 'Well, I don't know if we need the death penalty,' and then we get rid of the death penalty and the numbers go up dramatically," said Mr. Volker, who said he would be surprised if the death penalty was not reinstated by the end of the year.

There is no proof that the death penalty is a better deterrent to murder than life in prison, said Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that researches the death penalty but takes no position on the issue. "It's hard to prove a negative, but the overwhelming majority of studies over the past 30 years do not find a deterrent effect from the death penalty."

Kevin L. Wright, president of the New York State District Attorneys Association, said he could see how opponents of the death penalty might use the delay to prevent repairing the 1995 law. But he said state leaders should keep a pledge to fix it swiftly. "I think there is legitimate concern that an important statute on the books is in need of legislative repair and hasn't received that attention," he said.

For his part, Mr. Silver has been a longtime supporter of capital punishment. But after the Court of Appeals ruling, a rift developed among Democrats and he paused as members debated whether public sentiment for the death penalty remained strong. In 1995, most Assembly Democrats voted against the death penalty.

Mr. Silver cautioned against fixing the statute so quickly that it could be found flawed by a future Court of Appeals. The court has decided four times to overturn death sentences under the state's 1995 death penalty law. It has never upheld a death sentence under the current statute.

In striking down the death penalty, the court, led by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, found a problem with a central provision regarding guidelines for sentencing in cases where a jury could not reach a unanimous decision between life without parole and a death sentence. The court ruled that because a judge had to instruct a jury that a sentence including the possibility of parole after 20 to 25 years would be instituted if they failed to reach a unanimous decision, it might coerce the jury to vote for a death sentence rather than risk a criminal's being set free. And it said only the Legislature could fix the provision.


-------- homeland security / national intelligence

Dulles, BWI Consider Security Shift Private Contractors Could Do Screening

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58538-2004Nov17.html

Officials at Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International airports said they are considering the replacement of federal airport screeners at security checkpoints with workers employed by private contractors.

The Transportation Security Administration this week invited airports to apply to leave the federal security screener system and return to private screeners. The government took over airport screening after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and is planning a transition for approved airports by spring or summer 2005.

Several airports have said private contractors might provide more staffing flexibility and might be more responsive than the federal government to hiring more employees when needed. This summer, passengers at Dulles waited more than an hour at times to pass through security as air traffic surged there with the launch of Independence Air.

"The issue of the long lines -- that's probably where we're most concerned about customer service issues," said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. She said the concerns mostly pertained to Dulles and not Reagan National Airport, which the authority also operates. "We've not made a decision at this point."

A spokesman for BWI said the airport needs more information about a shift to private screeners. Like many major airports, BWI said it wants to learn more about liability in the event of another terrorist attack.

"Some pretty significant questions need to be answered," BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said.

The TSA suggested in its announcement this week that airports would be protected by federal laws that limit tort liability in case of terrorist attack, but it did not specify the exact terms. Airport officials are concerned about what would be covered, said James McNeil, chief executive of McNeil Technologies Inc., a security firm that employs screeners at the Rochester, N.Y., airport. "If they can get some indemnification, that will play a huge role" in decision making, he said.

The TSA has set up a complicated process for the transition. Airports apply to the TSA for approval to "opt out" of the federal screening program. U.S.-based private security firms also apply to the TSA to be approved as security contractors. The TSA would then select the security firm for each airport, and the company would sign a contract with the agency, not the airport. The firms must abide by the same security standards as the TSA's, and federal supervisors already stationed at airports would oversee the contractors.

Airports said the private security option is attractive because they can be more creative with screeners' schedules and duties. Some airports would like to have screeners working for private companies staff security checkpoints during busy travel times and give the employees other airport duties, such as cleaning or wheelchair services, during slower periods. Some airports have discussed keeping TSA screeners at one terminal and stationing privately employed security screeners at other security gates.

Several months ago, lawmakers and lobbyists estimated that one in four of the nation's airports expressed interest in switching to private security firms, but now security contracting companies said they do not expect more than two dozen airports to apply. Many of the applicants, they said, will likely be mid-size or smaller airports.

"We feel, eventually, most airports will opt out" of the federal program, said Gerald L. Berry, president of Covenant Aviation Security LLC, which employs screeners at San Francisco International Airport through a TSA pilot program. "But they're not in a hurry."

TSA said security companies must provide comparable pay and benefits to their workers and must give priority in hiring to current TSA screeners. But that isn't reassuring to many TSA screeners, said Ron Moore, a screener at BWI and president of Local 1, the American Federation of Government Employees union.

"We feel protected as federal screeners because we don't feel we can be pressured by airlines or airports," Moore said. "The passengers seem to respond better to us because we're federal. It would be a shame to start to break that."

--------

Intelligence Deal Given a 50-50 Shot
Lieberman Says Senators Made Concessions on Budget Powers

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58630-2004Nov17.html

Spurred in part by President Bush, congressional negotiators said last night that there is at least a 50-50 chance they will reach agreement on a bill to revamp the nation's intelligence community in time for it to be enacted this month.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), a key negotiator, said senators have had to make several concessions to the House regarding powers of the proposed national intelligence director. But they are justified, he said, in the name of reaching a compromise.

"I think we're going to end up where very few people will be thrilled," Lieberman said in an interview. But the goal, he said, is to find an agreement that the House and Senate will approve -- presumably by this weekend -- and that the president will sign. "I'm encouraged," he said, adding that it is still possible the effort could crumble.

Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), noted that hopes for the House-Senate negotiations have waxed and waned in recent weeks. Last night, he said, "it's as close as it has been."

Working with recommendations issued this summer by the Sept. 11 commission, the House and Senate passed wide-ranging bills that were similar in some general areas and different in hundreds of specifics. House-Senate conferees have tried for weeks to resolve the differences.

Bush, who was criticized by some commission members and by others for taking a largely hands-off posture, telephoned House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) last weekend to urge him and other negotiators to find a consensus.

Hunter is a strong advocate of the Defense Department, which has resisted the Senate's call for it to surrender some of its control over intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency. The new intelligence director needs substantial control over such agencies to coordinate the nation's anti-terror efforts, senators say.

The House and Senate bills would create the national intelligence director and a counterterrorism center, but they differ on the powers each would have. Lieberman, interviewed during an evening break in the closed-door negotiations, said senators have had to yield ground in areas such as the intelligence director's budgetary authority.

The Senate bill originally called for the director to "determine" the government's total intelligence budget and to "manage and oversee" how the funds are distributed. The House bill would grant less clout, allowing the director to "develop" the intelligence budget and ensure its "effective execution."

House conferees agreed earlier to the Senate language allowing the director to "determine" the budget. But they have been less yielding on questions of managing the actual spending.

Lieberman said last night, "We fought very hard for our bill on budget authority, but we couldn't get everything we wanted."

He declined to offer specifics, noting that negotiations were still underway.

Even with the Senate's concessions, he said, the budget authorities a national intelligence director would wield "are clearly better than the status quo." In the end, he said, the new director will have "very strong powers on shaping the budget, and strong powers on spending it, too."

Lieberman said negotiators also were trying to resolve matters involving immigration, law enforcement and protecting Americans' civil liberties while waging a war against terrorism.

--------

Dulles, BWI Consider Security Shift
Private Contractors Could Do Screening

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58538-2004Nov17.html

Officials at Dulles International and Baltimore-Washington International airports said they are considering the replacement of federal airport screeners at security checkpoints with workers employed by private contractors.

The Transportation Security Administration this week invited airports to apply to leave the federal security screener system and return to private screeners. The government took over airport screening after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and is planning a transition for approved airports by spring or summer 2005.

Several airports have said private contractors might provide more staffing flexibility and might be more responsive than the federal government to hiring more employees when needed. This summer, passengers at Dulles waited more than an hour at times to pass through security as air traffic surged there with the launch of Independence Air.

"The issue of the long lines -- that's probably where we're most concerned about customer service issues," said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. She said the concerns mostly pertained to Dulles and not Reagan National Airport, which the authority also operates. "We've not made a decision at this point."

A spokesman for BWI said the airport needs more information about a shift to private screeners. Like many major airports, BWI said it wants to learn more about liability in the event of another terrorist attack.

"Some pretty significant questions need to be answered," BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said.

The TSA suggested in its announcement this week that airports would be protected by federal laws that limit tort liability in case of terrorist attack, but it did not specify the exact terms. Airport officials are concerned about what would be covered, said James McNeil, chief executive of McNeil Technologies Inc., a security firm that employs screeners at the Rochester, N.Y., airport. "If they can get some indemnification, that will play a huge role" in decision making, he said.

The TSA has set up a complicated process for the transition. Airports apply to the TSA for approval to "opt out" of the federal screening program. U.S.-based private security firms also apply to the TSA to be approved as security contractors. The TSA would then select the security firm for each airport, and the company would sign a contract with the agency, not the airport. The firms must abide by the same security standards as the TSA's, and federal supervisors already stationed at airports would oversee the contractors.

Airports said the private security option is attractive because they can be more creative with screeners' schedules and duties. Some airports would like to have screeners working for private companies staff security checkpoints during busy travel times and give the employees other airport duties, such as cleaning or wheelchair services, during slower periods. Some airports have discussed keeping TSA screeners at one terminal and stationing privately employed security screeners at other security gates.

Several months ago, lawmakers and lobbyists estimated that one in four of the nation's airports expressed interest in switching to private security firms, but now security contracting companies said they do not expect more than two dozen airports to apply. Many of the applicants, they said, will likely be mid-size or smaller airports.

"We feel, eventually, most airports will opt out" of the federal program, said Gerald L. Berry, president of Covenant Aviation Security LLC, which employs screeners at San Francisco International Airport through a TSA pilot program. "But they're not in a hurry."

TSA said security companies must provide comparable pay and benefits to their workers and must give priority in hiring to current TSA screeners. But that isn't reassuring to many TSA screeners, said Ron Moore, a screener at BWI and president of Local 1, the American Federation of Government Employees union.

"We feel protected as federal screeners because we don't feel we can be pressured by airlines or airports," Moore said. "The passengers seem to respond better to us because we're federal. It would be a shame to start to break that."


-------- POLITICS

North removes Kim portraits

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS
By Lim Chang-won
November 18, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041117-115542-9445r.htm

SEOUL - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has ordered the removal of his portrait from display throughout the Stalinist state, signaling a scaling back of the decades-old adulation of the supreme ruler, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported yesterday.

The order to take down portraits was issued three weeks ago by Mr. Kim himself, who was concerned that he "has been lifted too high," the agency said.

Also yesterday, North Korea's official press dropped the glorifying description of "dear leader" for Mr. Kim, Kyodo News Service reported, citing the Japanese monitoring agency Radiopress.

The United States yesterday brushed off both reports.

"I'll leave it to the analysts," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told a press briefing when asked about the reports. "Don't have a reaction."

A State Department official, speaking separately on the condition of anonymity, said, "I don't see anything to get worried about."

Radiopress said the North's Korean Central Broadcast, the Korean Central News Agency and other press simply described him as "general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army."

The initials DPRK stand for North Korea's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Yonhap quoted a source who has "good connections" in Pyongyang as saying Mr. Kim's portraits were being removed from all public places and homes.

Based on a telephone conversation with a North Korean official, the source said that now only the portraits of Mr. Kim's father - Kim Il-sung - can be seen at public buildings and residences in Pyongyang, Yonhap said.

The North Korean official told the source that the removal of portraits had "nothing to do with any problem" involving Mr. Kim, who visited a front-line army unit yesterday.

Mr. Kim's portraits have long been ubiquitous in homes, offices and public buildings across North Korea, where they have hung prominently beside a picture of his father.

The junior Mr. Kim took power when his father, who founded the hermit nation, died in 1994.

South Korean government officials said they had not noticed any distinct change in North Korea. But some North Korea watchers said the removal of portraits could signal a political change.

"If confirmed, it signals a major change in North Korea because Kim Jong-il is the only person who can order the removal of his portraits," Korea University professor Yoo Ho-yul said.

"Taking down Kim's portraits means there is a shift in the personality cult built around him, or some movement related to the succession of his leadership," Mr. Yoo said.

Few details emerge from North Korea concerning the private life of Mr. Kim and his family. Information concerning the 63-year-old ruler's health is considered a state secret.

Mr. Kim has three sons. The eldest, Jong-nam, 33, was born to Sung Hae-rim, who reportedly died in a Moscow hospital in 2002.

His second wife, Ko Yong-hui, now also reportedly dead, gave birth to Mr. Kim's second son, Jong-chul, 23, and third son, Jong-woon, 18, according to Pyongyang watchers in South Korea.

Norbert Vollertsen, a German human rights activist who once lived in North Korea, told Yonhap yesterday that he has received an e-mail message from an international aid worker in Pyongyang, confirming that Mr. Kim's portraits were being taken down.

"Since the beginning of August, there is removal of official portrait of Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and all over the countryside in public places but not everywhere," the e-mail said, according to Yonhap.

North Korean defectors in Seoul reacted with surprise to the news, it said.

"Removal of Kim's portraits from homes is something that I cannot even imagine," a North Korean woman who defected to Seoul in 2000 told Yonhap.

She said a North Korean couple in her former neighborhood were punished after accidentally dropping and breaking a framed picture of Mr. Kim during a family quarrel.

-------- budget

Iraq War Topping $5.8 Billion A Month

November 18, 2004
United Press International
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, according to the military's top generals.

That is nearly a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon has used to estimate the cost of the war so far.

The Army alone is spending $4.7 million a month while the Air Force is spending $800 million a month transporting soldiers and flying combat missions. The Marine Corps is spending $300 million a month, the four service chiefs told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.

Since 2003, the Pentagon has received some $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in supplemental funding -- that is, in addition to its annual budget. It will be requesting another multibillion-dollar supplement early next year to cover the continuing cost of the war.

Sound Off...What do you think? Join the discussion.

----

Senate Votes to Let Government Borrow More

By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58501-2004Nov17.html

The Senate voted 52 to 44 yesterday to let the government borrow an additional $800 billion to head off a fiscal crisis that could occur when the $7.4 trillion national debt ceiling is reached in the next few days.

Democrats used the occasion to criticize GOP fiscal policies, including tax cuts, for causing a flood of red ink that drove the federal budget deficit to more than $400 billion in fiscal 2004. But Republicans warned that failure to raise the limit would prevent the government from sending out Social Security checks and providing necessary services.

It was nearly a party-line vote, with just one Republican, Sen. John Ensign (Nev.), voting against the proposal while only two Democrats, Sens. John Breaux (La.) and Zell Miller (Ga.), voted in favor. The House is set to take up the bill today.

When President Bush took office, the public debt was at $5.9 trillion and was declining because of the first federal budget surpluses in decades. Yesterday's increase was the third in as many years and will raise the government's borrowing authority to a record $8.2 trillion.

The defeated Democratic presidential candidate, John F. Kerry (Mass.), used the Senate floor to reprise campaign attacks on the Bush administration's deficit spending.

"Here we are again, back again, with a new [fiscal] hole, deeper and with graver consequences than at any time in American history. . . . It's the worst fiscal turnaround in our nation's history," he said.

But as Democrats bemoaned the red ink on the floor, senators from both parties were fighting behind the scenes to head off cuts in favorite programs and home-state projects in a huge spending package funding foreign aid and most federal agencies in 2005. GOP leaders expressed hope that the measure, rolling together eight or nine annual spending bills, could be completed by the weekend. But it was clear yesterday that hurdles remain. The White House budget office, in a letter to Congress, said the administration is opposed to a proposed 3.5 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees and warned that it could force employment cuts to bring the overall federal payroll into line with projections.

The letter said the "arbitrary across-the-board increase" exceeded the 2.5 percent increase set to take effect Jan. 1 and would add $2.2 billion to the federal payroll.

The White House letter, however, pressed Congress to provide more adequate funding for several administration priorities, such as the Millennium Challenge foreign aid program.

Decisions on dozens of matters had not been finalized, leaving uncertainty about provisions regulating the use of pesticides, safety requirements for Mexican trucks, drug reimportation, food labeling and possible new fees on small business loans.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) expressed concern that Republican leaders were secretly adding "appendages" -- riders and provisions benefiting special interest groups.

The budgets of the National Science Foundation and the clean-water program of the Environmental Protection Agency will be cut, said Byrd, who called the bill "shortsighted."

There was strong pressure from the White House and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) to beef up the budget of NASA to finance a return to manned spaceflight and a mission to the Hubble space telescope.

--------

Senate Backs Higher Debt

November 18, 2004
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/politics/18debt.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - Faced with the prospect of a government unable to pay its bills, the Senate voted on Wednesday to raise the federal debt limit by $800 billion.

Though an increase in the debt ceiling was never in doubt, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress postponed action on it last month, until after the elections, to deprive Democrats of a chance to accuse them of fiscal irresponsibility.

The bill, if approved by the House in a vote expected on Thursday, would authorize the third big increase in the federal borrowing since President Bush took office in 2001. Federal debt has ballooned by $1.4 trillion over the past four years, to $7.4 trillion, and the new ceiling would allow borrowing to reach $8.2 trillion.

With no end in sight to the huge annual budget deficits, which hit a record of $412 billion this year, lawmakers predicted on Wednesday that the new ceiling would probably have to be raised again in about a year.

Democrats, still stinging from their election defeats, voted against the measure and argued that it should be accompanied by rules that would force Congress to pay for new tax cuts with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere.

"I don't remember anyone during the elections making a promise to raise the federal debt to $8.1 trillion," Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said. "What we're doing here is just writing another blank check and saying to this administration, 'Go ahead, continue to run record budget deficits.' "

Administration officials have been pleading for an increase in the debt limit since last August, and the Treasury Department has been tapping into Civil Service retirement accounts since Oct. 14 to avoid breaching the limit.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow warned that the administration had "exhausted" all the previously used financial maneuvers. The government can probably keep paying bills until early next month, but the Treasury Department would have to postpone an auction of new Treasury securities scheduled for Monday.

Raising the legal borrowing limit has long been more political theater than substantive decision making, because lawmakers ultimately have no choice in the matter if the government is to stay in operation.

The 52-to-44 vote was almost purely along party lines, with one Republican, Senator John Ensign of Nevada, voting against a higher ceiling.

Two Democrats, Senators John B. Breaux of Louisiana and Zell Miller of Georgia, voted in favor of the measure.

Some Republican lawmakers had hoped to bury the measure in a broader spending bill that would attract less attention and that many Democrats would feel compelled to support. But Senate leaders decided to vote on a stand-alone bill in exchange for a commitment from Democrats to limit the debate.

"We've come to a general agreement to move ahead today," Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, said. "The House literally is waiting for us to act."

In a muted floor debate, Democrats did almost all the talking - all aimed at castigating the administration and its Congressional allies for indulging in "borrow and spend" policies - while Republicans grimly waited for the debate to end and the vote to begin.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, in his first appearance on the floor since losing the presidential election, said the growing debt threatened economic security.

"To pay our bills, America now goes cup in hand to nations like China, Korea, Taiwan and Caribbean banking centers," Mr. Kerry said. "Those issues didn't go away on Nov. 3, no matter what the results."

Administration officials contend that the annual deficits are undesirable but necessary to help stimulate an economic recovery and fight a global war on terrorism.

Mr. Bush has promised to reduce the deficit by half over five years, though the administration is fighting to make its tax cuts permanent and may need more than $70 billion in extra money next year to support military operations in Iraq.

House Republicans said they would schedule a vote on the bill for Thursday evening. "We'll get it done," John Feehry, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, said. "We have an obligation to keep the government in operation."

-------- corruption

House Republicans Act to Protect DeLay

By Charles Babington and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 18, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57294-2004Nov17.html

Emboldened by their election success, House Republicans changed their rules yesterday to allow Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) to keep his post even if a grand jury indicts him, and Senate GOP leaders continued to weigh changing long-standing rules governing filibusters to prevent Democrats from blocking President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees.

Republicans were less brazen a month ago, when they held a tiny Senate majority and House members were more sensitive to criticisms of ethical lapses on Capitol Hill. But, basking in the Nov. 2 election that gave Bush a second term and expanded the party's House and Senate majorities, Republican leaders are showing a greater willingness to brush past Democratic objections, parliamentary traditions and watchdog groups' denunciations to advance their agenda.

House Republicans, in an unrecorded voice vote behind closed doors, changed a 1993 party rule that required leaders who are indicted to step aside. Under the revised rule, an indicted leader can keep his or her post while the Republican Steering Committee -- controlled by party leaders -- decides whether to recommend any action by all GOP House members.

The rule change applies equally to state and federal indictments.

Republicans made it clear they will not act if they think their leaders are targeted by grand juries or prosecutors motivated by politics, which is the charge DeLay and his allies repeatedly have leveled at a grand jury based in Austin. The grand jury has indicted three of DeLay's political associates in connection with fundraising activities for a political action committee closely linked to DeLay.

Democrats and ethics watchdog groups denounced the House GOP action. "Today, Republicans sold their collective soul to maintain their grip on power," said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.). Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said: "Republicans have reached a new low. It is absolutely mind-boggling that as their first order of business following the elections, House Republicans have lowered the ethical standards for their leaders."

DeLay told reporters yesterday that he does not expect to be indicted but supports the rule change. Without it, he said, Democrats could "have a political hack decide who our leadership is" by engineering a baseless indictment. He said Democrats "announced years ago that they were going to engage in the politics of personal destruction, and had me as a target."

DeLay said the charges being investigated in Austin by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, an elected Democrat, "are frivolous" and "have no substance." Earle, who says partisanship plays no role in his investigation, notes that he has prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans during his long career.

Republicans said neither DeLay nor Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) addressed the caucus meeting, which lasted several hours. Hastert later called the rule change "a good decision" that resulted in a "fair and equitable" standard.

When House Republicans adopted the 1993 rule requiring indicted leaders to step aside, they were highlighting ethical problems dogging prominent Democrats.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, where the GOP will hold 55 of the 100 seats in January, Republican leaders have sharpened their talk of changing rules governing the filibuster, a tactic that both parties have used over the years to block proposals that cannot muster 60 votes to shut off debate. Republicans are angry that Democrats have used the filibuster to block 10 of Bush's most conservative judicial nominees.

Changes to Senate rules usually require up to 67 votes if they are especially controversial. But there is one approach -- called the "nuclear option" because of its explosive potential -- that would require only 51 votes. Republicans could employ it at almost any time after the new Congress convenes in January.

Under this rarely used procedure, the Senate's presiding officer, presumably Vice President Cheney, would find that a supermajority to end filibusters is unconstitutional for judicial nominees. Democrats would undoubtedly challenge this ruling. But it takes only a simple majority -- or 51 votes from the Senate GOP's new 55-vote majority -- to sustain a ruling of the chair.

Some key Democrats have warned that such an approach would enrage even moderate Democrats who have qualms about judicial filibusters and destroy whatever comity remains. "To implement the nuclear option would make the last Congress look like a bipartisan tea party," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Some Republicans also have qualms about the proposal, and it is not clear whether it would get a simple majority.

Starting with a speech last week to the Federalist Society and continuing through the Sunday talk shows, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Senate Republicans would no longer tolerate filibusters on judicial nominations. He hinted broadly that the "nuclear option" is under consideration as a last resort. "One way or the other, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end," he said.

But Frist has also talked about trying to reach some kind of accord with Democrats on handling nominations, and some believe that his threats, capitalizing on the Democrats' weakened clout, are aimed at achieving this result. At a news conference yesterday, he reiterated his opposition to judicial filibusters but declined to say if he wanted to provoke a constitutional fight over the issue.

--------

House G.O.P. Acts to Protect Chief

November 18, 2004
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/politics/18house.html?pagewanted=all&position=

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - Spurred by an investigation connected to the majority leader, House Republicans voted Wednesday to abandon an 11-year-old party rule that required a member of their leadership to step aside temporarily if indicted.

Meeting behind closed doors, the lawmakers agreed that a party steering committee would review any indictments handed up against the majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, or any other members of the leadership team or committee chairmen, to determine if giving up a post was warranted. The revision does not change the requirement that leaders step down if convicted.

The new rule was adopted by voice vote. Its chief author, Representative Henry Bonilla of Texas, said later that only a handful of members had opposed it.

The Republicans' old rule was adopted in August 1993 to put a spotlight on the legal troubles of prominent Democrats. Mr. Bonilla said revising it had been necessary to prevent politically inspired criminal investigations by "crackpot" prosecutors from determining the fate of top Republicans.

"Attorneys tell me you can be indicted for just about anything in this country, in any county or community," said Mr. Bonilla, an ally of Mr. DeLay. "Sometimes district attorneys who might have partisan agendas or want to read their name in the paper could make a name for themselves by indicting a member of the leadership, regardless of who it may be, and therefore determine their future. And that's not right."

Mr. DeLay said he had not instigated the change. But he applauded it nevertheless, saying it could deprive "political hacks" of an ability to influence the makeup of the Republican leadership.

Republican lawmakers "fixed the rules so that Democrats cannot use our rules against us," he said.

Mr. DeLay said he did not expect to be indicted, but added, "This has nothing to do with whether I was going to be or not going to be.''

The comments of Mr. DeLay and Mr. Bonilla were clearly directed at Ronnie Earle, the district attorney in Travis County, Tex., including Austin, who won indictments earlier this year against three political associates of the majority leader. The investigation by Mr. Earle, a Democrat, involves charges of illegally using corporate money to help Republicans win state legislative races in 2002. Those Republican victories in turn gave the state party enough legislative muscle to win redistricting changes that helped Congressional Republicans gain five additional seats in Texas on Nov. 2.

Despite the indictments of his associates, Mr. DeLay has not been called to testify, and Mr. Earle has not said whether the congressman is a target.

Not all Republicans agreed with Wednesday's rule change, which was adopted after some two and a half hours of debate.

"This is a mistake," said Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut.

When the Republicans gained control of the House in the elections of 1994, "we were going to be different,'' Mr. Shays said.

But "every time we start to water down what we did in '94," he said, "we are basically saying the revolution is losing its character."

Democrats and outside watchdogs bitterly criticized the change.

"Today Republicans sold their collective soul to maintain their grip on power," said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the Democratic whip. "They unabashedly abandoned any pretense of holding themselves to a high ethical standard, by deciding to ignore criminal indictments of their leaders as reason for removal from leadership posts in the Republican Party."

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group that follows campaign finance issues, said: "With this decision, we have gone from DeLay being judged by his peers to DeLay being judged by his buddies. It's an absurd and ludicrous new rule and an affront to the American people."

Republicans said Democrats had no standing to criticize them, since House Democratic rules have no provision to remove indicted party leaders, though they do require indicted committee chairmen to step aside. The minority leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said Wednesday that her party would quickly expand the provision to cover leadership posts as well.

"Republicans have reached a new low," Ms. Pelosi said. "It is absolutely mind-boggling that as their first order of business following the elections, House Republicans have lowered the ethical standards for their leaders."

The change follows two admonitions that Mr. DeLay received from the bipartisan House ethics committee this fall, one involving a House floor vote, the other a fund-raiser. Mr. DeLay has built strong loyalty in the House over the years by helping raise campaign money and paying close attention to the personal legislative interests of Republican lawmakers, and the ethics committee's action angered some of his supporters in the chamber.

Mr. DeLay and many other House Republicans have criticized Mr. Earle's inquiry as highly partisan. "Ronnie Earle is trying to criminalize politics," Mr. DeLay said. "I think that is wrong."

Mr. Earle, in a statement issued by his office, said the Republican rule change would have no effect on the continuing investigation. But he added, "It should be alarming to the public to see their leaders substitute their judgment for that of the law enforcement process."

House Republicans did not dispute the idea that the change had been brought on by the events in Texas but said most of the majority's lawmakers had also concluded that the rule was simply unfair.

"In my sincere opinion, it only provoked the timing" of the change, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said of the Texas inquiry. "When you look at the rule, it is an outrageous rule."

The new rule says that upon the return of an indictment against a committee chairman, a subcommittee chairman or a party leader, a steering committee made up of House leaders other than the accused lawmaker will have 30 days to recommend to the full Republican conference "what action, if any, the conference shall take concerning said member."

Though the change had been a subject of discussion for the last week, it was not submitted by Mr. Bonilla until right before a Tuesday deadline that Republicans had set to offer proposals for rules in the new Congress. Mr. Bonilla and others said the Republican conference, including many members elected only two weeks ago, had been insistent on the revision.

"It is the right thing to do," said Representative John Carter of Texas, a former judge.

While House Republicans were acting on the rule, Congress continued its reorganization for 2005. House Democrats and Senate Republicans re-elected their leadership teams for the most part. In the only real race, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina gained a one-vote victory over Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota to head the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which provides guidance and money for Republican candidates.


-------- propaganda wars

IRAQI PRISONER
Newsman Who Taped Marine Shooting Captive Keeps Silent

November 18, 2004
By ROBERT F. WORTH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/international/middleeast/18mosque.html?pagewanted=all

NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 18 - The American photographer whose videotape of what appears to be a marine shooting a wounded Iraqi is generating a storm of outrage in the Arab world maintained his steadfast silence on Wednesday, saying he wanted to continue reporting on the incident before commenting.

"As sensitive as this is, we want to make sure the world has an accurate picture of the events," the photographer, Kevin Sites, a freelance cameraman working for NBC News, told a reporter at the military base near Falluja where he is staying.

The videotape shows a group of marines on Saturday entering a mosque in Falluja, where several wounded Iraqi prisoners lay on the floor. One marine is shown shooting and apparently killing one Iraqis. The marines were members of the Third Battalion, First Regiment, with whom Mr. Sites was embedded.

An unedited version of the videotape, which was distributed to other news agencies as part of a pool report, was being broadcast several times an hour on Arab satellite television stations on Wednesday, and American commanders have said it has already yielded a huge propaganda victory for the anti-American insurgency. Some Arab commentators have even compared it to the scandal surrounding mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

Yet many questions about the shooting remain unanswered, human rights advocates and senior military officials agree. In the videotape, the soldier, before firing at the prone body, can be heard yelling that the Iraqi prisoner was only pretending to be dead, suggesting that he may have believed he was acting in self-defense. It is unclear from watching it whether the prisoner was moving before the shot.

Mr. Sites would appear to be in a unique position to shed some light on what happened, but he declined repeatedly to comment on Wednesday.

He did say he had received hate mail and threats since the broadcast, in edited form, on the initial NBC News report. A comment section on a Web site he maintains has been shut down because of death threats.

A lanky man with shoulder-length hair and a goatee, Mr. Sites has maintained a low profile since emerging from the fighting in Falluja, avoiding the area where other reporters on the base are billeted.

Several other reporters said he might be concerned about legal or other complications stemming from the shooting, and was staying silent for that reason. Agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are conducting an inquiry, and the marine who fired the shot has been removed from the battlefield.

A spokeswoman for NBC News, Allison Gollust, said by e-mail, "Given that there is an investigation on behalf of the marines into this incident, it just doesn't make sense for Kevin to be commenting on it at this point."

On www.kevinsites.net, his Web site, Mr. Sites has posted photographs and writings from the days he spent with the marines in Falluja. In one journal, he wrote, "The marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement."

It goes on to quote a marine saying everything to the west of his position in Falluja was "weapons free." It continues, "Weapons free means the marines can shoot whatever they see - it's all considered hostile."

His entries on the site say nothing about the shooting or the videotape. But the site has links to a comment page maintained by a Web administrator, with a fierce exchange of views about the tape. Some viewers support his videotaping of the shooting, while others criticize it, some using obscene language. A number of comments have been deleted by the administrator.

His Web site describes Mr. Sites as a "pioneering, multimedia journalist" who has worked in Afghanistan, Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East. It features a photograph of him in a black T-shirt sitting next to a machine gun, gesturing, with the words, "Dispatches from a life in conflict." It recounts an incident in which he and his team were abducted outside Tikrit by members of the fedayeen, Saddam Hussein's paramilitary troops, and threatened with death, before their Kurdish interpreter negotiated their release after four hours.

Mr. Sites has worked for several networks and has a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, according to the site.

----

The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts)

Tom Dispatch
November 18, 2004
Tom Engelhardt and Jonathan Schell
http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=4001

Reality TV votes with its feet on Bush foreign policy:

"[Bernard van Munster, the Dutch-born co-creator and executive producer of the reality TV show, The Amazing Race] continues to scout locations for the seventh season, more than ever convinced that the world is a far less dangerous place than it sometimes seems. 'Everybody everywhere has been helpful to us from the beginning,' he said, 'because I tell them: "I'm not here to criticize your country or your culture. I'm here to bring Americans to learn from you and to have a good time." Right now, the only places I wouldn't consider going are Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything else is on the board.'"

- Joe Rhodes, "An Audience Finally Catches Up to The Amazing Race," the New York Times

The Carthaginian Solution

What follows is a collage put together from the eyewitness accounts of reporters with major newspapers and news services, most of them embedded with U.S. troops. It is meant to be a portrait of Fallujah... well, you can't quite say "after the battle" since - as in the Chechen capital Grozny after the Russians flattened it in 1999 - the fighting goes on and on. I'm sorry to say that I suspect the following only begins to catch the scale of the destruction in Fallujah:

"Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe. The aluminum shutters of shops on the main highway through town have been transformed by the force of war into mangled accordion shapes, flat, sharp, jarring slices of metal that no longer obscure the stacks of silver pots, the plastic-wrapped office furniture, the rolls of carpet... [T]he insurgents were putting up their most tenacious resistance as U.S. and Iraqi forces pursued them through a bleak landscape of bombed-out cinder block factories and houses reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner... It is still far from clear when civilian residents will be allowed back in [to Fallujah] - or what they will think of this post-apocalyptic wasteland when they are... Driving down Highway 10, the main street running east to west through the heart of Fallujah, is like entering a film that is set sometime on the other side of Armageddon. Cars sit on the roofs of buildings. Lamp posts lie at odd angles on the street. Just south of the highway, a minaret has been snapped off near the base like a pretzel stick, and another minaret is missing a huge chunk. Fire has blackened the facade of building after building... As he trudged through the desolate, rubble-filled streets, [Marine Sgt. Aristotel] 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...

"A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The northwest Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks... Restaurant signs were covered in soot. Pavements were crushed by 70-ton Abrams tanks, and rows of crumbling buildings stood on both sides of deserted streets. Upmarket homes with garages looked as if they had been abandoned for years. Cars lay crushed in the middle of streets... The reaction of U.S. troops to attacks, say residents, have been out of all proportion; shots by snipers have been answered by rounds from Abrams tanks, devastating buildings and, it is claimed, injuring and killing civilians. This is firmly denied by the American military. About 200,000 refugees fled the fighting, and there have been outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases... The city's Haj Hussein mosque was destroyed in one overnight air raid, [residents] said. The U.S. military says it considers mosques legitimate targets if insurgents use them for military purposes...

"Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Fallujah on foot on Thursday morning and arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the west, at night. He said families left in the city were in desperate need. 'There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no proper food,' he told aid workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000 families sheltering there... Cowering in their house with nothing to eat or drink as bombardments and firefights shook their neighborhood, Iyad al-Mashadani and his family dug a 3-foot hole in their yard and drank the brackish water. 'We were sure that we would die,' said Mashadani, 32, a car mechanic...

"The brutal assault has crushed homes and mosques and ground much of the southern neighborhoods into rubble. Survivors are hungry and aid convoys have been unable to reach them. Reports of civilian suffering, expected to spread after the Americans loosen [their] grip on the city, could transform Fallujah into a shrine to Muslim warriors killed in the fighting... The town's main east-west drag, a key objective of U.S. troops, is a tangle of rubble-filled lots and shot-up storefronts. Shattered water and sewage pipes have left pools of sewage-filled water, sometimes knee-deep. Scorched and potholed streets are filled with debris; power lines droop in tangles or lie on the ground. Many mosques, the city's pride and joy, are a shambles after insurgents used them as shelter and firing positions, drawing return fire from the Marines... The entire municipal government complex must be rebuilt and secured. The police station, City Hall, and other government buildings have been seriously damaged, heavily looted and are occupied by Marines... Despite the clear military gains, the city remains insecure enough that major civil affairs units that will oversee reconstruction have yet to arrive. But more than $50 million in contracts has already been let, and people are standing by, ready to start work as soon as it is safe enough... In the works is some kind of 'Welcome Back to Fallujah' campaign, directing residents to military civil affairs offices where people can find reconstruction help... Though a week-long American offensive smashed the insurgents' haven of Fallujah, snipers continued Tuesday to shoot at American troops roaming the debris-covered streets. Residents began to warily step out of their homes, emerging into a wasteland devastated by American bombs and bullets."

[The sources for the quotes above are in order: the Washington Post's Jackie Spinner, "Fallujah Battered And Mostly Quiet After the Battle"; the Boston Globe's Anne Barnard, "In hidden spots, a tenacious foe"; the New York Times' Robert F. Worth, "Battleground: As Fire Crackles in Fallujah, GIs Look to Rebuild a Wasteland"; Spinner, "In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War"; the British Independent's Michael Georgy in Fallujah and Kim Sengupta, "A city lies in ruins, along with the lives of the wretched survivors"; Reuters' Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani, "U.S. Forces Say Rebels Trapped in Southern Fallujah"; Barnard, "Fallujah refugees describe ordeal of life in crossfire"; the Associated Press's Jim Krane, "U.S. racing insurgents for influence in Fallujah as battle winds down"; the Los Angeles Times' Patrick J. McDonnell, "Iraqi City Lies in Ruins"; the New York Times' Edward Wong, "U.S. Troops Move to Rein In Rebels in North of Iraq."]

And the latest reports indicate that American troops are still mortaring parts of Fallujah, that insurgents are attempting to slip back into the city, and that at least one of the leaders of the homegrown Fallujan rebels remains there, and defiantly so. ("'The Americans have opened the gates of hell,' Abdullah Janabi said Monday in Fallujah. ... The battle of Fallujah is the beginning of other battles.' Iraqi officials had said they believed Janabi, a 53-year-old Sunni cleric, had fled the city before U.S. troops pushed into the insurgent stronghold. But he spoke from the city's southern section, at times boasting of losses inflicted on U.S. troops and at other times insisting that other insurgent leaders remained in Fallujah with him.")

All of this provides a context for Jonathan Schell's discussion below of the battle for "hearts and minds" in Iraq (which the editors of the Nation magazine have kindly allowed TomDispatch to publish online). From his experience covering the Vietnam War long ago for the New Yorker Magazine (see his classic book The Real War), Schell knows a good deal about that "battle" and the escalating levels of destruction that tend to go with it. His most recent book, The Unconquerable World, offers an unparalleled three-century-long perspective on imperial attempts to nail down hearts and conquer minds, almost invariably in the long run without success but at a horrific cost in life and limb. Tom What Happened to Hearts? by Jonathan Schell

For some time now, American political discussion has seemed to revolve around little stock phrases, such as "defining moment" (at the time of the first Gulf War), "the end of history" (at the end of the Cold War), "the economy, stupid" (in the early Clinton years), "shock and awe" (as the second Gulf War began). Sometimes there's a revival of one or another. One of these is "winning hearts and minds." It became popular during the Vietnam War and is enjoying a vogue in the context of the war in Iraq.

However, the phrase has undergone an interesting evolution. This is reflected in two recent columns, one by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post, the other by Mark Bowden in the Los Angeles Times. You might suppose that any reflection on hearts and minds would revolve around the elections that are planned for January in Iraq. How, someone might ask, can the United States, now hugely disliked in Iraq, make itself so appealing that Iraqis would vote for a government cut to our specifications? Yet the principal occasion for the two writers' reflections is instead the military campaign - specifically, the Marines' assault on Fallujah.

Back in the days of Vietnam, the phrase acquired a definite meaning: In a war of pacification, winning battles was not enough; you also had to win the population's hearts and minds. If you did not, each victory in battle would only be the prelude to further battles, and at the end, when you left, all your work would be washed away by the contrary will of the local people, as happened in Vietnam. It was possible to rule by the sword, as empires have done through the ages, but then you had to be ready to occupy the country indefinitely. Winning hearts and minds, therefore, was not a frill of policy but its foundation, the sine qua non of victory.

In his discussion of the invasion of Fallujah, Hoagland begins with a seeming acknowledgment of the Vietnam lesson. He recognizes that the measurements of success cannot merely be the "numbers of insurgents killed or captured, or bomb factories seized or obliterated." For "as Americans learned to their grief in Vietnam," such measurements are "elusive and illusory." We expect to hear at this point that winning hearts and minds is necessary, and Hoagland does not disappoint. But he introduces a variant of the old phrase. Fallujah, he says "is part of a battle for minds rather than 'hearts and minds.'" (The title of the article is "Fighting for Minds in Fallujah.") What can he mean? What happened to hearts?

The answer is that the "immediate objective is to dissuade Sunni townspeople from joining, supporting or tolerating the insurrection," and "the price they will pay for doing so is being illustrated graphically in the streets of Fallujah." This isn't a lesson for the heart - the organ of love, enthusiasm, positive approval. The reaction of the heart - whether Iraqi or American - could only be pity, disgust, and indignation. Thus, only the "minds" of "the townspeople" could draw the necessary conclusions, as they survey the corpse-strewn wreckage of their city. In short, the people of Iraq will be stricken with fear, or, to use another word that's very popular these days, terror. Then they'll be ready to vote.

Bowden takes up the same theme. "Guerrilla war is always about hearts and minds," he notes. He acknowledges that most of the guerrillas would have escaped in the long buildup to the attack. Still, he argues, the attack was important. True, it will not influence the "boldest" souls, who are motivated by "nationalism, religion, kinship, or ideology." (All these things were applauded in the recent American election, but they apparently are to have no place in the life of Iraqis.) But "ordinary people" can still be won over. How? He arrives at the same conclusion as Hoagland. "I suspect fear has more to do with influencing them than anything else." Most Iraqis, "like sensible people everywhere, are looking to see which side is most likely to prevail." The stake for them is "survival" - depending on which side is more likely to kill them. Bowden wants it to be the United States. The payoff is not any concrete achievement of the attack; it is the spectacle of the subjugated city, which "works as a demonstration of will and power."

Certainly, the assault on Fallujah has given the Iraqi people a lot to look at, and a lot to think about. Some 200,000 people - the great majority of Fallujah's population of some 300,000 - were driven out of their city by news of the imminent attack and the U.S. bombardment. No agency of government, U.S. or Iraqi, which turned off the city's water and electricity in preparation for the assault, offered assistance. Nor did the United Nations Refugee Agency or any other representative of the international community appear. And where are the people now? And what stories are the expelled 200,000 telling the millions of Iraqis among whom they are now mixing? We don't know. No one seems to be interested.

When the attack came, the first target was Fallujah General Hospital. The New York Times explained why: "The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties." If there were no hospital, there would be no visible casualties; if there were no visible casualties, there would be no international outrage, and all would be well. What of those civilians who remained? No men of military age were permitted to leave during the attack. Remaining civilians were trapped in their apartments with no electricity or water. No one knows how many of them have been killed, and no official group has any plans to find out. The city itself is a ruin. "A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction," the Independent of Britain reports, "with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack, and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets."

Both columnists do mention the elections. Bowden says the best hope for Iraq is "for elections to take place," and Hoagland believes the attack on Fallujah will "clear the way" for them. Ballot boxes are to spring up in the tracks of the tanks. Some commentators even refer to "the Sunni heartland." (As far as I can tell, no one has yet asked how Iraqi "security moms" will vote.) Meanwhile, the insurgency, failing so far to learn its lesson, has opened fronts in other cities, which may soon get the same treatment as Fallujah. "They made a wasteland and called it peace," Tacitus famously said. It was left to the United States, champion of freedom, to update the formula: They made a wasteland and called it democracy.

Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute. His most recent book is The Unconquerable World.

--------

[To respond - mailto:letters@washingtontimes.com ]

Whose side is the media on?

November 18, 2004
Washington Times
Letters to the editor
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20041117-085408-8737r.htm

Every time an embedded reporter airs a negative report about our military, it provides a major propaganda victory to our enemies and endangers our military forces ("Insurgent clashes kill more than 50," World, Tuesday).

As far as I'm concerned, such reporters are providing aid and comfort to our enemies. Look at what is going on in the Middle East after the shooting in the mosque. Headlines throughout the Middle East scream that a Marine shot an unarmed man in a mosque. Talk about inflaming our enemies.

These reporters need to be removed from these units or show more restraint. They should think about the consequences to our military forces versus the public's right to know. The lives of our military should come before the story.

ROBERT WINSTEAD
Alexandria

•

Last night, I sat by in disgust as the media mounted a massive campaign against a young Marine who fatally shot a wounded terrorist. The media did not say "terrorist." They called him an "unarmed Iraqi."

We should pull the embeds out of Iraq. I once believed it was a great idea, but I have come to the conclusion that the media has an agenda to turn this into Vietnam. We have seen it since the start of the war.

We asked these young men to go over there and fight for us. We asked them to lay their lives on the line so we can live in freedom and security here. No one knows what this young man has been through. We do know that the insurgents have been playing dead in order to trick our troops.

I call on you and your colleagues to support our troops, and this one in particular. If we don't have the courage to fight for them here, we shouldn't be asking them to fight for us over there.

JASON VANZIN
Bridgeville, Pa.

--------

WashingtonPost.com Drops Ted Rall's Cartoons

By Dave Astor
November 18, 2004
Editor & Publisher
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000723114

NEW YORK WashingtonPost.com is no longer running the cartoons of hard-hitting liberal Ted Rall.

Rall said he thinks the site dropped his work because of a Nov. 4 cartoon he did showing a drooling, mentally handicapped student taking over a classroom. "The idea was to draw an analogy to the electorate -- in essence, the idiots are now running the country," he told E&P.

"That cartoon certainly drew a significant amount of negative comment from our users," said WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Doug Feaver when contacted by E&P. But he added that the decision to drop Rall was a "cumulative" one that had been building for a while.

"Ted Rall does very interesting work," Feaver said. "Some of it is not funny to an awful lot of people. We decided at the end of the day that it just did not fit the tone we wanted at WashingtonPost.com."

Rall was dropped effective Nov. 15, according to Feaver.

In addition to receiving a number of complaints about the Nov. 4 cartoon (including e-mails from parents of mentally handicapped children), WashingtonPost.com also received a number of complaints from readers criticizing the dropping of Rall.

"The analogy obviously fell flat, or overshadowed the main point of the cartoon," Rall said of his Nov. 4 drawing. "More importantly, I forgot the editorial cartoonist's obligation to comfort the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. I got the latter in that cartoon at the expense of the former. Special-needs children face a lot of challenges; they don't need, or deserve, mocking from me. ... The cartoon was effective in its way, but it could have been better."

Rall said he was dropped for one "boneheaded" drawing when WashingtonPost.com has "no problem with 99% of my work." He noted that the site could have pulled the one cartoon without canceling him entirely.

"Nobody bats a thousand -- not me, not anyone," said Rall. "Strong editorial cartoonists take risks. Sometimes they cross the line. Actions like the Post's encourage the kind of timidity that has blandified not just editorial cartoons, but newspaper content overall."

The Universal Press Syndicate creator said "I don't think censorship is ever the answer," mentioning that he publicly opposed campaigns to fire or boycott conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura Schlessinger for that reason.

Rall -- who said WashingtonPost.com kept running him after his controversial cartoons about Pat Tillman (earlier this year) and "terror widows" -- hopes the site will reconsider "depriving readers of one of the most stridently liberal voices in the media at a time when liberal values are under ferocious attack."

Feaver declined to respond to Rall's comments.

Another major newspaper site, NYTimes.com, dropped Rall this past winter (E&P, March 4) because it felt "some of his humor was not in keeping with the tone we try to set" -- words not that different than WashingtonPost.com used today. But Rall said at the time that NYTimes.com was tired of dealing with e-mail campaigns from conservatives who didn't like his work.

-------- us politics

Bush Family Baseball; From Cute Sociopath to Global War Criminal

Op-Ed News
November 18, 2004
By Teresa Simón-Noble,
http://www.opednews.com/SimonNoble_111804_baseball.htm

"It is the pitch of a father who never c or rected his son's misguided baseball game and the batting son who is still misaiming his baseballs at destroying the American Democracy".

A long time ago Barbara Bush told a story about a young teenaged boy named George and the baseball he hit and aimed directly at an old neighbor's second story window. The story, for me, today, connects many dots between the American attacks on Fallujah, the White House purge of the CIA liberals, the advent of new horrors to come against the world and our very own democracy during the second Bush Squat-A-Thon and, between this young George, her son, and our Squatter in the White House.

In the story, as I recall the telling of it, Barbara Bush said that she was both enraged at George for breaking the old man's window and, that she, feeling powerless to do anything about what George had done, or failing to find the right "discipline" for George, she launched a verbal attack on him for aiming the ball at their neighbor's window and or breaking it, and then threatened George with a, "wait until your father hears about this," tirade, the implication being that George was going to get his just deserves once George Senior got home and was apprised of George's misadventure.

Barbara Bush expected her husband to be equally enraged upon learning of George's misadventure. She expected the elder George to call the younger George on the carpet right then and there and fry his butt, or impose some "you are grounded for an x period of time," stuff. Instead, she says, the elder George was amazed and bewildered at young George's ingenuity and good aim and with approval and admiration in his voice at his son's mischief he kept repeating, "Gee, you mean to say that George batted the ball that far? ... You mean to say that George broke the old man's window?"

So much for discipline and just deserves. George the elder paid for the repair to the old man's window and George received no punishment for his mischief which turned out to be a cause celeb for the elder George.

That was, in my mind as I heard the story, the very birthing of a sociopathic son by a sociopathic father who was letting his son get away without any consequences for his mischievous actions... a pattern which, as history makes clear, has repeated itself time and time again in the Bush father-son dyad.

The story foreshadows many of the now well known rescuer-rescued dynamics between the two Georges. It points to the admiration and idealization for mischief present in the Bush family, and it provides a basis for , at least, a bare minimum understanding of all of the horror stories that have accompanied their mischievous behavior on a grand national scale : from the stealing of election 2000, to the equally mischievous but newly perfected re-stealing of election 2004, to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, to the Fallujah Massacre, to the CIA purge of liberals and of those who do not supp or t the Bush doctrine... to, and including the clear directive from the current director of the CIA to neither suppor t opposition to George, nor champion opposition to the administration nor its policies ... behind all of which, I believe, George the elder (the only former president who continues to receive, at his request, CIA [ or is it FBI?] briefings) is not only pulling the strings, but is still, with awe and admiration in his voice, muttering, Wow! Look at George and at all that he is accomplishing in his presidency on behalf of the nation and the world as he throws one ball after another against democracy, civil liberties, environmental protection, innocent civilians in other countries, etc. etc., etc.! Wow! What a son, the elder Bush continues to mutter. Wow...the power of a baseball!

What a pitcher's pitch and a batterer's bat!

It is the pitch of a father who never corrected his son's baseball game, and the batting of a son who is misaming his baseballs against our American democracy and world peace.

It is a like father, like son story.

Teresa Simon-Noble

Teresa Simon-Noble fchiok@bellsouth.net is a computer activist for peace and social justice who lives in the sunny state of Florida . She is a former mental health clinician. A poet and a freelance writer, her work has been published in several online publications


-------- ENERGY

-------- alternative energy

Connecticut Program Promotes Use of Renewable Energy

November 18, 2004
By Maria Garriga,
New Haven Register
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=401

ROCKY HILL, Conn. - The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund will offer free solar energy systems to towns and cities that commit to buying 20 percent of their electricity from environmentally friendly sources by 2010, the agency said Tuesday.

The $500,000 program, "Connecticut's Clean Energy Communities," will encourage municipalities to urge consumers to use renewable energy.

"Solar energy is here in Connecticut. It's real, it's here, and it's working," said Charlie Moret, marketing director for the Clean Energy Fund.

Moret said the program gives towns and cities three options: They can have at least 100 people to sign up for the program, they can encourage businesses to buy at 1-gigawatt of renewable energy, or they can qualify if 10 percent of residents sign up.

The solar panels can be attached to municipal buildings or schools to produce electricity and reduce electric costs.

Two years ago, New Haven was the first city in the state to commit to buying 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

"It's a no-brainer for New Haven," said Robert M. Smuts, deputy chief of staff for the city. New Haven has been trying to lead the state in renewable energy, he said.

Clean Energy Fund officials believe once residents see renewable energy in use, they will begin to use it themselves.

Residents and businesses in participating communities may sign up directly for clean energy options made available by The United Illuminating Co. of New Haven and Connecticut Light & Power Co.

The state Department of Public Utility Control has required the utilities to allow consumers to sign up for renewable energy. The utilities will buy the renewable energy and charge consumers accordingly.

The Connecticut General Assembly created the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund in 1998 as a quasi-public agency that invests in clean energy technologies such as biomass, landfill gas, fuel cells, solar, wave and wind power.

The agency receives its funding through a surcharge on ratepayers' electric bills.

----

New York State First to Lease 2005 Honda Fuel Cell Cars

November 18, 2004
ALBANY, New York, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-18-09.asp#anchor5

Governor George Pataki announced Wednesday that New York State will lease two Honda 2005 FCX hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles. The zero emissions fuel cell cars will be added to the state's growing fleet of alternative fuel vehicles.

New York is the first state government customer for the fuel cell vehicles in the United States and will be the first to operate the vehicles in the Northeast.

"New York is pleased to partner with Honda to utilize these innovative fuel cell vehicles, which use emerging technology to significantly reduce energy use, promote cleaner air and help break our dependence on foreign oil," said Pataki.

"Fuel cells - like those used in this vehicle - have the potential to revolutionize the transportation and energy industries," the governor said, "and we are proud that the state will play a major role in helping to develop the next generation of clean, energy efficient vehicles for daily use."

As part of Honda's testing program for the 2005 FCX, New York State will lease two cars for a period of two years with the first vehicle expected to be delivered in December and the second in mid-2005. The vehicles are the first fuel cell vehicles in New York's fleet and will be used in regular daily State operations.

Koichi Kondo, president and CEO of American Honda Motor Co., Inc. joined Pataki at the State Capitol for the announcement. "I would like to commend the governor and the people of New York for their vision and for taking this bold step toward a more sustainable energy future, and also thank them for becoming a customer for Honda fuel cell technology," he said.

The Honda FCX converts compressed gaseous hydrogen into electricity for motive power with water as its only emission. The 2005 FCX has a range of up to 190 miles and seating for four people, making it practical for a wide range of real-world applications.

FCVs can be fueled with pure hydrogen gas stored onboard in high pressure tanks. They also can be fueled with hydrogen rich fuels, such as methanol, natural gas, or even gasoline. However, these fuels must first be converted into hydrogen gas by an onboard device called a "reformer."

FCVs fueled with pure hydrogen emit no pollutants; only water and heat. In addition, FCVs can be twice as efficient as similarly sized conventional vehicles and may also incorporate other advanced technologies to increase efficiency.

The Honda FCX is the only fuel cell car to be certified by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board for regular daily use.

Beginning in model year 1997, the Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 required state agencies to increase their acquisitions of alternative fueled vehicles for state fleets. New York State has exceeded these federally mandated requirements for the sixth consecutive year - in model year 2003, by nearly 14 percent.

In 2003, 89 percent of all light duty vehicles purchased by New York State were alternative fueled vehicles.

Currently, the state has 4,141 alternative fueled vehicles in its fleet, using a variety of different fuels, such as CNG, ethanol, propane, electric and hybrid vehicles. These vehicles make up 32 percent of the total vehicles in the state's fleet and by 2009, that number is expected to jump to 62 percent.


-------- OTHER


-------- environment

Bush Administration Wants Arctic Meltdown

rense.com
11-18-4
By Wayne Madsen
http://www.rense.com/general59/bushadminwantsartic.htm

WASHINGTON, DC -- Speaking off the record, scientists studying the current warming of the Arctic region intimated that some officials in the Bush administration saw the loss of Arctic ice and the resultant opening of sea channels such as the Northwest Passage of Canada as a good thing for the exploration and retrieval of oil and natural gas from the endangered region.

Over 300 international scientists have just completed an extensive 1200-page report documenting their exhaustive 4-year Arctic Climate Impact Assessment study on the rapid warming of the Arctic. The study was commissioned by the Arctic Council and the International Arctic Science Committee at a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Point Barrow, Alaska in 2000. On November 8, the scientists released a 144-page summary of their findings at a press conference in Washington, DC.

As if out of a scene from the Roland Emmerich's climate disaster movie, "The Day After Tomorrow," the U.S. State Department is criticizing the international panel's call to slow down Arctic warming by curbing greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere. The State Department, according to some scientists, is echoing the positions of oil companies and anti-environmentalist pressure groups like the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation, in dismissing the recent report on Arctic warming. In fact, President Bush has repeatedly referred to previous scientific studies pointing to the effects of global warming as "silly science" based on "fuzzy math." The chief State Department focal point on the Arctic warming issue is Paula Dobriansky, the Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, who is seen as a virtual mouthpiece for Vice President Dick Cheney, the oil companies, and the anti-environmental groups. She will be trying to minimize the impact of the Arctic warming report before she attends the November 24 meeting of the Arctic Council in Reykjavik, Iceland where the report will be officially released. Before her current stint at the State Department, Dobriansky was an international affairs adviser with the law firm Hunton & Williams, whose clients include a number of large energy companies, including Exxon Mobil.

The report concludes that Arctic warming has increased dramatically since 1954. Average Arctic winter temperatures have increased as much as 4 to 7 degrees F (3-4 degrees C) during the past 50 years and are projected to increase another 7-13 degrees F (4-7 degrees C) over the next 100 years. Over the past 30 years, the sea-ice extent of the Arctic has decreased 386,100 square miles (or Texas and Arizona combined). Since Arctic sea ice is declining at such a rapid rate, maritime access by oil exploration ships and tankers is viewed by the Bush-Cheney administration and their oil industry backers as an economic windfall because of increased access to Arctic resources. Timber companies are also excited about access to Arctic timber reserves from accessible Arctic seaports. Therefore, the Bush administration and their corporate sponsors want to downplay the environmental catastrophe that will be brought about by an anticipated complete loss of Arctic ice and the creation of an iceless Arctic Ocean by the end of the century. Already, British Petroleum and a Russian partner are using newly-opened shipping channels in the Russian Arctic to begin the off-shore drilling of natural gas.

The possible opening of the Northwest Passage to maritime shipping has already prompted Canadian warnings to the United States not to intrude on its national territory. The United States does not recognize Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic sea passages. This past summer, Canada's largest warship, a fleet of helicopters, and 200 troops engaged in Operation Narwhal, the largest Canadian military exercise ever held in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Narwhal was also noteworthy in that U.S. military participants and observers were not invited.

The Bush administration and their oil company supporters have also dismissed concerns that oil spills resulting from increased maritime access to Arctic waters cannot be cleaned up because no solutions have been discovered on how to deal with oil contamination in colder waters, such as the Arctic. They point to continued problems arising from the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

In addition to the loss of the Arctic icepack, scientists discovered that substantial melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will continue and its eventual melting will raise global sea levels by about 23 feet (7 meters). That, coupled with glacial melting in the Arctic (in Canada, Alaska, and Russia) and Antarctic melting, will cause the sea to flood most of southern and coastal Florida (including the Keys and the Everglades), the Mississippi Delta (including the city of New Orleans), a number of near-sea level islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, and the expansion of tidal-influenced bays and rivers worldwide.

Arctic ice melt will also increase ocean salinity and this affects ocean currents that bring warmer waters to colder regions. Because saltier water results in colder water sinking, a decrease in salinity will result in colder water rising to the surface and threatening the thermohaline conveyor belt upon which Europe depends for its temperate climate [see Dale Allen Pfeiffer's writings on abrupt climate change and the thermohaline current in FTW, especially:

The effect is that while temperatures increase in North America and Asia, regional cooling will take place in Europe. The imbalance will affect agriculture and the overall eco-system.

The loss of snow cover in the Arctic will mean that less solar energy will be reflected back into space, thus adding to the warming of the Arctic's land and water surfaces. Unprecedented rainfall is already being witnessed on Greenland's Ice Sheet by the local Inuit inhabitants.

According to the Arctic warming report, the loss of Arctic ice and permafrost will also result in the near extinction of a number of species, including the polar bear, a number of seal species, walruses, caribou, reindeer, lemmings, voles, and migratory birds such as snow owls. The Indigenous People of the Arctic will be forced to relocate from floods, loss of permafrost, coastal erosion from killer storms, building collapse from destruction of permafrost, and loss of food supply. In addition, rising Arctic temperatures are permitting the invasion of destructive insects such as the spruce beetle which has already decimated 1.6 million hectares of white spruce and Sitka/Lutz spruce on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. In Sweden, invading moths have destroyed entire forests of birch trees. New species of birds entering the warmer Arctic tundra regions are also bringing with them a new disease - West Nile Virus, which threatens both humans and animals.

The Bush administration, in its unwillingness to appreciate the impact of Arctic warming and its desire for expanded oil sources, has incurred the wrath of the nations and peoples of the Arctic Council. These are Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the Aleut International Association, Arctic Athabaskan Council, Gwich'in Council International, Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, the Saami Council along with observers France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Queen Elizabeth have both championed the efforts to reverse global warming as have Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman.

See also:

"An Arctic Alert on Global Warming," Peter N. Spotts, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor. November 9th, 2004

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1109/p01s03-sten.html

"Satellites Record Weakening North Atlantic Current," NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center press release. April 15th, 2004.

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0415gyre.html
http://www.fromthewilderness.com /members/111104_arctic_meltdown.shtml

--------

Russia Starts Kyoto Climate Clock Ticking

November 18, 2004
NAIROBI, Kenya, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-18-05.asp

The 90 day countdown to the Kyoto Protocol's entry into force was triggered today by the receipt of the Russian Federation's instrument of ratification by the United Nations Secretary-General. The Protocol will become legally binding on its 128 Parties on February 16, 2005.

Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Andrey Denisov formally handed over the accession papers on ratification of the protocol to Kofi Annan, who is in Nairobi for the UN Security Council meeting on the Sudan humanitarian crisis.

Andrey Denisov is permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN. (Photo courtesy UN) Annan congratulated Russian President Vladmir Putin and the Russian Federation, and said it is "a great day for the whole world."

He called the ratification "a historic step forward in the world's efforts to combat a truly global threat." Most important, he said, "it ends a long period of uncertainty."

When the protocol takes effect, 30 industrialized countries will be legally bound to meet quantitative targets for reducing or limiting their emissions of six greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Countries that have ratified the Protocol, and have been trying to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases even before its entry into force, now have a legally binding obligation to do so, Annan pointed out.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Photo courtesy UN) "Businesses that have been exploring the realm of green technology now have a strong signal about the market viability of their products and services," said Annan. "And the financial community and insurance industry, which have been trying to put a price on the risks associated with climate change, now have a stronger basis for their decisionmaking on incentives and corporate performance."

Only four industrialized countries have not yet ratified the protocol - Australia and the United States and the tiny European countries of Liechtenstein and Monaco.

Australia and the United States have stated that they do not plan to ratify; together they account for over one third of all greenhouse gases emitted by the industrialized world. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister John Howard, who both won re-election in the past two months, say that adhering to the protocol would not be in their countries' best economic interest.

The secretary-general took the occasion to urge the United States and Australia to join the rest of the industrialized countries in ratifying the protocol.

"All countries must now do their utmost to combat climate change and to keep it from undermining our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals," said Annan. "I therefore take this opportunity to urge those developed countries that have not ratified the Protocol to ratify it and limit their emissions."

The Parties to the Climate Change Convention will have their next major meeting in Buenos Aires from December 6 to 17. "I hope they will use that occasion to seize the promising possibilities that have been opened up by this major development," Annan said.

In a statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had not taken the decision to ratify lightly, acknowledging that the Kyoto Protocol will have consequences for "Russia's social and economic development."

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) listens to U.S. President George W. Bush during a White House meeting. The two leaders have gone in different directions on the Kyoto climate protocol. (Photo by Eric Draper courtesy The White House) Nevertheless, he said, a thorough analysis of all the ramifications have concluded that the treaty was vital for "the promotion of international cooperation."

Today's ceremony was attended by Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner who serves as Kenya's assistance environment minister.

Toepfer said the circumstances of the ratification underlined the vital links between the environment and global peace and also the importance of UNEP and its African headquarters to world affairs. Scientists predict that Africa, which is only responsible for just over three percent of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, is likely to be hit hardest of any region by the impacts of climate change.

"A period of uncertainty has closed. Climate change is ready to take its place again at the top of the global agenda," said Joke Waller-Hunter, Executive Secretary of the Climate Change Secretariat, which services the UN Climate Change Convention and its Kyoto Protocol.

"Next month's ministerial conference in Buenos Aires will provide the next major opportunity for governments, businesses and civil society to promote the innovative new policies and technologies that will create the climate-friendly economy of the future," she said.

The protocol's entry into force means that from February 16, 2005, the international carbon trading market will become a legal and practical reality. The protocol's emissions trading regime enables industrialized countries to buy and sell emissions credits amongst themselves. This approach is expected to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of emissions cuts.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) will move from an early implementation phase to full operations. The CDM will encourage investments in developing country projects that limit emissions while promoting sustainable development.

The protocol's Adaptation Fund, established in 2001, will start preparing itself to help developing countries cope with the negative effects of climate change.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialized countries are to reduce their combined emissions of six greenhouse gases during the five year period 2008-2012 to an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels.

Rapid melting of the Lucia Glacier in South America's Patagonia Icefield shows in the bare patches on either side of the remaining ice mass. (Photo by Andres Rivera courtesy NASA) Developing countries, including Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia, are also Parties to the protocol but do not have emission reduction targets.

"Reducing the risks of global warming will require the active engagement of the entire international community,"said Waller-Hunter. "I urge the U.S. and other major emitters without Kyoto targets to do their part by accelerating their national efforts to address climate change."

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most up-to-date scientific research suggests that humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will raise global average temperatures by 1.4 to 5.8°C by the end of the century.

These emissions are expected to affect weather patterns, water resources, the cycling of the seasons, ecosystems and extreme climate events.

Scientists have already found many early signals of global warming, including the shrinking of mountain glaciers and Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, less ice on lakes and rivers, longer summer growing seasons, changes in the arrival and departure dates of migratory birds, and the spread of many insects and plants towards the poles.

----

Greenpeacers in China and Australia Target Illegal Logging

November 18, 2004
BEIJING, China, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2004/2004-11-18-02.asp

Greenpeace is mounting a concerted campaign to stop illegal logging in Asia. The environment group held a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday to expose Asia Pulp & Paper's destruction of the forests in China's Yunnan province. And activists were arrested in Brisbane, Australia earlier this week for protesting illegal logging in Papua New Guinea.

Greenpeace filed an official report to China's State Administration of Forestry about the illegalities involved in the Yunnan logging situation, and urged the Chinese government to punish the responsible parties.

In 2002, Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) signed a memo of understanding with the Yunnan provincial government for its eucalyptus forest, pulp and paper integration project.

Within the year, APP enclosed a forest of 183,330 hectares in southern Yunnan province, and began logging in the region.

The hills of Yunnan have been stripped of their trees. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace China) Confirmation comes from government reports, including an investigation report from the State Administration of Forestry in which the project is pronounced as problematic.

With no felling permit or other required approvals, APP contines to log the natural forest illegally, as Greenpeace has documented in two field researches in June and September.

Liu Bing, forest campaigner with Greenpace China, said, "Yunnan is a world biodiversity hotspot. The project in question will wreak havoc on the local biodiversity, which will trigger a chain reaction in the neighboring areas, thus causing irreversible ecological disaster to the whole region."

In Papua New Guinea, illegal logging and human rights abuses are the subject of a Greenpeace campaign that links purchases of illegal timber by Australian consumers to forest destruction.

A timber company based in Brisbane is trading in illegal timber from Papua New Guinea (PNG), according to a local clan leader and Greenpeace Australia. The timber industry in PNG is responsible for environmental destruction, corruption and human rights abuses, both parties say.

Greenpeace activists stenciled the message, "Illegal timber destroys lives" onto piles of timber in the TLB timber yard Monday and held a banner reading "Corporate violations or human rights" across the front gates.

Five Greenpeacers were arrested. Two of them were charged after chaining themselves to TLB's front gates at Hamilton near the Brisbane wharves and another three were arrested for graffiti.

The federal Forestry and Conservation Minister, Ian Macdonald, says he agrees with Greenpeace on the issue. "On this issue I do agree with Greenpeace," he said on Monday.

"I do think some of the most important forests in the world are being destroyed through illegal logging and I do think we have to, through the world community, stop the destruction of these very special forests."

The Brisbane company is owned by Malaysian logging giant Rimbunan Hijau, which was the subject of a November 3 SBS Dateline program that focused on practices which abuse the human rights of indigenous landowners.

John Danaiye, a PNG clan leader and spokesperson for Musula and Iwatubu village clans, is taking Rimbunan Hijau to court claiming they have illegally logged his tribal land.

PNG clan leader John Danaiye speaks to the media in Brisbane. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace Australia) He is in Brisbane to ask Australians to help save the forest of PNG. "Logging by Rimbunan Hijau has destroyed large parts of our traditional forests," said Danaiye. "They have ruined our rivers, hunting grounds and sacred sites. We get beaten and abused when we try to stand up for our rights."

Reports commissioned by the PNG government, the World Bank and nongovernmental organizations have documented the illegalities, environmental destruction, human rights abuses and corruption in the PNG forestry industry.

"I am here to let the Australian people know what's happening to my forest home, so that they know not to use disputed PNG timber in building their homes, said the PNG clan leader. "And to urge the Australian government to take action to stop stolen or illegal timber from entering Australian ports."

Greenpeace forests campaigner Katerina Lecchi said, "Illegally logged timber destroys lives. Australian based companies should stop supporting the trade in illegal timber and move urgently to certified sustainable sources of timber."

"Timber companies should check their sources and immediately stop importing and trading in illegal and destructive timber. They should source timber which carries reputable certification like the Forest Stewardship Council certification," said Lecchi.

Australian Forestry Minister Ian Macdonald (Photo courtesy Office of the Minister) The Forestry Minister Macdonald also agreed with Greenpeace in February, saying, "I agree with Greenpeace that one of the most important forests in the world is being destroyed through illegal logging in Papua New Guinea."

But this time the minister only made the statement to urge Greenpeace to focus on PNG and leave Australian loggers alone. "I find it incredible that Greenpeace, other radical conservation groups and the Green Party continue to oppose sustainable forestry in Australia," Macdonald said.

"Australia has the best managed, most sustainable forests in the world. We carefully monitor and regulate all harvesting and strictly enforce environmental guidelines. Yet expansion of Australia's sustainable timber industry is thwarted by radical conservationists bent on a political agenda," said the minister.

"They have no real interest in the world environment. If radical greens were serious," the minister said, "they would be sitting up trees in PNG not stopping workers doing their lawful business in forests that are already 70 percent locked away in reserves."

"If Australia was self sufficient in wood and forest products," said Macdonald, "we would not have to consider imports from alleged dodgy operations."

Greenpeace Australia and other conservation groups have been protesting the logging of old growth forests in Australia's island state of Tasmania.

In November 2003, environmentalists from Australia, Japan, Canada and Germany set up a tree sit - dubbed the Global Rescue Station - a platform 65 meters above ground to protect the tallest hardwood trees on Earth from being pulped for paper.

Tasmania exports more logs and woodchips from native forests than all other Australian states combined.

-------- health

DuPont Faces New Complaint
Group Says Firm Withheld Plaintiffs' Blood Test Results

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58511-2004Nov17.html

Chemical giant DuPont Co. withheld information from federal officials that indicates a dozen residents near its Parkersburg, W.Va., plant have high blood levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, an ingredient used to make Teflon that in animal studies has been linked to cancer and birth defects, an environmental advocacy group said yesterday.

The company is already facing as much as $313 million in fines on the grounds that for two decades it did not provide the Environmental Protection Agency with data pointing to health risks associated with the compound, also known as C-8 or PFOA. Next month DuPont is expected to go before an EPA administrative law judge to try to dismiss the government's claims in connection with the soaplike material, which is used in making stick-resistant surfaces and materials.

In a related case, DuPont agreed two months ago to pay as much as $343 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of contaminating drinking water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia with C-8. DuPont asked an independent lab to examine blood taken from the 12 named plaintiffs in the lawsuit to gauge their exposure to the chemical compound. Lawyers in the suit submitted the study's findings to the EPA in September, so the agency had the results before environmentalists went public yesterday.

Environmental Working Group President Kenneth A. Cook, whose group obtained a copy of the test results from the plaintiffs' lawyers, wrote to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt yesterday to complain about DuPont's failure to turn over the recent findings.

"Despite EPA's formal complaint and pending hearing, DuPont continues its established pattern of hiding important health information from the agency," Cook wrote.

DuPont officials said they were not required to report the study's conclusions to the EPA because the residents' blood levels of C-8 -- which were 12 times higher than those of average Americans -- did not represent a health threat.

"The Environmental Working Group's latest claims are irresponsible and alarmist," said Stacey J. Mobley, DuPont senior vice president and general counsel. "DuPont is cooperating fully with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and is providing all appropriate information to the agency about PFOA, whether required by a statute or not. The EWG is doing all it can to mislead the public on this issue."

The EPA has no established safety level for C-8 exposure, though it is in the midst of a broad scientific review to determine whether it is dangerous. Agency officials have expressed concern that the compound remains in the bodies of exposed people for several years.

EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said the agency "takes very seriously" the allegation that DuPont failed to fully report possible health problems linked to C-8, which is why it decided in July to seek fines against the company.

"The agency continues to receive and review information, and we have not foreclosed any possibilities, including that of additional claims," Bergman said.

DuPont representatives met with EPA officials on Nov. 2 to determine what information is "of interest to the agency," said DuPont spokesman R. Clifton Webb, adding the company "is committed to share details of all ongoing research on the compound."

--------

Survey Shows Fear of Medical Errors

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 18, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58502-2004Nov17.html

Americans are increasingly worried about dangerous -- even deadly -- mistakes in hospitals, but an overwhelming majority say the solution lies in easy-to-read, published safety report cards, not more medical lawsuits, a national survey released yesterday found.

Five years after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a landmark report on widespread preventable deaths in U.S. hospitals, the new poll shows that confidence in the health care system has declined and pressure to reform it has grown.

More than half of the 2,000 adults surveyed said they are dissatisfied with the quality of health care, up from 44 percent in 2000. At the same time, 92 percent said reporting of medical errors should be mandatory, according to the poll, by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Harvard School of Public Health and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Despite enormous frustration, few people indicated a desire to use the courts as recourse, calling into question policymakers' renewed interest in malpractice legislation, said Harvard pollster Robert Blendon.

"They do not view the malpractice system as the way to resolve these problems," Blendon said. "They would like the medical errors reported by a public agency, have the agency release it and then have it printed in some kind of Consumer Reports, and then they can go somewhere else" for care, he said.

About one-third of those surveyed said either they or a family member had experienced a medical error, but only 11 percent of them said they had sued for malpractice. By much larger margins, respondents favored remedies such as suspending the license of a doctor or nurse who makes medical errors.

In the 1999 report "To Err Is Human," the IOM estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in hospitals each year because of preventable mistakes. The errors range from operating on a wrong limb to spreading infection with dirty hands. Hospital-based errors are the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, claiming more lives than AIDS, automobile accidents or breast cancer.

"Unfortunately, despite five years of focused attention, people do not seem to feel safer," the researchers wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. "In fact, 40 percent believe that the quality of health care has 'gotten worse' in the past five years."

Donald M. Berwick, president of the Massachusetts-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said it is impossible to say whether progress has been made because there are no universal standards.

"Impressionistically, substantial progress has been made on awareness," he said. Yet "most hospitals in this country do not have improvement of safety in their strategic agenda."

One major stumbling block is a dispute over whether hospital errors should be publicly released.

"Public reporting is not the answer" because it could create a climate of fear, said Don Nielsen, senior vice president for quality leadership at the American Hospital Association. Physicians want "definitive, useful, confidential reporting," he said.

But Carolyn Clancy, director of the federal agency devoted to improving medical care, countered: "Telling a patient about a medical error and what will be done in the future to prevent it should be the rule, not the exception."

Safety improvements can come in low-tech and high-tech changes, said Elliot Sussman, president of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in Pennsylvania. His hospital installed a $5 million computer system for ordering prescriptions and tracking patient care, and it placed hand-sanitizer dispensers in every room, reducing the rates of infection to far below the national average, he said.

-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)

Why the Dollar's Fall is Bad for Everyone

November 18, 2004
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,328487,00.html

As the United States pushes further and further into debt, the country is financing its budget with infusions of a billion dollars a day from Asia. But if China and Japan started trading in euros instead, the dollar could collapse. That would be bad for the US and Germany, where economic recovery is dependent on exports.

The logo on one of the classic T-shirts on display in the souvenir shop at the Chicago Futures Exchange reads: "Pigs are trendier than you thought." For generations, the Exchange's building on Wacker Drive has been famous for trading in pork bellies.

These days, of course, a different commodity has become the focus of speculation: On the floor of the exchange, currency traders, in their brightly colored jackets, are betting billions on the future of the US dollar. And if the traders' predictions hold true, it's not exactly rosy.

The futures traders, in any event, seem to agree: They're betting that the greenback will continue to decline. To show that they mean business, they've covered themselves with at least 200,000 so-called short contracts, which entitle them to sell currency at a set exchange rate on a fixed date in the future.

The volume of selling positions has quadrupled since spring. Recently, in early November, trading volume jumped by 17 percent in one week alone. Into the euro and out of the dollar -- that's the traders' current mantra.

The US currency has dropped into a downright tailspin, rapidly losing its value, and not just in recent weeks. Since February 2002, the dollar has declined by 30 percent, while the value of the euro has increased proportionately. Back then, investors were getting $0.86 for one euro. This week, the euro jumped over the $1.30 mark, an all-time high. "We are experiencing a weak dollar across the board," says Stephan Beilke, a currency trader with Bremer Landesbank. He is firmly convinced that this trend will continue.

The economists are outdoing each other with bleak forecasts. Thomas Mayer, chief European economist at Deutsche Bank, believes $1.40 is realistic, while his counterpart at investment bank Goldman Sachs, Jim O'Neill, expects an exchange rate of $1.50. Finally, US economist Fred Bergsten is boldly talking about rates of $1.80 and $2.20. Everything seems possible.

Bush II: four more years of debt?

It seems odd: A US president is re-elected by a larger margin than expected, normally a sign of confidence and strength, but then the currency begins taking a nosedive. Some people are just now realizing that the election slogan "Four More Years" could also mean four more years of more debt, more unemployment and more uncertainty.

People are beginning to worry that the consequences of the dollar's weakness could be more serious than anticipated. In the United States, a strong currency is the basis for relatively low interest rates and healthy consumption rates. In Asia and Europe, it's an important condition for a flourishing export economy.

Germany's economic recovery, in particular, is completely dependent on exports. The German economy was almost stagnant in the third quarter, because exports haven't been as strong as they used to be. Carmakers and chemical conglomerates are worried that they could be selling fewer and fewer products in US dollar markets in the future. Customers in those markets are seeing these products become more expensive as the euro strengthens.

Of course, most German companies have learned their lesson and are now hedging their dollar revenues against exchange rate risks. But this also has its price. "The longer the hedge transactions continue and the more the dollar fluctuates, the more expensive the whole thing becomes," says Diether Klingelnberg, senior manager at a mechanical engineering firm in Germany's Rhineland region. "If the euro reaches 1.50 or even 1.80, it'll become unaffordable."

Growing wary of the dollar

The anti-dollar mood is also being stoked by speculators. Hedge fund managers, who are some of the most aggressive investors, periodically pump billions into the market for a few days, just to push exchange rates in the desired direction. So what happens if they permanently turn against the dollar?

Hardly anyone expects George W. Bush to spend his second term enthusiastically addressing the country's economic problems: the US budget and current account deficits. Caio Koch-Weser, an undersecretary in the German Ministry of Finance, warns that this double deficit is "alarming the markets." As long as it exists, the dollar will not regain its strength.

The US budget deficit for the last fiscal year will reach a record $422 billion. The war in Iraq is consuming enormous sums of money, and tax cuts are also taking their toll.

At the same time, the current account deficit is growing: Americans are buying more than they produce, and they're using credit to pay for their affluence. The deficit had already reached $531 billion in 2003 and is expected to grown by another $120 billion this year. The government can't borrow from its citizens, who are saving at a rate of only 0.2 percent. As a result, it's forced to borrow overseas, mainly in Japan and China.


-------- ACTIVISTS

The Role of Boycotts in the Fight for Peace
Notes on Post-Election Strategy

Common Dreams
by Paul Rockwell
November 18, 2004
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1118-24.htm

After the election of George Bush, it took less than a week for peace activists to reach a consensus: "Stand and fight."

The U.S. election is simply unacceptable. No president, no matter how large the vote, has any authority to commit war crimes, to destroy cities from the air, to create inhuman prison systems beyond the rule of law, to violate the sovereignty of states. No franchise anywhere entitles any leader to subjugate foreign peoples, or to violate international law. Far from being a democratic "mandate" for Bush, the election is a mandate for world-wide resistance. As James Madison wrote: "Elective despotism is not the government we fought for."

Notwithstanding the consensus of defiance, questions of strategy remain to be addressed. How and where and by what means do we carry on the fight for peace? Do we continue to work within deformed, money-drenched elections? Or do we move into a new phase of direct, economic actions?

At the turn of the 20th century, when imperialism was in its ascendancy, British economist J.A. Hobson, wrote: "Consumption alone vitalises capital and makes it capable of yielding profits...It is idle to attack Imperialism or Militarism as political expedients or policies unless the axe is laid at the economic root of the tree."

No country is more market-driven, more intertwined with foreign commerce and trade, more dependent on the good will of workers and consumers, than the United States. Its war machine depends on parts produced in foreign countries, and there is growing feeling throughout the world that farmers, entrepreneurs, workers and consumers should do unto the U.S. what the U.S. does unto others.

As peace organizations formulate strategy and co-ordinate actions, the teachings of Arundhati Roy, the most visionary and sagacious strategist on the world stage, take on immediate significance.

In her address at the World Social Forum in Porte Allegre, Brazil, January 27th, 2003, Roy put out a call for a new strategy of non-cooperation. Steeped in the traditions of Gandhi, Roy's books and speeches emphasize the economic vulnerability of the U.S. empire.

"The U.S. economy," she writes, "is strung out across the globe. It's economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant."

"We could reverse the idea of economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of People's sanctions on every corporation that has been awarded a contract in post-war Iraq. Each one of them should be named, exposed and boycotted-forced out of business. It would be a great start."

Weekend protests, Roy tells us, are not enough. "What we need to discuss urgently are strategies of resistance...Gandhi's salt march was not just political theatre. In a simple act of defiance, thousands of Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire."

"Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted...They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the amorphous but growing fury in the world."

For Roy, it is not enough to communicate ideas, to write letters to Congress. "We must make it materially impossible for the empire to achieve its aims." She does not ignore elections. But she believes that "Free elections, a free press, and independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available for sale to the highest bidder...The machinery of democracy has been effectively subverted."

The Pending World-wide Boycott

All over the world, peace and anti-globalization movements are preparing to put Roy's concepts into practice. They are calling for a new kind of strategy to end the occupation of Iraq: a well-organized, sustained boycott of U.S. and British goods. In its range and scope, the coming boycott (including divestment from U.S. corporations) could resemble the historic boycott of South African apartheid.

The theme of the boycott, unencumbered by riders or secondary demands, is clear and simple: end the heinous occupation of Iraq. The boycott will not subside until all U.S. and British troops are withdrawn from the sovereign soil of Iraq; until all U.S. military bases are dismantled; until all U.S. corporations on Iraqi soil are closed down.

Boycotts have often changed the world. The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party. The non-violent movement that brought down the British Empire included Gandhi's boycott against British textiles. The Montgomery bus boycott launched the civil rights movement. The United Farm Workers in the U.S., led by Caesar Chavez, were unionized through laborious national boycotts of lettuce and grapes. And of course, the international boycott of South Africa played a vital role in bringing down the system of apartheid.

Spontaneous Boycotts Are Already Happening

Sporadic and spontaneous boycotts, local in form, have been taking place in cities throughout the globe. National Public Radio (U.S.) reports that thousands of Europeans, repulsed by the election of Bush, are refusing to buy American goods. One placard in a Paris window says: "Promote peace. Don't buy American." According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Europe is simmering. "You're going to see American profits disappear. American corporations are going to be in big trouble. It's going to be a mantra not to buy American. All our major manufacturers are reporting major slowdowns in Europe. You're going to see the dollar disappear."

The boycott is spreading. Greenpeace is already involved in a boycott against Exxon-Esso and Mobil Oil. Fermiamo La Guerre, a coalition of peace groups in Italy, called for a boycott of Esso when the U.S. invasion commenced. Sales of Pepsi and Coca Cola have plummeted in the Mideast during the occupation, and Islamic nations are creating alternative cola drinks called Zam Zam and Mecca Cola. Iran banned ads for U.S.-manufactured goods. South African protesters in Cape Town demanded that Denel, a South African contractor, cancel all its contracts to supply military components to the U.S. war machine. The people of South Africa are well aware of the power of boycotts. As South Africa Indymedia put it: We must "take aim at the only thing that can bring Bush to his knees-the American economy."

In the capital of Pakistan, the bustling Jehangir restaurant has taken U.S. soft drinks off the menu. "We only serve Pakistani drinks," one waiter said in an interview with Inter Press Service. "We don't serve Pepsi or Coca-Cola or any other American soft drinks anymore." Fast-food chains-Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken-are under a boycott in Pakistan. As one member of the Islamist Party said: "We must stop buying anything American or British. We must hurt American interests as much as possible."

The Myth of U.S. Invincibility

Mussolini once said there is no greater sin than looking weak. All empires sustain themselves through a mystique of invincibility. The U.S. is no exception. Its leaders now choose their words-"Shock and Awe," "Operation Iron Hammer"-to cow the timid.

But all of its nuclear weapons, all of its attack helicopters and B-52s, its power to turn mosques, hospitals and cities into rubble; all of its tanks, cluster bombs, computers and depleted uranium, cannot protect the U.S. empire from the ubiquity and power of non-cooperation. The U.S. may post soldiers at its foreign bases. It may continue to bribe foreign officials, to blackmail foreign governments. But its economic outposts, from Starbucks to Disneyland, from Hollywood films to corporations that advertise on Fox "News," are open and vulnerable. It is the U.S. that depends on the people of the world-on their land, their oil, their skills and labor, their buying power and good will-not the people of the world who depend on the U.S. That is the key insight for peace strategists of our time.

The U.S. empire is weaker than its neo-cons dare admit. Laborers and farmers and entrepreneurs are stronger than they realize.

Spontaneous boycotts, however, are rarely effective. Without organizational support, long-range planning, creative tactics and publicity, boycotts lose momentum. Successful boycotts require leadership. They're arduous struggles that last for years. When the leaders of the peace movement are ready to seize the time, prepared to unleash the power of non-cooperation, the darkness and despondency of our post-election days will fade.

Christmas, the most commercial season of the year, will soon arrive. Under Bush, Christmas is a time to make war and shop. But for us, it is the time to make peace and boycott.

Gandhi wrote: "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a responsibility as co-operation with good."

Let the boycott begin.

Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine, among other journals. (rockyspad@hotmail.com)


-------

------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)

------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!